The Remnants of Protoss, a Broken Race - Page 5

On September 10 2012 23:04 gCgCrypto wrote:
I highly doubt that Blizzard will ever fix protoss but now would be a damn good time. Im my opinion its Force Fields and Warpgates what makes Protoss so "wierd" If you can simply cut your oponents army in half and ignore distances and design everything around that you will for sure get a really terribly designed Race TT

On September 10 2012 23:07 Wombat_NI wrote:

Their units are weak and generally have to be deathballed precisely because stronger gateway units with warpgate would be silly. It's a design flaw that I really wish Blizzard would look at again

On September 11 2012 02:00 UntoTheBreach wrote:
Warpgates are no more gimmicky than death drops or Zerg remaxing in seconds.

Half our units don't even come from warpgates, anyway. What are you saying, they can't buff the void ray because of warpgates? Poppycock. They just don't like our race.

On September 11 2012 04:20 RinconH wrote:
I'd make your post a bit more clear.

You need to stress it's not about "competitive balance" as, with a long enough period of stats adjustments, Blizzard can probably "balance" win rates.

It's about Protoss being a flawed race to play and watch. Which sucks since I played Protoss (prob switching if HOTS doesn't fix it).

On September 11 2012 06:36 ChristianS wrote:
I also don't quite understand why people are saying gateway units are "bad." Zealots are really strong (considered maybe too strong in late-game PvT), especially in the hit points area. Stalkers are weak by themselves, but early on they do well with zealot support, and later on they support colossi well. They can even take on brood lords; it's the infestors that shut that down as a viable response to bl/infestor. And sentries, as has been acknowledged by OP and others, are nearly game-breaking with their forcefields.

So when you say they're "weak," I assume you mean you can't build your composition solely out of zealots and stalkers all game, the way Terran can (sort of) do with MMM. In which case, no, you can't, and you shouldn't be able to. Pure gateway compositions die to MMM, as they should, because MMM dies to higher Protoss tech, and if they died to gateway compositions too, there'd be no viable composition for Terran. 2-base gateway attacks were standard PvZ for a while to deny the third base, and they're exactly the reason that Zerg gets the roach warren as early as they do. But there's no reason to stay on pure gateway compositions, because higher Protoss tech is better (as higher tech should be). This is exactly the way the game should function, and does not need a massive overhaul of the game in order to "fix" it.

On September 11 2012 Xion wrote:
Yeah, the Oracle seems a bit dire at the moment. I think more tweaking with numbers with the Tempest, Oracle and Mothership Core could help make Protoss in HotS on more equal footing to the other races, however doesn't really change the gimmicky-ness of it all.

I miss the Arbiter and Reaver from BW. I can't help but compare the Oracle to the Arbiter because of the cloaking field they initially had for it, and I can't help but be disappointed.

It just makes me sad that Protoss are viewed by others as a race in shambles, the A-move race, the gimmick race. Give me a chance to micro, and I'll micro my heart out, I'd love to, we just barely get the opportunity to with the A+move deathball we're stuck with.

I miss BW where you used speedlots to drag mines into siege lines, while dodging EMPs from Science Vessels and landing the clutch stasis on top of them, while dropping HTs and Reavers with the speed shuttle to storm the siege line between tank rounds.

Now its sorta, oh look my zealots are charging forward, zap-zap Colossus kills stuff, blink with stalkers... maybe some forcefields and storm... nothing exciting. APM sitting at 2 for clicking A + LMB =.=, it's just boring.

On September 11 2012 01:20 UntoTheBreach wrote:
Fellers, you're making this waaaaaayy more complicated than it actually is. Here's a few relevant facts:

PvT:
(1) Late game PvT is relatively balanced if Toss goes gateway units + templar archive/robo bay.

(2) Those are the only options a Toss player has against Terran. A stargate option would make the game a lot more interesting.

(3) Unfortunately, marines and vikings are OP against air. Something needs to be done about this.

(4) Also, Terran is incredibly strong mid-game. The Terran bio-ball gets out of control and can only be held at bay with forcefields. Give us a viable mid game strategy, with no quick and easy hard counter like vikings against collosus.

PvZ:

(1) Even in WoL, Zerg is too powerful in this match-up. Toss is forced to resort to gimmicks to survive, none of which is a viable strategy in the long term. In open terrain we die; if we make a single slip with our forcefields we die. Zerg just has to get roach/ling and follow the same recipe every game.
(2) The new units are just the death blow to Toss. Zerg gets huge buffs to hydras and ultras, as well as incredibly strong new units, like a unit that can pull collossi out of position. We get nothing.
(3) The only way you're going to get this balanced is by giving some pretty huge buffs to Toss. We need to hold our own in wide maps and we need a way to win matches without relying on gimmicks.
(4) Why can't we stick with the stargate tech? Because infestors are so powerful. Because mutas have area of effect. Because so many corruptors can be produced all at once.

So, my suggestions:

- Nerf the infestor's anti-air ability. They've got freakin' hydras.
- The void ray is a tank unit, so give it a tank ability that makes it stronger against ground and less fragile against marines.
- The phoenix is a specialist anti-air fighter, so improve its aerial fighting capabilities. The phoenix ought to be much stronger than the viking, because Toss (if the game is going to work) will become dependent on stargate tech, and Terran gets a reactor to produce two vikings at the same time.

On September 11 2012 07:12 Rimak wrote:

Let me explain what we mean.

About Zealots
The difference between Fresh zealots and 3/3 chargelots is HUGE, but they are not actually that good and mostly they are just used as a meat shield, so your deathball can live longer.
Same goes for stalkers and stalkers with blink.

While they are really good when are working together, mostly gateway units is just junk you throw against your enemy so your robo/templar tech could do the killing.
You take the robo/templar tech away and gateways will just be annihilated badly, so this gets us to point that you MUST get AOE, you MUST get TECH or DIE.
So this puts P in position, that before tech you can do nothing, you can just barely survive early-midgame (and with swarmhost and gghound even more buffing Z and T midgame, it's going to be painful to watch), as your units just don't stand a chance against other race (just to be clear, I'm talking about macro games, not a 1-2 base allin).
And although lategame protoss units are really good in deathball, when you chip them away from it, they just die to everything.

About toss all in all.
Though Protoss is a race that has it's strong points, very strong tech, colossus (which i find stupid design), templar (which is awesome) but if we look into core mechanics they are very gimmick and stupid.
For example - the Force Field, both T and Z hate the force field, as it's clearly an unfair spell that destroys your army synergy, and the protoss should love the spell, right?... Wrong most of the protoss do not like it, as for having It in our arsenal P pay for It with the price of ALL the early game being around it, every single toss remember how many games he has lost due a single incorrectly placed FF, which is just plain stupid.
And there are other examples of this, like having a slow, flying 22 range 300/300 roach.

I'll quote you a guy from Bnet forums.

On September 11 2012 08:14 ChristianS wrote:

-Zealots are absolutely used for a "meat shield" in late-game scenarios quite often. Of course they are! It's a melee unit with 100 shields, and another 100 health which has a point of natural armor. The thing is designed to tank damage, as it was in BW for that matter.

-Stalkers, on the other hand, are pretty bad at tanking damage. They're not exactly low on hit points because they're Protoss units, but they're primarily good because they're mobile, ranged, and anti-air. In a colossus/zealot army, the zealots are designed to tank damage, but in a colossus/stalker/zealot army, the stalkers are there to shoot down vikings or corruptors and add a little DPS.

It's absolutely true that pure gateway armies tend to die to MMM, or to mass roach/ling, but that's absolutely how it should work.PvT basically functions this way: MMM kills gateway units, but toss higher tech kills MMM. Then Terran has specific counters to toss's higher tech to try and negate that advantage and force him back to the killable pure gateway army. If MMM couldn't convincingly kill gateway units, then Terran would have no way to beat Protoss even before higher tech came into play, and there'd really be no hope once you added in colossus.

Gateway armies aren't exactly weak, anyway. The 4gate absolutely wrecked the metagame for a long time, and 2base 6gate attacks can only really be defended by T because of bunkers + mass repair. Honestly without warpgate there would still be very little room for buffing gateway units, because delay a 6gate attack by the 30 seconds it takes to walk your stalkers across the field, and its still a REALLY powerful attack. But gateway units are still tier one units, and toss has much more powerful core compositions. Nor are they as uninteresting to attack with as random Bnet poster would have you believe; storms and forcefields require impressive micro, and colossi depend on positioning them to do damage before the vikings completely destroy them.