The Warp Mechanic and How It Broke Protoss - Page 29

On September 11 2011 10:34 Excludos wrote:


Lets split this post up a bit:


Good, you found a point in the game where terran can't attack. This has nothing to do with the OP whatsoever.


Not really. Because protoss units are so incredibly weak by themselves, warping in to "defend" anything is usually incredibly hard. The best you can do is warp in a bunch og zealots to buy a bit more time until your real army comes to the rescue. Again, you're missing the point completely here.

I explained this earlier, but lets do it again:

7 minutes in the game, terran attacks a Zerg. With a 1 minute walking distance, the zerg now has a 8 minute army to defend with. This is called "defenders advantage".

8 minutes in the game, protoss attacks the terran. The terran now has a 8 minute army to defend with. This seems incredibly strong! Protoss units thus are equally bad, to leave the terran a chance to fend for himself. Protoss 8 minute attack is nerfed to become a 7 minute attack. But heres the bad part about this:

7 minutes in the game, terran attacks the protoss. With 1 minute walking distance, the protoss now has a 8 minute army to defend himself with. But wait! the protoss army is weakened to become a 7 minute army, as to not become too strong offensively. This means protoss has no defenders advantage whatsoever. This is the essence of what the OP is on about. Now go back and read the OP again.




Zealots don't do better if there are canons vs terran. Thats largely the problem here. That, pluss the fact that spines and bunkers 1. comes from pool/barracks, while canon comes from forge, which is out of the way early on, and 2. Can't be moved or salvaged.

Thus canons, while helpful, doesn't provide the optimal way to defend yourself compared to spines and bunkers. Again, this was explained in the OP to the detail..

On September 11 2011 10:53 GMonster wrote:


Bolded Part = 100% completely wrong
Sentry is all im going to say for that.

The positional advantage you get from Warpgate, which benefits protoss THE MOST (Positioning your Army). That is where you realize that the OP probably has no idea what he is talking about. The warp-in mechanic along with the Sentry FF and Zealot is very good and goes with the race perfectly. If you understand positioning, it is a great benifit, if you don't then... you post stuff like this. I've given my 2 cents, won't post in this thread again or bother to read a response to mine.

EDIT: @ OP If you include how your argument relates to the positional advantage you get from warp-in to your natural/main where ever you are defending then you might have a legit argument.

I don't know, I see this argument a lot that WG mechanic meant significantly weaker Protoss units. I used to think so myself, but I'm not sure anymore. The Zealot remains a strong unit, its stats similar or close to the BW Zealot. The Stalker, which I dislike, is strong in the early game but does get progressively worse as the game goes on. It is effective, however, in the mid/late game in mass numbers and with Blink (which is a cool ability). The Sentry is a decent support unit which has two great abilities in FF and GS and does ok damage for what it is. Therefore, it may not be the Protoss gateway army or WG mechanic that may be the issue here.

I don't know, maybe the issue is that when Blizzard added the Roach and the Marauder to SC2 they did not add something similar to the Protoss so that the Protoss Gateway army remains un-upgraded from BW apart from the addition of the Sentry with its FF/GS as a support unit. I'm also no longer sure, like I used to think, that the Sentry FF was meant to compensate for the weakness of Gateway units as a result of the WG mechanic. Rather, that specific Sentry ability was more to counteract the ability of other races to have significantly numerically superior forces than Protoss very quickly (through such mechanisms as Reactors and Larva Inject). Protoss' WG mechanic is the Protoss version of these race abilities in SC2 but, IMO, seems weaker as its advantage in mobility (i.e. warp in within pylon range) has to be played off against the timing of these Z and T racial abilities (along with complicated factors such as stim; concussive; ling speed and so on). Whatever the strengths of the WG mechanic in neutralising distance, you are still limited to the number of gates you have.

Returning to my earlier point, I think the Immortal as it was originally conceived was meant to be the Protoss gateway equivalent of the Roach/Marauder (it certainly counters them very effectively) but is probably too powerful and tanky (especially with such gimmicks as hardened shield) to remain a Gateway unit. This leaves Protoss Tier 1 unable to handle these armies without significant assistance and, at least versus Terran, is made worse by the power of Marines when they reach a significant number (aided by the Reactor ability on Rax). Therefore, I am doubtful if the WG mechanic is the core of Protoss design flaws and issues with the race in general.

I'm sorry if I am being a little unclear, I think I usually make my points better. But I have been thinking about this a little and am coming around to the conclusion that pinpointing the WG mechanic (as I used to do) as the core flaw in Protoss design may be wrong. The WG mechanic, fundamentally, may be fine as are Protoss Gateway units (although I do think the Stalker needs a little work - at least 1/1 for upgrades, please). The issue, rather, may be in a missing gateway unit for Protoss in SC2 and racial Z and T racial mechanics which, while legitimate, have no direct Protoss counter. Nor should they, I think. The WG mechanic works fine as an indirect response to these abilities, what needs to be also tweaked are the timings of this ability (together with, perhaps, minor tweaks to Gateway units).

Edit/ That said, I think bringing back the shield battery would be a great idea. It would, however, have to be tied to the Nexus or base in some way, as the way shield regeneration works in SC2 means, I think, that there could be room for abuse if it could be generated at any pylon anywhere on the map.

TL; DR: The WG mechanic does not necessarily lead to weaker Gateway units. What is lacking is a Gateway equivalent to the Marauder and Roach. Sentry FF/GS are not a buffer to the weakness of Gateway units, rather they compensate for the racial mechanics of Reactors for Terran and Larva Inject for Zerg which gives their armies a numerical advantage which P cannot match without FF/GS. The WG mechanic is therefore fine and does not break Protoss. Rather, what is required is better tweaking of the timing of the WG mechanic and the addition of a new Gateway unit.

On September 08 2011 19:07 MCMXVI wrote:
Good read, and I agree. Not only is it easier for terran to macro than for protoss and zerg (warp in and larva injects instead of queue queue queue), but to your question; how should they make offensive warp-ins weaker? Units spawn with less shields or armor or something?

On September 11 2011 10:53 GMonster wrote:


Bolded Part = 100% completely wrong
Sentry is all im going to say for that.

The positional advantage you get from Warpgate, which benefits protoss THE MOST (Positioning your Army). That is where you realize that the OP probably has no idea what he is talking about. The warp-in mechanic along with the Sentry FF and Zealot is very good and goes with the race perfectly. If you understand positioning, it is a great benifit, if you don't then... you post stuff like this. I've given my 2 cents, won't post in this thread again or bother to read a response to mine.

EDIT: @ OP If you include how your argument relates to the positional advantage you get from warp-in to your natural/main where ever you are defending then you might have a legit argument.

On September 11 2011 10:33 Gheed wrote:


Banshees come out of the third tier of terran structures; they are tier 3. Cloak requires research. An observer comes out of the second tier of protoss structures; it is tier 2. There's no reason to argue semantics. If a terran is rushing for banshees, then he is spending a lot of gas on things that are not stim/siege mode/extra tanks/extra banshees, or he is delaying the 111 push. It would be pretty stupid if terran teched all the way to starport, used a tech lab, researched cloak, and produced the banshees themselves only for the protoss to be able to completely thwart them no matter what tech path he went down, which is what the poster I quoted was rather boldly suggesting. The only way to follow that poster's suggestion would be to give protoss mobile detection at tier 1, or add detection at the stargate. Either way would be stupid and basically eliminate the cloaked banshee and DT from play against protoss.

If you're complaining about how difficult it is to scout terrans, than that isn't really material to the thread. Go complain in the "why 111 is imbalanced" thread. Trying to hold off 111 with gateway units only is pretty futile, anyway, and gateway units are what this thread is about.

On September 08 2011 19:13 RodYan wrote:
The solution is:
-Make Gateways start with warpgate
-Gateways now have a warp in radius for the early game. Pylons cannot be used to warp in at this point.
-Proxy pylon warp-in is a mid or late game upgrade

On September 11 2011 10:52 mprs wrote:
I agree with the OP. I've been saying this for quite a while, and I think there is only one real solution if Blizzard is really keen on keeping their warp-gate mechanic. Give normal gateways a faster production time than warp-gates, and let people decide between offense and defense. If it takes 12 seconds from one natural to the other, then all you need to have is units to come out 4-8 seconds faster. You won't increase P's offensive power but significantly make them better at defending. Obviously these numbers should be changed according to testing and what not.

This adds a shit ton more depth to P strategy and adds another thing they (we) need to think about.

1) Pushes don't become any better as it is always faster to just warp in units with a proxy pylon (which will use the old warp-gate timings)

2) Defending timing pushes becomes much easier, allowing for more economic openings and more macro games.

3) Fixes PvP. Not "fix pvp like Blizz tried to do" but ACTUALLY fix PvP. You get the defender's advantage and reactionary 3/4 gates will be able to hold fast 4 gate.

4) Allows a dynamic for the players where they have to decide if they want to be agressive or defensive or maybe even both. How many gateways you want as warp-gate becomes a real decision throughout the game, and becomes more important as the game progresses.

5) P is the easiest race to macro in, and the chronoboost mechanic is much easier than larva inject or creep tumor because you can forget it and then catch up without problems. Even T has to think about if they want to save 50-100 energy for mules at a certain period of the game. This gives P another thing to do, switching between gateways and warpgates throughout the game to maximize production, according to your strategy.

I honestly don't see any negatives, but feel free to add/correct anything I might have said wrong.

On September 11 2011 12:13 shammythefox wrote:



It's an interesting idea but it would still affect aggresive warpgate pushes. You'd build up a standing army with your gateways, then go do a regular push, and the normal defenders advantage is that the opponent has more rounds of units than you, however at this point your warpgate finishes, your morph gates and get that extra round. So protoss units will still end up having to be somewhat inefficient. You need some way of having a very long warpgate morphing time without giving protoss a vulnerable time window & keeping the research worth getting.

Also no mules arent easier than chrono

On September 11 2011 12:15 HellionDrop wrote:
the reason toss has small defender advantage is that Forge usually isnt part of the opening, unless you FE vs zergs. but FF is the best spell in early game and no other races have an early spell casters. imo, warp gate mechanics doesn't really have any downside. maybe you can't queue things up, but zerg need to injects too. plus,you can just build more gates if you really can't keep up and chrono boost the buildings.

On September 11 2011 13:07 susySquark wrote:


Relying on a 100 gas unit in multiple numbers is much, much worse than 100 minerals bunkers or spines. If you were trying to hold your natural expansion on Xel Naga Caverns, which would you prefer - 1 sentry, OR a bunker with 2 marines in it? 2 sentries and a stalker, OR 2 full bunkers? And that's with gas valued at 1.5:1 ... which is conservative to say the least. Sentry production cuts into other unit production, requires gas and tech, and just isn't that great cost wise compared to the other race's defensive options. **unless theres a narrow natural ramp, etc etc

Again, if you want to defend an open expansion, you MUST have a lot of sentries. They take a long time to build and require a lot of gas, so you naturally must expand much later than the other races. Early defensive options simply are not as cost efficient for Protoss.

On September 11 2011 13:14 Xpace wrote:
Units being warped in have less starting shields (50%) than units from a Gateway. :S