|
On June 11 2010 20:51 D3lta wrote:
A lot of anti-EMP arguments center around this unquestioned assumption that emp will just always land on all your templars. I'm, not trying to be condescending, but really does make me question the level of play these guys are at. Even if it is easier to land an EMP than a feedback (and it is), it doesn't mean you can simply position/micro your templars so that in a given fight, they wont all get emp'ed right away.
What a lot of toss do is simply engage their army, with their temps spread out and in the back. Once the battle starts and some EMPs go off, they then move in for the storms. Even if you get a emp or two off on them, once a few storms are up its devastating to a bio ball.
Trying to get Feedbacks off (on the ghosts or the medvacs) or simply backing up after getting emped (unless their extremely marauder heavy, chances are they get a lot or two at most with concussive), will improve the above strategy significantly.
Look guys, some things are designed to be strong. Like tank fire. If you nerf something to the point where you can walk up to tanklines or say - get all your storms off easily despite him building a 150m/150g counter (that also has to compile energy), you completely screw with the dynamic of the game.
What if I suggested that "there really isn'y micro involved in dodging storm, once they get the storm off my army is screwed, so we need to add a cast time to storm to give me and the rest of the bads time to move out of it."
Oh and Auto-Turrets just as strong as storm drops? lol?
Dragging your templars is of course possible and used by better players. And I agree that they are hard to EMP as the ghosts have quite a high target priority and will be destroyed fairly early during a battle.
But: I don't think that bio-balls are the best way to play against protoss in the late-game anyways (especially using lots of lots of marines except for playing against carriers.....). Mixing in mech is much better and then the high templar don't have the highest hit'm-priority anyways. Hitting the main army and taking away the valuable shields will be more than enough to gain a large advantage combined with using PDD extensively PLUS if the HT are way behind your main army they won't be able to feedback ravens as efficiently.
Finally, you could still balance the game when changing the duration of the EMP animation.
|
On June 11 2010 21:05 Drazzzt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2010 20:51 D3lta wrote:
A lot of anti-EMP arguments center around this unquestioned assumption that emp will just always land on all your templars. I'm, not trying to be condescending, but really does make me question the level of play these guys are at. Even if it is easier to land an EMP than a feedback (and it is), it doesn't mean you can simply position/micro your templars so that in a given fight, they wont all get emp'ed right away.
What a lot of toss do is simply engage their army, with their temps spread out and in the back. Once the battle starts and some EMPs go off, they then move in for the storms. Even if you get a emp or two off on them, once a few storms are up its devastating to a bio ball.
Trying to get Feedbacks off (on the ghosts or the medvacs) or simply backing up after getting emped (unless their extremely marauder heavy, chances are they get a lot or two at most with concussive), will improve the above strategy significantly.
Look guys, some things are designed to be strong. Like tank fire. If you nerf something to the point where you can walk up to tanklines or say - get all your storms off easily despite him building a 150m/150g counter (that also has to compile energy), you completely screw with the dynamic of the game.
What if I suggested that "there really isn'y micro involved in dodging storm, once they get the storm off my army is screwed, so we need to add a cast time to storm to give me and the rest of the bads time to move out of it."
Oh and Auto-Turrets just as strong as storm drops? lol?
Dragging your templars is of course possible and used by better players. And I agree that they are hard to EMP as the ghosts have quite a high target priority and will be destroyed fairly early during a battle. But: I don't think that bio-balls are the best way to play against protoss in the late-game anyways (especially using lots of lots of marines except for playing against carriers.....). Mixing in mech is much better and then the high templar don't have the highest hit'm-priority anyways. Hitting the main army and taking away the valuable shields will be more than enough to gain a large advantage combined with using PDD extensively PLUS if the HT are way behind your main army they won't be able to feedback ravens as efficiently. Finally, you could still balance the game when changing the duration of the EMP animation.
people claim that mech is better than bio but howcome i've never seen pure ghost/mech in high level tvp ? maybe because u will get abused/outexpoed so f'kn hard u will always be behind decent protoss.
|
On June 11 2010 20:51 D3lta wrote:
What if I suggested that "there really isn'y micro involved in dodging storm, once they get the storm off my army is screwed, so we need to add a cast time to storm to give me and the rest of the bads time to move out of it."
Oh and Auto-Turrets just as strong as storm drops? lol?
You do know that in fact storm as it is, gives you plenty of time to MOVE OUT of it and receive little damage, like 20 only for the first tic. It does its total damage over 4 seconds. EMP is instantaneous and does NOT allow for the opponent to micro out of the AoE. This is one of the major reason why its imba.
Turret drop is a very good harass tool. Low energy cost means u can spam a few and then run away. All you expended was energy. And with its long range, a lot of workers will die b4 they can be moved out of range. A storm drop is also great. You do need a few templars to cover a lot of workers. The fact that ravens can even harass so good along with the uber PDD and detection just shows how good the unit is.
But similar to ghosts, very few Terran ever use these units. I don't know why this is the case, it can't be that most T are terrible or ignorant.. maybe.. just maybe, they don't actually need to use these units and still do ok. I mean, just traditional bio ball with a few tanks is hard enough to defeat.
|
your both kinda right about ghost-mech IMO. Generally Mid-Game/ "early" late-game if you will, Bio mobility is simply too valuable to give up in favor of tank damage (especially since the nerf). The only time this may not be true is mass chargelot vs hellions, but for whatever reason, toss usually doesn't go big chargelot (even though its extremely effective vs emp bio-ball and tanks imo). If you watch all the import tourney matches top T play, it will confirm this.
However really the later the game gets, the more expos T manages to establish ect, mech/starport does start seem like the more muscular 200/200 army to transition into. But in my experience, most games don't go to this late game 200/200 ghost-mech phase, unless both players are being unusually passive, or the toss does several fail attacks vs tank lines rather than exploiting map control/imobility of a straight meching T.
|
On June 11 2010 21:20 SilverforceX wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2010 20:51 D3lta wrote:
What if I suggested that "there really isn'y micro involved in dodging storm, once they get the storm off my army is screwed, so we need to add a cast time to storm to give me and the rest of the bads time to move out of it."
Oh and Auto-Turrets just as strong as storm drops? lol?
You do know that in fact storm as it is, gives you plenty of time to MOVE OUT of it and receive little damage, like 20 only for the first tic. It does its total damage over 4 seconds. EMP is instantaneous and does NOT allow for the opponent to micro out of the AoE. This is one of the major reason why its imba. Turret drop is a very good harass tool. Low energy cost means u can spam a few and then run away. All you expended was energy. And with its long range, a lot of workers will die b4 they can be moved out of range. A storm drop is also great. You do need a few templars to cover a lot of workers. The fact that ravens can even harass so good along with the uber PDD and detection just shows how good the unit is. But similar to ghosts, very few Terran ever use these units. I don't know why this is the case, it can't be that most T are terrible or ignorant.. maybe.. just maybe, they don't actually need to use these units and still do ok. I mean, just traditional bio ball with a few tanks is hard enough to defeat.
Alright man, you try moving you army out of storms in the middle of big concave vs concave fight, and let me know how that 20 damg thing worked for you.
I understand it could be viable to raven harass (although thats alot of wasted PDD energy IMO). But 2 temps in a warp pris will destroy all of your workers in a few seconds. Where as a a raven will most likely just scare the drones of the mineral line. Having a cannon or turret/spine crawler would also be a lot less effective at preventing storm drop than raven harass.
edit: part of the reason terran dont go ghost/raven is because of the huge cost in gas 150 per ghost 200 per raven. medvacs take 100 and tanks take 125 as is, so you generally pick one of two untell very late in the game
|
A cannon would own templars. They are so weak, in fact, a lot weaker than an auto-turret. But that's besides the point, both are effective harass. And i did mention how good PDD is already.. it's just that ravens CAN harass as an option, it makes them a great unit even if its rarely used.
You know, a big concave fight etc.. you get ppl saying "when u get EMP, retreat!! let the shields regen", it's a lot worse than moving out of a storm, because all terran units are ranged (unlike zealots who if retreating, are going to die), they can reform a lot easier. Marines/marauders are quite small also, pathfinding and concave reforms are quite efficient. Stim just makes them evade storm a lot easier.
But let's not forget the major point. Storm is from HT that is very slow moving and stands out of the crowd, requiers research, higher tier, much more expensive in cost and time to reach. But you CAN evade it easily. EMP is ready to go at a low tier, from a very mobile unit that blends very well into a bio ball.. but you CAN'T evade it at all. There's no room for micro to minimize its impact, this is why its so imba.
Why can't EMP be "Removes 80 shields and 200 energy over 4 seconds", and have a shorter range? 10 + 2 aoe is retarded. It should be 7 range, with the 2 aoe range giving it a reach of 9 that is on par with other caster abilities. At least allow ppl to micro out of the field.
My instincts on this say that EMP will be redesigned (or slightly nerfed) in the future as more Terran learn to put ghosts into their builds and totally dominate protoss MU. It hasn't happened because its rarely used.
|
In my experience (I play random, which means I know the terran side of the equation but I don't have as much practice with toss as a pure toss player) chargealots are the way to go.
Very early game, Toss has the advantage. Zealots chew up marines and mauraders not behind a wall, and stalkers can scout an enemy's choke to see if they are massing an army up or doing something fishy (if they don't have a big army).
Early game terran gets the advantage when concussive shells come up. If he pushes you at this point you have 2 options - you can A) not wall off, fall back into your base and surround him wtih zealots or B) you can forcefield your ramp or his ramp and try to cut his army up. Most terran players won't attack at this point because if they get trapped by FF they are way behind.
Mid game is where I see alot of toss players going into robo. They do this for the observer (smart) and for the immortals/collossi (silly). Immortals do well but they are huge and only have range 5. This means they don't come to bear often enough and require good micro to target mauaraders, and get kited. I really think that if immortals were immune to concussive shot then they would be viable but as it stands now, not so much. Collossi tear MM apart with thermal lance, but by the time you have both collossi AND thermal lance, the terran has had enough time to swap a reactored starport and bring out vikings that will pick off colloxen.
What I usually do is just go into mass zealots with charge. Boost the charge, get warp gates out and get map control. This is critical. Even eating EMP in the face, chargealots will still eat MM alive, IF you catch the terran player with a flank. This is critical. If you throw chargealots head on into a terran army, you will lose. If you cap those watchtowers, get a scout out and spread your zealots into 2 or 3 balls strategically, you can hit the terran player as he's moving towards your base. Even with a full out EMP you'll still win. Even with tanks set up you'll still win. Hellions are the only real risk but you just have to try and nullify them by sniping with stalkers.
Normally you can get map control this way - a terran army can't move out on the ground against you with mass charagelots. With blink you can stifly banshee and medivac harass. Typically the terran will just turtle and expo, since you can't break a choke with zealots  At this point I just hide some void ray tech, boost void rays out and GG him by blowing his choke and moving my ground army in as support against marines. Remember that if he expos and you're massing voids, you have a great timing window to push him. You can alternativly use templar if you see lots of marines or vikings.
So in short, I've found that if a terran goes heavy in EMP, don't even try to stop it. You can't feedback it reliably or spread out reliably. Just counter with storms to the face and mass zealots -honestly zealots eat terran face.
Remember to merge your templar if they get hit with EMP too. Archons can tank very well for a toss army - they're untyped and marauders only do their base damage to them.
|
There is a lot of extreme narrow-mindedness in this thread. Let's look at the abilities more in depth.
Psy Storm:
Is effective against all three races to an equal degree
Can do damage to any unit in the game.
Can actually kill a unit.
Can be used to to block off area to force an opponent to retreat or enable your own retreat.
can be cast immediately upon spawn once upgraded on a unit that can spawn anywhere there is power.
Effect persists for 4 seconds - can be microed out of to minimize damage
EMP:
Damages the shields of Protoss units
Can only effect the casters of Zerg and Terran
Can never actually kill a unit
Can't be used upon the spawn of the unit even with upgrades
Effect is instantaneous.
I'm sure there is more that can be added to these lists as well.
Psi Storm is a lot more versatile of a spell and you often trade power for versatility.
Personally, I don't think EMP needs a nerf, when I play TvP and get Ghosts I don't feel like I auto-win just because I built the unit no matter what else I have in my composition (MMM+Ghost or Ghost-mech for example). If the spell is truly that OP then I humbly request you show me a replay where the Terran player builds ONLY Ghosts and wins no matter what his opponent does.
|
On June 11 2010 21:42 SilverforceX wrote:
A cannon would own templars. They are so weak, in fact, a lot weaker than an auto-turret. But that's besides the point, both are effective harass. And i did mention how good PDD is already.. it's just that ravens CAN harass as an option, it makes them a great unit even if its rarely used.
You know, a big concave fight etc.. you get ppl saying "when u get EMP, retreat!! let the shields regen", it's a lot worse than moving out of a storm, because all terran units are ranged (unlike zealots who if retreating, are going to die), they can reform a lot easier. Marines/marauders are quite small also, pathfinding and concave reforms are quite efficient. Stim just makes them evade storm a lot easier.
But let's not forget the major point. Storm is from HT that is very slow moving and stands out of the crowd, requiers research, higher tier, much more expensive in cost and time to reach. But you CAN evade it easily. EMP is ready to go at a low tier, from a very mobile unit that blends very well into a bio ball.. but you CAN'T evade it at all. There's no room for micro to minimize its impact, this is why its so imba.
Why can't EMP be "Removes 80 shields and 200 energy over 4 seconds", and have a shorter range? 10 + 2 aoe is retarded. It should be 7 range, with the 2 aoe range giving it a reach of 9 that is on par with other caster abilities. At least allow ppl to micro out of the field.
My instincts on this say that EMP will be redesigned (or slightly nerfed) in the future as more Terran learn to put ghosts into their builds and totally dominate protoss MU. It hasn't happened because its rarely used.
First of all the reason cannons and other static defense are worse against templars is because can still get storms off even if the templar are going to die (which i think would only be the case if there were a good 3 cannons at least). Those stroms are going to very quickly kill drones,compared to auto turrets, which would get pelted by cannons as they single fire on one worker at a time. I really dont see what "point" ravens being able to harass proves. So can Hellions and Thors. My point was that templar drops are clearly more inherently dangerous than auto-turrets.
As for the whole "move out of storm" statement. Yes you obviously move out of the storm when you can. The point is this is a huge problem for the T army. You ether leave half your army to sit and fight the entire toss army, sit the storm, or try to run your entire army back. Toss are faster than Terran, as everyone should be aware. You can stim your marines that just got blasted for a minimum of 20 damage (and were probably on the tail end of the first stim), but this many times, leads to death of those said marines. If and when you stim to run, if the toss is persistent, he can catch you. There's a very good change that he will be looking to counter attack anyway, if you just got stormed badly. Or perhaps, he'll wait tell all his shields recharge from the emp the T dropped. Also because toss are faster, it is in no way worse to back off from a army once your emped, than to back from a storm.
My point is that storm is unquestionably really good whether you micro or not, just as emp is. you can micro to minimize storm damage, just as you can do micro tricks to minimize emp. But its just stupid to argue you can get anywhere near negating ether of these abilities with micro. IMO that does not make ether storm or EMP overpowered, simply powerful.
My instinct is that players tend to whine. Any nothing comes of it unless to proves to dampen competitive play. Which I seriously doubt this will. If you look at sc1, its simply a lot of really strong compositions that take a lot to counter, every game (darkswarm, tank/mine-happy vultures, arbitors ect) The generic match in which a T does not go ghosts currently, is them 3 rax pushing hard from 5:00 marauder harass onward (the equivalent to a T 4 gate push), or them getting some kind of tech build and losing (strelok v huk being the most recent Iv'e seen). Eventually I think it will be apparent that ghosts are the best option vs late game toss, making templars vs ghosts a staple in the mu.
|
On June 11 2010 22:32 STS17 wrote:
There is a lot of extreme narrow-mindedness in this thread.....If the spell is truly that OP then I humbly request you show me a replay where the Terran player builds ONLY Ghosts and wins no matter what his opponent does.
Right, because that is the only thing which proves if an ability is too strong or not *eyesroll*
You did so well trying to be logical till you screwed it up with that last sentence.
By your logic if there was a unit which would instantly kill all other units but one it would not be too strong since you cannot build *only* it and win...
-----
Regarding EMP - the main problem is that feedback does not really counter EMP simply because single target effect vs AOE effect. You will always get off an EMP before the feedback, even if EMP had not the range advantage. IMO they should nerf feedbacks damage (and possibly up the energy cost) and make it an AOE effect in return.
That should even the scales somewhat. EMP would still have the higher range, but Protoss tpyically have the scouting advantage due to observers.
|
On June 11 2010 22:32 STS17 wrote:
There is a lot of extreme narrow-mindedness in this thread. Let's look at the abilities more in depth.
Psy Storm:
Is effective against all three races to an equal degree
Can do damage to any unit in the game.
Can actually kill a unit.
Can be used to to block off area to force an opponent to retreat or enable your own retreat.
can be cast immediately upon spawn once upgraded on a unit that can spawn anywhere there is power.
Effect persists for 4 seconds - can be microed out of to minimize damage
EMP:
Damages the shields of Protoss units
Can only effect the casters of Zerg and Terran
Can never actually kill a unit
Can't be used upon the spawn of the unit even with upgrades
Effect is instantaneous.
I'm sure there is more that can be added to these lists as well.
Psi Storm is a lot more versatile of a spell and you often trade power for versatility.
Personally, I don't think EMP needs a nerf, when I play TvP and get Ghosts I don't feel like I auto-win just because I built the unit no matter what else I have in my composition (MMM+Ghost or Ghost-mech for example). If the spell is truly that OP then I humbly request you show me a replay where the Terran player builds ONLY Ghosts and wins no matter what his opponent does.
Are you serious? like really? What role does PvZ have in this when the question is how to deal with EMP as protoss? You also compare the 2 without regarding cost/research time - which is one of the main points of most protoss players. You made an excellent list to showcase your own points, you just "forgot" all the reasons why protoss players are having such a hard time dealing with this - mainly the non-existant research time on a spell that nullifies 2 units AND 30-50% of the HP of whatever army the protoss player can build; and that is without any way for the protoss to dodge these effects.
I've played random throughout the beta and one of my very first posts was a "EMP and fungal growth needs to be avoidable like storm is" and I'll stand by that. I would love to hear some tournament terrans arguments as to why they don't use the ghost more against protoss.
|
Fungal growth isn't really that bad. The damage from it is relatively minor. It can be an issue with low hp units, but not more than banelings, siege tanks or colossi.
It can really screw you up when retreating/moving due to its root but so do forcefields.
|
What about using warp prisms to hide your more valuable units?
Leave a couple high templar on the ground to force his EMP( feedback if he doesn't ), and then drop your units that now have full shields, and maybe use the warp prism to warp in another wave of forces for fast reinforcements.
Seems like a good way to protect high templar and maybe immortals.
|
Love these "Just spread out!" counterarguments. Because, like the Mothership, your limit is only ever one Ghost.
You can pepper the entire spread-out Protoss army with multiple EMPs even EASIER than we can Psi Storms on your spread-out bio blob. The area of effect is 125% larger ((1.5*1.5)/(1*1)) for crying out loud.
Whatever Protoss can do to counter Terran, is made twice as easy on his side. Pit two equal-skill players in front of each other with large armies and there's no way the Protoss is coming out on top. Its not really balance when the Protoss only course of action at this point is to scrap the ground army completely, mass Void Rays and exploit Terran's weakness to them when they're fully charged. EMP and Void Rays are just fucked up.
|
I havnt seen this said yet so I'll describe my strategy Against ghosts and emp.
Hallucination.
I'm a diamond league player and I use essentially mind tricks to beat the ghosts. I hallucinate high priotity targets, like the high templars preferably. I keep 2 groups of them. Normally to either side of my army. Just far enough to be out of range of emp. I normally bring these units in closer to the front as well. Normally a smart Terran player Will see me moving temps in as If to storm. He will emp them. Wasting an emp. This is when I bring the real temps forward and storm.
Hallucinate makes ff unusable for thr battle practically. But you don't need it to be honest. I havnt actually played a whole lot of Terran games where the opponed went ghost. Lots of mirror matches for some reason. But whenever I did see ghosts. This strategy is killer. And if you need to do this more than once you can even double fake it and put real Templars up front. that Way your opponent may just think that the units are another hallucination. Although I'd imagine good players wouldn't risk that.
Anyways. Just my prefered strat. Plus it's fun to
play 
|
Every Toss "solution" to EMP is to make Toss work harder. The truth is, every solution against terran is to have the opposing race (Zerg or Toss) play at a level above Terran. This is not balanced.
FWIW, I'm a (Diamond) Toss AND Terran player. I can't play Zerg to save my life.
|
I think the perfect solution to the problems of EMP in PvT can be fixed simply by allowing Guardian Shield to absorb an EMP blast, with anything under it being protected. The trade-off for toss is that the GS is destroyed when it gets hit by the EMP (currently, the GS stays active if you cast the spell before the EMP ... this makes no sense to me anyhow). However, Toss will have a workable solution to EMP that does not require any changes that would effect any other matchups.
|
That would be way to heavy a fix in the direction of a WP protoss. There would be 0 chance to get off an EMP seeing as before any engagement the protoss would just fire up 10 shields and GL trying to get through that.
|
One EMP would wipe out any GS it contacts with. It would just take a second EMP if you really want to target what's below the GS. But removing the shield is not without its benefit either.
Terran would be forced to actually think and execute for effective EMP play. Right now, it's a dummy "E" button.
|
On June 12 2010 01:45 whoopadeedoo wrote:
Every Toss "solution" to EMP is to make Toss work harder. The truth is, every solution against terran is to have the opposing race (Zerg or Toss) play at a level above Terran. This is not balanced.
FWIW, I'm a (Diamond) Toss AND Terran player. I can't play Zerg to save my life.
So you want what? An anti-emp "lets make the skill cap even lower" button?
I think the perfect solution to the problems of EMP in PvT can be fixed simply by allowing Guardian Shield to absorb an EMP blast, with anything under it being protected. The trade-off for toss is that the GS is destroyed when it gets hit by the EMP (currently, the GS stays active if you cast the spell before the EMP ... this makes no sense to me anyhow). However, Toss will have a workable solution to EMP that does not require any changes that would effect any other matchups.
Oh...
Hallucinate needs to be 50/50 and cheap to cast. The End. Overwhelm T with high priority targets, and hell all the toss player needs to do after making the hallucinations is to 1a them just like the rest of his army, once again preserving toss as the 1a2a3a4a (now just 1a) race.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
