|
Mexico2170 Posts
Hello everyone, today I want to talk about the current state of Protoss in Legacy of the Void. I wanted to bring this to your attention because right now, it feels as if although Blizzard is doing pretty big changes, they aren't doing other, necessary changes, and so, Protoss is stuck in between of something great and something terrible.
First, as some of you have pointed out before, the new economy is a straight up nerf to the Protoss race, this is because Protoss is the race that has the hardest time to expand. Some of the reasons that make it hard in HotS are the following.
-Protoss mid game is comparatively weak to the other races.
-Protoss units in general aren't very mobile, and so, moving them to protect different expansions is a problem.
-Protoss can warp in to defend expansion, but Gateway units are relatively weak alone, and can't defend anything on their own. Furthermore, while they are being warped in they slowly gain health, instead of appearing with full health. This makes it so instead of having to deal 100 damage to kill a warping zealot you may need to deal 20, or 30 or more, depending on how much time has passed since it started to warp in.
-Mother ship core is a good defending tool, but again, it is fairly slow. You can position it between your 2nd and third, for example, but as you add more and more bases, its hard to defend. Also, while being very strong on the early game, since the damage doesn't scale, it is very weak, and negligible, on the late game.
This are just some examples, now, lets see how LotV fixes, or not, those problems:
-Protoss mid game while going robo received a considerable buff with the addition of the disruptor. However, Protoss mid game also received some nerfs, like the new immortal. Add to that the existence of the ravager, and overall, I'd say that the mid game Protoss macro game, received a nerf.
-Protoss units in general aren't very mobile still. The adept is a great mobile addition I think, however with its current stats it isn't a really good core unit.
-Protoss warp in units now receive more damage. While this nerfs nasty all ins, it also nerfs Protoss ability to defend and secure expansions.
-Mothership core is still very strong on the early game, and early mid. But it still very weak on the lategame, and considering the speeded up early game, the time of usefulness of the nexus cannon is considerably reduced.
Furthermore, Protoss is the race that suffers the most when losing an expansion. Not only does its units are the most expensive, and they have a more difficult time securing that expansions than the other races, but the great and mighty chronoboost, as useful as it is, it is actually the worst macro mechanic of the 3 when it comes to pure economy, making it harder for Protoss to maintain or recover it's income as fast as the other races can.
If we analyse this, and the other changes made to the Protoss race, we can see that Blizzard intentions are to reduce the effectiveness of Protoss All ins, while at the same time reducing the hard counters and abusable abilities. This is awesome, but it seems like they forgot something.
By nerfing the immortal for example, sure, you remove a hard counter, thats good for the game, but you also "break" the balance that existed in certain match ups, and so, you must give something in return. But they didn't.
By creating a counterplay to the Sentry and ForceFields, sure, you remove abusable strategies and some turtle, however, you must give something in return to make it balanced. But they didn't.
The only case where they did gave Protoss something to compensate for a nerf, its in the case of the Colossus and Disruptor, however, this puts the Colossus in a weird place.
The disruptor deals way more damage, and faster than a Colossus, however, the Colossus brings a more reliable way to bring AoE Damage to your Army. This is similar to the HT-Archon interaction. The high templar in general brings more damage, but since your opponent can dodge the storms/use EMP to drain energy, the Archons bring a more reliable way to deal Splash damage, while at the same time bring more "tankiness" to your army. This is good design. Making you take decisions depending on what you want to achieve.
There is a problem with this though, that goes way back to the time the Colossus way unveiled.
When Blizzard showed the colossus, and people got to play it, one of its main "features" was that it could be targeted by both Air, and ground. One of the problems with this though, is that if you were playing with Colossi, and then for some reason wanted to switch to, Carriers for example, the opponent already had the unit it needed to counter it in the game.
This problem not only still exist in LotV, but it is amplified. In TvP for example, if the game starts as Bio, and when you got your Disruptors and Colossi, and the Terran is forced to Switch into mech, and So, you switch to Stargate, well, if they didn't suicide their Vikings, they already have a counter to your Air army. This can be tweaked with numbers of course, to make it fairly balanced, however, the design problem is there.
But what happens with the Disruptor? Well, if you don't want it to be a glorified baneling, you need some way to make it survive after the explosion. The way to save it right now is either to kill everything, or use a warp prism. Now, think about that for a second. What unit counters the warp prism? The same units that counters the tier 3 of both the Robo, and the Stargate.
This is alleviated a little by the increased pick up range, but again, it is a problem that's bound to have consequences sooner or later.
This makes it so there is only one path left for protoss to go, the Templars, This is a great unit against Zerg, however let's remember that Templar Archive is still very vulnerable to widow mines and EMP.
In my opinion, on PvZ, Protoss will have a very hard time securing expansions, "forcing" them to all in again. On TvP in my opinion, all the chances will lead to the same old playstyle we have had since Wings of Liberty: Robo-Into templar.
TL;DR Protoss weaknesses are extrapolated by this new economy. Protoss midgame and mobility are fairly weak, and not only Blizzard didn't buff them, but by nerfing his All-Ins and Hard counters, they nerfed his ability to expand even more.
There will still be problem though, since Protoss is designed to not be that mobile, and not expand that much, while Zerg for example, is designed to do the opposite, making this expansion a straight up buff to zerg, and a nerf to Protoss. I don't have a way to fix that, but if you have any ideas, feel free to share them.
While all of what I said above, and what I'll say down below, has consequences to the balance, what I want to focus on is on the design of the game. Numbers, and balances changes can be adjusted later, bad design? Never.
My suggestions:
I spoilered them because the point of the thread is to discuss the current state of the Protoss, and not my suggestions, Feel free to discuss them and make some of your own, but remember what the thread is intended for.
+ Show Spoiler +-The tempest, the warp prism, the Carrier, and the Colossus, are mostly countered by the same units, this needs to change. My suggestion is: Remember the Alpha Wings of liberty Tempest? That unit looked like a DT carrier, and one of its features was that it had a protective shield that reduced the damage taken from ground units. My suggestion is to give this ability to one of this units, to help reduce the fact that 1 unit can hard counted the entire Tier 3 of Protoss.
-About the weak gateway units. We all have heard that the gateway units are weak, and if we remove the sentry we should buff them. But there are problems with that.
First of all, the sentry wasn't removed, I guess you could say the FF was "kinda" removed vs Zerg when Ravagers hit the map, however, they still exist, and they still are pretty useful on the 3 match ups. In my opinion, buffing gateway units would be a mistake, since this would only increase the strength of things like the Blink all in vs terran, and other types of All ins, here are my suggestions:
-Buff the adept: In my opinion, two changes need to happen to make it a good core unit: Increase its health, and make it so you decide when to teleport him, and not the "7 second" rule we have right now.
-Give the Stalker two different attacks. One for Air and one for ground. The ground one is the same. The air one is just 2-3 points better than the ground one. I'd manage it as a passive "The Stalked deals increased damage to air targets" This will help against the units that counter the Tempest, Colossus, Warp Prism and Carriers, but shouldn't be that big of an increased attack to not make Stalkers hard counter them.
This will also help against mutalisk. Since the game will focus on expanding, and there are fewer resources per base, high mobile harass units like the mutalisk will be very good against Protoss. As we all know, mutalisk force you into Phoenix, and while this interaction kinda works right now on HotS, with more bases I fear that Mutalisk will deal too much damage before you can complete the transition. This would help alleviate the problem.
As you can see, I'm not proposing buffs to the Zealot, since it is very immobile, and is good at what he does. What a Protoss would want in this expansion is a buff to their high mobility units.
-Nerf the immortal, and reduce its cost and build time. Make it so its more masseable sort of like a dragoon that still comes from the robo. (I didn't play BW). This change is needed to help the Protoss have a stronger mid game while not buffing the Stalker against ground, which due to its mobility and blink, could lead to very strong all ins.
-Buff the mothership core in the late game. Let it teletransport between nexus for free like the in the HotS Beta, Let the damage of the nexus cannon scale a little.
|
I actually don't see the reason of why 'improving' the Zealot is not an option. They could really help on lessening the problems you listed here. Now, I am not advocating buffing up numbers for the Zealot but rather, making their upgrade Charge much more accessible and earlier (for example, moving it to the cybernetic core).
A change like this won't make Protoss suddenly mobile, but it does give them more flexibly with what they can do. I find that Zealots are actually good at engagements since they are the cheapest units the Protoss has and deal rather good DPS. And because Zealots with Charge are actually decent against every first tier unit (zergling, roach, hydralisk, marine, maraduar, stalker, immortal) in the game, they could actually fight head with the other races early on, so the player can then invest their gas into higher tech. Though, I would still suspect there would be Stalkers/Adepts to support them in those engagements.
I mean, when I think about it, I think it could work as the Zealot could act as the linchpin early on as Protoss decides to invest heavily on one of the three tech paths after Cybercore. Twlight for better Stalker/Adept play (more quick and harass option), Robotics for Immortal/Warp Prism play (heavy ground force), and Stargate for air play.
This is just a thought, and not designed to fix every problem. Even if this would go through, I would still say, Adepts should be tweaked to be more useful, a Disruptor should be tweaked so Protoss aren't heavily reliant on them and that they aren't so All-or-Nothing, or that Stalkers could become better at stopping air harass.
|
In my opinion, the warpgate change is contradictory with the "expand like a madman" approach they want to use for LotV. I don't see the point of that nerf honestly if you're not going to give gateway units a bit more mobility early on.
|
The whole design of LotV is a joke, but that's ok for Blizzard. I'll explain why.
I know you hate BW, but we shouldn't ignore good ideas from there. First, lurker outranges colossus. That's bad because colossus replaces reaver, and there has to be some kind of anti-lurker unit, especially when you're under siege since you can't 1a with stalkers. Disruptor? Nope, if zerg spreads lurkers like siege tanks, then that doesn't work.
Lurkers vs terran. Zerg can position lurkers around map like they're mines, and terran will waste a lot of scan and walk into traps, etc. This was reasonably countered by science vessels as they were air detection units with irradiation. Now, who goes ravens anyway? It didn't happen in WoL and HotS with bio style. There has to be some good reason to always get a raven when you play TvZ. Not just for detection but also some nice spell.
Viper seems to be not well thought unit. It's like the new infestor. Abduct, irradiate spell, blinding cloud, consume ability. Who wouldn't use that? Too much power into one unit.
Also how about a new protoss unit? E.g. 2 dark templars into dark archon for maelstrom. There's no anti-muta unit for protoss other than phoenixes. There has to be a ground unit as well. Not everyone wants and has the time to transition to air only to be trolled by 10-15 mutas into ground army again.
Edit: Ok, maelstrom + disruptor would be imba, but you see what I mean. There's no good ground unit vs mutalisks.
|
you could always spit charge into 2 upgrades, the speed aspect of it to cybercore and the charge aspect of it still at twilight
That way zealots could deal with kiting a little better from terrans bio and zerg roaches
|
Darkness your post is kind of lol. Protoss can deal with mutalisks just fine or in HOTS they would be struggling versus zergs (hint they don't).
LOTV is a great design (could do a better economy change of course), but they do need to buff protoss to compensate. Right now Protoss is definitely UP, once they buff toss to compensate all will be good, it will just be awhile most likely before it gets done right.
|
On April 13 2015 02:42 Clear World wrote:
I actually don't see the reason of why 'improving' the Zealot is not an option. They could really help on lessening the problems you listed here. Now, I am not advocating buffing up numbers for the Zealot but rather, making their upgrade Charge much more accessible and earlier (for example, moving it to the cybernetic core).
A change like this won't make Protoss suddenly mobile, but it does give them more flexibly with what they can do. I find that Zealots are actually good at engagements since they are the cheapest units the Protoss has and deal rather good DPS. And because Zealots with Charge are actually decent against every first tier unit (zergling, roach, hydralisk, marine, maraduar, stalker, immortal) in the game, they could actually fight head with the other races early on, so the player can then invest their gas into higher tech. Though, I would still suspect there would be Stalkers/Adepts to support them in those engagements.
I mean, when I think about it, I think it could work as the Zealot could act as the linchpin early on as Protoss decides to invest heavily on one of the three tech paths after Cybercore. Twlight for better Stalker/Adept play (more quick and harass option), Robotics for Immortal/Warp Prism play (heavy ground force), and Stargate for air play.
This is just a thought, and not designed to fix every problem. Even if this would go through, I would still say, Adepts should be tweaked to be more useful, a Disruptor should be tweaked so Protoss aren't heavily reliant on them and that they aren't so All-or-Nothing, or that Stalkers could become better at stopping air harass.
I'd be on board with this if charge was somehow modified to require more micro and have more room for micro, because as it is now, zealots are basically a-move units with some surround micro and a few splits against mines. If they are a core unit then they should be more microable.
|
we can deal with mutalisks in HOTS because viper doesn't have the irradiate spell to fuck over all the phoenixes though, I mean moving ur irradiated phoenix out of the pack is an option but the damage is so quick it still does massive damage in a very short time, especially if there would be more than 1 viper
even now without viper, the corruptors are so much better since they can snipe buildings that just playing vs mutas/corruptor would be much harder than it used to be
|
Every time I hear Protoss complain about their status in LotV, I remember HotS beta, and how they complained through the entire thing that they were broken and terrible, only to dominate for the next 2 years once the game went live.
|
They didn't replace what they removed because they didn't know what they removed.
Blizz needs to take a long look at the roach / marauder / sentry dynamic before they start tearing shit up.
On April 13 2015 03:10 [PkF] Wire wrote:
In my opinion, the warpgate change is contradictory with the "expand like a madman" approach they want to use for LotV. I don't see the point of that nerf honestly if you're not going to give gateway units a bit more mobility early on.
It's because warpgates in general are bullshit and people don't like how they affect the game. The change itself wasn't exactly what was needed, though, and Blizz neglected to consider what would have to be changed to compensate for it.
|
I'd hope they take a look at the economy first and then adjust Protoss where needed. But there are some design changes I'd love to see regardless to give protoss a little more mobility and less balance around gimmicks.
I'd like to see an Immortal adjustment to be a little cheaper, lower build time, a bit faster (like stalker speed), damage point lowered/removed and have a little weaker stats vs armored + a little less HP.
Basically make it more of a unit that can run around on the map and microed back - especially in combination with the barrier. Maybe make barrier autocast upon shield depletion or first hit (first one being the "optimal solution", the second one being the "you can abuse it as an opponent" solution).
Zealot legs instead of charge would also be quite a nice buff for Protoss mobility. Even if you don't like BW-solutions just for the sake of them being a BW-solution, it just makes sense to make Protoss more mobile and harassoriented instead of the half-assed speed buff + charge only triggering in combat.
Adepts, I don't like their ability too much. Don't see a reason why it cannot be a "boring" unit just with a good antilight attack (or just in general a good attack, maybe with only a small +vs light bonus similar to stalkers with their small +vs armor bonus), reasonable mobility (without the shade) and nice microability - hence some buffed stats compared to now. Maybe give it some passive ability instead of the shade thing, e.g. a 3 second phase shift upon receiving lethal damage, therefore giving you the chance to still safe the unit and making opponents target switch.
Also the disruptor shouldn't be invulnerable in its Purification-mode, that just takes away from the opponent counteracting it and forces it to be overly expensive and eventually balanced around all-or-nothing.
Here is just a counteridea to that: I would like to have its shields buffed incredibly to say 250 (from 100). Upon exploding it loses all its shields and deals 1damage per shield lost. Thereby the opponent is encourage to split but also targetfire the disruptor with the rest of his units. You couldn't run with one disruptor into a whole army and blow all up, but it would still be great for harassment and smaller groups of units and in combats with a lot going on the splitting alone can make it payoff.
Also add a passive ability that when the disruptor is not in purification nova mode it recharges like 10shields per second and drop its gas costs a bit. --> it would encourage more interaction and counterplay, but also make the protoss less dependend on "getting that one big hit", because the cost would be lower.
|
Russian Federation4235 Posts
What I completely don't understand now is that you can build a starport (a necessary and useful building), attach a tech lab (can be reused with a barracks or a factory), and you've got yourself a flying (!) unit that is quite fast, medium ranged, invisible at will, has decent HP and is notoriously good vs workers. But you still need a completely useless and expensive dark shrine to build a goddamn DT that is ground, melee, less durable and more expensive. Why was dark shrine needed in the first place is beyond me, but it looks even more forced now with the banshee changes. Move DTs to templar archives maybe?
|
On April 13 2015 05:27 BluzMan wrote:
What I completely don't understand now is that you can build a starport (a necessary and useful building), attach a tech lab (can be reused with a barracks or a factory), and you've got yourself a flying (!) unit that is quite fast, medium ranged, invisible at will, has decent HP and is notoriously good vs workers. But you still need a completely useless and expensive dark shrine to build a goddamn DT that is ground, melee, less durable and more expensive. Why was dark shrine needed in the first place is beyond me, but it looks even more forced now with the banshee changes. Move DTs to templar archives maybe?
I think it was to compensate for the addition of warp gates / warp prisms, the removal of Overlord detection, and the decision to have Scanner Sweep energy compete with MULE energy. Also, if your opponent is already prepared, you can immediately morph it into an Archon, instead of a caster that requires special research, lots of energy buildup, and specific targets to be effective.
I don't think the cheese tower needs to be in LotV though, with the turret / spore buffs and oracles / ravagers.
|
When the beta went live I took a long look at the patchnotes for the initial beta build. All I could come up with was "so they are just nerfing Protoss across the board, in every aspect of the game... Am I missing something?".
But as it turned out it's not me who is missing something, it was their dev team that seemed to forgot some basics of the Protoss race. I'm not going to talk about how or why the economic changes are really bad for Protoss because it's fairly obvious even to people who don't play that race. What I found astonishing where these things:
-The changes to the oracle are a pretty severe nerf to the mobile detection of Stargate openings since the detection of the oracle is now a spell cast on a single location instead of turning the oracle into a detector and keeping its mobility... which makes it fairly useless against more than a single cloaked unit. That in itself would already be pretty bad but on top of that they decided to buff/add cloaked units for Terran and Zerg. So... uhm.. what is the compensation for Stargate opening?
-Protoss, especially against Zerg, was already heavily relying on the sentry to get to a somewhat stable 2-3 base economy or to be able to push across the map without getting devoured by superior low-tier Zerg units. And even then we have witnessed Zerg players being able to shut down a 3rd base for Protoss if they were dedicated enough. With the Ravager added, Warpgates nerfed and the economy changed in a way that makes overly passive play unviable I'm not really sure what Protoss is supposed to do to compete. In fact there is not much a Protoss army can do without the help of forcefields and I don't think that Disruptors will stay the way they are now. So with everything nerfed in that regard, where is the compensation to make up for it?
The Adept, while a pretty cool unit, is not really what people wanted it to be and it does not solve any of the inherent problems of the Protoss race when it comes to being able to compete with mobile low-tier armies of other races without needing expensive, high tier silver bullets.
Many units of the other races where buffed without giving Protoss new ways to deal with them properly. Neither the Adept nor the Disruptor are a proper answers to Zerg Muta/Corruptor/Viper combinations and with Phoenix or air units in general being out of the equation there is no answer left that is mobile enough to defend the higher amount of bases properly with.
I seriously don't understand what they are trying to do with Protoss in LotV. Like... Why nerf Oracle detection? Why nerf Warpgate units (through warp-in and Ravager)? Why give Zerg a hardcounter to the only counter to Mut-Muts?
When players have been asking for the exact opposite (more stable ways of dealing with mass Muta transitions that don't require prebuilding 4 Stargates, stronger Warpgate units during the mid- to lategame, a more mobile core army)...
Regarding Warpgates:
It was proposed quite a few times that a solution would be to simply swap cooldowns of the Warpgate with unit build time of Gateways. Currently it's faster to warp-in units than building them from a Gateway which means that you will turn every Gateway into a Warpgate by default. If building a unit from a Gateway would be faster than using a Warpgate then there is a choice when to change Gateways into Warpgates and how many of them. There would be a payoff for being able to warp units across the map (longer build time per unit) and either building units faster from the Gateway or stronger Gateway units in general would be a pretty good way to give Protoss a proper defenders advantage... and help them get through the early- and midgame in a more stable fashion without resorting to being hyper defensive, spamming sentries or relying on rushing key tech units.
|
Protoss does not need any changes. The economy needs to be changed to accomodate defensive styles instead of removing them like the LOTV current economy does.
Then Protoss/Mech will be in a better place without even changing anything else about the game.
Protoss suffers some in beta right now because you are put on a timer to take a 3rd and 4th base. The way Protoss has always functioned is that you need to get a decent army up with tech units and you cannot really spread across the map too easily or you will get picked apart.
Same applies to Mech Terran.
|
Maybe they can adjust the warp gate mechanic where instead of nerfing the warp-in time across the board, units warp faster when near allied nexi/town halls to make defending bases easier while limiting the strength of offensive warpins.
Another idea could be to have the warp in time the same as before the nerf if units are being warped in via warp prism.
|
Italy12246 Posts
On April 13 2015 07:10 avilo wrote:
Protoss does not need any changes. The economy needs to be changed to accomodate defensive styles instead of removing them like the LOTV current economy does.
Then Protoss/Mech will be in a better place without even changing anything else about the game.
Protoss suffers some in beta right now because you are put on a timer to take a 3rd and 4th base. The way Protoss has always functioned is that you need to get a decent army up with tech units and you cannot really spread across the map too easily or you will get picked apart.
Same applies to Mech Terran.
I doubt it's only the economy, you could introduce these same changes to hots (which is reasonably balanced) minus the new units and protoss would still suffer
|
I just see a lot of meta complaining without actually waiting to see how things work. If adepts prove strong enough, they could be excellent harass defenders paired with a DEFENSIVE warp in behind the mineral line. You don't NEED to put your warp ins right in front of his army, in fact, that should be as stupid as it sounds.
The thing is blizzard WANTS protoss to stop being so clumpy and slow. The beta is very much going to be in flux, and we're likely to see changes made. But right now, very, very clearly, blizzard is most interested in the new economy.
So while I do agree that protoss is certainly the odd one out, being forced to rethink unit comps moreso than terran or zerg, I don't think the game has been broken. Meta wank is always the absolute nadir of this game, and it just never, ever plays out according to how things "should" be. discussing theoretical potentials of composition and structure/economy just do not EVER translate to core gameplay.
Stop going off the rails and bitching at blizzard. Provide clean feedback based on what you are seeing in a way that makes their job (which is providing us with a good game, not just pissing specifically on your shoes for a laugh) easier to do, not combing through miles of speculative nonsense.
As it stands, I think the economy is causing more problems than the unit comp for all races equally, maybe SLIGHTLY less so for zerg, but the DRG vs yoda style of crashing waves of units on a fortress is weakened just as much.
That said, lurkers shouldn't outrange colossus. That is kind of stupid.
On April 13 2015 08:25 Teoita wrote:
I doubt it's only the economy, you could introduce these same changes to hots (which is reasonably balanced) minus the new units and protoss would still suffer
But the thing is, protoss is not in a position with the current meta for that to be a huge problem. Protoss is already one of the most forgiving races for new players and still performs very well at the pro level. So this kind of comment is not very helpful.
|
On April 13 2015 10:46 Honeybadger wrote:
But the thing is, protoss is not in a position with the current meta for that to be a huge problem. Protoss is already one of the most forgiving races for new players and still performs very well at the pro level. So this kind of comment is not very helpful.
lol, forgiveness is exactly what protoss lacks, the race does not forgive mistakes from the opponent or from the protoss player, it's the race that only go big. The best way to avoid that is to play passive instead of trying to make stuff happen.
Almost every action you decide to take with protoss you either win big time or get rekt.
The Disruptor is like the the best example of the race as a whole. and of course I'm exaggerating a bit, sometimes disruptor trades evenly or slightly (un)favorable, but it lacks the ability to do that consistently just like the protoss race.
This problem is far harder to solve than the inability of the race to grab new bases in LOTV.
|
Warped in units should start with the same HP but takes double the damage like in Warcraft 3. This is so much more feasible.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
