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Hello people.
I am curious to know what TeamLiquid thinks about the direction of a vital but quite concentrated aspect of Protoss.
Currently there are arguments that Protoss gateway units are slightly too weak, while Photon Overcharge and Warp Prism are slightly too strong. It is also reasonable to speculate whether the Disruptor is slightly too strong, but this unit I believe is down to receive seperate changes if needed.
Right now I think there is a quite crucial showing in mostly the earlygame that Protoss relies heavily on Photon Overcharge while only Adepts really lives up to the defensive requirements.
My question is: Do you think it would be more interesting to see Photon Overcharge and/or Warp Prism nerfed and Gateway units buffed?
Poll: Nerf Photon Overcharge/Warpin and buff Gateway units?Yes (55) 65% No (29) 35% 84 total votes Your vote: Nerf Photon Overcharge/Warpin and buff Gateway units? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
Below you can see some difference in choice:
Poll: What is your Protoss preference in the following:Something else / Do nothing. (33) 41% Nerf Photon Overcharge and Warp Prism Warpin, then buff Gateway units (31) 39% Nerf Photon Overcharge and buff Gateway units (12) 15% Nerf Warp Prism Warpin only and buff Gateway units (4) 5% 80 total votes Your vote: What is your Protoss preference in the following: (Vote): Nerf Photon Overcharge and Warp Prism Warpin, then buff Gateway units
(Vote): Nerf Photon Overcharge and buff Gateway units
(Vote): Nerf Warp Prism Warpin only and buff Gateway units
(Vote): Something else / Do nothing.
Note: I would have added remove Photon Overcharge or nerf Disruptor only, but these would seem uncessary and biased.
A Warpin nerf will force Protoss players to rally his units more similarily to other races while still keeping the unique and interesting aspect of Warp In. The Photon Overhcharge nerf combined with Gateway unit buffs will make Protoss feel more flexible with these units to harass and take map control more easily while not sacrificing the reward in teching to splash or air.
Currently the most popular suggestions to nerf Photon Overcharge/Warpin on Warp Prism are:
- Increase the energy requirement for Photon Overcharge to 50, from 25.
- Increase the Warpin timer on Warp Prisms to 11 seconds, from 5. (Maybe make an upgrade on Robo Bay to get it back to 5 seconds.)
From here there are many small buffs you could do to Gateway units to compensate. Either buff impact damage on Charge to 16, from 8, or increase the HP/Shields of Zealots by 10 or 20. Dark Templars could receive a faster movementspeed while Stalkers could do maybe 1 more damage. One or all of the above buffs could be implemented if needed once perhaps these nerfs to Photon Overcharge and Warp Prism are done.
Please vote and feel free to discuss!
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While I'm all for buffing Gateway units, it's a bit of a tricky situation, it's not necessarily that Gateway units are bad, but they simply do not scale well throughout the game. In the early game, Gateway units are indeed quite powerful, but fall off later as Terran (using PvT as an example) gets things like Stim, Combat Shield, and Medivacs, which allow them to shred through Gateway units really quickly. With Stim, kiting Chargelots becomes a thing and Protoss can't do much about it. Blink Stalkers just get shredded through, Terran's high mobility invalidates Sentries, and Adepts have a huge overkill problem where they do a lot of extra, wasted damage on Marines.
The correct kind of buff to Gateway units would be to add some sort of upgrade to the Twilight council that is universal to the Stalker, Zealot, and Adept that would allow them to compete better with other low tier units in the later parts of the game. While the Adept attack speed upgrade helps a bit with this, it still does a lot of extra damage upon the killing blow. What this upgrade may be, I'm not sure. But a straight buff to these units would make early game shenanigans more than likely too strong, even if Protoss had to rally across the map because of a nerfed Warpgate.
Also, according to the last Community Update, they do plan on nerfing Photon Overcharge to be 50 energy, so there is that to consider. One thing that I think would be interesting to add as an upgrade is a Gateway unit speed buff that would increase the speed of which they move. This would allow Protoss to more quickly move across the map and defend multiple expansions which they do still struggle against.
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Preface:
17 year blizzard veteran -- Masters Protoss-only player. I have 0 perspective from Terran & Zerg POV about Protoss and their mechanics, but please hear me out.
- They need to remove warp-gate flat out.
- Warp Prism can stay in some form
- Remove Warpgate and buff gateway units
Start there, and THEN PROCEED to balance the game. Whatever else Blizzard wants to do can fucking stay, but for the love of god and as a lover of Protoss please remove Warpgate from the game. We've had it for 2 expansions, it's no longer a cute/unique-core mechanic. It's tired, old, and it holds back balance.
Blizzard says it forces them to be creative with balance...have they succeeded with creativity at the same time achieving balance??
NO. So fucking make it easier on yourselves and remove Warpgate, and THEN balance.
Enough of this Warpgate shit, bring back Starcraft people actually loved. Maybe large maps for multi-player like BGH/Hunters will have a chance without a single damn pylon killing/defending every rush. Jesus part of map balance is the distance, why fuck map creators over?
Former mapmaker on WarpGates, old thread well worth the read, as you can see this issue has been around for many years...and it still hasn't been addressed.
Ragoo former mapmaker from Germany that quit before he expressed his thoughts on Warpgate + Mapmaking
As a mapmaker I can tell you that warp-in ruins a lot of concepts~
Apart from that it obviously has numerous negative effects on actual gameplay.
Would be happy if it was lategame tech or only worked at Warp-Prisms and the normal/early game production would be from normal Gateways.
Highly suggest this thread from 2012 for a perspective on why Removing Warpgates would fix the balance of the game, shoutout to SuzyQuark!
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tl;dr: Decrease production rate on Warp Gate and increase production rate on Gateways. This will indirectly buff Gateway/ Warp Gate units, reduce the need for PO and fix problems with warp in abuse.
So, first of all, I agree that Warp Gate tech should not be a core mechanic. It should give a unique and powerful tactical choice to Protoss players but not be a standard component of how you play Protoss.
Right now it's a core mechanic because it's completely absurd to not get Warp Gate (you always want it asap). There is a clear benefit from getting Warp Gate but there is near to no benefit from not getting Warp Gate (other than 50/50 resources more in the early game).
I agree with what deadmau said above.
On November 07 2015 18:05 deadmau wrote:
Enough of this Warpgate shit, bring back Starcraft people actually loved. Maybe large maps for multi-player like BGH/Hunters will have a chance without a single damn pylon killing/defending every rush. Jesus part of map balance is the distance, why fuck map creators over?
The Warp In mechanic as a core mechanic—in addition to Force Fields but that's another topic—will always somewhat counter out the design intentions of maps. If you have a huge map it should always lend itself to a macro game. A map with a tight natural choke should be more easy to defend. Warp Gate is a big factor why this doesn't work in PvX.
Proposed Change: My proposed change is very simple. Change the warp time (warp in cooldown on Warp Gate) and train time (production time on a Gateway). The warp time should be higher than the train time. In addition add make the Warp Gate -> Gateway transformation incur a cooldown on production for all Gateway/ Warp Gate units. For example:
- Increase warp time for every Gateway/ Warp Gate to current train time
Example: Zealot warp time is 28s and would be changed to 38s.
- Decrease train time for every Gateway/ Warp Gate unit below warp time
Example: Zealot train time is 38s and would be changed to ~25s (or lower).
- Warp Gate -> Gateway transformation incurs warp time cooldown on all Warp Gate/ Gateway units
Example: When transforming a Warp Gate back to a Gateway Zealots cannot be trained for 38s.
Reasoning: First of all, I will leave buffs to Gateway/ Warp Gate units untouched because this will complicate things. The lowered train times are an implicit buff to gateway units anways (when not warping in) because you will be able to produce more of them.
This change makes Warp Gate have a clear pro and con and will therefore imo promote standard gameplay.
- Pro: Warp In anywhere with a psionic matrix (pylon or warp prism) negating defender's advantage or making run-by plays easier.
- Con: Production penalty (warp in time is higher than train time and the Warp Gate -> Gateway transformation leaves you without unit production after a warp ins)
Gameplay Implications: Warping in will not be the default way of producing Gatway/ Warp Gate units because of the lower production rate. Warp ins will also leave you vulnerable because of the cooldown on unit training from a Warp Gate -> Gateway transformation. The standard way of producing units will be from Gateways in your main base.
Warp in tactic must be executed more carefully because of their clear disadvantages. Timing pushes with forward pylons (or warp prisms) and/ or warp prism all-ins are less effective.
All in all, I think that cheesy warp in play would be made less powerful while retaining the unique and powerful aspects of the warp in mechanic for Protoss players. I think this would be a great change to the game!
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Problem with making Warp Gate production slower then Gateway is, that after such a change no one will ever build Warp Gate.
Gateway has one big advantage over Warp Gate production - if you have extra resources floating, you can queue production, and you will get those units produced. If you miss a cycle with Warp Gates, that time when you were not producing anything is lost. Every time you miss a cycle, you lose production. With Gateway you can just set up a queue and you do not lose production time.
If Gateway produces units only 5-15% slower (currently around 30-35%), you give slower players the safety of Gateway queue, while faster player can use faster production of Warp Gate, but risk missing/forgetting about production.
And with faster production of a Gateway, you can remove/nerf PO completely. Maybe even do something about the Force Field.
In my poll of 72 people (at time of posting), 72% wants or is positive to try just reduction of Gateway production times, while 85% of people would like to test it anyway.
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On November 07 2015 20:17 Nazara wrote:
And with faster production of a Gateway, you can remove/nerf PO completely. Maybe even do something about the Force Field.
Definitely agree. Lowered Gateway production time would give Protoss better early game defense and makes a PO nerf possible. This is lost however once you have to spread out on the map. In the mid to late game with 3-4 bases and up you will want to have Warp Gate tech.
On November 07 2015 20:17 Nazara wrote:
Problem with making Warp Gate production slower then Gateway is, that after such a change no one will ever build Warp Gate.
Gateway has one big advantage over Warp Gate production - if you have extra resources floating, you can queue production, and you will get those units produced. If you miss a cycle with Warp Gates, that time when you were not producing anything is lost. Every time you miss a cycle, you lose production. With Gateway you can just set up a queue and you do not lose production time.
If Gateway produces units only 5-15% slower (currently around 30-35%), you give slower players the safety of Gateway queue, while faster player can use faster production of Warp Gate, but risk missing/forgetting about production.
Well, I have to disagree. You would build Warp Gate as a mid to late game option for harassment (run-by from a proxy pylon or prism warp-in) and to be able to defend multiple locations. The skill component of Warp Gate would imo be shifted but not lost. Warping in rather than producing from Gateways is a trade-off and must be carefully executed. It also requires additional APM (for switching between Gateway and Warp Gate).
Also, only reducing gateway production time wouldn't adress the issues with the warp-in mechanic.
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Protoss has always had some of the strongest lategame armies in the game, plain combat buffs to the units would make these armies even stronger.
I believe it is a dilemma caused by:
- The stalker is too universal: The facts, the unit has good speed, the blink ability, built in regeneration (as all Protoss units) from shields and can target air. Besides the blink ability all of this is even there from get-go, no additional speed upgrade needed. Consequently such a versatile unit cannot be that strong in straight number combats.
- The adept and zealot are not mobile enough: The facts, both of those units are quite strong combatants. They both have abilities that let them close gaps to the opponent. But when it comes to plain walking speed which is necessary for escaping from threats they are lacking behind nearly all other basic units. In particular against Zerg, Protoss has to stay overly defensive because of that. Their units are easily surrounded and outnumbered. The mothershipcore recall helps here, but still forces the protoss to keep everything together and to even further reduce his mobility to that of the MsC.
- The Immortal and voidray are too all or nothing: This one is rather plain. Good immortal counts often backfire on the Protoss, when the opponent simply skips on the armored units (marines, zerglings, hydralisks, ravagers) or takes to the sky (mutalisk, medivac, phoenix, oracle). Similar arguments apply to the voidray. Protoss therefore has a distinctive lack of midtier combat units and is forced to skip this techlevel most of the time. The extra tech investments (robotics bay, thermal lance, fleet beacon, templar archives, storm) has to be compensate by sitting tight and relying on "bandaids" like photon overcharge and forcefields.
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On November 07 2015 19:43 Turb0Sw4g wrote:tl;dr: Decrease production rate on Warp Gate and increase production rate on Gateways. This will indirectly buff Gateway/ Warp Gate units, reduce the need for PO and fix problems with warp in abuse. So, first of all, I agree that Warp Gate tech should not be a core mechanic. It should give a unique and powerful tactical choice to Protoss players but not be a standard component of how you play Protoss. Right now it's a core mechanic because it's completely absurd to not get Warp Gate (you always want it asap). There is a clear benefit from getting Warp Gate but there is near to no benefit from not getting Warp Gate (other than 50/50 resources more in the early game). I agree with what deadmau said above. Show nested quote +On November 07 2015 18:05 deadmau wrote:
Enough of this Warpgate shit, bring back Starcraft people actually loved. Maybe large maps for multi-player like BGH/Hunters will have a chance without a single damn pylon killing/defending every rush. Jesus part of map balance is the distance, why fuck map creators over? The Warp In mechanic as a core mechanic—in addition to Force Fields but that's another topic—will always somewhat counter out the design intentions of maps. If you have a huge map it should always lend itself to a macro game. A map with a tight natural choke should be more easy to defend. Warp Gate is a big factor why this doesn't work in PvX. Proposed Change: My proposed change is very simple. Change the warp time (warp in cooldown on Warp Gate) and train time (production time on a Gateway). The warp time should be higher than the train time. In addition add make the Warp Gate -> Gateway transformation incur a cooldown on production for all Gateway/ Warp Gate units. For example: - Increase warp time for every Gateway/ Warp Gate to current train time
Example: Zealot warp time is 28s and would be changed to 38s.
- Decrease train time for every Gateway/ Warp Gate unit below warp time
Example: Zealot train time is 38s and would be changed to ~25s (or lower).
- Warp Gate -> Gateway transformation incurs warp time cooldown on all Warp Gate/ Gateway units
Example: When transforming a Warp Gate back to a Gateway Zealots cannot be trained for 38s.
Reasoning: First of all, I will leave buffs to Gateway/ Warp Gate units untouched because this will complicate things. The lowered train times are an implicit buff to gateway units anways (when not warping in) because you will be able to produce more of them. This change makes Warp Gate have a clear pro and con and will therefore imo promote standard gameplay. - Pro: Warp In anywhere with a psionic matrix (pylon or warp prism) negating defender's advantage or making run-by plays easier.
- Con: Production penalty (warp in time is higher than train time and the Warp Gate -> Gateway transformation leaves you without unit production after a warp ins)
Gameplay Implications: Warping in will not be the default way of producing Gatway/ Warp Gate units because of the lower production rate. Warp ins will also leave you vulnerable because of the cooldown on unit training from a Warp Gate -> Gateway transformation. The standard way of producing units will be from Gateways in your main base. Warp in tactic must be executed more carefully because of their clear disadvantages. Timing pushes with forward pylons (or warp prisms) and/ or warp prism all-ins are less effective. All in all, I think that cheesy warp in play would be made less powerful while retaining the unique and powerful aspects of the warp in mechanic for Protoss players. I think this would be a great change to the game!
More reasonable than mine, and probably safer. But, i'll still put my vote in for the heavy handed approach.
You put a lot of effort in to your response, but it's feels heavily complicated and introduces other problems. I just think it's way simpler to remove the Warpgate, and proceed to balance from there. Only Gateway units would take away Blizzard finding the balance between Gateway/Warpgate, cmon they've failed at balance for 2 expansions now. They need to relieve themselves of this garbage that they have been unable to balance.
I see responses: "well then Protoss armies are too strong because the other units are the strong core units, with strong Gateway units, Protoss will be too powerful."
The reason those core units are so damn powerful is because of the existence of Warpgate. You can't have strong Warpgate units, or the Protoss armies are just too strong, but without those core units the Warpgate units are too weak to stand on their own.
They have to be this way, or else offensive warp-ins are too powerful. Think about this, if you get attacked at base, you warp in at home your travel distance is 0. But if they are Gateways, sure you have to move a bit, but your units are basically at home anyway. And because you cannot offensive-warp in, Gateway units don't have to be balanced around offensive-warpins being too strong. If they remove Warpgates, and you only have Gateways you lose early offensive warp-in, but you gain STRONG defensive capability in units building out of Gateways and having minimal travel distance to defend, and you can then use those units as on the map from there.
Please reasonable people, give this 2012 on Warpgate a read, SuzyQuark explains it much better than me
Again, I'm a Protoss-only Masters player [never the best], but my experience in Blizzard titles go back 17 years. I have so much hate for this mechanic in this game, it's just not worth what Blizzard keeps using as a "cute-unique mechanic" -- I hope some of you can see where this is coming from. I'd like to hear from Zerg and Terran players too (zero experience with these)
Look at the mess keeping it in the game creates -- having to come up with more gimmicks upon more gimmicks, that they just can't make in to refined mechanics. Photon overcharge, FF, etc. Enough, Blizzard with this crap. I'll still play for damn sure because I like to compete, but I still have no faith that it will draw many players. What did people play back in those days, large fun replayable multiplayer maps, and that will never be possible with Warpgate in the game.
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Please separate "Something else" and "Do nothing"! They are completely different.
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On November 08 2015 04:22 rockslave wrote:
Please separate "Something else" and "Do nothing"! They are completely different.
Totally this. I got stuck on that vote, it was confusing as hell.
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On November 08 2015 04:22 rockslave wrote:
Please separate "Something else" and "Do nothing"! They are completely different.
Right, but the first Poll allows you to vote "No". The point of the Poll is to distinguish whether people would like to see this particular direction or not, so something else or do nothing is not as bad as it looks. But yeah I made the 2nd. poll because of that but I did not want to ruin the other votes.
I think all the ideas about removing warpgate or changing warpin to training timers etc are all fine but they will fundamentally change the entire game and I think that is not the state the game is in right now.
However, I think we are more than able to nerf warpin on Warp Prism and buff gateway units as the changes are simple and the gameplay will most likely be affected positively.
If our goal is to completely get rid of warpgate or change it to any of the many interesting warpgate ideas, such as 28 second warpin for zealots but no cooldown, I think a change and test of the suggestions in the PO must be done first. Slow and progressive changes should be best.
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On November 08 2015 05:47 TheoMikkelsen wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2015 04:22 rockslave wrote:
Please separate "Something else" and "Do nothing"! They are completely different. Right, but the first Poll allows you to vote "No". The point of the Poll is to distinguish whether people would like to see this particular direction or not, so something else or do nothing is not as bad as it looks. But yeah I made the 2nd. poll because of that but I did not want to ruin the other votes. I think all the ideas about removing warpgate or changing warpin to training timers etc are all fine but they will fundamentally change the entire game and I think that is not the state the game is in right now. However, I think we are more than able to nerf warpin on Warp Prism and buff gateway units as the changes are simple and the gameplay will most likely be affected positively. If our goal is to completely get rid of warpgate or change it to any of the many interesting warpgate ideas, such as 28 second warpin for zealots but no cooldown, I think a change and test of the suggestions in the PO must be done first. Slow and progressive changes should be best.
You fall into the same trap as Blizzard. They want to keep it, because it "challenges them" to come up with creative "gimmiky" ways to balance those pitfalls of Warpgate. So please, enough. We've seen what they come up, stop coming up with more convoluted ways to be creative but in the end gimmicky. Get rid of it, proceed to balance however you want from there.
But as you say, it's not where this games at. It's not gonna happen not because the state though, it's because David Kim is myopic brained, narrow-minded bafoon. He's unable to see his own short-sightedness.
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On November 08 2015 06:16 deadmau wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2015 05:47 TheoMikkelsen wrote:On November 08 2015 04:22 rockslave wrote:
Please separate "Something else" and "Do nothing"! They are completely different. Right, but the first Poll allows you to vote "No". The point of the Poll is to distinguish whether people would like to see this particular direction or not, so something else or do nothing is not as bad as it looks. But yeah I made the 2nd. poll because of that but I did not want to ruin the other votes. I think all the ideas about removing warpgate or changing warpin to training timers etc are all fine but they will fundamentally change the entire game and I think that is not the state the game is in right now. However, I think we are more than able to nerf warpin on Warp Prism and buff gateway units as the changes are simple and the gameplay will most likely be affected positively. If our goal is to completely get rid of warpgate or change it to any of the many interesting warpgate ideas, such as 28 second warpin for zealots but no cooldown, I think a change and test of the suggestions in the PO must be done first. Slow and progressive changes should be best. You fall into the same trap as Blizzard. They want to keep it, because it "challenges them" to come up with creative "gimmiky" ways to balance those pitfalls of Warpgate. So please, enough. We've seen what they come up, stop coming up with more convoluted ways to be creative but in the end gimmicky. Get rid of it, proceed to balance however you want from there. But as you say, it's not where this games at. It's not gonna happen not because the state though, it's because David Kim is myopic brained, narrow-minded bafoon. He's unable to see his own short-sightedness.
Proceeding to balance however you want there is going to be a disaster as it would not only take a lot of time, the actualy balance testing with just removing warpgate will require an insane amounts of tests. Swarmhost was not used the first 3-4-5 months after HotS release and was considered underpowered, then all of a sudden it became one of the most feared units from zerg in PvZ.
Small, gradual changes are better as long as the goal is to build up towards something that can be considered big. I would not even consider my suggestions small changes. I think they are quite big, but they are simple, and that is key. They would fit the game release.
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Remove medivac boost and muta regen.
Problem solved.
The problem is not "gateway units suck."
The problem is Protoss has near zero mobility and therefore can't defend multiprong attacks without some sort of "defending without units there" mechanic.
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On November 08 2015 12:13 DinoMight wrote:
Remove medivac boost and muta regen.
Problem solved.
The problem is not "gateway units suck."
The problem is Protoss has near zero mobility and therefore can't defend multiprong attacks without some sort of "defending without units there" mechanic.
Those didn't existed in WoL, and whereas PO was added as compensation in HotS WG did exist before both boost and regen.
However those only come until after, the problem with PO is at the stage of the game before multiprong attacks exist. Not to mention PO doesn't deals with those once they come.
However we are not talking about balance here, speed is one of the things that can be tunned if needed.
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This is sort of outside the box but what if.....
The real problem with SC2 is the speedling, its too fast. In order to combat it toss needs warp-ins. In fact all the races have been built in order to defend the speedling...
Think about it... marine strength, massive aoe... all needed becuz the speedling
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Yea it's hopeless, my Protoss brethren won't even let go Warpgate themselves. They dumb as blizzard.
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I have a simple solution.. probably been hashed out before, but here goes.
Why not just remove warp-ins from pylons? and just have it on warp prism. Have warp-in technology come in at the same time warp prisms come out. Then buff gateway build times accordingly.
It would really be nice if a Protoss playe actually switch their warpgates back into gateways for any reason
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On November 09 2015 00:04 faulty wrote:
I have a simple solution.. probably been hashed out before, but here goes.
Why not just remove warp-ins from pylons? and just have it on warp prism. Have warp-in technology come in at the same time warp prisms come out. Then buff gateway build times accordingly.
It would really be nice if a Protoss playe actually switch their warpgates back into gateways for any reason
Protoss army is far less "queue up x unit repeatedly" compared to terran for example because each have specific roles.
And it is good for Protoss to have choice of what to warp in based on current situation reactively
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I too would enjoy playing protoss more without warp ins being the primary mechanic. Once a gateway becomes a warpgate it should still produce units like a gateway UNLESS you click "W" and perform a warp in. The warp in should cause a warp in cooldown that is approximately 10 seconds longer than the gateway production speed.
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EPT
