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The Dance Evolves
It's late game PvT. Both players are on 4 bases. The Templar Archives is on the field. The Ghost Academy gets thrown down in response. Both players are locked into a deadly dance. EMP, Cloak and Snipe Vs. Feedback and Storm. A tiring tango of micro and quick draw.
But... the dance is about to evolve.
=== The current meta game behind the dance ===
--- From the Protoss perspective ---
I send my HT forward. My goals (by priority) are:
1. Feedback (and kill if lucky enough) a Ghost before being EMP'd or Sniped myself.
2. Storm and soften up an cluster of bio.
3. Feedback a high energy Raven or Medivac to hopefully kill.
--- From the Terran Perspective ---
I send my Ghost forward. My goals (by priority) are:
1. EMP a HT. If cloacked attempt to Snipe HT and gamble for no observers.
2. EMP Sentrys. Eliminate those pesky forcefields.
3. EMP a cluster of protoss units softening up thier shields.
=== How the Game changed ===
While watching Grubby's stream the other day during some jestive practice matches versus beastyqt, Grubby and beasty found themselves in the dance.
When a flash of brilliance came accross Grubby. He hallucinated two High Templar and sent them towards his opponent trying to bait some EMPs. Brilliant!
But alas beastyqt had scanned to track Grubby's army.
And in a brief moment of mockery...
[Beastyqt: Cool story bro] (in jest of course)
... the brilliance had gone.
But in this little insignificant moment arose evolution.
=== The Numbers ===
Hallucination: 100 energy
Hallucination: Creates 2 HT at a time
5 Full Energy Sentrys: 1000 energy
= 20 Hallucinated HT + regeneration
3 full Orbital Commands: 600 Energy
Scan: 50 energy
= 12 Scans + regeneration
I think you can see where I'm going with this. There are new fears to be had!
=== The New Dance ===
Protoss sends a contant steam hallucinated High Templar at the Terran to bait EMP. Terran is forced to scan, waste EMP energy, read the bluff and do nothing, or use other forms of detection to sniff out fake Templar.
There are so many little aspects to the new dance, I'm just going to rattle them off.
Terran has the scan every forward HT. Or gamble!
Scanning the protoss army with forward Ghosts to spot fakes. But it could be a tell if you're advancing!
Protoss knows you've scanned hallucinated Templar and sends a real one forward! He's in my head!
How much energy do I have left on my Orbital Commands?!? The fake HT keep coming!!
Scanning to Snipe observers so I my cloacked Ghosts can snipe the HT!! Huge move!!
Protoss evolves to holding their HT's in Warp Prisms so they can't be EMP'd during the dance!
Terran Ghost circumnavigates protoss' army and Snipes Sentry's from behind!!
Protoss starts throwing DTs at the terran to use up Orbital Command energy!!
Do I choose to be agressive with my high energy Ghosts with cloack play, or be defensive trusting my detection abilities?!?
Forward Observer vs forward Raven play!
> Blink stalkers to snipe raven. But gamble concussive shells and tanks!!
> Do I keep Raven energy high for PDD or low because of feed back threat?!?
> Pheoix and Vikings get thrown into the mix!! So much micro!
Terran starts noticing the energy bar on the fake Templar. Protoss wait until there 10secs left on the hallucination to advance when its over 75 energy!
I'm sure there are lots of other little nuances to this turbulent tango. I for one am excited to see this new Hallucinated High Templar play. I'm excited to see Hallucination evolve in general!
This is why I Love Starcaft!!
To be honest with myself. I feel like I won't see much of this play at all  to be in this position is quiet situational, so many things have to fall into place. But it's fun the imagine the epic micro battle that could take place :D inb4 foreveralong comic 
TLDR; using hallucinated high templar to bait EMP and the Terrans response to this play.
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Or dance a energy-less Raven around to spot the hallucinations.
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This is interesting and will encourage more ravens into the game. If these strats gets implemented, more units will get used and more diversity in the matchup.
But not only hallucinated HTs, even Collosus can be good when going against vikings to have them shoot the fake ones by having them in front of your real ones. Immortals for tanking dmg... etc.
But I understand that you are talking about these micro battles between two spellcasters, and this will spice up the confrontations.
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BRILLIANT.
I've never thought of anything like that. That could be really useful in the lategame when it really is dependent on Ghost vs HT micro to determine battles...thanks for posting about it 
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On March 18 2011 09:39 FinestHour wrote:
Or dance a energy-less Raven around to spot the hallucinations.
If they don't scan the army ahead of time to see the hallucinations (you can always hallucinate after they finish scanning), they have no way of telling it besides the Raven, and they won't get a Raven until they KNOW it's hallucinated units.
The protoss can easily hallucinate after the terran finishes scouting, and he can have hallucinated high templars suicide into terran army "trying to storm" to force terran to go ghosts while you go colossi.
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this is a great idea i'll definitely be trying this. great post
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Well, IMO Ghosts are more useful then High Templar....so hallucinations won't actually do that much.
Ghosts can actually SHOOT high templar.
They don't need to research EMP (which does 100 damage to shields, aka 100 damage to protoss INSTANTLY unlike storm which takes a time of like 10 seconds to do 80 damage)
Unlike High Templars, they still have +25 energy upgrade for EMP. (amulets being removed)
Their storm (EMP) is combined with Feedback, for the same amount of energy (wdf?)
Ghosts just need one tech- Ghost Academy. High Templars need Twilight Council, Templar Archives, THEN research storm...unlike Ghosts that can use EMP without it being researched.
One last thing- nukes. Provided, it is indeed rare that nukes do go down, but it creates a psychological effect on Protoss (omg is he going for my probes or army or pylons or what)
Anyways, at the topic, even if he baits EMP, ok. So um, EMP's gone down. Ghosts still shooting. Hallucinated templars still doing nothing.
Just how I see Ghosts vs Templars, I guess.
Not much related to the thread though, just food for thought.
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I've never quite got why Snipe works against Templars, it was my understanding that they are Psionic beings and not biological (I know they are listed as bio, I just thought psionic beings weren't like us lol)..... but I guess Snipe would suck if it only worked against Zealots lol
I've been waiting for Hallucinate to be fleshed out by the pro's, its always seemed like it has amazing potential to fuck with your opponent. I mean even just hallucinating a couple extra collosi just before you hit sight range could turn a battle in your favour, with the insane apm and micro of the pro's I see this ability becoming a huge part of the Protoss mind games, as a Terran player..... this scares me!
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Neat idea. I like this.
Hopefully I'll remember to try this, I really don't get hallucination enough.
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I think that ultimately in the late game players don't have the gas for this kind of trickery. Protoss are pretty gas strapped as it is making HT's, stalkers, whatever other units they need BEFORE they can afford the sentries which they will need to use for FF's, not a few hallucinated unit in the kind of big engagements you tend to see once HTs are on the field. I just don't see anyone building a few extra sentries just to try to distract a ghost or two which may or may not work.
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dont Terran need to scan to get ghost vision anyway? I mean the moment a ghost could see HT is when he get in feedback range. => scan is almost a must.
also i think HT after next patch will only be used defensively or harras tool due to the cost of it...
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On March 18 2011 09:44 iChau wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 09:39 FinestHour wrote:
Or dance a energy-less Raven around to spot the hallucinations. If they don't scan the army ahead of time to see the hallucinations (you can always hallucinate after they finish scanning), they have no way of telling it besides the Raven, and they won't get a Raven until they KNOW it's hallucinated units. The protoss can easily hallucinate after the terran finishes scouting, and he can have hallucinated high templars suicide into terran army "trying to storm" to force terran to go ghosts while you go colossi.
Raven is/should/always be a strong part of a good terran army. Anyone that goes without one in any game is a silly man
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On March 18 2011 09:52 Cyclone999 wrote:
Well, IMO Ghosts are more useful then High Templar....so hallucinations won't actually do that much.
Ghosts can actually SHOOT high templar.
They don't need to research EMP (which does 100 damage to shields, aka 100 damage to protoss INSTANTLY unlike storm which takes a time of like 10 seconds to do 80 damage)
Unlike High Templars, they still have +25 energy upgrade for EMP. (amulets being removed)
Their storm (EMP) is combined with Feedback, for the same amount of energy (wdf?)
Ghosts just need one tech- Ghost Academy. High Templars need Twilight Council, Templar Archives, THEN research storm...unlike Ghosts that can use EMP without it being researched.
One last thing- nukes. Provided, it is indeed rare that nukes do go down, but it creates a psychological effect on Protoss (omg is he going for my probes or army or pylons or what)
Anyways, at the topic, even if he baits EMP, ok. So um, EMP's gone down. Ghosts still shooting. Hallucinated templars still doing nothing.
Just how I see Ghosts vs Templars, I guess.
Not much related to the thread though, just food for thought.
What you are saying is true if there are only HT and Ghosts on the battlefield. ghosts and HT have to be careful of the gateway units and bio army that will kill the spellcasters, respectively. Also, while ghosts are better than HT in sense that they can attack and use EMP right away with mobius reactor, ghosts cost a lot of resources. So making ghosts waste EMP with hallucination is a good investment for protoss
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On March 18 2011 10:04 NB wrote:
dont Terran need to scan to get ghost vision anyway? I mean the moment a ghost could see HT is when he get in feedback range. => scan is almost a must.
also i think HT after next patch will only be used defensively or harras tool due to the cost of it...
A ghost has sight range of 11. EMP range is 10. Feedback range is 9.
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On March 18 2011 09:52 Cyclone999 wrote:
Well, IMO Ghosts are more useful then High Templar....so hallucinations won't actually do that much.
Ghosts can actually SHOOT high templar.
They don't need to research EMP (which does 100 damage to shields, aka 100 damage to protoss INSTANTLY unlike storm which takes a time of like 10 seconds to do 80 damage)
Unlike High Templars, they still have +25 energy upgrade for EMP. (amulets being removed)
Their storm (EMP) is combined with Feedback, for the same amount of energy (wdf?)
Ghosts just need one tech- Ghost Academy. High Templars need Twilight Council, Templar Archives, THEN research storm...unlike Ghosts that can use EMP without it being researched.
One last thing- nukes. Provided, it is indeed rare that nukes do go down, but it creates a psychological effect on Protoss (omg is he going for my probes or army or pylons or what)
Anyways, at the topic, even if he baits EMP, ok. So um, EMP's gone down. Ghosts still shooting. Hallucinated templars still doing nothing.
Just how I see Ghosts vs Templars, I guess.
Not much related to the thread though, just food for thought.
People never mention the fact that EMP damage isn't permanent and can't kill anything. Yes you lose your shields, but shields can regenerate. Storm damage can't be regenerated by Terran except via healing or repair (one costs energy and one costs resources) So while EMP may do its damage instantly, it can't kill your units and to be frank, if EMP didn't do it damage instanty then it wouldn't be an EMP...... its based off a real thing unlike storm.
Anywho, I EMP you.... you can run away and regen your shields for free...... you storm me, I have to heal or repair, using a resource. If I don't have any medivacs left then I'm pretty screwed, even if i do run away I can't heal the damage.... If I'm meching (which is getting more popular) then I have to spend MONEY to heal the damage from storm, not to mention most mech is so god damn slow its not worth moving out of the storm half the time lol.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, there are two sides to every story. While EMP may seem to be better than storm, if you look at it from the POV of storm can kill stuff and its damage is permanent (atleast to a Terran army) then it doesn't seem so much better. When you factor in the fact the EMP does absolutely NO DAMAGE to zerg or Terran units, unlike storm, then storm suddenly starts to win the battle.
EMP is great against 1 race. Ghosts are rarely used in any other matchup. HT's are good for all matchups, thats why you have to research storm and why you can no longer warp in and storm on the spot..... 1 HT can stop a drop in its tracks, you can either feedback the medivac before it unloads or storm the drop once its out..... a ghost can't do shit to stop a drop, the only thing a ghost can do is stand there and get killed.
EMP is not Storm and feedback in one, its an AOE feedback that can't do any permanent damage. Feedback can one shot stuff, EMP can't. Storm can kill stuff EMP can't. Templars take 5 secs to warp in, ghosts take 45 secs to build.
Ghosts are awesome, EMP is awesome, but so is storm. Stop feeling so hard done by and actually think about things from both POV's.
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I can't see how Protoss would have the gas for templar AND sentries.
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On March 18 2011 10:10 K3Nyy wrote:
I can't see how Protoss would have the gas for templar AND sentries.
Its lategame, you should already have the sentries from early game and in late game you should be on 3-4 bases of gas income which is more than enough to get whatever tech you want.
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I like the hallucinated templar idea, but the raven would pretty much nullify that concept.
Or the fake templar would just get sniped by two or three infantry stimmed out to the front... no point in Terran bringing his whole army (which could be stormed by the fake templar) to snipe it.
Or siege tanks would kill it before it's even in range of anything.
Now if hallucinated high templar could be cloaked and un-cloaked... just kidding.
But yeah, Terran still has so many ways of dealing with single high templar that they still don't pose the same threads that ghosts do.
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On March 18 2011 10:13 emythrel wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 10:10 K3Nyy wrote:
I can't see how Protoss would have the gas for templar AND sentries. Its lategame, you should already have the sentries from early game and in late game you should be on 3-4 bases of gas income which is more than enough to get whatever tech you want.
Then let's assume you have mass colossus instead of mass fake units, if we're really going under the assumption that there are no resource limitations at all. This would be far more practical, considering the fact that you can use colossus immediately instead of making high templar and waiting 45 seconds to use them (which is the case, since there's no more KA upgrade). A colossus ball with stalker support and good sentry forcefields would be excellent.
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It's a good idea to have in mind but sentries also need energy for guardian shield and forcefield. Generally, Protoss players don't have any more sentries than needed for guardian shield and forcefields because they cost 100 gas per sentry. This gas is needed later in the game for colossi and templar.
Some hallucinations have worked in the past for things like zealots to tank and some colossi for trickery so I don't see why it couldn't work for templar as well if they have EMP. However, mass hallucinated templar probably isn't very viable.
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EPT
