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On September 09 2011 15:51 ducken wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 15:35 Kaolla wrote:On September 09 2011 15:26 ducken wrote:
make gateways produce faster than warp gates do.
defender's advantage
macro reward
higher level decision making (gear up for attack? when to change gateways?)
4gate nerf
bam. problems with proxy becoming OP ... bam! so your argument is that cheese and not reacting to cheese is op? also i don't actually know this but could anyone tell me when protoss ever actually uses gateways when they have warpgate?
Warpgates produce faster than non-morphed gateways. To use a magic the gathering term, Warpgates are strictly better than gateways.
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On September 09 2011 15:53 Geo.Rion wrote:
I really do not mean to troll you, but it seems like this is your logic:
An offensive and a defensive Protoss have the same rally distance. Hence, Protoss doesnt have an advantage in defence, because it doesnt have a disadvantage in attack cuz of easy reinforcing, so it is pretty clear, that Protoss is weak.
I appreciate your work and the effort you put in it, but you really did not convince me, actually it is ridiculous, maybe i didnt understand it well enough.
Also: Protoss timing attacks with large armies are balanced against defensive, economic Terrans and Zergs (both races have economic openings that are ahead after defending a Protoss timing).
It would be a lot nicer and look less biased, if you'd say "allegedly" or "presumably" balanced timing atacks, and both of the other races have economic openings that are ahead IF they defend the protoss timing push, if not they just died.
Well, I just sort of assumed that the games in all our tournaments speak for themselves. Terrans and Zergs are capable of defending early Protoss pressure with economic openers. If this weren't true, every Terran or Zerg would open much more unit heavy than they currently do.
Yes, I am making assumptions, but I feel they aren't that ridiculous. I'm just assuming that it is possible as a Terran or Zerg, to expand before (ie play more economically than) a pressuring Protoss and survive. Do you disagree? If yes, do you have a replay?
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On September 09 2011 15:53 Geo.Rion wrote:
I really do not mean to troll you, but it seems like this is your logic:
An offensive and a defensive Protoss have the same rally distance. Hence, Protoss doesnt have an advantage in defence, because it doesnt have a disadvantage in attack cuz of easy reinforcing, so it is pretty clear, that Protoss is weak.
I appreciate your work and the effort you put in it, but you really did not convince me, actually it is ridiculous, maybe i didnt understand it well enough.
I think what he's trying to say is that Protoss have the ability to negate part of the other races defender's advantage. In order to make that balanced Protoss needs to be weaker in some sense. This weakness, that is necessary to make Protoss timing attacks balanced, will cause problems for P when they are on the defence. So in order to make up for that weakness they need another defenders advantage because the proximity advantage has been "negated" in some sense.
Of course they still have the proximity advantage, but other balance changes have negated it's effect to make offensive Protoss balanced.
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I would argue that both the sentry and the stalker work better on the defense than the offense, there are far more forms of defenders advantage than what you have described.
Sentries can trap attacking units far more easily than defending units (fall back to your natural nexus etc.)
Stalkers can kite and harass attacking units across the map back to your base to weaken early timings (stalker pokes are pretty common in every matchup)
And then of course there is always the big one, you can always pull workers.
You can pull probes on defense to trap units to stop them kiting/surrounding your zealots but they just get in the way if you try to allin with them (unlike scv/marine).
So I'm assuming the ultimate point was that Warpgate help on the offense but not on the defense, I would argue that there are many small things like those above that give protoss a defenders advantage other than rally points.
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On September 09 2011 15:47 Azzur wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 15:26 susySquark wrote:A lot of people are getting the wrong idea... I edited in a new conclusion: The differences in the races amounts to basic units and their defenders advantage. A Zealot, Stalker, Sentry army is equally good on offense and on defense. A Marine, Marauder force is good on offense, but BETTER on defense, because of bunkers and a shorter rally compared to their offense. Same goes for Zerg - a force at home is BETTER than an attacking force because of creep, spines, and relatively short rally. A defending Protoss army has literally no advantage compared to an attacking one, there is nothing to set the defending army above the attacking one. So, if a Protoss early expands, their weaker army cannot make up for their lack of size with any external forces like a Terran or Zerg one can, and is vulnerable to timing pushes from the enemy. - An offensive and a defensive Protoss have the same rally distance.
- Protoss timing attacks with large armies are balanced against defensive, economic Terrans and Zergs (both races have economic openings that are ahead after defending a Protoss timing).
- Because of these two points, a defensive Protoss with an small unit count and economic opener is weak because what is normally a defenders advantage is not a defenders advantage for them, it's a given in both offense and defense.
- The lack of a defensive structure after gateway adds to this problem.
- Therefore, the lack of a strong defenders advantage means Protoss has no safe, economic openers.
This is a good conclusion. Many months ago (7 months), I wrote a post entitled "Warpgates, a broken mechanic": http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=189432 and suggested a nerf to WGs with a "nexus cannon" as a compensating solution. This is a non-detecting ground attack only defensive structure that can only be built within a certain radius of a nexus. The pre-requisite for this structure would be a gateway. One thing I didn't mention in the post is also to re-balance the gateway building times for units. I found it a bit silly that WGs also allows for faster units. A shield battery is a good alternative idea if it can only be built within a certain radius of a nexus. It's important to have this "nexus nearby" pre-requisite or the cheesy protosses will abuse it for offense. Anyways, my feelings is that protoss is the "gimmick" race. There is also a higher tendency for the people that picked protoss to also be similarly gimmicky and all-inn'ish. With the other races now mastering ways to counter their gimmicks, protoss have been struggling. And I
I really like that Nexus cannon suggestion. Hopefully Blizzard can cook up something creative like that in HoTS.
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On September 09 2011 16:04 Divergence wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 15:53 Geo.Rion wrote:
I really do not mean to troll you, but it seems like this is your logic:
An offensive and a defensive Protoss have the same rally distance. Hence, Protoss doesnt have an advantage in defence, because it doesnt have a disadvantage in attack cuz of easy reinforcing, so it is pretty clear, that Protoss is weak.
I appreciate your work and the effort you put in it, but you really did not convince me, actually it is ridiculous, maybe i didnt understand it well enough. I think what he's trying to say is that Protoss have the ability to negate part of the other races defender's advantage. In order to make that balanced Protoss needs to be weaker in some sense. This weakness, that is necessary to make Protoss timing attacks balanced, will cause problems for P when they are on the defence. So in order to make up for that weakness they need another defenders advantage because the proximity advantage has been "negated" in some sense. Of course they still have the proximity advantage, but other balance changes have negated it's effect to make offensive Protoss balanced.
This is the misconception that everyone has. Protoss warpgate DOES NOT NEGATE DEFENDERS ADVANTAGE. T&Z defense still has a short rally compared to offense, you still have creep, you still have bunkers. Protoss warpgate simply makes Protoss offense and defense the same. But your defense is supposed to be stronger per cost than your offense, which means that either: Protoss offense is too good, but defense is fine, or, as I'm arguing, Protoss offense is balanced, but defense is lacking.
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On September 09 2011 15:58 susySquark wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 15:53 Geo.Rion wrote:
I really do not mean to troll you, but it seems like this is your logic:
An offensive and a defensive Protoss have the same rally distance. Hence, Protoss doesnt have an advantage in defence, because it doesnt have a disadvantage in attack cuz of easy reinforcing, so it is pretty clear, that Protoss is weak.
I appreciate your work and the effort you put in it, but you really did not convince me, actually it is ridiculous, maybe i didnt understand it well enough.
Also: Protoss timing attacks with large armies are balanced against defensive, economic Terrans and Zergs (both races have economic openings that are ahead after defending a Protoss timing).
It would be a lot nicer and look less biased, if you'd say "allegedly" or "presumably" balanced timing atacks, and both of the other races have economic openings that are ahead IF they defend the protoss timing push, if not they just died. Well, I just sort of assumed that the games in all our tournaments speak for themselves. Terrans and Zergs are capable of defending early Protoss pressure with economic openers. If this weren't true, every Terran or Zerg would open much more unit heavy than they currently do. Yes, I am making assumptions, but I feel they aren't that ridiculous. I'm just assuming that it is possible as a Terran or Zerg, to expand before (ie play more economically than) a pressuring Protoss and survive. Do you disagree? If yes, do you have a replay?
I sincerly believe, it is not possible to expand before the Protoss because on most positions a Protoss can go 15 nexus before forge against anything slower then a 13 pool, or just forge first in wich case the Zerg is not allowed to hatch first, because he dies to canons on most of the maps, and even if he goes pool first has to have at least one drone following the probe because of possible contain or just 1 well placed canon behind the mineral line.
The Zerg's standard response to this is either go for an allin, some sort of 2 base risky timing attack, Or do the more mainstream double exp thing (on some maps anyways).
The double expantion though is fairly risky because it can easily die to a 2 base allin or get behind vs a well played Stargate play.
To this, recently the WarpPrims rushes and allins were added (mind you which will get just stronger with the new warprism). The blinkstalker+waprism 2 base attack with elevating 2 sentries to block the main ramp, blinking in with stalkers and just reinforcing trough WP is unbeatable imo, unless you know it exactly it s coming and prepare perfectly. If not, your main and the majority of ur tech and production is gone.
But the standard Warprism +6or7 warpgates are almost as potent and even less allinish. Imo protoss is fine in PvZ, i know im biased, but the nerfs/buffs proposed are out of proportion right now on PTR.
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On September 09 2011 16:05 TheLink wrote:
I would argue that both the sentry and the stalker work better on the defense than the offense, there are far more forms of defenders advantage than what you have described.
Sentries can trap attacking units far more easily than defending units (fall back to your natural nexus etc.)
Stalkers can kite and harass attacking units across the map back to your base to weaken early timings (stalker pokes are pretty common in every matchup)
And then of course there is always the big one, you can always pull workers.
You can pull probes on defense to trap units to stop them kiting/surrounding your zealots but they just get in the way if you try to allin with them (unlike scv/marine).
So I'm assuming the ultimate point was that Warpgate help on the offense but not on the defense, I would argue that there are many small things like those above that give protoss a defenders advantage other than rally points.
Sentries trapping is map dependent, XNC has those two hallways into your nat, Shak has a ramp, etc. Maps like Typhon there is almost no difference between a sentry at home and a sentry in the middle of the map.
Stalkers can kite yes. This can be big, but its completely shut down by concussive shells or zergling speed, both of which are standard.
Worker pulling goes against the whole point of doing a safe opening. Safe openings are supposed t come out economically ahead of aggressive openings, but if he kills enough workers, you've simply come out even.
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On September 09 2011 16:08 Geo.Rion wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 15:58 susySquark wrote:On September 09 2011 15:53 Geo.Rion wrote:
I really do not mean to troll you, but it seems like this is your logic:
An offensive and a defensive Protoss have the same rally distance. Hence, Protoss doesnt have an advantage in defence, because it doesnt have a disadvantage in attack cuz of easy reinforcing, so it is pretty clear, that Protoss is weak.
I appreciate your work and the effort you put in it, but you really did not convince me, actually it is ridiculous, maybe i didnt understand it well enough.
Also: Protoss timing attacks with large armies are balanced against defensive, economic Terrans and Zergs (both races have economic openings that are ahead after defending a Protoss timing).
It would be a lot nicer and look less biased, if you'd say "allegedly" or "presumably" balanced timing atacks, and both of the other races have economic openings that are ahead IF they defend the protoss timing push, if not they just died. Well, I just sort of assumed that the games in all our tournaments speak for themselves. Terrans and Zergs are capable of defending early Protoss pressure with economic openers. If this weren't true, every Terran or Zerg would open much more unit heavy than they currently do. Yes, I am making assumptions, but I feel they aren't that ridiculous. I'm just assuming that it is possible as a Terran or Zerg, to expand before (ie play more economically than) a pressuring Protoss and survive. Do you disagree? If yes, do you have a replay? I sincerly believe, it is not possible to expand before the Protoss because on most positions a Protoss can go 15 nexus before forge against anything slower then a 13 pool, or just forge first in wich case the Zerg is not allowed to hatch first, because he dies to canons on most of the maps, and even if he goes pool first has to have at least one drone following the probe because of possible contain or just 1 well placed canon behind the mineral line.
And I politely disagree with your opinion that Zerg cannot open more economically than a Protoss. Once cannon rushing is denied, the length of time to any aggressive maneuver is long enough for you to 3 base and prepare. Keep in mind that a forge + cannons does not advance tech towards any units at all. In other words, If you defend a pylon + 2 cannon rush with lings, but lose 400 minerals of lings, you're technically ahead, because both players have lost the same amount of minerals, but you actually can make attacking units. I still have to build my gateway to get going.
Agree to disagree, I suppose. I think most people would agree with me though >.>
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On September 09 2011 16:07 susySquark wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 16:04 Divergence wrote:On September 09 2011 15:53 Geo.Rion wrote:
I really do not mean to troll you, but it seems like this is your logic:
An offensive and a defensive Protoss have the same rally distance. Hence, Protoss doesnt have an advantage in defence, because it doesnt have a disadvantage in attack cuz of easy reinforcing, so it is pretty clear, that Protoss is weak.
I appreciate your work and the effort you put in it, but you really did not convince me, actually it is ridiculous, maybe i didnt understand it well enough. I think what he's trying to say is that Protoss have the ability to negate part of the other races defender's advantage. In order to make that balanced Protoss needs to be weaker in some sense. This weakness, that is necessary to make Protoss timing attacks balanced, will cause problems for P when they are on the defence. So in order to make up for that weakness they need another defenders advantage because the proximity advantage has been "negated" in some sense. Of course they still have the proximity advantage, but other balance changes have negated it's effect to make offensive Protoss balanced. This is the misconception that everyone has. Protoss warpgate DOES NOT NEGATE DEFENDERS ADVANTAGE. T&Z defense still has a short rally compared to offense, you still have creep, you still have bunkers. Protoss warpgate simply makes Protoss offense and defense the same. But your defense is supposed to be stronger per cost than your offense, which means that either: Protoss offense is too good, but defense is fine, or, as I'm arguing, Protoss offense is balanced, but defense is lacking.
Well, according to your reasoning, this means that if the protoss were given a defensive ability that does not affect their offense (e.g. "nexus shield battery" or my "nexus cannon" idea), then it should be fine.
However, I prefer to take a broader outlook rather than just considering offense and defence. I believe the real issue is that WGs are broken. They should be nerfed and then everything re-balanced to that.
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On September 09 2011 16:23 Azzur wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 16:07 susySquark wrote:On September 09 2011 16:04 Divergence wrote:On September 09 2011 15:53 Geo.Rion wrote:
I really do not mean to troll you, but it seems like this is your logic:
An offensive and a defensive Protoss have the same rally distance. Hence, Protoss doesnt have an advantage in defence, because it doesnt have a disadvantage in attack cuz of easy reinforcing, so it is pretty clear, that Protoss is weak.
I appreciate your work and the effort you put in it, but you really did not convince me, actually it is ridiculous, maybe i didnt understand it well enough. I think what he's trying to say is that Protoss have the ability to negate part of the other races defender's advantage. In order to make that balanced Protoss needs to be weaker in some sense. This weakness, that is necessary to make Protoss timing attacks balanced, will cause problems for P when they are on the defence. So in order to make up for that weakness they need another defenders advantage because the proximity advantage has been "negated" in some sense. Of course they still have the proximity advantage, but other balance changes have negated it's effect to make offensive Protoss balanced. This is the misconception that everyone has. Protoss warpgate DOES NOT NEGATE DEFENDERS ADVANTAGE. T&Z defense still has a short rally compared to offense, you still have creep, you still have bunkers. Protoss warpgate simply makes Protoss offense and defense the same. But your defense is supposed to be stronger per cost than your offense, which means that either: Protoss offense is too good, but defense is fine, or, as I'm arguing, Protoss offense is balanced, but defense is lacking. Well, according to your reasoning, this means that if the protoss were given a defensive ability that does not affect their offense (e.g. "nexus shield battery" or my "nexus cannon" idea), then it should be fine. However, I prefer to take a broader outlook rather than just considering offense and defence. I believe the real issue is that WGs are broken. They should be nerfed and then everything re-balanced to that.
To your first point - Exactly! You got it.
To your second point - thats a matter of opinion, subject to how Blizzard wants the game to turn out. It is possible to properly fix the game either by making warpgate less offensive, OR making another defensive option.
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On September 09 2011 16:07 susySquark wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 16:04 Divergence wrote:On September 09 2011 15:53 Geo.Rion wrote:
I really do not mean to troll you, but it seems like this is your logic:
An offensive and a defensive Protoss have the same rally distance. Hence, Protoss doesnt have an advantage in defence, because it doesnt have a disadvantage in attack cuz of easy reinforcing, so it is pretty clear, that Protoss is weak.
I appreciate your work and the effort you put in it, but you really did not convince me, actually it is ridiculous, maybe i didnt understand it well enough. I think what he's trying to say is that Protoss have the ability to negate part of the other races defender's advantage. In order to make that balanced Protoss needs to be weaker in some sense. This weakness, that is necessary to make Protoss timing attacks balanced, will cause problems for P when they are on the defence. So in order to make up for that weakness they need another defenders advantage because the proximity advantage has been "negated" in some sense. Of course they still have the proximity advantage, but other balance changes have negated it's effect to make offensive Protoss balanced. This is the misconception that everyone has. Protoss warpgate DOES NOT NEGATE DEFENDERS ADVANTAGE. T&Z defense still has a short rally compared to offense, you still have creep, you still have bunkers. Protoss warpgate simply makes Protoss offense and defense the same. But your defense is supposed to be stronger per cost than your offense, which means that either: Protoss offense is too good, but defense is fine, or, as I'm arguing, Protoss offense is balanced, but defense is lacking.
Also, one more thing - defender's advantage is a broad term. One of the aspects of it that the attackers are far away from their supply lines and reinforcements. Thus, in the layman sense, WGs do negate the defender's advantage because this time the attackers are close to their reinforcements.
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On September 09 2011 15:51 ducken wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 15:35 Kaolla wrote:On September 09 2011 15:26 ducken wrote:
make gateways produce faster than warp gates do.
defender's advantage
macro reward
higher level decision making (gear up for attack? when to change gateways?)
4gate nerf
bam. problems with proxy becoming OP ... bam! so your argument is that cheese and not reacting to cheese is op? also i don't actually know this but could anyone tell me when protoss ever actually uses gateways when they have warpgate?
the rewards of cheese shouldn't get too big... of course still depends on the timings a bit, but it is the risk of making gateways produce faster... and i doubt anyone uses warpgates after having the tech...havent ever seen it anyway...
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blizzard already noticed this when they intended to reduce the build times of units from gateways, and increase warp gate research time to balance it out. however, people complained that 2 gate pressure or proxy 2 gates will be too powerful, which i agree to as well. they still kept the sentry build time reduction though, which i think has helped a bit. perhaps reducing sentry/stalker gateway production times will help with the early game vulnerability, and since both these units require a cybernetics core to be constructed before they can be produced, the threat of 2 gate pressure becoming too strong is not there.
every race has its own diversity and the warpgate mechanics is one of the most unique features of protoss and obviously should remain as it is. changing it in anyway besides the research duration would completely change the way the race is played.
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I'm not sure that the warp mechanic is the reason for the boring PvP matchup and the brutal beating Protoss has experienced in the other match ups. Nonetheless, the warp mechanic is f***ing retarded. Because there is exist only a small the defenders advantage namely the ramp while in the other matchups there exists additional advantages for the defender, time. Time to react through more units and their composition, "static" defence. Protoss does have a static defence disadvantage as compared to the other races because zerg can move their spine crawlers and spore crawlers. Terran can salvage bunkers. This mechanic allows these races to secure an expansion and transition from 1 base static defences to 2 base static defences. Phase cannons anyone?
Early game:
I think PvP is responsible for the sentry which main ability is the forcefield. The forcefield is necessary for one of the three defensive advantages in PvP, denying access through the ramp while the other advantages is the high ground and the ramp itself (concave defence vs one line aggression). If there were no forcefield the aggressor would only have one obstacle to worry about the high ground advantage and a concave defence.
Mid game:
As mid game has been reached in the match up or rather blink has been upgraded then the defenders advantage diminishes even more. Because the ramp has almost lost its importance due to the fact that the ramp is not the only entry point into the base. The high ground advantage is also of less importance with an enemy observer.
Solutions:
Allow only same level blinking or conversely disallow cliff blinking. This would allow only one entry point for blink stalkers to a protoss base. If that is not enough then the sentries should have a greater range so that they could attack behind stalkers and gain an ever stronger concave defence (Could be imba in PvT and PvZ but i'm solely brainstorming in the PvP match up)
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On September 09 2011 17:05 archonOOid wrote:
I'm not sure that the warp mechanic is the reason for the boring PvP matchup and the brutal beating Protoss has experienced in the other match ups. Nonetheless, the warp mechanic is f***ing retarded. Because there is exist only a small the defenders advantage namely the ramp while in the other matchups there exists additional advantages for the defender, time. Time to react through more units and their composition, "static" defence. Protoss does have a static defence disadvantage as compared to the other races because zerg can move their spine crawlers and spore crawlers. Terran can salvage bunkers. This mechanic allows these races to secure an expansion and transition from 1 base static defences to 2 base static defences. Phase cannons anyone?
Early game:
I think PvP is responsible for the sentry which main ability is the forcefield. The forcefield is necessary for one of the three defensive advantages in PvP, denying access through the ramp while the other advantages is the high ground and the ramp itself (concave defence vs one line aggression). If there were no forcefield the aggressor would only have one obstacle to worry about the high ground advantage and a concave defence.
Mid game:
As mid game has been reached in the match up or rather blink has been upgraded then the defenders advantage diminishes even more. Because the ramp has almost lost its importance due to the fact that the ramp is not the only entry point into the base. The high ground advantage is also of less importance with an enemy observer.
Solutions:
Allow only same level blinking or conversely disallow cliff blinking. This would allow only one entry point for blink stalkers to a protoss base. If that is not enough then the sentries should have a greater range so that they could attack behind stalkers and gain an ever stronger concave defence (Could be imba in PvT and PvZ but i'm solely brainstorming in the PvP match up)
PvP would actually be the one most clearly and easily fixed with the addition of a gateway tech defensive structure, in my opinion. As long as there were some way to restrict it to solely defensive use. Just start a shield battery, ff your ramp a couple times to let it get up, and bam you're safe.
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Not sure if this has been mentioned, but I think Blizzard could make the gateway units' warpin times almost instant when defending, and the same warpin time it has now for proxy pylons on offense. Maybe like, if you warp in units close to a nexus there is little to no warpin time allowing for instant reinforcements instead of having to wait the 3-4s for them to warpin.
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On September 09 2011 15:26 ducken wrote:
make gateways produce faster than warp gates do.
defender's advantage
macro reward
higher level decision making (gear up for attack? when to change gateways?)
4gate nerf
bam.
proxy 2 gate every game
bam.
( but with a longer gateway build time your change could really be the way to go)
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I really like the idea about shield battery as a defensive structure avaible after the gateway, it could be an addon to the nexus (yes addon, I dont think it should use up all chrono energy!).
This would stop the battery from being used offensively and give a hefty boost to your defenders advantage. It would also let toss deal with terran drops later with fewer units left back in your base. If you have proper awareness and micro.
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Noticed everything OP said all the way back when I was first learning protoss FE builds and studying how the different races defend timings after FE. I think a point that most people are not considering is that everything OP said, if true (and frankly I don't see how it could be untrue, unless you argue the compliment, that protoss defense is fine and offense overpowered) does not by default make it a balance issue. Personally I think it could be okay for one particular race to have greater difficulty FE'ing. I remember a time where zerg was the only race that consistently FEs and people worked with it. It'll take some smart balancing, but little racial mechanic differences like these make the game more interesting imo.
I'm not saying the state of the game is balanced now. I'm just saying a balanced game doesn't need to have similar feasible expand timings/openers or overall similar dynamics for each race and each matchup.
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EPT
