Everything in this article is my opinion unless otherwise stated. As a progamer for several years now, I have a wealth of personal experience and observations to draw upon. That said, sometimes I have to speculate.
Overview:
The adept is a gateway unit that only requires a cybernetics core to produce. The adept is a tanky frontline unit that excels vs light units due to its bonus damage. The bonus damage is substantial so the adept is poor against armored units such as marauders, roaches, and stalkers. Also, adepts 2 shots all workers making them an excellent harass unit. The twilight council has an upgrade which increases the adept’s shields by 50 raising its total life from 180 to 230. As shields often stay unupgraded gaining 50 shields with minimal armor is less impactful than a 50 hp increase.
The adept is really interesting because of Psionic Transfer. Psionic Transfer creates an image that moves about the speed of a reaper and can be controlled. This image cannot attack. After 7 seconds the adept then teleports to the image. This image is not affected by any collision from units although it cannot pass through buildings. The adept’s controller may cancel the image to prevent the teleportation. This allows the adept to threaten multiple locations at the same time. The most common use for this is to send the adept to one mineral line and images to the other thus making it very difficult for the defender to accurately split their army. The adept opens up a new range of harassment opportunities for protoss as well as new compositions due to its high hit points.
By the numbers:
Cost: 100/25 Damage: 10 (+13 vs light) Build time same as a zealot Health: 90/90 Armor: 1 Movement speed: same as a marine
Psionic Transfer: Projects an invulnerable Psionic Image that can move but cannot attack. After 7 seconds, the Adept teleports to the Image's location. Adept can cancel the shade ability at any time. When you cancel, the shade disappears and you don’t teleport. The image is about as fast as a reaper.
Upgrade:
Shield upgrade, costs 100/100 researches from twilight council, gives adept +50 shields bringing them to 140/90.
PvT:
Adepts rule the early game vs Terran. They 2 shot marines and so do an even better job of maintaining early map control compared to stalkers. In addition, Psionic Transfer gives them opportunities to bypass an early bunker and trade for scvs or force a fight vs marines. Protoss also has a much easier time scouting as the image created gives them vision. Terran must wall off their main and raise depots if any images are attempting to sneak into the main. Adepts are excellent at getting into position while there is other action on the map as the default configuration for Terran will be to have the wall open. Adepts excel in small unit encounters and are able to overcome the healing of medivacs on marines without much trouble due to their high burst damage vs light.
Adepts can close the gap against ranged units instantly using their image and also cut off retreat.
There are a number of strong adept openings, allins and timings early on although their effectiveness in a head on fight falls off greatly as soon as marauders, stim, shields, and medivacs are out. Shields allows marines to survive 2 shots from adepts, although it depends on the upgrades and if they’re able to heal at all after stimming before taking damage.
Nightend uses his adepts to completely surround the terran forces.
Due to adept’s relative low range and lack of anti-air, bio + medivacs are able to kite an adept heavy army and pick up if things get too dicey. Adepts are generally supplemented with blink stalkers to limit medivac movement and immortals to help deal with a heavy marauder based composition. Late game, adepts are used mostly to harass. Warp prisms and image runbys are very common in high level TvP and force Terran to have heavy map control or take huge losses when they move out.
PvP:
Due to adept’s high hitpoints and mobility, both players open 2 gate adept almost every game. As adepts do bonus damage to other adepts, the best unit to counter early adepts are also adepts.
Adepts from both sides scout using their image.
Stalkers, zealots and sentries just don’t do enough damage early game to stop adepts from trading for probes early on. Currently PvP involves a lot of adepts roaming the map and using the image to get into their opponent’s base. As adepts 2 shot probes, 2 adepts are able to do a lot of economic damage unless the defender has a significant number of units already in position.
Adepts use their image to peek inside his opponent’s base.
Adepts see their opponent out of position and transfer into the base where they wreak havoc.
Adepts bounce from one mineral line to another harassing workers while his opponent tries to keep up
Adepts work great in a warp prism as they two shot workers.
Some protoss players have taken to setting up the top of their ramp so they can wall it off with a single pylon to keep adepts out of their base as needed. Stargate has relatively limited usage here due to the threat of being overrun by adepts but can be effective in catching your opponent off guard or out of position.
A typical adept vs adept fight looks a bit like roach vs roach, but there’s far greater opportunities to sneak by and gain position.
The natural transitions once players make it up to 2 base lie in either robotics or twilight. Robotics provides a measure of safety against dark templar while also giving access to Disruptors.
As archons do bonus damage to adepts and do not take extra damage, they can be a potent mid game response.
Immortals and colossus see little play in the matchup currently as immortal’s bonus damage is irrelevant with adepts forming the majority of each player’s army and their shield spell having too long of a cooldown to use them for soaking a lot of damage. As adepts move relatively slowly and are pretty small, disruptors are generally able to catch a significant number of them in the blast.
Disruptors also do excellent damage as adepts tend to clump and are slow.
Players also choose to go into blink and/or the adept shield upgrade for either timings or general pressure. While this leaves them a bit more vulnerable to dts, twilight allows the core army to be significantly stronger.
PvZ:
Adepts largely fill the role of zealots in this matchup. They are strong against zerglings, have high hitpoints and relatively low range. Since they do not do bonus damage vs roaches, they do not perform well and can have trouble actually getting in range to deal damage to the hydralisks. Psionic Transfer helps a lot with positioning but it can be difficult to get the adepts in position without isolating them completely from your army when trying to get on top of the hydralisks. Early game, adept timings largely take the place of zealot timings as adepts are a bit easier to micro and are much more versatile. Psionic Transfer allows them to place additional pressure on the zerg as well as bypass walls while also being an extremely effective scout. As the game goes on, adepts won’t necessarily form a core part of the army as they often do in the other matchups but generally get at least sprinkled in due to their high hitpoints, ability to clear zerglings and scout.
Nightend uses adepts to attack one mineral line while his images allow him to quickly move to another.
Adepts move in to pressure the 3rd and punish the zerg for being out of position when the transfer to their image in the natural.
The adepts stutter step away from zerglings and then cast their image backwards providing an escape if the zerg continues to chase.
Overall impressions:
When fighting against protoss, it’s important to get an idea of how many adepts to expect so that you can prepare in time. Once the harass starts, it becomes very hard to stabilize, but setting up ahead of time makes a huge difference toward defending. Walls are incredibly important for defense. As the protoss player can always cancel the teleport, adepts near your base offer a near endless and risk-free way to scout. Pushing adepts away from your base will be necessary to deny vision of your tech path. In low numbers, adepts will beat most units, especially once they have the shield upgrade from the twilight council. Be wary of leaving your base with minimal map control as you may be inviting a large number of adepts to invade and give you nightmares. The adept succeeds at being useful and creating new ways for protoss to control the map, scout and harass but is a little too similar to the zealot in terms of what units it’s good/bad against. While there are a number of situations that the adept is better than the zealot in, the reverse is less true. The zealot fills few roles that aren’t already filled by the adept. So, while the adept is creating new and interesting interactions in all three matchups, it is largely doing so at the expense of the zealot.
Thanks to NighEnD for providing replays and protoss insight.
Nice. I find that Stalkers do decent against Adepts, if on even economy, since they can kite with longer range. I have done some counter 4 gate aggression with pylon wall off against the 2 gate Adept style, though it's pretty allin.
The adept is a tricky equation. The unit appears far too dominant in early game with its anti light bonus, to the point it poisons PvP openings. On the other hand, once midgame is reached it's actually an interesting unit that solidifies gateway compositions a LOT. I REALLY think adepts should require a twilight council.
This post is pretty objective, summing up things that we already know. I would prefer to hear more of qxcs opinion about the state of the unit, should it be changed and if yes how? Does he think it is too strong? Personally I think adepts are too good early game TvP, some allins like warpprism 4 gate or voidray adept seem impossible to stop.
On August 14 2015 08:06 [PkF] Wire wrote: The adept is a tricky equation. The unit appears far too dominant in early game with its anti light bonus, to the point it poisons PvP openings. On the other hand, once midgame is reached it's actually an interesting unit that solidifies gateway compositions a LOT. I REALLY think adepts should require a twilight council.
On August 14 2015 08:06 [PkF] Wire wrote: The adept is a tricky equation. The unit appears far too dominant in early game with its anti light bonus, to the point it poisons PvP openings. On the other hand, once midgame is reached it's actually an interesting unit that solidifies gateway compositions a LOT. I REALLY think adepts should require a twilight council.
this is probably a very good solution
Thanks, I hope this is considered at some point. It definitely takes hatch tech drops out of the question, without adepts there is no way you defend speedlings drops, but I don't think this is a bad thing, drops should be lair tech.
On August 14 2015 08:06 [PkF] Wire wrote: The adept is a tricky equation. The unit appears far too dominant in early game with its anti light bonus, to the point it poisons PvP openings. On the other hand, once midgame is reached it's actually an interesting unit that solidifies gateway compositions a LOT. I REALLY think adepts should require a twilight council.
Twilight council could work, but it feels like it's going to pidgin hole Protoss into twilight/blink/HT tech first even more. The adept is/should be essentially Protoss' roach/marauder it NEEDS to be available early game to support, solving the problem of fragile early game army.
I've heard the suggestion of removing 10 or 20 shield and moving it to the upgrade, that feels like a better solution but honestly it feels like the adept isn't THAT crazy good but people are just not fully adapted to playing against it. Let's not nerf it into the ground just because it's viable.
On August 14 2015 08:16 Aquila- wrote: This post is pretty objective, summing up things that we already know. I would prefer to hear more of qxcs opinion about the state of the unit, should it be changed and if yes how? Does he think it is too strong? Personally I think adepts are too good early game TvP, some allins like warpprism 4 gate or voidray adept seem impossible to stop.
Agreed. I was hoping for some discussion of the unit's mechanical floor and ceiling, especially in light of the existing concern that Zealot harass is already too strong in the lategame considering its non-existent micro requirement.
Are Adepts more or less effective harass units in the lategame? Do they require substantially more micromanagement in performing this role? Can Blizzard rest easy knowing that they've solved A+move Protoss once and for all?
It quite obvious that the Adept is way too tanky for its cost, role, and tech level. I would like see an adept more in line with the DT in terms of HP. Its suppose to be a nimble harass unit that is capable of penetrating behind enemy lines, not a super tanky zealot substitute.
- Remove the ability to cancel the transfer, so there is some commitment in using the ability. - Reduce vision radius of shade. - Two-shotting marines just feels a little too good for a unit that has so much HP and is so fast. But what the hell do I know?
On August 14 2015 09:25 Loccstana wrote: It quite obvious that the Adept is way too tanky for its cost, role, and tech level. I would like see an adept more in line with the DT in terms of HP. Its suppose to be a nimble harass unit that is capable of penetrating behind enemy lines, not a super tanky zealot substitute.
Honestly, Protoss doesn't need another light harass unit. They need a tanky unit from the gateway, adepts fill a hole that has been sorely missing.
On August 14 2015 09:25 Loccstana wrote: It quite obvious that the Adept is way too tanky for its cost, role, and tech level. I would like see an adept more in line with the DT in terms of HP. Its suppose to be a nimble harass unit that is capable of penetrating behind enemy lines, not a super tanky zealot substitute.
Honestly, Protoss doesn't need another light harass unit. They need a tanky unit from the gateway, adepts fill a hole that has been sorely missing.
The Zealot isn't tanky?
Obviously rhetorical question is obviously rhetorical. I just want to find out what you actually meant.
On August 14 2015 09:25 Loccstana wrote: It quite obvious that the Adept is way too tanky for its cost, role, and tech level. I would like see an adept more in line with the DT in terms of HP. Its suppose to be a nimble harass unit that is capable of penetrating behind enemy lines, not a super tanky zealot substitute.
Honestly, Protoss doesn't need another light harass unit. They need a tanky unit from the gateway, adepts fill a hole that has been sorely missing.
Isn't that exaclty what the zealot is? The cheapest way to accumulate hitpoints in the game! Even if we talk splash and armor type, the adept is pretty much the exact same thing as the zealot, just more exposed to EMP.
The thing with the adept is that it is superstrong vs light, which means nearly everything early. Then it starts falling off because tanking doesn't stack as well as dps-ing. Then it has an upgrade that is superpowerful on paper - and doesn't help the unit with any of its problems, i.e. low dps against in many scenarios, no antiair, no good movement speed to actually run around.
The gameplay against the adept feels to me like early you just can't really do anything. You just somehow try to get by with whatever you can while building up your setup. Then you get some vital technologies and the adept becomes pretty pointless because you are just not building what it is good against. I guess the way of a well-designed low tier unit is that it fades out and makes room for other units to shine, but I think the drop-off for adepts can be too hard due to the extreme damage discreptancy between vs light and vs armored.
On August 14 2015 09:25 Loccstana wrote: It quite obvious that the Adept is way too tanky for its cost, role, and tech level. I would like see an adept more in line with the DT in terms of HP. Its suppose to be a nimble harass unit that is capable of penetrating behind enemy lines, not a super tanky zealot substitute.
Honestly, Protoss doesn't need another light harass unit. They need a tanky unit from the gateway, adepts fill a hole that has been sorely missing.
The Zealot isn't tanky?
Obviously rhetorical question is obviously rhetorical. I just want to find out what you actually meant.
Unfortunately because of it's kiteability it's really more of just a meat shield, yes there is overlap between the two but they're not mutually exclusive. The zealot is more like the ling, if they can get up on the army/surround they are good, soaking up the shots and the adept like the roach, ranged tanking unit.
Isn't that exaclty what the zealot is? The cheapest way to accumulate hitpoints in the game! Even if we talk splash and armor type, the adept is pretty much the exact same thing as the zealot, just more exposed to EMP.
So like above, only if you think about it in meat shield terms, but unlike the zealot the adept cannot be nullified by being kited to death. Which was the problem with early game gateway army vs Terran, your zealots get stim kited to death, you don't have much to fall back on.
What if they made the phase ability more like stim? Everytime the adept creates a shadow, it would use up 20 shield points? I think that would be a very interesting mechanic.
Well, also consider that the next patch will throw out most timings we know are in the game. Without chronoboost, early game adepts sound much less threatening.
Also the warp prism change with the (pylon power), which im not sure if its coming would fix many all ins.
The adept is allowed to be very strong, people just need to get used to dealing with it more. Its the first unit that doesnt seem like it pays a crazy warpgate tax.
Zerglings beat them cost effectively in lower numbers, they cant shoot air and they are very beatable with many unit compositions.
Maybe I'm over-simplying the solution when I say this, but couldn't there be a change added in so that the adept is less effective vs shield unit? This way we won't have to put up with the constant/bland/boring 2 gate adept openings in PvP.
As far as PvT and PvZ is concerned, I do agree the adept is very strong early game. However as the game progresses, it become less and less effective as a core army unit. So I don't think it's a big issue. And doing run-bys/harass with Adepts are still less cost efficient than zealots anyways because they cost gas.
Hi QXC, thanks for the article. I remember you at the Anaheim convention center back in 2011 I believe. I remember you do an all kill against IM at the GSTL and then seeing you at the convention center. I was so excited getting to meet you. Hope to see you excel in LOTV.
I think one point that should have been emphasized was that how Adepts are just so much worse vs marauders than zealots. Insanely worse, especially with Medivacs involved.
On August 14 2015 12:06 FabledIntegral wrote: I think one point that should have been emphasized was that how Adepts are just so much worse vs marauders than zealots. Insanely worse, especially with Medivacs involved.
And marauders need much more shots to kill an adept than a zealot. Insanely worse, especially with Collosus involved.
I know its abit of a rant but basically P players wanted more usability with zealots since they are slow even with charge and their effectiveness would decrease as the game goes by? Wouldn't it be wonderful if they can be useful throughout the game?
Blizzard heard this and introduced a new unit that completely shadows the zealot with a gimmicky ability and I think will get nerfed alot rendering that unit worthless or with the same balancing issues as most of these gimmicky units. Too many new units which does A when you do B one dimensional abilities that require baby sitting.
Couldn't they just given zealot legs and took away the charge? zealots with a speed upgrade would do wonders for that unit on top of readjusting their shields to hp ratio which someone on TL already analyzed (its beneficial!).
On August 14 2015 12:06 FabledIntegral wrote: I think one point that should have been emphasized was that how Adepts are just so much worse vs marauders than zealots. Insanely worse, especially with Medivacs involved.
And marauders need much more shots to kill an adept than a zealot. Insanely worse, especially with Collosus involved.
Yes, but the colossus is nerfed, warp gates are going to be severely nerfed, immortals...which also countered marauders more harshly are nerfed.
The communities main feedback of Protoss has always been to nerf warp gate and buff gateway units. That's what Blizzard has done. The damage output of the Protoss army is severely nerfed and other races have units introduced that makes it even easier to deal with it. The adept doesn't even have good damage, it's just a tank.
It seems that most people are bringing their old sentiments and feelings towards HoTS Protoss into LoTV and not really looking at changes in a holistic way.
Maybe the adept needs a 10 or 20 unit change in it's shield in some way or something, other than that it's a great step forward and a well thought out solution to some of the problems of the protoss army. Terrans seem to be beside themselves that Protoss have a gateway unit that in ways rivals theirs in terms of manoeuvrability and health (hello marauder in medivac). Does the Adept stand up 1v1 verses marines and marauders? Fuck yeh it does, but is it really that amazing once the Terran get's literally ANY of their other units?... not really.
I hate the adept all together in its current role. It is essentially a zealot that can blink. It is not unique, just a hybrid. If protoss needs a tankier unit then so be it, but why does the unit HAVE to have an ability. Why not just take the ability away from the adept and increase its range or something. Abilities are added fun, but blizz might be trying to do too much with a unit who has a main purpose of tanking even better than the zealot
On August 14 2015 08:06 [PkF] Wire wrote: The adept is a tricky equation. The unit appears far too dominant in early game with its anti light bonus, to the point it poisons PvP openings. On the other hand, once midgame is reached it's actually an interesting unit that solidifies gateway compositions a LOT. I REALLY think adepts should require a twilight council.
Twilight council could work, but it feels like it's going to pidgin hole Protoss into twilight/blink/HT tech first even more. The adept is/should be essentially Protoss' roach/marauder it NEEDS to be available early game to support, solving the problem of fragile early game army.
I've heard the suggestion of removing 10 or 20 shield and moving it to the upgrade, that feels like a better solution but honestly it feels like the adept isn't THAT crazy good but people are just not fully adapted to playing against it. Let's not nerf it into the ground just because it's viable.
another option would be to keep it at cyber core tech but make the teleport ability require an upgrade (at twilight council perhaps), that way you keep the strong early game unit but delay the parts that feel the most "bullshitty" until later.
I'm not sure it fits as a gateway opener...like most people seem to suggest, it's probably worth testing the unit at the twilight council level. Main reason is because this unit is actually pretty effective in the mid game, and it dominates early game, also pushing the zealot away i think :\.
I don't think it's overpowered per se, but i do think it should be tested around a little more and maybe moved around the tech tree a bit before the game goes live. why not, it's beta right?
Ive found that I win many many games on the back of Adepts and carriers. As long as protoss cant really be contested in the very early and very late game - they are strong.
On August 14 2015 17:11 Cassalina wrote: also pushing the zealot away i think :\.
No that's the thing, it actually has great synergy with almost everything! zealots, High Templar, Archon, Shield Upgrade. It makes a whole other path available for Protoss to be played. . That's the beauty of the adept. If you shade against bio stutter stepping you can attack from the other side and sandwich with zealots and storm. Isn't that the micro you want? Then obviously if you're buffing medic vac de/load pickup micro against it you can have this good dynamic?
Add to this that forcefields (and maybe units) should be able to block adepts' shades. An adept shade should at least behave like a mineral walking probe, not go through everything like it does. Oh, and it shouldn't be cancellable.
On August 14 2015 12:48 Beliskner wrote: Yes, but the colossus is nerfed, warp gates are going to be severely nerfed, immortals...which also countered marauders more harshly are nerfed.
The marauder was nerfed quite a bit vs protoss with the 2 shot thing, so not only base armor units (like zealots) are stronger vs marauders but any protoss army is much stronger against them as long as they have guardian shield.
I think the adept should be less polarized in damage. Reduce it to maybe 15/20 instead of 10/23 would make it still, perhaps stronger, in lategame while making PVP less... problematic. TVP and ZVP might still be relatively playable with the unit as is, but for early/midgame and especially if terran opens mech, dealing with adepts is extremely difficult.
I think the unit needs to be similar to the stalker, instead of extra damage to armored units, it does extra damage to light units but without the big gap.
I would like to see the ability not being unit-walkable so u can wall off against it as a protoss player. I think it is extremely concerning that phoenix vs phoenix and adepts are the core part of current PvP gameplay, and I do not think it is possible to theorize any alternative openers.
All I could think of is that the adept's ability and shield upgrade would be really nice on zealots. Not sure we needed a new unit. That psionic transfer thing could even replace charge.
Protoss doesnt need 1 insanely strong gateway unit, Protoss needs multiple good gateway units. nerf the adept, buff the zealot and the stalker. remove the 2 second warpin from warp prisms, make it a dropship just like for every other race but maybe increase the capacity to twice as much?
The twilight suggestion is interesting, but how about a cheap cyber core upgrade? Maybe allowing them to swap with image or something like that. The goal is to allow the adepts to stay viable in the early and mid game, but kill the current PvP trend of adept vs adept. A nerf to light bonus would prevent them from killing workers on 2 shots, and removing the swap with image almost kills early harass, but let them be good scouts and drops.