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This topic has been revived countless times since Beta started. The same arguments more or less stupid have been said on both sides why EMP or psy is too powerful and should be nerfed.
I can clearly see some TvP where EMP gave a winning advantage to Terran as much as I saw psy getting an advantage to Protoss.
Playing Protoss this ability sure is something I'm afraid of especially early game... but I don't see how people claim this is imbalanced based on a very narrow minded perspective. Balance is about races not abilitys, some things are designed to be an advantage for a race against another. Terran have EMP yes, they also got PDD and other good stuff... Protoss have psy, warp ins and other good stuff too.
Is one EMP better than a single storm ? Yes probably, does it means the match-up is imbalanced ? Not in my opinion. Protoss has other advantage to exploit in other area of the game.
This game is not about a 200 - 200 army battle after 20 minutes, it's a lot more complex and for myself can clearly see some advantages to Protoss.
Maybe in 4months TvP will be clearly defined as imbalanced when this precise build and strategy will come up and give a 90% victory to top protoss or terran. Meanwhile... this seems pretty even to me, and especially too soon to cry for imbalance.
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Can one EMP prevent a huge carpet storm? Yes.
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Also: it may be hard to notice, but EMP does have a missile with a traveling time.
Stalkers with blink CAN dodge EMP with excellent timing. I've managed to do it in relatively small battles
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On July 01 2010 05:40 Smurfz wrote:
Also: it may be hard to notice, but EMP does have a missile with a traveling time.
Stalkers with blink CAN dodge EMP with excellent timing. I've managed to do it in relatively small battles
Was it intentional or were you Blinking anyway and just happened to avoid it? I doubt anyone is going to be pulling that off on a regular basis in a reactive manner. Its not like spotting a Hunter Seeker and simply running the whole force away to avoid it.
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How about EMP does takes away 50% of shields. i.e. Immortal w/ 100 shields gets reduced to 50. Hit again w/ EMP shield = 25.
Maybe even 50% mana reduction as well?
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On July 01 2010 04:41 Bibdy wrote:
You still need to scout it, which is a 100 (Hallucination) or 200 (Observer) gas investment in itself, unless that's your standard opener.
And with that few Stalkers and Sentries, there's every likelihood you're going to get ploughed over by a simple M&M push, though I suppose you can pump some extras from your Warp Gates with all that spare gas you'll have accumulating as you save up for HTs.
You still have a horrendous shortage of Sentries and no Zealot charge, even if you do end up building that force. So he could just kite your ass to death.
It's my standard PVT opening. Don't remember losing to any composition of early bio once i got comfortable with it. Some games vs MM were admittedly close, but, against early ghosts/emp, it usually wasn't even close.
I'm not very good with stalkers without blink. I don't find them very strong, and they take bonus damage from marauders, and get slowed the same as anything else. the sentry is nice for guardian sheild vs MM, or force field to delay at the ramp if needed.
The goal of this opening is to primarily get to usable templar and then charge, fast. Once I have storm/charge, if the terran is still on bio, it should be lopsided, in my favor, regardless of what he adds to his army. My infrastructure is ready at that point to pump units.
As for kiting, let him kite. I'm not trying to kill him now, unless possible. Zealots are strong enough. keep him occupied until archons show up.
Keep in mind, some of the benefits of archons.
1. tanks - 350 sheilds is alot of damage to absorb. Emp hurts, but takes 3 to cripple, 4 to kill, but he should only have 2 ghosts worth.
2. quick - not quite as fast as stalkers, but not zealot slow, makes his kiting more difficult.
3. Faster tech than storm. Storm is too slow to hold any decent timing push off. All the gas is wasted for storm if you die before its done researching.
4. mineral light = zealot heavy, or earlier safe expansion.
5. Timings work out pretty well with zealot. 1 zealot + 1 templar is slightly slower than 2 stalkers/sentries. and alternates gas unit, mineral build.
6. Bonus damage is heavily in favor of the toss. Bio bonus from archon, no marauder armor bonus.
Though, they are strong early, they are only to tide me over until storm/charge which is a much stronger composition, its just too slow to tech rush to. This is how i get there.
On July 01 2010 04:46 xDaunt wrote:
I'd love to see a replay of this. My gut reaction is that a terran would mow down your zealots without charge. But hey, I'd be happy to be wrong.
I wish i could provide a replay. My Raid failed a day before 1st beta ended. I know i have no credibility w/out it, no name recognition, no post count, but, please try it when beta returns. All i can say is the only matchup i have a good win percent is terran, (pvp and pvz are less than 50%).
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alright... lets nerf the hell out of brood lords, cause as a terran, as soon as my opponent got them, i was screwed, when we were sitting on even bases, and same supply armies.
i have seen whole Bio balls fall to 2-3 storms, when ghosts were present, their emp's hit the wrong group of templar and were also TOO LATE
emp is the counter to storm, that much is true, but storm can be utilized so much better than emp, you can even use it as a temporary (very temporary) wall, like FF's, and you can back up to recharge shields, and for those who say, but what if he emp's before that... well micro better, or suck it up,
this is all from beta play, just shift your strategy so that it allows you to deal with it, for both sides. stop screaming for a nerf or buff, play with the game you got
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On July 01 2010 05:34 rezoacken wrote:
Maybe in 4months TvP will be clearly defined as imbalanced when this precise build and strategy will come up and give a 90% victory to top protoss or terran. Meanwhile... this seems pretty even to me, and especially too soon to cry for imbalance.
If the imbalance that a skill adds to the general matchup is less than 5% it's not as obvious as that. Even broodwar i can say with almost 100% confidence it's not perfectly balanced. What if some unit got 5, 1 HP, or even 0.5HP increase, who could say it was more balanced or not? That's probably going to affect less than 0.1% of the matchup, and no one would be able to say in which direction (balancing or imbalancing) it went, yet it clearly changes something. Balance is when the matchup is 50-50, and thats just a number, compared to the infinity of the numbers than surround it. Everything should be thought of has imbalanced. It's very unlikely they managed to put anything at 50-50. Most imbalances are so small though, it's hard to notice, and for all purposes we can round them up to balanced.
At this time, imbalances are not as obvious as the start, so people have to just analyze suspicious details, and see if there's any reason behind them. Also at this point, you can't ask for "proof that x is imbalanced", only for traces that something is a little broken. If people clearly say they have difficulty dealing with x, that could be something or not. When imbalances are below [5-0[% people might not even notice they have to put that value of effort more than the other race. That's why if so many people start complaining it should be even more suspicious.
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On July 01 2010 06:44 indczn wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2010 04:41 Bibdy wrote:
You still need to scout it, which is a 100 (Hallucination) or 200 (Observer) gas investment in itself, unless that's your standard opener.
And with that few Stalkers and Sentries, there's every likelihood you're going to get ploughed over by a simple M&M push, though I suppose you can pump some extras from your Warp Gates with all that spare gas you'll have accumulating as you save up for HTs.
You still have a horrendous shortage of Sentries and no Zealot charge, even if you do end up building that force. So he could just kite your ass to death. It's my standard PVT opening. Don't remember losing to any composition of early bio once i got comfortable with it. Some games vs MM were admittedly close, but, against early ghosts/emp, it usually wasn't even close. I'm not very good with stalkers without blink. I don't find them very strong, and they take bonus damage from marauders, and get slowed the same as anything else. the sentry is nice for guardian sheild vs MM, or force field to delay at the ramp if needed. The goal of this opening is to primarily get to usable templar and then charge, fast. Once I have storm/charge, if the terran is still on bio, it should be lopsided, in my favor, regardless of what he adds to his army. My infrastructure is ready at that point to pump units. As for kiting, let him kite. I'm not trying to kill him now, unless possible. Zealots are strong enough. keep him occupied until archons show up. Keep in mind, some of the benefits of archons. 1. tanks - 350 sheilds is alot of damage to absorb. Emp hurts, but takes 3 to cripple, 4 to kill, but he should only have 2 ghosts worth. 2. quick - not quite as fast as stalkers, but not zealot slow, makes his kiting more difficult. 3. Faster tech than storm. Storm is too slow to hold any decent timing push off. All the gas is wasted for storm if you die before its done researching. 4. mineral light = zealot heavy, or earlier safe expansion. 5. Timings work out pretty well with zealot. 1 zealot + 1 templar is slightly slower than 2 stalkers/sentries. and alternates gas unit, mineral build. 6. Bonus damage is heavily in favor of the toss. Bio bonus from archon, no marauder armor bonus. Though, they are strong early, they are only to tide me over until storm/charge which is a much stronger composition, its just too slow to tech rush to. This is how i get there. Show nested quote +On July 01 2010 04:46 xDaunt wrote:
I'd love to see a replay of this. My gut reaction is that a terran would mow down your zealots without charge. But hey, I'd be happy to be wrong. I wish i could provide a replay. My Raid failed a day before 1st beta ended. I know i have no credibility w/out it, no name recognition, no post count, but, please try it when beta returns. All i can say is the only matchup i have a good win percent is terran, (pvp and pvz are less than 50%).
Yeeesh. Sounds scary against things like early MM pushes and Cloaked Banshee rushes. And that's a LOT of gas invested in two units that can get kited and killed without doing a lick of damage. They can easily have Stims by that point, which just makes your life hell if you don't have a good number of Sentries to prevent kiting, mitigate damage and split blob up.
I'm going to work with my standard build (fast Observer), switching to Zealot Charge if I spot the build with the Observer first. If that fails too often, I'll give this a shot.
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On July 01 2010 06:44 indczn wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2010 04:41 Bibdy wrote:
You still need to scout it, which is a 100 (Hallucination) or 200 (Observer) gas investment in itself, unless that's your standard opener.
And with that few Stalkers and Sentries, there's every likelihood you're going to get ploughed over by a simple M&M push, though I suppose you can pump some extras from your Warp Gates with all that spare gas you'll have accumulating as you save up for HTs.
You still have a horrendous shortage of Sentries and no Zealot charge, even if you do end up building that force. So he could just kite your ass to death. It's my standard PVT opening. Don't remember losing to any composition of early bio once i got comfortable with it. Some games vs MM were admittedly close, but, against early ghosts/emp, it usually wasn't even close. I'm not very good with stalkers without blink. I don't find them very strong, and they take bonus damage from marauders, and get slowed the same as anything else. the sentry is nice for guardian sheild vs MM, or force field to delay at the ramp if needed. The goal of this opening is to primarily get to usable templar and then charge, fast. Once I have storm/charge, if the terran is still on bio, it should be lopsided, in my favor, regardless of what he adds to his army. My infrastructure is ready at that point to pump units. As for kiting, let him kite. I'm not trying to kill him now, unless possible. Zealots are strong enough. keep him occupied until archons show up. Keep in mind, some of the benefits of archons. 1. tanks - 350 sheilds is alot of damage to absorb. Emp hurts, but takes 3 to cripple, 4 to kill, but he should only have 2 ghosts worth. 2. quick - not quite as fast as stalkers, but not zealot slow, makes his kiting more difficult. 3. Faster tech than storm. Storm is too slow to hold any decent timing push off. All the gas is wasted for storm if you die before its done researching. 4. mineral light = zealot heavy, or earlier safe expansion. 5. Timings work out pretty well with zealot. 1 zealot + 1 templar is slightly slower than 2 stalkers/sentries. and alternates gas unit, mineral build. 6. Bonus damage is heavily in favor of the toss. Bio bonus from archon, no marauder armor bonus. Though, they are strong early, they are only to tide me over until storm/charge which is a much stronger composition, its just too slow to tech rush to. This is how i get there. Show nested quote +On July 01 2010 04:46 xDaunt wrote:
I'd love to see a replay of this. My gut reaction is that a terran would mow down your zealots without charge. But hey, I'd be happy to be wrong. I wish i could provide a replay. My Raid failed a day before 1st beta ended. I know i have no credibility w/out it, no name recognition, no post count, but, please try it when beta returns. All i can say is the only matchup i have a good win percent is terran, (pvp and pvz are less than 50%).
My one concern about this build is that, without an observer or phoenix, you're left fairly blind to what the terran is doing. Assuming that the build does well against a ghost push, how does it do against other builds? For example:
1) what if the terran fast expands?
2) what if the terran goes for a tank build?
3) what if the terran goes heavy MMM?
4) what if the terran goes banshees?
5) how are you able to recognize these transitions/builds before it's too late to adjust your strategy?
P.S. Don't worry about the lack of replays or lack of name recognition.
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I'ma suggest a tactic to deal with EMPs, but this is from a guy with minimal knowledge of Protoss.
A high templar + chargelot army using chokes to their advantage? If they are to stay at a choke, the ghosts would either be at the back where HTs can storm the front of a bio ball without getting EMPed. Should the ghosts be at the front or middle, the chargelots should cut through the bio ball quite easily if the terran doesn't EMP the lots. If he does, you should send in your HTs to storm everything. Spreading the HTs out should help against any EMPs the ghosts have left and you'll get a few storms off.
How does it look?
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On July 01 2010 06:54 Bibdy wrote:
Yeeesh. Sounds scary against things like early MM pushes and Cloaked Banshee rushes. And that's a LOT of gas invested in two units that can get kited and killed without doing a lick of damage. They can easily have Stims by that point, which just makes your life hell if you don't have a good number of Sentries to prevent kiting, mitigate damage and split blob up.
I'm going to work with my standard build (fast Observer), switching to Zealot Charge if I spot the build with the Observer first. If that fails too often, I'll give this a shot.
It can be at times against MM, but what build doesn't have problems vs something.
You should be able to get a feel for what the terran might be doing from scouting, first probe, scout, then stalker, You should be able to get a good feel for what hes going for based on what you see. If somethings missing, get the robo up for the sake of being safe.
The terran is going to use gas on, MM, ghosts, tanks, banshees, or fast raven. (thor?). Of those, banshees are the biggest threat, but, also, easiest to deal with if prepared, in my opinion, and robotics is any good against them for the observer. Still have to rely on gateway units.
Once you get storm/charge, you units become so much for effective, i find its useful to get them as fast as possible, and the archon is the best way on the tech-tree to get there.
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On July 01 2010 07:23 Calamity wrote:
I'ma suggest a tactic to deal with EMPs, but this is from a guy with minimal knowledge of Protoss.
A high templar + chargelot army using chokes to their advantage? If they are to stay at a choke, the ghosts would either be at the back where HTs can storm the front of a bio ball without getting EMPed. Should the ghosts be at the front or middle, the chargelots should cut through the bio ball quite easily if the terran doesn't EMP the lots. If he does, you should send in your HTs to storm everything. Spreading the HTs out should help against any EMPs the ghosts have left and you'll get a few storms off.
How does it look?
Expensive.
Early pushes from Bio Ball + Ghost are a much bigger problem than EMP in general.
Anyone who truly thinks that EMP vs Psi Storm is imbalanced one way or the other after both sides have an expansion set up and the game hits the 10:00 mark, is out of their mind. Trouble is, Protoss take a LOT longer to field HTs and Psi Storm than Terrans take to field EMP.
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On July 01 2010 07:13 xDaunt wrote:
My one concern about this build is that, without an observer or phoenix, you're left fairly blind to what the terran is doing. Assuming that the build does well against a ghost push, how does it do against other builds? For example:
1) what if the terran fast expands?
2) what if the terran goes for a tank build?
3) what if the terran goes heavy MMM?
4) what if the terran goes banshees?
5) how are you able to recognize these transitions/builds before it's too late to adjust your strategy?
P.S. Don't worry about the lack of replays or lack of name recognition.
1) what if the terran fast expands? cut zealots, expand myself.
2) what if the terran goes for a tank build? do you mean tank+marine, or heavy mech? Against tank/marine push, i won pretty easily. Tanks function as marauders, but less mobile. Against mech,
3) what if the terran goes heavy MMM?
Not much different than MM, typical follow up, while im getting templar feedback/storm. If hes running from storm, hes not shooting my zealots. Yeah, i know zealots run into storm. If hes dropping ,you have warpgates and amuleted templar to defend/feedback.
4) what if the terran goes banshees?
Cry. Joking. Hopefully im aware enough to recognize hes not using any gas on anything else. Honestly, i saw this so rarely on the ladder, I'm not entirely positive on the timings. The only time i did, i caught the early gasses and went robo. I'd have to check the timings to say anything more definitive, other than this would be the weakest spot.
5) how are you able to recognize these transitions/builds before it's too late to adjust your strategy?
1st stalker scout tells alot. The build handles early ghost, MM, marine tank, and fast raven doesn't break it. I have alot of warpgates, so unit composition is adaptable.
I do need more playtime to work out the kinks, not to mention any patch changes.
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Do a barrel roll.
But seriously, juking and uber micro is your best bet. Or sac a few temps in front to try to trick them and retreat those and morph them into Archons (SAVE THE LULZ).
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There's no way a protoss player should not be able hold off a stim marine ghost push before they get colossi out. By the time the Brat_oK style stimed Marine Medivac ghost push is knocking on your door, its like 9+ minutes into the game, more than enough time for colossi tech. If anything, you'll be pushing into his base/preventing an expo with colossi before he can build sufficient vikings at this stage.
Keep in mind, it takes quite a few vikings to snipe off well microed colossi with stalker support. Even when a critical amount of vilkings are acheived, it still won't prevent the colossi from melting marines in a few lazers. Marines vs colossi is an ongoing problem, not something a handful of vikings auto fixes. Vikings offer a way to fight an army that would otherwise streamroll a marine-heavy Terran, but does not always come out on top.
That would be my advice for dealing with brat_ok's generic build. I'm not really interested in arguing with people who make it their business to try prove there's nothing you can do vs ghosts anymore.
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If collossi don't work, then don't get collossi. Use whatever works. Duh.
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Diamond rank random player here.
Ghosts don't magically appear in a terrans bio army. They require a rax with tech, a ghost academy, and a lot of gas. Any half decent toss player should be able to predict a ghost build, (double gas, no factory units? Heavy bias towards rax w/ tech lab? No reapers?) and actually scout it for sure fairly easily (assuming it isn't a proxy academy). And any decent toss build will set you up to scout out terran's base: hallucinated phoenix with mass gate, actual phoenix with a stargate build, or early observer or warp prism with a robo build.
The most common trend I see with complaining tosses is a complete unwillingness to adapt their builds and timing to a terran's ghost build, not at all taking advantage of the inherit weaknesses of a ghost build. "Omg HTs destroy my pure hydra army so imba!!" is basically the vibe I'm getting here.
Mass gateway builds: timing push before they get enough ghosts with emp up, or mass chargelot with HT/DT support (DTs abuse the lack of terran mobile detection)
Stargate builds: lift and kill with phoenix
Robo build: Warp prism drop/warp in harass into colossus
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Everyone complaining about EMP seems to be bypassing the fact that ghost are way more expensive than high templars and sentres, hence they obvously should be a little better.
Some other general themes of the posts:
* Terrans apparently have a reaction time that could just aswell be non existant, since the range 9 feedback would never work vs a range 10 EMP.
* Terrans always move all their forces out of a storm within the first second of its duration.
* It's not an option for the protoss players to spread their forces, so the EMP will OBVIOUSLY hit ALL the caster. I mean: Who would want to spread their casters vs. ghosts? :s
Think about those and now state to me why EMP is OP. It is more expensive the the protoss counterparts and can easily be worked around.
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On July 02 2010 00:45 NoM.NoM wrote:
Everyone complaining about EMP seems to be bypassing the fact that ghost are way more expensive than high templars and sentres, hence they obvously should be a little better.
Some other general themes of the posts:
* Terrans apparently have a reaction time that could just aswell be non existant, since the range 9 feedback would never work vs a range 10 EMP.
* Terrans always move all their forces out of a storm within the first second of its duration.
* It's not an option for the protoss players to spread their forces, so the EMP will OBVIOUSLY hit ALL the caster. I mean: Who would want to spread their casters vs. ghosts? :s
Think about those and now state to me why EMP is OP. It is more expensive the the protoss counterparts and can easily be worked around.
Ah the shitstorm this post will create.
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EPT
