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I just have the impression Protoss players as a group are incredibly hostile to experimenting and innovation. There are almost no differences in the styles between different Protoss players with few exceptions like White-Ra and Kiwikaki. But those two are pretty isolated and don't care much about what other Protoss are doing, which is actually helping them.
I remember a SotG where one guy suggested making more than one observer and was trashed by the other protoss on the show for even suggesting that. This is the mindset you usually find with Protoss, and it is now starting to hurt them, after more than year of only needing 4gate, 6gate and death balls without scouting to do very well.
So here a list of things I'm wondering, some of them since the game came out, some of them only since recently, and most of them have been raised by others as well. So ...
Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
Protoss have shield. All their units (and buildings) heal quickly for free without having to do anything. If they hit and run a lot they have most cost effective and most hit points in the game to spend. But in reality Protoss is the race that sits home in the base the most with the units. They even have a unit that is specifically designed to do this in the Stalker and DT and Phoenix, and abilities like blink and force field and later even recall specifically designed to get away unharmed to recharge. They have the best scouting options in observers and hallcinations to figure out where to strike safely. They have the fastest and most flexible deployment of all the races. They have the fastest most flexible air transport (soon to be toughest, although already tougher than medivac) of all the races which is dirt cheap and the highest DPS units to put into them. They can even transport without having to risk having any units in the transport. They have force fields to ensure to be completely undisturbed do the harass and uncounterable while harassing. Yet they somehow can't figure out how to harass and put on pressure.
Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
It's the ultimate end game unit. Yet you can get it out faster and cheaper than all the other end game tech for the other races. And motherships destroy any kind of death ball army with vortex while also increasing mobility and harass with recall and bolstering your base defense tremendously by making all buildings and units invisible.
Why don't Protoss use Hallucination?
No better scouting tool. With hallucinated phoenix or probes (4 at once!) there should be no way any opponent, and especially zergs who can't put up base defenses before the hatch finishes should ever get up an expansion easily. Especially with warp in wherever you want. No tech switch should ever surprise you, no attack should ever be in an unfavorable position.
Why don't Protoss use Warp Prism?
It's dirt cheap, can escape everything against terran and everything but mutas against zerg when upgraded. Can refill themselves anywhere. Can move across map without risking any units in them. Can reinforce drops. Has more HP than medivacs already and can recharge shields, will have more HP than overlords soon. The damage output of 4 high templar or 2immortals or 2archons or even just 4zealots in mineral lines is ridiculous. Why do they rarely get more than one? Multi drops would be even more powerful fro protoss than for terran or zerg, because you can reinforce the most successful ones with the least resistance and still get away with the bad drops against poor zerg anti-air.
Why don't Protoss use Templar?
Templar trash the staple mass units of the other races, like marine, ling, hydra, marauder, roaches. They literally erase worker lines within seconds. They instakill all casters while outranging most. They become extremely powerful units once out of energy. This one is slowly changing though.
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
They are the highest DPS unit in the game, attack air and ground, outrange everything (14, once the interceptors are released), benefit the most from upgrades, have tremendous survivability when microed and positioned well, have mothership tech available, so they can always be saved when in trouble, can be teched to faster and arguably cheaper than colossus. Also, neural parasite is not overly useful against them, at least in larger groups, even if successfully done with all that range: they lose their interceptors quickly without doing much damage.
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The Protoss Race lives and dies off of the deathball due to the way it was created, i.e. Sentries, Collosus, high priced units in general. Branching out from a "Deathball" Mindset is making your deathball less powerful, even though it is still necessary. So while these innovations are great, if you do not allocate the perfect amount of resources into your army (Or do enough damage with the harass to warrant a huge deficit to your army). Then you are walking a very thin line where you could very well be rolled over because your army is not strong enough. I think that Hallucinate, Templar, and even Warp prisms are quite popular at the moment, and with the insane 60shield warp prism buff I can only see that increasing.
Carriers have the exact same problem as Ultralisks for zerg, but it is even worse because Protoss' are not committing to air mid game like Zergs are committed to melee units. So it is even harder for them to achieve the maximum potential.
Mothership: You would be very surprised how easily this unit can make you look like a complete moron for creating it.
This all sounds good in theorycraft, but when you are playing and devoting quite a lot of resources to harass as Protoss, you will find counterattacks almost unstoppable.
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Mothership can be a huge pain in the ass to get. Stargate + Fleet Beacon + Mothership is a lot of time and a lot of vespene. Usually more templar or w/e is better.
Hallu: I use it all the time. I dunno why other people don't.
Warp prism: I use it all the time, especially PvT/PvZ.
Templar: Uuh I see lots of people use Templar.
Carriers: They aren't good vs high armored units, e.g. BC/Ultra, due to having 2 attacks meaning armor is applied twice. They do me best when there is a disparity between your air ups and enemy's armor. I do still think they are too unused however.
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Nobody got trashed because they suggested building two observers, geoff and Naniwa thought building two observers was better than one and tyler and huk thought it was a waste or robo build time, they had a discussion about it there was no clear winner. You can't poke around easily with protoss units, stimmed bio is exceptionally fast and so are zerg units if you try to poke they will chase and kill a lot of your units, this problem is made worse by things like fungal and concussive. Mother ship is VERY costly it does have some uses but in the late game your money is almost always better spent building mroe gateways so you can remax an army faster. There will be a few times where building a mother ship would help more than more standard units if somebody experimented with late game situations where mothership could be used then maybe you could find some times where its really good but how often does your game go into a position where you can get a mothership and it wont seriosuly hinder your army size, not very often. Hallucination gets used a lot, it could be used more thats just more a lazyness thing where people don't get it but its use it on the increas. Warp prism is another thing that is being used increasingly more and its working well so but there use should be somewhat limited because if your army composition includes robo units then you use build time which can make a big difference if your getting more than one at a time. Templar everyone uses them I don't understand why you dont think so. Carriers pretty much insert what I said about mothership.
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Blazinghand
United States25551 Posts
On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:
I just have the impression Protoss players as a group are incredibly hostile to experimenting and innovation. There are almost no differences in the styles between different Protoss players with few exceptions like White-Ra and Kiwikaki. But those two are pretty isolated and don't care much about what other Protoss are doing, which is actually helping them.
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I think you make some good points here, but I'd just like to address some of your questions first. Also, <3 White-Ra and Kiwkaki.
I'm going to address mostly TvP since that's the matchup I play.
On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
Against terran, they do so constantly until concussive shell (where it's hard to escape with stalker) or stimpack (same). Against zerg, they use "Sharking" and other strategies to force non-drones.
DTs, blink harass and other methods are also used. I've even seen PvT Phoenixes in GSL.
On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
Usually this is because the tech isn't standing by. If you have a stargate, a mothership is only like 500 gas, but if you don't, it's more like 650-700 for all that tech. Most Protoss players would rather have upgrades, or Templar to supplement their Colossi (In PvT)
On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:Why don't Protoss use Hallucination?
Hallucinated Phoenixes are pretty common PvZ. In TvP they're somewhat easily shut down, due to the high damage output of the marine-- you might accidentally lose it. Plus, the observer is a really really solid scout, so that's often used. I see no reason not to do this, and I sometimes see it on the ladder, but you're right in that it IS rarer.
On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:Why don't Protoss use Warp Prism?
Protoss does use the Warp prism. A common PvT Ladder build is the 5 gate Robo 2-base attack but you make a prism instead of an immortal. You elevator into the terran base, FF him out, and start warping reinforcements into his main while his army derps in the nat. It hits before medivac timing.
Speed prism play is rarer because Robotics Facility production time becomes really really valuable once you have a colossus support bay.
On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:Why don't Protoss use Templar? Can't explain this in PvZ. happens often in TvP though.
On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:Why don't Protoss use Carriers?. In TvP, Terran has marines as a staple unit, as well as the high-range vikings that make producing this slow-making, slow-moving unit a large risk.
I hope this addressed some of your concerns 
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Why dont protosses get HT's along with stalker and colossi and ultimately void rays and archons. They whine alot about infestors but HT's are equally as easy to use as infestors and just feedback the crap out of those infestors.
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On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:
I just have the impression Protoss players as a group are incredibly hostile to experimenting and innovation. There are almost no differences in the styles between different Protoss players with few exceptions like White-Ra and Kiwikaki. But those two are pretty isolated and don't care much about what other Protoss are doing, which is actually helping them.
I remember a SotG where one guy suggested making more than one observer and was trashed by the other protoss on the show for even suggesting that. This is the mindset you usually find with Protoss, and it is now starting to hurt them, after more than year of only needing 4gate, 6gate and death balls without scouting to do very well.
So here a list of things I'm wondering, some of them since the game came out, some of them only since recently, and most of them have been raised by others as well. So ...
Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
Protoss have shield. All their units (and buildings) heal quickly for free without having to do anything. If they hit and run a lot they have most cost effective and most hit points in the game to spend. But in reality Protoss is the race that sits home in the base the most with the units. They even have a unit that is specifically designed to do this in the Stalker and DT and Phoenix, and abilities like blink and force field and later even recall specifically designed to get away unharmed to recharge. They have the best scouting options in observers and hallcinations to figure out where to strike safely. They have the fastest and most flexible deployment of all the races. They have the fastest most flexible air transport (soon to be toughest, although already tougher than medivac) of all the races which is dirt cheap and the highest DPS units to put into them. They can even transport without having to risk having any units in the transport. They have force fields to ensure to be completely undisturbed do the harass and uncounterable while harassing. Yet they somehow can't figure out how to harass and put on pressure.
Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
It's the ultimate end game unit. Yet you can get it out faster and cheaper than all the other end game tech for the other races. And motherships destroy any kind of death ball army with vortex while also increasing mobility and harass with recall and bolstering your base defense tremendously by making all buildings and units invisible.
Why don't Protoss use Hallucination?
No better scouting tool. With hallucinated phoenix or probes (4 at once!) there should be no way any opponent, and especially zergs who can't put up base defenses before the hatch finishes should ever get up an expansion easily. Especially with warp in wherever you want. No tech switch should ever surprise you, no attack should ever be in an unfavorable position.
Why don't Protoss use Warp Prism?
It's dirt cheap, can escape everything against terran and everything but mutas against zerg when upgraded. Can refill themselves anywhere. Can move across map without risking any units in them. Can reinforce drops. Has more HP than medivacs already and can recharge shields, will have more HP than overlords soon. The damage output of 4 high templar or 2immortals or 2archons or even just 4zealots in mineral lines is ridiculous. Why do they rarely get more than one? Multi drops would be even more powerful fro protoss than for terran or zerg, because you can reinforce the most successful ones with the least resistance and still get away with the bad drops against poor zerg anti-air.
Why don't Protoss use Templar?
Templar trash the staple mass units of the other races, like marine, ling, hydra, marauder, roaches. They literally erase worker lines within seconds. They instakill all casters while outranging most. They become extremely powerful units once out of energy. This one is slowly changing though.
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
They are the highest DPS unit in the game, attack air and ground, outrange everything (14, once the interceptors are released), benefit the most from upgrades, have tremendous survivability when microed and positioned well, have mothership tech available, so they can always be saved when in trouble, can be teched to faster and arguably cheaper than colossus. Also, neural parasite is not overly useful against them, at least in larger groups, even if successfully done with all that range: they lose their interceptors quickly without doing much damage.
I use all of these all the time.
Warp Prism in both PvZ PvT.
Templars in both PvZ PvT
Carriers in PvT
Mothership in PvZ
Hallucination in every PvZ
Then again, I only play at 900 Masters so I don't know how applicable my strategies are at Pro level.
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Do people still even go deathball? This post is like a month late. You now see tons of harass (with blink stalkers, suicide zealot warp-ins, dts). Templar are used almost every game now since infestors are so popular, and hallucination is pretty common too.
Warp prisms are just starting to become more popular, partly in preparation for the buff.
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This is an extremely herp-derp post.
Mothership: Extremely hard to get in a lot of situations. I don't wanna spend all the gas.
Hallu: A lot of players use hallucination.
Warp Prism: Underpowered unit that is still sometimes used. See patch notes if you dont think they're underpowered.
Templar: Derp. Everyone uses templar.
Carriers: Not good against staple units like marine viking in PvT, Hydras/Corruptors PvZ, Blink Stalkers PvP. Oh get it anyways you can get collossi and storm to deal with that. Yeah no. Not enough gas.
Herr Derr bro.
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These speak more to my play and games I have watched, but....
Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
The (possibly perceived) lack of mobility. Other than stalkers the protoss army is fairly slow, so that is the reason for me. That said I see plenty of harass from pros.
Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
Because it is (imo) bad 99% of the time.
Why don't Protoss use Hallucination?
I use it all the time. I am not sure how often you have played around with it, but you can't use it quite as often as you suggest unless you plan to have a crazy sentry count or you are cool with going into battle without forcefields and shield. It costs a good bit of energy.
Why don't Protoss use Warp Prism?
It 'costs' robo time, it can't hold that much, and unless the PTR goes live it is extremely fragile. It also isn't a 'must make' for Protoss the way medivacs and overlords are for T and Z.
Why don't Protoss use Templar?
I use HTs and DTs quite often. Archons too. Not sure why you think Protoss don't use Templar tech. I see it regularly in matches.
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
They take a long time to build and it can be a rather awkward tech switch. Also if you have been going Colossus tech a large amount of anti air is probably already out.
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I'll try to respond to some of them:
1. Harass: Its viable if that tech path is in your gameplan/build. For Protoss, switching between tech trees is pretty expensive and time consuming. That said, if you go for FFE into Stargate against Z, its pretty common to see Phoenix harass and what not. But even then, its pretty easily shut down. Roving groups of Blink Stalkers are really fun to play with but it is not too hard for your opponent to keep the damage caused to a minimum. A few marauders/spines take care of it pretty well. Still I hope someone figures out a way to make harrassment for Protoss viable, because I would love to do that and I envy Terran for their ability to do drops all over the place.
3. Personally, I use Hallucination all the time...
4. I try to but Warp Prisms [until the next patch] are fragile and 4-6 zealots in a mineral line is devastating if the opponent doesn't pull his workers. If they do, you're kinda screwed. Zealots are too slow. Still, there is a lot of potential for warp prism tactics (storm drops, ff the workers from running...). I'm hoping to see some of that as the game develops.
5. We use Templar.
2. and 6. Can't speak on because I rarely if ever get a fleet beacon
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On September 10 2011 02:11 Olsson wrote:
Why dont protosses get HT's along with stalker and colossi and ultimately void rays and archons. They whine alot about infestors but HT's are equally as easy to use as infestors and just feedback the crap out of those infestors.
You don't play at a high level, because otherwise you would know that you can't just mass HT and autokill all infestors.
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On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:
1)Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
2)Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
3)Why don't Protoss use Hallucination?
4)Why don't Protoss use Warp Prism?
5)Why don't Protoss use Templar?
6)Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
They are the highest DPS unit in the game, attack air and ground, outrange everything (14, once the interceptors are released)
first of all I should say I'm a random player (I did however play P in season 1 and start of season 2 mostly)
1)it's hard to harras as protoss... Z units can outrun you, T has con shell... yes ofcourse I do harras with DTs, Phoenix and blink stalkers but in most cases it's not safe to move your army across map just to harrass... so yes... if you survive your shield will regen but you mostly wont survive
2) Mothership is getting buffed soon... for reason... it was way to slow, toilets got nerfed, against T cloak doesn't mean much, Z can NP it... it's dmg is almost non existant
3)Halls are great for scouting and most pros use it... however using Pheonix is better than using probes (good zergs will deny them with 4 lings)
4)I do agree P should use it more often. but even other races call it paper planes : )
5) I think they use it.
6) list of units that has bigger dps than carrier (acording to liquipedia carriers has 26.7... just to put that into perspective DT has 26.6)
- immortals when attacking armored
- fully charged void rays in some cases
- thors on armored
- battlecruisers
- ultras
taken from http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Protoss_Unit_Statistics
I could be wrong : )
also, carriers are countered by marines, hydras, infestors... all much lower tier
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Blazinghand
United States25551 Posts
On September 10 2011 02:15 mahi29 wrote:
I'll try to respond to some of them:
1. Harass: Its viable if that tech path is in your gameplan/build. For Protoss, switching between tech trees is pretty expensive and time consuming. That said, if you go for FFE into Stargate against Z, its pretty common to see Phoenix harass and what not. But even then, its pretty easily shut down. Roving groups of Blink Stalkers are really fun to play with but it is not too hard for your opponent to keep the damage caused to a minimum. A few marauders/spines take care of it pretty well. Still I hope someone figures out a way to make harrassment for Protoss viable, because I would love to do that and I envy Terran for their ability to do drops all over the place.
Emphasis mine. I agree a great deal with this statement. Let me refer you to a previous analysis I did on the nature of the Protoss, Terran and Zerg Tech trees and how they differ:
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=260575
On August 30 2011 09:52 Blazinghand wrote:This blog post inspired by Silverhand's immortal work on the subject: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=260470
GENTLEMEN, I HAVE CREATED IT: THE LEGENDARY OMNITREE, TECH TREE COMPARISON FOR EVERY RACE:(large image, technical diagram, have a good connection if you open the spoiler)
+ Show Spoiler +Hope that this in-depth technical diagram* that I spent much time** in photoshop*** working on**** helps. As the diagram clearly shows, there are a lot of things to take into account when teching ie, lower techs being passed to higher techs, like pool-tech roaches getting speed in lair tech, or lair-tech corruptors getting broodlord after hive tech; similar things for terran with tech labs, and particularly factory tech which allows nukes and reaper speed; and lastly protoss which passes twilight tech down into the gateway/warpgate tech areas. As you can see in my technical diagram, the terran tech tree is linear and chopsticklike (rax -> fact -> port), whereas the protoss tech tree is shaped like a trident (gate -> core -> robo or TC or Stargate). This gives the protoss a lot of late game tech flexibility, but not as much early game tech flexibility. 1/1/1 tries to hit during the window when the chopstick is greater than the trident. In the later game, the Terran player will strive to use the more trident-like and less chopsticklike by using buildings and tech that tech "sideways" instead of upwards, like making a reactor on his starport, tech labs for his raxes, and ghost academy for ghosts, and armory for +2, etc. The Zerg has a "comb" tech tree is because there's a basic tech progression (pool -> lair -> pit -> hive), but off of each step in the tech progression there are "branches" that increase your tech but don't let you move to the next level. At pool tech, this is Roach Warren and Baneling Nest. At Lair tech, this is Hydralisk Den, Spire, and Nydus Network. These all give you access to powerful units, but don't let you actually tech up to the next level. The Terran "comb" is actually shorter than the Zerg "comb", but it's wider, which means you can reach higher levels of tech more quickly, but branching out is more difficult. Also, the Zerg "comb" passes techs from one branch to the next more easily (burrow for roaches in lair, even though roach is pool tech, or spire corruptors learning Broodlord Aspect once you have hive tech) which means that although teching takes longer, it is more backwards-compatible, so to speak. The protoss has the least "integrated" comb, because 2 branches of the comb (stargate and robo) share very little with the so-called "integrated" TC branch, which passes the technology gained back down the trunk to Warpgate. Hope this shed some light on the tech differences. + Show Spoiler +
*: scribble
**: 5 minutes
***: MS Paint
****: dicking around with
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Hallu is great but not really needed unless you go nonSG PvZ and TvP it is really costly as you never have more than 5 sentries.
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On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I just have the impression Protoss players as a group are incredibly hostile to experimenting and innovation. There are almost no differences in the styles between different Protoss players with few exceptions like White-Ra and Kiwikaki. But those two are pretty isolated and don't care much about what other Protoss are doing, which is actually helping them.
I remember a SotG where one guy suggested making more than one observer and was trashed by the other protoss on the show for even suggesting that. This is the mindset you usually find with Protoss, and it is now starting to hurt them, after more than year of only needing 4gate, 6gate and death balls without scouting to do very well.
So here a list of things I'm wondering, some of them since the game came out, some of them only since recently, and most of them have been raised by others as well. So ...
Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
Protoss have shield. All their units (and buildings) heal quickly for free without having to do anything. If they hit and run a lot they have most cost effective and most hit points in the game to spend. But in reality Protoss is the race that sits home in the base the most with the units. They even have a unit that is specifically designed to do this in the Stalker and DT and Phoenix, and abilities like blink and force field and later even recall specifically designed to get away unharmed to recharge. They have the best scouting options in observers and hallcinations to figure out where to strike safely. They have the fastest and most flexible deployment of all the races. They have the fastest most flexible air transport (soon to be toughest, although already tougher than medivac) of all the races which is dirt cheap and the highest DPS units to put into them. They can even transport without having to risk having any units in the transport. They have force fields to ensure to be completely undisturbed do the harass and uncounterable while harassing. Yet they somehow can't figure out how to harass and put on pressure.
Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
It's the ultimate end game unit. Yet you can get it out faster and cheaper than all the other end game tech for the other races. And motherships destroy any kind of death ball army with vortex while also increasing mobility and harass with recall and bolstering your base defense tremendously by making all buildings and units invisible.
Why don't Protoss use Hallucination?
No better scouting tool. With hallucinated phoenix or probes (4 at once!) there should be no way any opponent, and especially zergs who can't put up base defenses before the hatch finishes should ever get up an expansion easily. Especially with warp in wherever you want. No tech switch should ever surprise you, no attack should ever be in an unfavorable position.
Why don't Protoss use Warp Prism?
It's dirt cheap, can escape everything against terran and everything but mutas against zerg when upgraded. Can refill themselves anywhere. Can move across map without risking any units in them. Can reinforce drops. Has more HP than medivacs already and can recharge shields, will have more HP than overlords soon. The damage output of 4 high templar or 2immortals or 2archons or even just 4zealots in mineral lines is ridiculous. Why do they rarely get more than one? Multi drops would be even more powerful fro protoss than for terran or zerg, because you can reinforce the most successful ones with the least resistance and still get away with the bad drops against poor zerg anti-air.
Why don't Protoss use Templar?
Templar trash the staple mass units of the other races, like marine, ling, hydra, marauder, roaches. They literally erase worker lines within seconds. They instakill all casters while outranging most. They become extremely powerful units once out of energy. This one is slowly changing though.
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
They are the highest DPS unit in the game, attack air and ground, outrange everything (14, once the interceptors are released), benefit the most from upgrades, have tremendous survivability when microed and positioned well, have mothership tech available, so they can always be saved when in trouble, can be teched to faster and arguably cheaper than colossus. Also, neural parasite is not overly useful against them, at least in larger groups, even if successfully done with all that range: they lose their interceptors quickly without doing much damage.
Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
Protoss doesn't really have the greatest unit options when it comes to harassment, you mention phoenix, stalker, and DT. Phoenix require energy to actually harass, and while using that energy, that particular phoenix is not doing DPS, plus they are quite expensive and somewhat difficult to transition out of. Stalkers are used for harass, sometimes, however they are expensive compared to their counterparts (marines, marauders, roaches, lings) and have mediocre DPS. Stalkers don't get particularly effective until they are in large numbers. DTs can be great, but they are a gimmicky unit that is shut down by 1 detector at each base, and it is typically not hard to scout DT tech, considering how long it takes to get to, and how expensive it is (250 gas just for the building, and 125 gas for each DT), usually if a protoss is going for DTs in the early game, there are some huge windows of vulnerability, and if the DT harass does not work, the protoss is significantly behind.
The problem with dropping 4 zealots, or 2 archons, or 2 immortals in mineral lines is that those drops are either very expensive or not too effective if the opponent has a decent reaction time. For example, zealots are melee, and not as fast as lings, even with charge, so if an opponent has a decent reaction time and pulls workers, that drop isn't going to do much damage. Dropping archons or immortals is a big gas and/or mineral investment, it's pretty devastating if you lose those drops.
Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
We can get it cheaper and faster than any other end game unit? It requires a 150/150 stargate, 300/200 fleet beacon, and then the mothership itself costs 400/400 while taking 3 in-game minutes to build. That's not cheap or fast. Perhaps with the speed and neural change, we will see more motherships in pvz, however in pvt, the viking typically will take out a mothership fast enough. The best use I've seen of a mothership is from Kiwikaki when he snipes bases with blink stalkers and recalls the army.
Why don't Protoss use Hallucination?
I hope to see some more use of Hallucination in the future, but I think what may be holding protoss back is that it takes away from forcefield energy, and if the opponent has detection, hallucinated battle units are useless.
Why don't Protoss use Warp Prism?
While it does have more HP than medivacs currently, they somehow die much faster than medivacs, so they are a big liability, currently. You see some pros (HuK, MC, Jyp) carry around HTs in WPs to shield them from EMP, but if that WP gets sniped, it can be GG because of the 400/600 in that paper airplane. I assume we'll see more warp prisms with the next patch, though.
Why don't Protoss use Templar?
Not sure what games you're watching/playing, but templar are used almost every game.
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
Carriers are extremely difficult to get out and then produce in good numbers, they cost 350/250 + 100 more minerals for the 4 interceptors, and take 2 in-game minutes to build. The big problem with them is vikings/corruptors, who absolutely demolish them if microed properly, plus marines which melt interceptors, rendering the carrier useless. They are not faster or cheaper than teching to colossi, either.
Edit: accidentally clicked submit.
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Mothership itself is pretty great but the situations it can really be useful are limited. Vortex is only useful when you are fighting an opponent at their front door so he has to make a choice of fighting with whatever army is left out or lose infrastructure. Anywhere else and at best it gives you a 20 second window of retreat, at which point your mothership is dead anyways because of it's movespeed.
Recall is super badass but unless you are willing to risk the massive amount of resources to fly your mama into his base solo, it's basically just an insanely expensive town portal for when you're losing a fight.
Carriers are way too easily countered by anything terran can make and fungal growth. Not to mention the 120 second build time makes it pretty worthless if you're trying to pull off some sort of tech switch.
Also their high DPS is hard countered by armor upgrades so you'll most likely be at disadvantage as soon as they come out unless you were getting air attack upgrades as soon as WG finished.
Hallucination is really good. Protoss need to use it more. But not as easy as it sounds because of it's high energy cost and the power of FF + GS cannot be understated.
Warp Prism does need to be used more. Again not that easy because of it's fragility. Very underused at the moment.
Protoss do use Templar, what rock have you been living under?
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On September 10 2011 02:08 Halcyondaze wrote:
...So while these innovations are great, if you do not allocate the perfect amount of resources into your army (Or do enough damage with the harass to warrant a huge deficit to your army). Then you are walking a very thin line where you could very well be rolled over because your army is not strong enough. ...
Don't know how harass is making the death ball weaker, since Protoss does harass with the same units they use in their army. It's not like for zerg where Mutalisks are practically useless in straight up fights (or reapers or hellions against protoss), or that throw away their banelings and lings to harass. As I said above, Protoss harass if doen properly should be the most coste efficient and effective of all the races if done properly. They just don't do it.
On September 10 2011 02:08 Halcyondaze wrote:
Carriers have the exact same problem as Ultralisks for zerg, but it is even worse because Protoss' are not committing to air mid game like Zergs are committed to melee units. So it is even harder for them to achieve the maximum potential.
The problem ultralisks have is their pathing, and that you never can get to attack with them properly if the opponent micros a little. That's defintiely not the problem carriers have.
On September 10 2011 02:08 Halcyondaze wrote:
Mothership: You would be very surprised how easily this unit can make you look like a complete moron for creating it.
Also true for mutas, banelings, ultralsiks, hydras, yet they still get used much more while costing more and arguably have less utility.
On September 10 2011 02:08 Halcyondaze wrote:
This all sounds good in theorycraft, but when you are playing and devoting quite a lot of resources to harass as Protoss, you will find counterattacks almost unstoppable.
Protoss have cannons, the best defenses of them all, and force fields and warp in and recall late game. They are the most counter proof of the races if they used all this properly
When I still played random, it was ridiculous how hard motherships on top of a few cannons and units crush the biggest counters, either with recall or vortex or even both. Fungal doesn't even make the invisible buildings visible, so they still wall and and can't be attacked. As long as you pick off the overseers, you crush.
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On September 10 2011 02:25 imbecile wrote:
The problem ultralisks have is their pathing, and that you never can get to attack with them properly if the opponent micros a little. That's defintiely not the problem carriers have.
It is correct that Carriers do not have pathing issues. But that isn't what he was comparing, see my above post.
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On September 10 2011 02:11 Olsson wrote:
Why dont protosses get HT's along with stalker and colossi and ultimately void rays and archons. They whine alot about infestors but HT's are equally as easy to use as infestors and just feedback the crap out of those infestors.
To get all those tech paths and the heavy gas units is just too much... you would need 4+ to realistically get that and how do you expect to survive long enough to get all of that out? HT stalker and collossi is some what possible but because of the completely different tech rotue of the two main units its very difficult to safely get there. Mixing in a stargate after for void rays just won't work. Now Zealot Archon Void ray might be a possibility and could be effective, worth a shot. but your orginal question basically asks why don't protoss literally get every high tech unit in their arsenal which is insanity unless in a 50 minute long 6 base vs 6 base game...
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1.Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
- Putting pressure on an opponent during mid game, as protoss, is a huge risk.
The reason for that is the fact that, if an engagement goes badly for the protoss, he can't really retreat without taking heavy losses, thanks to concussive shells, stim, zergling surrounds.
Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
- Motherships are a good unit toi have at an endgame scenario, I feel. Though it's hard to be in a situation where the enemy won't already have propper units to deal with it quickly. 1 EMP, 1 feedback, 1 neural parasite (god bless the patch), 1 volley of mass viking/corruptor fire, and it's dead. Was it worth it? Maybe. I imagine it will get some use again in PvsZ lategame after the patch. It could punish infestor/broodlord play with a well placed vortex.
Why don't Protoss use Hallucination?
- It does get used for scouting quite often, but that's all really. Hallucinating anything that can't be used for scouting, is not that usefull if your opponent has detection. There are some situations though where hallucinations like voidrays or colossi in PvsZ lategame have their potential, as they can soak up infestor spells and possibly corruptor fire. Still, you'll need to use the sentry energy on hallucinations instead of force fields, which are generally a better choice overall.
Why don't Protoss use Warp Prism?
There are a couple of reasons, I feel.
First off, creating warp prisms takes away from colossus building time. (which at high level of play can cost you dearly.) They are also quite easy to pick, thanks to their low health (changed in patch now) and speed, if they are not upgraded with the Gravitic drive upgrade (was that the name?)
The other big reason is, protoss does not have anything worth dropping untill very late game, when he can afford to drop high templar and then remake those after losing them eventually.
Sentry drops+ warp-ins above ramp have gained some popularity, which is really cool.
I feel like after the patch, we will see some experimenting with that kind of strategy more often.
Why don't Protoss use Templar?
They do....
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
Too big of an investment in all 3 SC2 resources. Minerals, Gas and Time.
In order to have a number of carriers and have them pay for themselves, you will be dead.
Ofcourse a fleet of 10 carriers will be amazing, but you just can't get 10 carriers without dying a painfull death.
Those are my thoughts. I am sorry about my bad English, teamliquid. :/
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most of what you're suggesting is only viable in the late game. otherwise it is not very practical.
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Harass:
The problem with protoss harass is that it requires heavy tech investment for relatively poor harassment options that aren't too useful in your main army. Compare that to something like a medivac drop, which is 0 tech investment, has the potential to do a lot more damage much faster, and is already part of your main army. Even something like blink stalkers is an investment (sometimes you can't afford fast twilight + blink if you're going colo, or if you're going gateway you need charge asap to hold off that attack), unless you go mass blink in PvZ or fast blink in PvT (in those cases, yes you do see a lot of blink harassment). And then again stalkers are expensive and have some of the worst DPS in the game. If your stalkers get flanked by bio or speedlings, or get caught by a fungal... it's a huge loss unlike losing a medivac or a group of 20 speedlings. People including me are starting to use a lot more warp prism though.
tl;dr High risk/investment small reward.
Mothership:
I do use mothership every late game PvZ. Effectively. At the highest level of play. I agree with you, people think it's a joke unit but it's actually one of the strongest units in the game and people just don't realize it yet. Kinda like infestors before the infestor patch. PvT though... too easily completely nullified by vikings and ghosts which terran will have no matter what. In PvP, you normally don't get to that late game to see it.
Warp prism:
People are starting to use this more and more. The reason why it wasn't used as much before is because a warp prism drop is really sad compared to the damage you can do with a medivac or baneling drop. Also in most situations robo production is really high demand and sometimes you can't afford to get a warp prism instead of another colo or more obs.
Hallucination:
People do use this a lot early game. When you get obs though obs is much better and requires less apm to use.
Templar:
You already realize this is slowly changing, people do use templar a LOT now.
Carriers:
I've experimented a lot with carriers. The reason why they are uncommon in PvZ is that voids are better in almost every way, except that carriers do a bit better against hydras than voids - but every other unit in the protoss army counters hydras so they're not an issue. However, the other counter to voids is fungal - which aren't good against carriers - so actually I'm using carriers instead of voids now in PvZ and achieving great success. I agree with you here, they should be used more.
People say that the issue is that because they take so long to tech to and build you die before you can get them - well you don't have to rush for them - you can max on your regular protoss army but as the game goes on you can slowly phase out gateway units in favor of carriers.
As far as PvT, while vikings don't counter carriers, they are more easily accessible and trade evenly with carriers. A big problem with carriers is that usually when you get them, you're just starting to upgrade them whereas bio is already on 2-2 or 3-3. And upgraded marines actually do counter unupgraded carriers. Carrier/HT is an awesome combo, but again at that point a terran can have 10+ ghosts and it may be difficult to get off those storms with EMPs flying everywhere. I used to try to tech switch to carrier in late game PvT but I've found that it just wasn't worth it. Carriers don't actually win vT in a 1a deathball style. It's much easier and effective to just stick with gateway/ht/colo.
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a mothership itself costs more then 2 expansions in resources(and that is without the cost of teching to it) and has really limited combat abilities apart from being rather good at soaking damage, the stealth bit rarely matters that late in the game when everybody has plenty of detection.
carriers are just bad as long as the opponent has as many armor upgrades to equal your air upgrades(their dps is not high at all because interceptor attackspeed is so low, 3sec the same as siege tanks, it does 5*8*2/3= 23 dps only slight more then what a stimmed marauder does vs an armored unit), it does scale wunderfull with attack upgrades but gets thrashed in the same way by enemy armor , and if for example a zerg scouts the fleet beacon when its done he can build a spire and have corruptors out before the carrier is even done(carrier build time is bigger then corruptor+ spire build times combined). also a carrier does really really bad dps(stalker like dps but for more then 4 times the cost) vs anything that has high natural armor reduction(corruptor/bc).
halluction is used ALOT as a scouting tool for pretty much all protoss going 3 gate sentry expand vs zerg(less so in the PvT version as that version generally wants to put pressure on the opponent wich will give scouting information and the early infestment makes the pressure less effective and delays your economy)
and templar tech is altleast as common as collosi tech in non PvP mu's at the highest lvl(korea) atm.
I agree the warp prisem is underused, but its also a paper plane and takes up the incredibly valuable robotics time and in pvt gets sniped in seconds by vikings wich often want anyway because of the collosus threat,it has very small capasity and requires an upgrade from robotics bay to get away from anything.
i think we will see more warp prisem play in the future though(both as harass tool and in the way MC and hero use them to give EMP protection).
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On September 10 2011 02:11 Blazinghand wrote:In TvP, Terran has marines as a staple unit, as well as the high-range vikings that make producing this slow-making, slow-moving unit a large risk. I hope this addressed some of your concerns
Yep, good replies for most.
The carrier thing I need to address though: I never found vikings to be a particularly big problem when I used carriers, because of the higher range and the graviton catapult carriers are quite effective against Vikings unless he absolutely masses them and then you have the same situation you have against a terran that overcommitted to Vikings against Colossus. Only that it is essentially necessary to overcommit to vikings to fight carriers with them.
Marines are harder, but if the terran has too few barracks or too few reactors because he mainly got marauders and ghosts, like they often do against protoss, he just can't make marines quickly enough to deal with a few well upgraded carriers, especially if you complement them with chargelots and templar.
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Last night I tried to use warp prisms a lot, and in a 30 minute game where i warped in zealots probably 10 times I killed 11 workers. Zealots do not kill workers very quickly, even with charge, if the opponent reacts even remotely quickly. That being said, 5 zealots can take down a hatch pretty quickly, and I found that you can keep Z from attacking by sending about 5 zealots to target a hatch. You lose 500 mins, but you buy time.
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Blazinghand
United States25551 Posts
On September 10 2011 02:41 imbecile wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 02:11 Blazinghand wrote:In TvP, Terran has marines as a staple unit, as well as the high-range vikings that make producing this slow-making, slow-moving unit a large risk. I hope this addressed some of your concerns Yep, good replies for most. The carrier thing I need to address though: I never found vikings to be a particularly big problem when I used carriers, because of the higher range and the graviton catapult carriers are quite effective against Vikings unless he absolutely masses them and then you have the same situation you have against a terran that overcommitted to Vikings against Colossus. Only that it is essentially necessary to overcommit to vikings to fight carriers with them. Marines are harder, but if the terran has too few barracks or too few reactors because he mainly got marauders and ghosts, like they often do against protoss, he just can't make marines quickly enough to deal with a few well upgraded carriers, especially if you complement them with chargelots and templar.
That's a fair point; if you can deal with the marines, I've found that in sufficiently large numbers carriers aren't bad against vikings.
On the other hand, part of this is basically surprise; if he sees you going for carriers before you have enough of them, he could just make a lottttt of ghosts, vikings, marines, bunkers turrets etc, or push during the incredibly, incredibly slow carrier transition during their large build time. I see them primarily being useful in dealing with full mech TvP (when it happens), rather than bio TvP (which is much more common).
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On September 10 2011 02:32 nShade wrote:
1.Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
- Putting pressure on an opponent during mid game, as protoss, is a huge risk.
The reason for that is the fact that, if an engagement goes badly for the protoss, he can't really retreat without taking heavy losses, thanks to concussive shells, stim, zergling surrounds.
Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
- Motherships are a good unit toi have at an endgame scenario, I feel. Though it's hard to be in a situation where the enemy won't already have propper units to deal with it quickly. 1 EMP, 1 feedback, 1 neural parasite (god bless the patch), 1 volley of mass viking/corruptor fire, and it's dead. Was it worth it? Maybe. I imagine it will get some use again in PvsZ lategame after the patch. It could punish infestor/broodlord play with a well placed vortex.
Why don't Protoss use Hallucination?
- It does get used for scouting quite often, but that's all really. Hallucinating anything that can't be used for scouting, is not that usefull if your opponent has detection. There are some situations though where hallucinations like voidrays or colossi in PvsZ lategame have their potential, as they can soak up infestor spells and possibly corruptor fire. Still, you'll need to use the sentry energy on hallucinations instead of force fields, which are generally a better choice overall.
Why don't Protoss use Warp Prism?
There are a couple of reasons, I feel.
First off, creating warp prisms takes away from colossus building time. (which at high level of play can cost you dearly.) They are also quite easy to pick, thanks to their low health (changed in patch now) and speed, if they are not upgraded with the Gravitic drive upgrade (was that the name?)
The other big reason is, protoss does not have anything worth dropping untill very late game, when he can afford to drop high templar and then remake those after losing them eventually.
Sentry drops+ warp-ins above ramp have gained some popularity, which is really cool.
I feel like after the patch, we will see some experimenting with that kind of strategy more often.
Why don't Protoss use Templar?
They do....
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
Too big of an investment in all 3 SC2 resources. Minerals, Gas and Time.
In order to have a number of carriers and have them pay for themselves, you will be dead.
Ofcourse a fleet of 10 carriers will be amazing, but you just can't get 10 carriers without dying a painfull death.
Those are my thoughts. I am sorry about my bad English, teamliquid. :/
1. Forcefield, blink and fast warp prisms can ensure the retreat if you use the terrain quite well.
2. EMP and Neural Parasite shouldn't matter if you have cloaked high templar, colossus or carriers with your mothership, since any infestor or ghost should be dead or out of energy before it gets in range. Especially Neural parasite shouldn't matter, even if it was successfut: just feedback the infestor in question.
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On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:
Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
Protoss units aren't cost- effective any way. BlinkStalkers are already used. You cannot retreat to heal your shield, because of marauders/stim/lings/roaches being faster. That means the whole Regenerate HP thingy is wasted effort.
Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
Protoss uses either Collosi or Air builds as a stepping stone to Mothership, Both are countered by the same unit (corruptor/infestor/viking). Mothership is by default easilly dealt with. Combine that with the fact that both caster units nullify them othership (by either NP/Fungal or EMP). Mothership is also FUCKING EXPENSIVE! It's like 2 bases + cannons in worth...
Why don't Protoss use Hallucination?
Why scout if you cannot react anyways? Btw, Observer does it better, and if you invest money in lategame Hallucination, Observer Speed is a better investment. As an offensive tool, they suck bigtime, Getting detection is not that hard.
Why don't Protoss use Warp Prism?
This one deserves some exploration, which is actually happening atm.
Why don't Protoss use Templar?
Outranging most? Like, which offensive casters (read: Ghost/Infestor/Raven) are outranged? Ghost EMP range is 3 higher (inc. Splash) and Ghost are also faster + cloack. NP is the same range, Fungal has a longer range. Feedback has lower range than anything, combined with lower speed of the templar. Storm deals its damage to slowly, any army can escape the storming (which only affects the first 4/5 seconds of the battle, after that, HP are nullified).
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
Vikings, Battlecruisers, Corruptor, Infestor. Anything that you build vs P anyways coutners Carriers...
[b]A complete lack of options is what is holding Protoss back. Play Protoss before you blame them for not changing their play.
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why don't protoss get far ahead in the upgrade war? You can chrono boost your forges all day long
it doesn't really matter that much if you stomp your opponent with blink stalker/zealot archon/colossus or whatever afterwards, just getting the upgrades way earlier than your opponent should be a huge advantage.
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I honestly got bothered with the accusation that the protoss race is not willing to innovate or try out new things when in my opinion with the current arsenal protoss has, it has been the most innovative/creative race by far. The problem with protoss is that (in my opinion), the whole race is fundamentally flawed, nor under or overpowered but just something feels out of place. Its a race which is very reliant on timing attacks which are very, very easily stopped if the opponent knows about them. As far as innovative, just look at the crazy amount of refined timing attacks/openings the protoss race has made over in comparison to zerg/terran.
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Mothership: Expensive, long build time, and not really all that useful.
Harass: We do with DT/Phoenix if that's the build we went. Can't harass with stalkers in most scenarios because of speedlings, fungal and concussive.
Hallu: People do.
Templar, warp prism are both used, but you can't do it every game.
Carriers: They're bad. I dunno how else to phrase it, they're just really bad.
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all easy questions to answer...carriers get emp'd and melt like chocolate..motherships are a huge investment and move super slow also to get emp'd and sniped..warp prisms are used quite often actually. hallucination is very risky because you run the risk of having your sentries sniped. templar? when do you not see templar?
pvz, carriers get OWNED by corruptors ( massive ) motherships get OWNED by corruptors ( massive ) warp prisms are used semi often, but fungal rapes it hard body...templar has its place except when placed against roaches and hallucination is used every now and then.
there is no harass unit really, pheonix does its damage but you can rebuild drones like the games nestea vs [i forget who] good example was on terminus re and dual sight i believe where the guy had like 10 air units and killed a ridiculous amount of drones yet nestea still had like 80-90. terran has blue flame hellions,banshees,medivacs of course. zerg has baneling bombs, mutas, zerglings, infestors. toss has warp prisms, pheonix, and void rays, and some blink harass i guess and storm drops. none of the toss harass units are as devestating as the others. theres no unit that can change the tide of a game besides storm dropping. but storm dropping is such a HUGE investment that players don't use it. plus without khydarin amulet its tough to do it anyways. i don't know maybe i'm being too defensive. i would LOVE to see immortal drops soon however.
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On September 10 2011 02:53 imbecile wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 02:32 nShade wrote:
1.Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
- Putting pressure on an opponent during mid game, as protoss, is a huge risk.
The reason for that is the fact that, if an engagement goes badly for the protoss, he can't really retreat without taking heavy losses, thanks to concussive shells, stim, zergling surrounds.
Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
- Motherships are a good unit toi have at an endgame scenario, I feel. Though it's hard to be in a situation where the enemy won't already have propper units to deal with it quickly. 1 EMP, 1 feedback, 1 neural parasite (god bless the patch), 1 volley of mass viking/corruptor fire, and it's dead. Was it worth it? Maybe. I imagine it will get some use again in PvsZ lategame after the patch. It could punish infestor/broodlord play with a well placed vortex.
Why don't Protoss use Hallucination?
- It does get used for scouting quite often, but that's all really. Hallucinating anything that can't be used for scouting, is not that usefull if your opponent has detection. There are some situations though where hallucinations like voidrays or colossi in PvsZ lategame have their potential, as they can soak up infestor spells and possibly corruptor fire. Still, you'll need to use the sentry energy on hallucinations instead of force fields, which are generally a better choice overall.
Why don't Protoss use Warp Prism?
There are a couple of reasons, I feel.
First off, creating warp prisms takes away from colossus building time. (which at high level of play can cost you dearly.) They are also quite easy to pick, thanks to their low health (changed in patch now) and speed, if they are not upgraded with the Gravitic drive upgrade (was that the name?)
The other big reason is, protoss does not have anything worth dropping untill very late game, when he can afford to drop high templar and then remake those after losing them eventually.
Sentry drops+ warp-ins above ramp have gained some popularity, which is really cool.
I feel like after the patch, we will see some experimenting with that kind of strategy more often.
Why don't Protoss use Templar?
They do....
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
Too big of an investment in all 3 SC2 resources. Minerals, Gas and Time.
In order to have a number of carriers and have them pay for themselves, you will be dead.
Ofcourse a fleet of 10 carriers will be amazing, but you just can't get 10 carriers without dying a painfull death.
Those are my thoughts. I am sorry about my bad English, teamliquid. :/
1. Forcefield, blink and fast warp prisms can ensure the retreat if you use the terrain quite well. 2. EMP and Neural Parasite shouldn't matter if you have cloaked high templar, colossus or carriers with your mothership, since any infestor or ghost should be dead or out of energy before it gets in range. Especially Neural parasite shouldn't matter, even if it was successfut: just feedback the infestor in question.
The ignorance your spouting makes me angry. You can't just forcefield and "escape". Sentries are really slow, almost any unit can catch them, so sure, you might get away with some of your stuff you are guaranteed to lose some, and probably most unless you have great terrain of your 100 gas sentries. Blink I agree with, except when terran is being aware/taking map control (which he can, T is much more mobile) or z has speedlings or infestors so you can never harass with blink. Fast warp prism still dies too fast, we'll see post patch.
The second comment is just silly, neural outranges feedback and he'll have more than one ghost.
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On September 10 2011 02:55 ToastieNL wrote:
A complete lack of options is what is holding Protoss back. Play Protoss before you blame them for not changing their play.
I played random for most of the time, never made Colossus, never 4 gated, never 6 gated, never made Void rays, and didn't use much stalker or sentry even for a long time, and wasn't any worse than with my other races.
Although I have to admit not 4gating on Tal'Darim vs. Protoss sucks.
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Some perspective from a Platinum-league random player:
Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
In short, Protoss aren't great at putting on pressure because their units are individually weak. Zealots are high-damage but slow, stalkers are fast but low-damage, and sentries are not a harassment unit.
As others point out, stalkers (the best candidate for early-game gateway unit harass) are also stopped by concussive shell or stim (for Terran) or speedlings (for Zerg).
The deficiencies are helped with tech (charge/blink/warp prism) or higher-tier units (phoenix), but this puts harassment into the middle-to-late game; opponents are more likely to have sufficient static defenses or highly mobile response.
Why don't Protoss use Hallucination? (Added in edit)
As you point out, HuK shenanigans aside Hallucination is best used for scouting. But the Protoss already has a dedicated scouting unit in the observer, which generally mid-game Protoss get already for detection. Super early-game, Hallucination is a gas expenditure better used on a tech structure (usually), and mid-to-late game Hallucination use requires the player to have kept most of the early-game sentires alive (since late-game gas is spent on higher-tier AoE units).
As others point out, that's not to say Hallucination is bad. It's just not really a slam-dunk or game-changer.
Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
Because the mothership is a building that costs supply. It's essentially useless in a direct fight, the cloaking is easily countered, the unit itself is (currently) very immobile, and vortex is highly situational at best.
On top of that, there are no all-game AirToss strategies in use that I know of; Fleet Beacon tech is a diversion from just about everything. So a Mothership can never "just happen" -- even given a Stargate already from the early game, it will take an extremely long time to come up.
Why don't Protoss use Warp Prism?
That's starting to change and will probably do even moreso if the shield buff from the PTR goes live, but there are a few reasons why they're still uncommon:
*) First, Warp Prisms never Just Happen -- BioTerrans will have Medivacs already, and Zergs can turn each of their overlords into dropships with research. Each and every Warp Prism is a diversion from how Protoss intends to actually kill you.
*) Second, Medivacs have one armor; Warp Prisms do not. That makes the Medivac a more durable unit that you expect.
*) Third, Protoss have no one-slot combat units to load into a Warp Prism. Four zealots in a mineral line may be scary, but eight marines (with stim!) are scarier. The warp-in of the prism partially compensates for this, but warp-ins are fairy slow and require that the warp prism itself be secure.
A protoss can either "drop, kill stuff, load up" or "drop, secure the zone, warp in," but not both. On top of that, warp-ins are obviously limited by gateway numbers. Truly scary warp prism use requires a lot of gateways, which are not available early-game.
*) Fourth, Medivacs synergize with bio units in a way that Warp Prisms don't. A Terran drop is scarier against a few countering units because the same Medivac that did the drop is there to heal the dropped units. Eight marines and one Medivac are much stronger together than just eight marines; four zealots and a warp prism are just four zealots.
Why don't Protoss use Templar?
They do, but they're not usually good at killing worker lines because they are fairly slow and comparatively vulnerable. It's difficult to actually get them to a worker line, and as gas-heavy units it's unacceptable to suicide them like you can get away with for zealots.
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
Because Carriers are a poor solution in search of a problem. Everything that carriers are good against is better-countered by something either more flexible or lower on the tech tree. On top of that, like nearly every other Protoss unit Carriers are better in numbers than individually.
That's not to say that Carriers are bad units, but with the time and resources it takes to assemble a fleet, usually a Protoss could have killed the opponent with something else. The vulnerability of interceptors only adds to the troubles.
From a metagame standpoint, another problem with Carriers is that there's no way to effectively get to them. The tech-tree means that a CarrierToss would need to go heavy air, but earlier Protoss air units are ineffective at securing ground against marines, hydralisks, or even stalkers. This will make it difficult for the Protoss to get a third base, and I'd say those resources are necessary to get carriers in the numbers required to be scary.
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Blazinghand
United States25551 Posts
On September 10 2011 03:03 imbecile wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 02:55 ToastieNL wrote:
A complete lack of options is what is holding Protoss back. Play Protoss before you blame them for not changing their play. I played random for most of the time, never made Colossus, never 4 gated, never 6 gated, never made Void rays, and didn't use much stalker or sentry even for a long time, and wasn't any worse than with my other races. Although I have to admit not 4gating on Tal'Darim vs. Protoss sucks.
Wait, what builds did you use? Not making stalkers or sentries makes AA very difficult, and denying early scouts difficult as well. This sounds like almost Funday Monday tier difficult restrictions.
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On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
They are the highest DPS unit in the game, attack air and ground, outrange everything (14, once the interceptors are released), benefit the most from upgrades, have tremendous survivability when microed and positioned well, have mothership tech available, so they can always be saved when in trouble, can be teched to faster and arguably cheaper than colossus. Also, neural parasite is not overly useful against them, at least in larger groups, even if successfully done with all that range: they lose their interceptors quickly without doing much damage.
Sorry, off topic I know, but can an infestor NP an inteceptor? Just curious..
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Blazinghand
United States25551 Posts
On September 10 2011 03:13 sGs.Kal_rA wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
They are the highest DPS unit in the game, attack air and ground, outrange everything (14, once the interceptors are released), benefit the most from upgrades, have tremendous survivability when microed and positioned well, have mothership tech available, so they can always be saved when in trouble, can be teched to faster and arguably cheaper than colossus. Also, neural parasite is not overly useful against them, at least in larger groups, even if successfully done with all that range: they lose their interceptors quickly without doing much damage.
Sorry, off topic I know, but can an infestor NP an inteceptor? Just curious..
My initial thought is "probably not" but liquipedia has no information on the matter. But really you should just fungal them as they get catapulted out, causing terrible terrible damage.
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TOss is actually the most innovative / creative / tries new stuff. How many cheese's / openers / play styles / etc have u seen toss do? SOOOOOOO freakin many, i dont know where ur gettin ur facts from.
imo zerg / terran are the least willing to try new stuff. how long did it take for zerg to actually use banes in overlords? or overlord multi prong drops? has any patch effected that strat to make it more popular today...? nope. zergs just watch each other play via streams / replays / popularity nd they do what they see nd copy.
How many times have u heard a zerg or terran say "oh man i lost to blah blah blah's all-in. i havnt ever seen that strat before"
Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
uhm we try our best; but once u get fngaled thers no escape.... one fungal = incoming chain fungals because its not like storms where u can run away, u are freakin stuck....
nd if its vs terran, u can only harass if htey go mech; if they are bio, u harass u either A.) lose to a base trade. B.) get caught by concussive nd ur harass ddnt do shit but lose more units.
Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
i use to use it alot; back in archon toilet days, also use to use it alot before infestor days, until NP would give it to zerg nd i would die because my obs died with fungal; but now since patch is gonna fix it; u will see me use it more often
Why don't Protoss use Hallucination?
lol who dsnt use this spell? u must be watching low level games... unless they already have air units then hallucination is not needed. and some pro players are use to using observer nd they have such great control and game sense, they can find out all the information they need with only their obs scouts.
Why don't Protoss use Warp Prism?
i use warp prism ALL the time....
Why don't Protoss use Templar?
I never have a game w/o some sort of templar... unless im all-in'ing ie 6gate.
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
I tried using carriers; vs terran, mass marines / vikings is always present so they bad (unless they going mech). vs zerg i tried nd it takes too long nd u will die by the time u can reach a good number if the zerg is good nd knows wtf u doing.
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On September 10 2011 03:08 Blazinghand wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 03:03 imbecile wrote:On September 10 2011 02:55 ToastieNL wrote:
A complete lack of options is what is holding Protoss back. Play Protoss before you blame them for not changing their play. I played random for most of the time, never made Colossus, never 4 gated, never 6 gated, never made Void rays, and didn't use much stalker or sentry even for a long time, and wasn't any worse than with my other races. Although I have to admit not 4gating on Tal'Darim vs. Protoss sucks. Wait, what builds did you use? Not making stalkers or sentries makes AA very difficult, and denying early scouts difficult as well. This sounds like almost Funday Monday tier difficult restrictions.
Early on I mostly went FFE or 2 gate robo into chargelot into immortal/warp prism into carrier/mothership and only got stalkers in response to early/midgame air, relied a lot on cannons and a few sentries for defensive force fields.
Later I added more stalkers and sentries for better harass and better early offensive options. Templars and archons I only really started using after the Archon range buff.
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Protoss doesn't just have anything to harass. Zealots are cheap and may be fantastic dps for drops, but they just can't catch workers (damn you game design). Stalkers are too expensive and have barely any dps. There's not very many escape options, we just don't have stim, or the fastest/cheapest ground unit in the game.
I don't know why hallu isn't used as often, now after the research time drop it's much better to scout.
Mothership/Carrier are just in a generally lesser used tech path. They are super lategame usually, where a robo as first tech choice is almost always safest.
I see players use templar plenty, not sure why you consider it underused
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Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
Dark Templar and Phoenixes are a commitment early game. If you go that route, you have to do a significant amount of damage or else you're way behind. Late game, Dark Templar are really good until they catch on. Late game Phoenixes in my opinion can never justify it's cost because it takes up supply and harassing a few workers is meaningless when they have so many drones and scvs.
Blink Stalkers aren't that great at harassing vs Zerg because of creep and how mobile the Zerg units are. Infestors lock them in place and they can move their army to flank the Stalkers easily. If you're talking about denying some creep tumors or sniping a base in Shakuras or something, people have been already doing that. In PvT, it's meh at best because at most you're gonna snipe a building or two and the risk of doing that is losing all your Stalkers to Marauders.
Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
I think Motherships are definitely viable in PvZ, but in PvT, it usually gets focused down really fast.
Why don't Protoss use Hallucination?
Hallucination has always been used in PvZ. I don't really like it though. The investment delays your tech and 100 energy off Sentries means you have two less FFs. If they do some kind of Roach/ling, you might not have enough FFs. In PvT, Robo is standard anyway so obs is better.
Why don't Protoss use Warp Prism?
Warp Prism has been seen a lot in recent games. Protoss players have been experimenting with this a lot more. With the next patch, I can definitely see a lot of new strategies with this.
Why don't Protoss use Templar?
I never seen Templars not being used. People have always been using it in PvT for Storm and against Ghosts, and also PvZ when Zergs get Infestors.
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
Carriers are certainly great when you can build a lot of them. The question is when can you do it? Going Carriers right from the beginning leaves you dead to any timing attacks. They take so long to build also that in late game, when can you sacrifice your army for an extended period of time so that you won't die to a straight up push? If Terrans or Zergs see you're building Carriers, they're just going to attack and you will lose because your army is smaller.
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On September 10 2011 03:08 Blazinghand wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 03:03 imbecile wrote:On September 10 2011 02:55 ToastieNL wrote:
A complete lack of options is what is holding Protoss back. Play Protoss before you blame them for not changing their play. I played random for most of the time, never made Colossus, never 4 gated, never 6 gated, never made Void rays, and didn't use much stalker or sentry even for a long time, and wasn't any worse than with my other races. Although I have to admit not 4gating on Tal'Darim vs. Protoss sucks. Wait, what builds did you use? Not making stalkers or sentries makes AA very difficult, and denying early scouts difficult as well. This sounds like almost Funday Monday tier difficult restrictions.
he never said he was good with protoss.. he just said he wasn't any worse. for all we know he could be just as terrible with T and Z.
in which league can you get away with not building colossi, void rays, and not having a mainly stalker and/or sentry composition? only viable composition from there is zeal/archon.
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Ehm… Ps do all the things listed. Platinum/diamond/low masters Ps get by with timing pushes, and the most successful Ps get by with timing pushes, the best Ps tend to place in between and use the literally hundreds of unique builds that have popped up (and most of the strongest ones have been turned into all-in variations by other Ps). You might not always see the best Ps use that much variation in competitions, of course, because the builds overall don’t work that well against top players on ladder and in team practice, from what I understand.
Simply, timing pushes and all-in innovations have always been the strongest part of P, nothing else works as well. Pro players’ time is better spent perfecting timings and all-ins, as evidenced by the very top Ps throughout SC2.
That’s not how it should be, but it’s how it has been up to present time. At least, that’s how it has always looked to me, and I watch a whole lot of competitions and streams.
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On September 10 2011 03:03 imbecile wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 02:55 ToastieNL wrote:
A complete lack of options is what is holding Protoss back. Play Protoss before you blame them for not changing their play. I played random for most of the time, never made Colossus, never 4 gated, never 6 gated, never made Void rays, and didn't use much stalker or sentry even for a long time, and wasn't any worse than with my other races. Although I have to admit not 4gating on Tal'Darim vs. Protoss sucks.
A lot of things work in bronze i guess..
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On September 10 2011 02:53 imbecile wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 02:32 nShade wrote:
1.Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
- Putting pressure on an opponent during mid game, as protoss, is a huge risk.
The reason for that is the fact that, if an engagement goes badly for the protoss, he can't really retreat without taking heavy losses, thanks to concussive shells, stim, zergling surrounds.
Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
- Motherships are a good unit toi have at an endgame scenario, I feel. Though it's hard to be in a situation where the enemy won't already have propper units to deal with it quickly. 1 EMP, 1 feedback, 1 neural parasite (god bless the patch), 1 volley of mass viking/corruptor fire, and it's dead. Was it worth it? Maybe. I imagine it will get some use again in PvsZ lategame after the patch. It could punish infestor/broodlord play with a well placed vortex.
Why don't Protoss use Hallucination?
- It does get used for scouting quite often, but that's all really. Hallucinating anything that can't be used for scouting, is not that usefull if your opponent has detection. There are some situations though where hallucinations like voidrays or colossi in PvsZ lategame have their potential, as they can soak up infestor spells and possibly corruptor fire. Still, you'll need to use the sentry energy on hallucinations instead of force fields, which are generally a better choice overall.
Why don't Protoss use Warp Prism?
There are a couple of reasons, I feel.
First off, creating warp prisms takes away from colossus building time. (which at high level of play can cost you dearly.) They are also quite easy to pick, thanks to their low health (changed in patch now) and speed, if they are not upgraded with the Gravitic drive upgrade (was that the name?)
The other big reason is, protoss does not have anything worth dropping untill very late game, when he can afford to drop high templar and then remake those after losing them eventually.
Sentry drops+ warp-ins above ramp have gained some popularity, which is really cool.
I feel like after the patch, we will see some experimenting with that kind of strategy more often.
Why don't Protoss use Templar?
They do....
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
Too big of an investment in all 3 SC2 resources. Minerals, Gas and Time.
In order to have a number of carriers and have them pay for themselves, you will be dead.
Ofcourse a fleet of 10 carriers will be amazing, but you just can't get 10 carriers without dying a painfull death.
Those are my thoughts. I am sorry about my bad English, teamliquid. :/
1. Forcefield, blink and fast warp prisms can ensure the retreat if you use the terrain quite well. 2. EMP and Neural Parasite shouldn't matter if you have cloaked high templar, colossus or carriers with your mothership, since any infestor or ghost should be dead or out of energy before it gets in range. Especially Neural parasite shouldn't matter, even if it was successfut: just feedback the infestor in question.
1: That's pretty vague. And Protoss do use hit and run tactics, but by the time and/or well before sufficient ff, blink, or upgraded warp prisms are an option, fungals and conc shell are serious considerations and they have to back off.
Maybe cough up a couple replays?
2: emp and fungal uncloak the army, and in what situation besides an already won game does a protoss who has invested in fleet beacon tech have the residual income to out produce their opponent in gas intensive casters? Using 50 energy to feedback an infestor that just dropped 100 energy on np is a waste, unless unbeknownst to me feedback cancels it, because it won't kill the infestor unless it had 190 energy before it cast; In ZvP, isn't the idea to cast np after fungal growth?
The OP is kind of vague overall, and you need to check a couple of your facts.
As far as P being hostile to innovation, my sense is that this is something you're observing in the balance debate that's erupting. If that's the case, you might as well call spades spades and post somewhere else saying that P isn't imbalanced and P users should stuff it, because I'm not really sure what else you've said here besides pointing out that some protoss don't attack in the mid game some of the time.
EDIT: would also like to add, you claimed protoss has the fastest and most flexible transport. Would you elaborate on/defend that claim a little? I have a hard time seeing how a warp prism is definitively more flexible than medivacs.
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On September 10 2011 02:10 Zedex wrote:
Nobody got trashed because they suggested building two observers, geoff and Naniwa thought building two observers was better than one and tyler and huk thought it was a waste or robo build time, they had a discussion about it there was no clear winner.
Also, they were talking about PvP, which is extremely relevant.
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On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
They are the highest DPS unit in the game...
That is factually false. Among the units that have higher dps than a full carrier are:
Immortal vs Armored, Thors vs ground, Battlecruisers, Ultralisks vs armored
There are several units that are very close to the same dps, such as the marauder - which does 75% of the dps of one carrier. Obviously this doesn't take into account range, aoe, cost efficiency, or upgrades, but it's just false to say that carriers have the highest dps in the game and I think people only said it because Artosis said it once.
I'm not saying carriers are bad, or whatever, I just hate it when people make statements about game stats like these that are wrong.
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Blazinghand
United States25551 Posts
On September 10 2011 03:35 Cold Warpgates wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
They are the highest DPS unit in the game... That is factually false. Among the units that have higher dps than a full carrier are: Immortal vs Armored, Thors vs ground, Battlecruisers, Ultralisks vs armored There are several units that are very close to the same dps, such as the marauder - which does 75% of the dps of one carrier. Obviously this doesn't take into account range, aoe, cost efficiency, or upgrades, but it's just false to say that carriers have the highest dps in the game and I think people only said it because Artosis said it once. I'm not saying carriers are bad, or whatever, I just hate it when people make statements about game stats like these that are wrong.
You make a valid point. Let me add: Carrier gains 26 DPS per +1, whereas immortal gain +20 DPS, thor gains +5, BC gains ~+5DPS, ultralisk gains ~+5 DPS.
I think Artosis was talking about how much Carrier scales with upgrades, in all likelihood.
EDIT: THIS IS ALL WRONG NEVER MIND
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Why don't protoss spread their units and use hallucinated collossi to make infestors useless, instead of whining about them?
Terrans spread their marines against banelings, why is it so hard for protoss? And don't say detection counters hallucination, what zerg brings an overseer into every battle against protoss?
Also why don't protoss use blink stalkers to harass lategame? They are insanely mobile and can easily snipe queens and drones. You don't need dark templar or air units to harass.
Why does protoss attack into broodlords? You wouldn't a-move into 20 siege tanks, but you a-move into 20 broodlords mindlessly and then cry op.
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On September 10 2011 03:39 Blazinghand wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 03:35 Cold Warpgates wrote:On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
They are the highest DPS unit in the game... That is factually false. Among the units that have higher dps than a full carrier are: Immortal vs Armored, Thors vs ground, Battlecruisers, Ultralisks vs armored There are several units that are very close to the same dps, such as the marauder - which does 75% of the dps of one carrier. Obviously this doesn't take into account range, aoe, cost efficiency, or upgrades, but it's just false to say that carriers have the highest dps in the game and I think people only said it because Artosis said it once. I'm not saying carriers are bad, or whatever, I just hate it when people make statements about game stats like these that are wrong. You make a valid point. Let me add: Carrier gains 26 DPS per +1, whereas immortal gain +20 DPS, thor gains +5, BC gains ~+5DPS, ultralisk gains ~+5 DPS. I think Artosis was talking about how much Carrier scales with upgrades, in all likelihood.
That's not true either...without upgrades or enemy armor, carriers do 26.66 dps. They gain +20% damage from +1, so they go up to ~32, an increase of about 6, not 26. I also don't know how Immortals go up to 50+ dps from one upgrade, lol...
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Blazinghand
United States25551 Posts
On September 10 2011 03:44 Cold Warpgates wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 03:39 Blazinghand wrote:On September 10 2011 03:35 Cold Warpgates wrote:On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
They are the highest DPS unit in the game... That is factually false. Among the units that have higher dps than a full carrier are: Immortal vs Armored, Thors vs ground, Battlecruisers, Ultralisks vs armored There are several units that are very close to the same dps, such as the marauder - which does 75% of the dps of one carrier. Obviously this doesn't take into account range, aoe, cost efficiency, or upgrades, but it's just false to say that carriers have the highest dps in the game and I think people only said it because Artosis said it once. I'm not saying carriers are bad, or whatever, I just hate it when people make statements about game stats like these that are wrong. You make a valid point. Let me add: Carrier gains 26 DPS per +1, whereas immortal gain +20 DPS, thor gains +5, BC gains ~+5DPS, ultralisk gains ~+5 DPS. I think Artosis was talking about how much Carrier scales with upgrades, in all likelihood. That's not true either...without upgrades or enemy armor, carriers do 26.66 dps. They gain +20% damage from +1, so they go up to ~32, an increase of about 6, not 26. I also don't know how Immortals go up to 50+ dps from one upgrade, lol...
Ooh oops my mistake. I misread carrier DPS. they have 26 TO BEGIN WITH and gain +5 per upgrade, which is pretty awe-inspiring. So they're on par with all these other guys.
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Templar, warp prisms, and hallucination are quite common actually.
Carriers are good lategame, but getting them earlier than 20 minutes in the game usually involves a huge risk as carriers take an eternity to build.
Mothership.. It is good but just like the carrier, involves a massive risk and is an ridiculous investment. You really can't get one before 15 mins, and 50% of all PvX games played have already ended at that point. I think the carrier and the mothership could use a build time buff.
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On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:
Why don't Protoss use Mothership?
It's the ultimate end game unit. Yet you can get it out faster and cheaper than all the other end game tech for the other races. And motherships destroy any kind of death ball army with vortex while also increasing mobility and harass with recall and bolstering your base defense tremendously by making all buildings and units invisible.
Why don't Protoss use Templar?
Templar trash the staple mass units of the other races, like marine, ling, hydra, marauder, roaches. They literally erase worker lines within seconds. They instakill all casters while outranging most. They become extremely powerful units once out of energy. This one is slowly changing though.
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
They are the highest DPS unit in the game, attack air and ground, outrange everything (14, once the interceptors are released), benefit the most from upgrades, have tremendous survivability when microed and positioned well, have mothership tech available, so they can always be saved when in trouble, can be teched to faster and arguably cheaper than colossus. Also, neural parasite is not overly useful against them, at least in larger groups, even if successfully done with all that range: they lose their interceptors quickly without doing much damage.
U will see all of this when Zergs can't Neural parasite them anymore, don't worry T_T.
Why u don't see them in vT and vP?
vP matches don't last that long and in vT matches you really don't want air units, templar are used.
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On September 10 2011 03:25 K3Nyy wrote:
Why don't Protoss constantly harass and put on pressure?
Dark Templar and Phoenixes are a commitment early game. If you go that route, you have to do a significant amount of damage or else you're way behind. Late game, Dark Templar are really good until they catch on. Late game Phoenixes in my opinion can never justify it's cost because it takes up supply and harassing a few workers is meaningless when they have so many drones and scvs.
Blink Stalkers aren't that great at harassing vs Zerg because of creep and how mobile the Zerg units are. Infestors lock them in place and they can move their army to flank the Stalkers easily. If you're talking about denying some creep tumors or sniping a base in Shakuras or something, people have been already doing that. In PvT, it's meh at best because at most you're gonna snipe a building or two and the risk of doing that is losing all your Stalkers to Marauders.
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Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
Carriers are certainly great when you can build a lot of them. The question is when can you do it? Going Carriers right from the beginning leaves you dead to any timing attacks. They take so long to build also that in late game, when can you sacrifice your army for an extended period of time so that you won't die to a straight up push? If Terrans or Zergs see you're building Carriers, they're just going to attack and you will lose because your army is smaller.
I never used a lot of phoenixes either, but when they were used against me as zerg in small numbers it essentially meant I'm gonna lose a few overlords/overseers, I can't have overlord spread, and I'm gonna lose a few drones here and there, and I can't go muta at all, because he will scout it and be ready to mass more phoenix. All those are quite annoying restrictions to zerg. And since Graviton beam cancels Neural Parasite those would still be useful all game long.
When I used carriers as Protoss, I did quite a bit of warp prism harass to snipe and delay tech with immortals and thrash mineral lines with chargelots, which I found bought me enough time to get the 4-6 carriers and the upgrades to start really doing damage with them. Also, if you go warp prism/immortal/chargelot against a meching terran or a terran going marauder/ghost you can win outright with it. Happened far too often before I even got to carriers.
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On September 10 2011 03:45 Blazinghand wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 03:44 Cold Warpgates wrote:On September 10 2011 03:39 Blazinghand wrote:On September 10 2011 03:35 Cold Warpgates wrote:On September 10 2011 01:58 imbecile wrote:
Why don't Protoss use Carriers?
They are the highest DPS unit in the game... That is factually false. Among the units that have higher dps than a full carrier are: Immortal vs Armored, Thors vs ground, Battlecruisers, Ultralisks vs armored There are several units that are very close to the same dps, such as the marauder - which does 75% of the dps of one carrier. Obviously this doesn't take into account range, aoe, cost efficiency, or upgrades, but it's just false to say that carriers have the highest dps in the game and I think people only said it because Artosis said it once. I'm not saying carriers are bad, or whatever, I just hate it when people make statements about game stats like these that are wrong. You make a valid point. Let me add: Carrier gains 26 DPS per +1, whereas immortal gain +20 DPS, thor gains +5, BC gains ~+5DPS, ultralisk gains ~+5 DPS. I think Artosis was talking about how much Carrier scales with upgrades, in all likelihood. That's not true either...without upgrades or enemy armor, carriers do 26.66 dps. They gain +20% damage from +1, so they go up to ~32, an increase of about 6, not 26. I also don't know how Immortals go up to 50+ dps from one upgrade, lol... Ooh oops my mistake. I misread carrier DPS. they have 26 TO BEGIN WITH and gain +5 per upgrade, which is pretty awe-inspiring. So they're on par with all these other guys.
They do scale quite well, though of course they lose just as much from enemy armor. They scale just as well as zerglings and phoenixes-vs-non-light, Reapers vs non light and broodlings actually scale even better, but that isnt as big of a deal.
Even in a full-attack-upgrade situation, carriers don't do the most dps (it's actually thors vs ground), and each point of enemy armor cancels out 1 attack upgrade.
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you are about 3 metagames behind, protosses are using warp prisms, carriers, templar, hallucination, and when they can they are investing in motherships.
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Mothership is bad, good players do use hallucination early game, but if you lose your sentry, it's not worth it to replace them since protoss is so gas heavy. How are warp prisms cheap?? Wth... 200 minerals for a paper airplane? Overlords have more HP and they cost half a warp prism. Have you ever played a pvz? try harassing with your main army and see what happens. Protoss units are very slow and retreating has a cost associated with it unlike zerg. Templars are very popular, not sure where your getting this from. And carriers like mothership isnt worth the cost. They are too easily hard countered imo
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On September 10 2011 03:40 Manical wrote:
Why don't protoss spread their units and use hallucinated collossi to make infestors useless, instead of whining about them? Terrans spread their marines against banelings, why is it so hard for protoss? And don't say detection counters hallucination, what zerg brings an overseer into every battle against protoss?
It's a double edged sword. With a spread, Infestors will be less effective, but the lings will be exponentially better. In regards to hallucination, Sentries almost never get reproduced- they cost too much gas, when you need it to get your T3 units/upgrades for those units. That first push where Sentries are around usually means the Toss techs during that time (which is why you get Sentries, to delay). And if you're being offensive with Sentries, then that's the timing before Infestors come around.
Also why don't protoss use blink stalkers to harass lategame? They are insanely mobile and can easily snipe queens and drones. You don't need dark templar or air units to harass.
It's extremely dependent on the map and where everything is arranged. Generally, creep spread, the speed of slings and the threat of 1 Fungal throwing away your army means 1 DT (which can't do as much, but does enough to be respectable) or air units (which can outrun/out maneuver) are preferable. However, I think I'd agree, I don't think there's much practice and knowledge about just where you can blink to and from.
Why does protoss attack into broodlords? You wouldn't a-move into 20 siege tanks, but you a-move into 20 broodlords mindlessly and then cry op.
Bad control, same as why you a-move into Siege Tanks. Usually Toss is FORCED to do it, like breaking a contain.
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If you spread vs Infestors, neural can catch a Colossus at the edge of the spread formation, then likely another because the Colossi aren’t balled up and can’t vaporize Infestors before they reach them.
If you spread gateway units, mass lings from a Z on even just one base over the P are way too cost efficient.
Hallucinations are ok if they catch the Z unawares, but a single overseer ruins your day (even if you Blink snipe it, the Z has time to see which Colossi are hallucinated).
The reason Ps tend to attack into Broodlords is that the P lategame units are just as immobile as the Broods. Any time Broods are not over Spines is the one timing to attack them, pretty much have to do it. I have seen some success with mass Zealot basetrade vs Broods, in which case if you can avoid a direct engagement with Broods (broods are by the way the best units in the game to force engagements due to the broodling mechanic, in my opinion) you can clean up the Z bases faster. Problem is, that requires the P to get up a fourth base (or on some maps a third) far away from their current bases so that they can keep producing air units or stalkers and eventually whittle down the broodlords. Getting that extra base is extremely difficult unless the Z gets greedy and tries to get 2 bases ahead instead of 1.
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On September 10 2011 03:51 Alejandrisha wrote:
This thread is an insult
Yes.
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Carriers, BCs, are "force" units. they force a person to create the counter unit, thereby greatly weakening themselves.
you don't produce mass carriers or BCs, you make two or three. They're far more powerful like this, and you can afford their loss.
On September 10 2011 03:58 imbecile wrote:Yes.
and a pretty accurate one.
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Blazinghand
United States25551 Posts
On September 10 2011 03:58 imbecile wrote:Yes.
I think what "Big A" wanted to say here was that you just did the equivalent of walking into a room full of Terran people and asking them why they don't support their TvP Marine Marauder composition with Medivacs and Battlecruisers. We've been using medivacs for ages and the battlecruiser suggestion just sounds bad. In the same regard, a lot of this stuff you've suggested is considered standard and used all the time at high levels of play, and some of it seems ridiculous and nonsensical.
I think you could do a better job, moving forward in this thread, of articulating yourself-- a lot of this seems a little on the aggressive side, especially accusing Protoss players as being uncreative, when in fact the Protoss community is just like the rest of the Sc2 community: constantly innovating.
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On September 10 2011 03:58 imbecile wrote:Yes.
Never post in the strategy forum again.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DE3sG.png)
