I DO like the current oracle's ability to attack buildings, but I feel like it will be easily "figured out" how to efficiently defend vs the ability, and it will fall out of use. All you need is a few queens, a few marines, or a few stalkers to defend vs oracle harass. I'd also like to mention that they aren't that good as a lone unit, and easily deterred without the ability to shut down any anti-air units in order to harass.
I'm not sure this is true. Oracles are pretty damn fast, and they do enough damage that if units don't get to them quickly they can very feasibly snipe smaller buildings and tech structures and get out safely. It will be very difficult to spread one's units out over your bases well enough to fully prevent vulnerability to Oracles, especially once you have multiple expansions to defend. Plus, Oracles can slow units rushing to get to them.
I mean, think about it. Oracles swings by and starts Pulsar Beaming your 3rd base. You can either ignore it, or send units to defend...in which case the Oracle can Timewarp you once you get there, then use their superior speed to fly back to your now-undefended tech structures and start sniping stuff before you can get back. Or you park units at all your bases, and now your army is fucking tiny and can't do anything.
I actually think fully stopping Oracle harass on multiple bases is gonna be damn hard, due to their combination of extremely high-dps vs buildings, flight, high speed, and the ability to slow down defenders.
This is the situation for each matchup when it comes to oracles and pulsar harassment:
PvZ: Zerg has a queen there, so you already have to micro 1 oracle away after it takes some damage, which additional queens on the way + a spore or 2 you are working with restricted space, time, and health. Zerg has spire access mid game as well, and making a few corruptors/mutas easily counter oracles.
PvP: Warp in 2-3 stalkers. Thats it. Mothership core can also help defend pretty easily with the nexus attack. Optional cannons at base as well. I find it much easier to harass protoss with Phoenix.
PvT: Easiest race to defend vs Oracle harass IMO. Marines/missile turrets/widow mines are very useful in deterring Oracles. I find it much easier to harass Terrans with the Tempest.
I feel like The pulsar ability is one of those things where it will be good if you catch your opponent with his pants down, but not something that is always reliable for harass.
I would also like to mention that the Oracle's attack animation requires you to channel it for 1 second before it does any damage. You can't micro them like you can void rays, I found this out the hard way!
I learned that day 1 ^^. Should have read my thread on Oracle micro
Its a very cool spell and I really like it. If a anyone puts a building up against the edge of their main and there is airspace next to it its dead. If you micro the Oracle right you are effectively 7 range away from whatever ground unit that can shoot up wants to protect it.
On November 02 2012 23:52 Freeborn wrote: 5 oracles can kill your nexus in no time even with recall you won't save it due to the delay.
you basically have to leav 3+ stalker behind or have perfect scouting in pvp as soon as you see stargate.
Make a phoenix. I am thinking I should open Phoenix in PvP now just because its that much safer nowadays.
I like this one ^^ They didn't do much, but it was fun to watch
There's so much dead airspace behind bases in SC2 maps
Thats the only thing you take from that? ;P
It's too forgiving for air harassers like the Oracle. You go deep in the base, react late, but it's all okay because you have all this dead airspace behind the base where you can park your units. I don't like it.
I like this one ^^ They didn't do much, but it was fun to watch
the guy had 6 oracles, but people will see it and call OP
6 oracles is 900/900/18 resources worthy of protoss harass...
for example, the other races can snipe buildings with:
Terran -1350/750/6, you get 3 ghosts/3 nukes/3 ghost academy. -1500/600/30, you get 3 medivacs and 12 marauders, that is 240 DPS (stim), you would need ~9 Oracles to match it.
Zerg -700/1050, you get 7 infestor, you can burrow near an expansion and spawn a max of 7x8=56 IT, that is 504 DPS...
The advantage of the oracle if compared with these alternatives is that you can build an oracle squad pretty fast and they can hit and run much more easily... the disadvantage is that unlike the alternatives 6 oracles is a lot of dead weight in battles and the harass is limited to buildings.
IMHO, the only problem of the current Oracle is that it hits zerg way too fast, I don't know if zergs can spot an oracle squad build and react in time.
I still think blizzard is missing the mark with this ability: it's not as exciting to see some buildings get killed as it is to see workers get killed.
If blizzard wants to give protoss better air harass, they should rework the phoenix and void ray instead of adding yet another air unit to protoss.
On November 03 2012 03:37 Ideas wrote: I still think blizzard is missing the mark with this ability: it's not as exciting to see some buildings get killed as it is to see workers get killed.
If blizzard wants to give protoss better air harass, they should rework the phoenix and void ray instead of adding yet another air unit to protoss.
I like the ability, I think with phoenix, protoss have their go-to worker killing unit, this gives protoss a little versatility and forces the opponent to react with units instead of towers.