The Oracle is near the top of my HotS fears list (right up there with the replicant, Mass Recall on the Nexus, and Arc Shield) because it seems like the sort of unit that breaks the game. Here's why:
The Oracle is extremely fast, making it a terrific scout and fantastic harassment unit. These are GOOD things, and I approve of that. However, it also has Entomb and Phase Shift, which allow 1-2 of these little things to give the Protoss player incredible map control.
Entomb denies mineral harvesting for a long period of time, and gives no in-game alarm. The forces the victim to play very passively, constantly checking their base for those pesky Oracles, which can come darting in at any moment to deny hundreds of minerals from being harvested. The alternative is to spend considerable time and resources into static defense to protect your mineral lines and make it harder for the Oracle to lock down your harvesting, but this has the same effect of forcing the player to play withdrawn and passive for an extended period of time because static defense cuts into your army production and takes time and resources to establish.
Even if you can manage to keep the Oracle away from your mineral lines, it also has Phase Shift, which can temporarily remove key tech from the game for extended periods of time. This increases the map control that a small number of Oracles provide, because players will be forced to protect their key tech structures (spires, roach warrens, infestation pits, factories, starports, etc). Even worse than that, this allows the Protoss player to literally force a player into certain unit combinations. Don't want you Zerg opponent to make hydras against your largely air army? No problem. Don't want to see warhounds or tanks against your stalker heavy force? No problem. Don't want to ever worry about EMP or ghosts? No problem. Need to stop viking production so that your colossi can't be touched at all? No problem!
Add onto Phase shift the ability to negate static defense when pushing into someone's base, and you have possibly the most game-breaking, over-powered little unit despite the fact that it has no attack whatsoever.
My hopes for this unit? Phase shift turned into what Contaminate used to be. Entomb given an in-game alarm, and barriers given very little health (like 50-60). MAYBE slightly decreased movement speed on the Oracle so players have a little more time to react when they see one of these darting into their base to deny harvesting.
I think this unit CAN be very interesting and fun to play with/against, but not in it's currently advertised form.
I think enforcing a short casting range for some of its spells makes it less one-sided. Otherwise you just have a super-speedy oracle that can't be defended against very well. Requiring the oracle to risk itself a little bit when attacking allows for more skilled players, both on the offensive and defensive side, to get out more of the unit.
On November 04 2011 02:44 Grumbels wrote: I think enforcing a short casting range for some of its spells makes it less one-sided. Otherwise you just have a super-speedy oracle that can't be defended against very well. Requiring the oracle to risk itself a little bit when attacking allows for more skilled players, both on the offensive and defensive side, to get out more of the unit.
This is one of the design problems; the harass either needs to be weak or defendable, and neither is a good solution.
On November 04 2011 00:27 SpaceYeti wrote: The Oracle is near the top of my HotS fears list (right up there with the replicant, Mass Recall on the Nexus, and Arc Shield) because it seems like the sort of unit that breaks the game. Here's why:
The Oracle is extremely fast, making it a terrific scout and fantastic harassment unit. These are GOOD things, and I approve of that. However, it also has Entomb and Phase Shift, which allow 1-2 of these little things to give the Protoss player incredible map control.
Entomb denies mineral harvesting for a long period of time, and gives no in-game alarm. The forces the victim to play very passively, constantly checking their base for those pesky Oracles, which can come darting in at any moment to deny hundreds of minerals from being harvested. The alternative is to spend considerable time and resources into static defense to protect your mineral lines and make it harder for the Oracle to lock down your harvesting, but this has the same effect of forcing the player to play withdrawn and passive for an extended period of time because static defense cuts into your army production and takes time and resources to establish.
Even if you can manage to keep the Oracle away from your mineral lines, it also has Phase Shift, which can temporarily remove key tech from the game for extended periods of time. This increases the map control that a small number of Oracles provide, because players will be forced to protect their key tech structures (spires, roach warrens, infestation pits, factories, starports, etc). Even worse than that, this allows the Protoss player to literally force a player into certain unit combinations. Don't want you Zerg opponent to make hydras against your largely air army? No problem. Don't want to see warhounds or tanks against your stalker heavy force? No problem. Don't want to ever worry about EMP or ghosts? No problem. Need to stop viking production so that your colossi can't be touched at all? No problem!
Add onto Phase shift the ability to negate static defense when pushing into someone's base, and you have possibly the most game-breaking, over-powered little unit despite the fact that it has no attack whatsoever.
My hopes for this unit? Phase shift turned into what Contaminate used to be. Entomb given an in-game alarm, and barriers given very little health (like 50-60). MAYBE slightly decreased movement speed on the Oracle so players have a little more time to react when they see one of these darting into their base to deny harvesting.
I think this unit CAN be very interesting and fun to play with/against, but not in it's currently advertised form.
Entomb should not be given an alarm. Forces multitasking, its on your minimap. It's like DTs in broodwar, DT's never indicated that you were getting attacked yet people managed to do fine.
Your way over reacting also. tanks? well usually most races have one than one production facility. Phase shift in its current form could be too powerful versus zerg though, depends on its time and when you can get oracle out. You also have to acknowledge that it is an investment to get oracles, it isn't free, so its not like, herp derp stop vikings. It's more like, hey, stop one round of vikings. Entomb would be a waste if its health was too low. Perhaps low health but high armor(so that workers couldn't fuck with it for free). There is nothing wrong with a really powerful unit, this really powerful unit also forces multi-tasking from both players, and your asking its most multitask dependent ability(entomb) to be weakened? Vikings would also be amazing at driving these things off, any kind of air unit, or even the new warhound. This is one of my favorite new units, and its idea is solid, but what your asking is that you make it damn near useless, and not worth its cost and getting a starport.
Does entomb really not give an "alarm" though? I might be wrong, but once you cast entomb on the minerals the workers will stop mining and show up on the UI as inactive. So, as long as you pay attention to your idle worker count you should be able to react in time. Also, paying attention to your minimap is one of the necessary skills of a pro player, so they should be able to notice the blips in front of their mineral line and react accordingly.
I don't think it will. Workers still attempt to move from patch to patch in the videos. It might be different if all the crystals are locked down, but we have no evidence they will be idle then. I think it's safe to assume they won't be, though, since at lower leagues the only adjustment you need to make is to only entomb seven out of eight patches and you still won't get the alarm. I don't think it's too much of a problem however, oracles aren't invisible and will show up on your minimap.
Ok, so personnally I believe the oracle is simply awful because it's harrass effect isnt permanent. However, I believe that blocking the mineral fields are an interesting feature. In order to correct that issue, I believe they should take 1 very interesting change:
-they should simply make the mineral field blocking permanent but destructible (with a very minimal health). Something close to 100 health or 200 health would be interesting. This way, it would be easier for protoss to harrass and it would really benefit the harrass concept.
Lets look at the purpose of a harrass: -Kill workers or cripple economy -Make damage on the long term -Kill units if possible -Slow the teching -The most important one (oblige the enemy to move his units around to defend the harrass). Just like mutas or terran drops.
Therefore, giving the mineral field blocking ability a permanent ability with 200 health would oblige the ennemies to move their units around to ''kill'' these power field. Which would pretty much fill all the purpose of a harrass I stated before.
Also, the protoss would be able to slow the super macro style of zergs since we could simply block most of the map mineral field and then it would give us back map vision/presence (a bit like creep tumor does) and would also oblige zerg to make units and move them around to expo (just like protoss and terrans!).
Perhaps a solution to the issue that the oracle isn`t able to assist a main army:
Give it spell, one which buffs friendly units, which actively aids other combat units long after the raiding option has been denied or which gives a type of defender`s advantage.
If you need to balance it, make the buff either a research option or require plenty of energy to use (so you can`t use it immediately).
Yes, I know protoss has plenty of spells already which may or may not fill this roll (forcefield and guardian shield come to mind).
Perhaps a shield battery type functionality? Give it a small AoE Healing effect where it replenishes shields over time. This way you can use it to both harass and as part of a push or defense scenerio. Or give it a large AoE field with a set up time (sort of the opposite of the shredder) so that suddenly there is a positional element to it (and one which is easy to use in conjunction with protoss' other spells).
Suddenly we have use for a unit which doesn't attack...
As already in your former post about the oracle, you are perfectly right about everything you wrote kcdc. I really hope Blizzard realises that the current unit design of the oracle doesn't fullfill the role of a unit that protoss is missing so much.
I really feel that you cannot really judge how good or not good a unit will be until it has had some time in the game with everyone playing. Once you've actually played the game and determined that you think the oracle is useless I view your whole argument as just guesses thAt have as good a chance of being wrong as they do being right.
In light of the beta starting, I thought it might make sense to review my design critiques from Blizz first proposed to concept of the oracle. A lot of these criticisms are starting to become frequent complaints now.
So at first I felt that my opening would be even stronger(and its sickly strong as it is right now)
However, after testing incorporating the oracle in many different ways. To me it is always more worth building phoenix or void rays against zerg. Especially the extreme high gas cost makes it far to useless.
I personally would love to see more gateway units, but becuase of warp tech it probably would be to strong.
As you mention a stable harras unit from the robotic is what protoss should get.
Otherwise it would be a very interesting if protoss could get a good harasser from gates as it could be warped in with prism or by close pylons. If it could be balanced, I believe that would be the most entertaining gameplay option for a new unit.
On September 10 2012 06:23 Myrmonden wrote: Otherwise it would be a very interesting if protoss could get a good harasser from gates as it could be warped in with prism or by close pylons. If it could be balanced, I believe that would be the most entertaining gameplay option for a new unit.
What if they made a unit that 1 shotted workers but had super low hitpoints that you could warp in from a warp prsim. Maybe they could make them permanently cloaked or something. Yea that sounds like a good unit.
On September 10 2012 06:23 Myrmonden wrote: Otherwise it would be a very interesting if protoss could get a good harasser from gates as it could be warped in with prism or by close pylons. If it could be balanced, I believe that would be the most entertaining gameplay option for a new unit.
What if they made a unit that 1 shotted workers but had super low hitpoints that you could warp in from a warp prsim. Maybe they could make them permanently cloaked or something. Yea that sounds like a good unit.
On September 10 2012 06:23 Myrmonden wrote: Otherwise it would be a very interesting if protoss could get a good harasser from gates as it could be warped in with prism or by close pylons. If it could be balanced, I believe that would be the most entertaining gameplay option for a new unit.
What if they made a unit that 1 shotted workers but had super low hitpoints that you could warp in from a warp prsim. Maybe they could make them permanently cloaked or something. Yea that sounds like a good unit.
Haha you guys are funny. But the DT is just another example of how limited protoss harass is. You have to make an entire building that costs 250 gas and has no abilities except to proclaim to the world that you can make invisible things. The point is that yes, protoss has harass options, but most of them cost huge amounts of gas, and the new units are more of the same.
Crank was using Preordain on Lair in PvZ to monitor Hive timings.
Also the detection makes sky toss more viable although to be honest most games I watched it's toss getting stomped by Swarm Host or Warhounds lol.
I like the Oracle.
That is a cool tactic! But you need every tech tree to make it work, so it won't happen until late game. Plus that squad is anything but cheap, so you are risking a lot.
It would be great if the protoss could have a gateway harassment option. I feel it could easily be balanced by making it build at a reasonable quick time out of gateways but warpgates actually incures a longer cooldown. Protoss needs some way to harass early game without a heavy commital to one tech or another like it currently is. I honestly don't think the answer is to create reaper or helion copycat but something more along those lines. A cheap unit that if you loose it its not the end of the game. I would love to be able to FFE and then at like 6 minutes be harassing lighty while going into say a 4 gate +1 timing at 8 minutes.
Crank was using Preordain on Lair in PvZ to monitor Hive timings.
Also the detection makes sky toss more viable although to be honest most games I watched it's toss getting stomped by Swarm Host or Warhounds lol.
I like the Oracle.
That is a cool tactic! But you need every tech tree to make it work, so it won't happen until late game. Plus that squad is anything but cheap, so you are risking a lot.
Yeah I think they should make it like 100/150 not 150/200.
EPT
