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I don't think 'weak' gateway units are a problem.
You don't want all races to have the meat of there army be a-move units. (I don't like the roach very much for that reason.)
So the Protoss advantage is a technical one. Being able to warp in, FF, and splash dmg. But P cannot straight up fight other armies early without FF or splash damage at similar supplies? That's ok. It works. It feels hindering playing Toss (I do!), but that's all right - it works - Protoss is not the weak race nobody plays, is it?
So: If you want different races, not all unites of all races can be cost effective in a simple way. Some meat has to go for cool abilities! And that helps the game to be fun and complex.
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The fact is that 95% of protoss builds are gate/robo builds, and all of those units benefit from the same upgrades. Not only that but those same protoss upgrades are LESS EXPENSIVE. Compare this to zerg, which has to choose between melee/ranged, or terran which must choose between bio/mech and also must build a separate structure for these upgrades (engineering bay for bio/armory for mech).
I guess what I am trying to say is, if gateway units are so weak then why is protoss so OP?
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On October 15 2012 20:58 GorGor wrote:
I guess what I am trying to say is, if gateway units are so weak then why is protoss so OP?
Maybe because protoss is anything but OP ?  Stalker has less dps than a single marine or zergling ...
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I really dont understand why Blizzard dont just explain why gateway units are weaker instead of just saying "they are powerful enough".
They are not as powerful as Terran or Zerg tier 1 units and thats fine, cause thats what sentries and our tech is for. Going up against a mass bioarmy from Terran, we need to hit with storms or do massive area of effect damage with colossus and forcefield to create distance. Thats how its balanced.
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We’ve been getting a lot of feedback from lower-level Protoss players saying that gateway units are weak because Warp Gates are too good, Force Fields are too difficult to use, etc.
Really?...Force Fields are difficult to use?...
I mean, perfect Force Fields like MC places are difficult, but everyone +Silver can place a half decent Force Field.
Is he talking about Bronze-level here, and should he really be worried about complaints from bronzies (sorry guys :-) ).
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On October 15 2012 21:08 loko1275 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2012 20:58 GorGor wrote:
I guess what I am trying to say is, if gateway units are so weak then why is protoss so OP? Maybe because protoss is anything but OP ? Stalker has less dps than a single marine or zergling ...
Marauder has even less dps, and nearly half the dps of a zealot.
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On October 15 2012 21:48 GorGor wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2012 21:08 loko1275 wrote:On October 15 2012 20:58 GorGor wrote:
I guess what I am trying to say is, if gateway units are so weak then why is protoss so OP? Maybe because protoss is anything but OP ? Stalker has less dps than a single marine or zergling ... Marauder has even less dps, and nearly half the dps of a zealot.
Marauder
DPS, No stim: 6.7 (13.4 vs armor)
DPS, Stim,: 10 (20 vs armor)
Range: 6
Supply: 2
Zealot
DPS: 13.3
Range: Melee
Supply: 2
Marine DPS
No stim: 7
Stim: 10.5
Supply: 1
Stalker DPS
DPS: 6.9 (9.7 vs armor)
Range: 6
Supply: 2
In terms of DPS, the bioball out-DPSs Zealot-Stalker ball by a crazy amount (mostly because Marines deal 10.5 dps per supply, the highest DPS per supply in the game after Zerglings (?)).
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Totally disagree with the idea that forcefields are NOT difficult to use.
Let me explain.
Map design currently revolves around helping protoss with forcefields. Every main has a small choke (for zerg? no; for terran? helps with early pool sure, but toss helps a ton), every natural has a small choke, and most of the thirds on the beta map set have a constriction except for the map where your natural is inside your main that I'm rmeembering.
Why is this? Because protoss requires forcefields and forcefields are not very good in open field combat. Can they be used there? Sure, we've all send the guy that lands 3-4 forcefields and dices up an army, BUT...we've all seen this on open maps like Metalopolis where the player then just walks around the forcefields and then a-moves while watching TV and kills off the protoss force.
Zealots and Stalkers are simply weak in every equal situation. They can be very good if you 1 base or 2 base all in as a timing against someone who went for 2 or 3 bases. Anything else they are just there to buffer for the real protoss units the high templar or colossus. I just wish there was a way that we could tweak colossus power down (make it a 4 food unit with smaller splash area and smaller cost) and increase the effectiveness of the gateway units. Maybe make a ground to ground only version of the stalker that is good verse marines, marauders, and roaches. Of course, one of the reasons marines are so good (other than being a crazy high dps unit that is also ranged!) is that the units are so small that the pack a lot of dps into a small space.
I think I'd like to see either a new unit for the protoss arsenal that bridges the gap between stim/medivac coming out and splash damage, and or some upgrades to existing units to make them better for the duration of the game. I mean the zealot gets charge but that doesn't even let it compete on equal footing with bio balls that micro on equal resources. I'm just not sure what they could get. Zerglings get speed and attack speed, zealots get charge, marines get stim/combat shield, marauders get concussive and stim. Zealots are also impacted worse by EMP and Fungal. There are a lot of creative ways to help them be a better longterm unit rather than just a mineral dump. Charge breaks fungal? Charge attacks do extra damage or snare? Possibly zealots get charge at the cyber and a second upgrade at the citadel (+1 zealot only armor? +hps? attacks snare?)
I don't know. It isn't that protoss is fundamentally weaker it is that protoss plays in a very funky way where maps have to be designed for them and the early units do not keep up with their counterpart units very well.
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On October 15 2012 21:56 SarcasmMonster wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2012 21:48 GorGor wrote:On October 15 2012 21:08 loko1275 wrote:On October 15 2012 20:58 GorGor wrote:
I guess what I am trying to say is, if gateway units are so weak then why is protoss so OP? Maybe because protoss is anything but OP ? Stalker has less dps than a single marine or zergling ... Marauder has even less dps, and nearly half the dps of a zealot. In terms of DPS, the bioball out-DPSs Zealot-Stalker ball by a crazy amount (mostly because Marines deal 10.5 dps per supply, the highest DPS per supply in the game after Zerglings (?)).
Ya know I have to wonder if Tom Cadwell was still with blizzard if this would happen. He was very outspoken about the need for melee to have higher dps per food/cost than ranged due to the way stacking range units amplify their power.
I guess he's doing an even better job on League of Legends. 
And yes, I think that protoss as a whole is underpowered not overpowered. The map making community has done a great job creating maps that allow protoss and zerg to compete. In early seasons maps like metalopolis or the 2 player desert map with main base back door rocks or lost temple were very tough for protoss (first temple specifically) but GSL especially has solved many of the problems with those race balance by making maps that work.
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For those that respond that gateway units aren't weak I'm wondering if you've spent much time playing broodwar? I understand it's a different game and I'm not arguing that it be BW2. I'm talking about unit feel. In BW zealots felt much stronger. I understand how that same Zealot from BW wouldn't be balanced due to the warpgate mechanic and sentries. But I think that's the basis for this discussion.
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On October 15 2012 21:56 SarcasmMonster wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2012 21:48 GorGor wrote:On October 15 2012 21:08 loko1275 wrote:On October 15 2012 20:58 GorGor wrote:
I guess what I am trying to say is, if gateway units are so weak then why is protoss so OP? Maybe because protoss is anything but OP ? Stalker has less dps than a single marine or zergling ... Marauder has even less dps, and nearly half the dps of a zealot. Marauder DPS, No stim: 6.7 (13.4 vs armor) DPS, Stim,: 10 (20 vs armor) Range: 6 Supply: 2 Zealot DPS: 13.3 Range: Melee Supply: 2 Marine DPS No stim: 7 Stim: 10.5 Supply: 1 Stalker DPS DPS: 6.9 (9.7 vs armor) Range: 6 Supply: 2 In terms of DPS, the bioball out-DPSs Zealot-Stalker ball by a crazy amount (mostly because Marines deal 10.5 dps per supply, the highest DPS per supply in the game after Zerglings (?)).
If marines deal so much dps then answer this simple question: How much dps does a marine do to a stalker that is kiting it? What if the stalker blinks away right after it's shields go down?
I guess there is a bit more to the discussion than quoting the dps numbers...
I don't get it anyway. You are factoring the dps with stim? Are you also going to factor in that stim reduces the health so the marines die much easier? Why don't you factor in guardian shield too, or the fact that marines can't do any dps while a stalker is kiting or blinking away into the main to kill all of your scvs, or while it is trapped helplessly behind force fields, or how the marine does basically 0 damage to a zealot charging and killing the marine in 3 hits?
So your point is that in a vacuum (or on paper) there is more dps in bio units? I suppose this is true, however it's only a slight advantage in terms of numbers, and mostly cannot be used as colossus and stalker outrange bio, not to mention storm melts terran that let their units clump. Also force fields can cut them in half, or guardian shield can be used, and blink micro, plus the protoss units all have more hp/shields. Stalkers for example have about 4x as much as a marine, so considering a marine has 0.1 more dps suddenly doesn't sound as strong, especially if you factor in the 10 hp loss for stim that is 35 hp for a marine and 160 total hp/shield for stalker. Maybe for the 1-2 seconds before it is obliterated by a single storm or a colossus there is more damage output from a bioball, but the simple fact is that protoss has the strongest deathball, and terran "bioball" melts in seconds is not a strategy, it is a byproduct of the pathing and actually hurts the terran in basically all engagements.
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On October 15 2012 22:53 GorGor wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2012 21:56 SarcasmMonster wrote:On October 15 2012 21:48 GorGor wrote:On October 15 2012 21:08 loko1275 wrote:On October 15 2012 20:58 GorGor wrote:
I guess what I am trying to say is, if gateway units are so weak then why is protoss so OP? Maybe because protoss is anything but OP ? Stalker has less dps than a single marine or zergling ... Marauder has even less dps, and nearly half the dps of a zealot. Marauder DPS, No stim: 6.7 (13.4 vs armor) DPS, Stim,: 10 (20 vs armor) Range: 6 Supply: 2 Zealot DPS: 13.3 Range: Melee Supply: 2 Marine DPS No stim: 7 Stim: 10.5 Supply: 1 Stalker DPS DPS: 6.9 (9.7 vs armor) Range: 6 Supply: 2 In terms of DPS, the bioball out-DPSs Zealot-Stalker ball by a crazy amount (mostly because Marines deal 10.5 dps per supply, the highest DPS per supply in the game after Zerglings (?)). If marines deal so much dps then answer this simple question: How much dps does a marine do to a stalker that is kiting it? What if the stalker blinks away right after it's shields go down? I guess there is a bit more to the discussion than quoting the dps numbers... I don't get it anyway. You are factoring the dps with stim? Are you also going to factor in that stim reduces the health so the marines die much easier? Why don't you factor in guardian shield too, or the fact that marines can't do any dps while a stalker is kiting or blinking away into the main to kill all of your scvs, or while it is trapped helplessly behind force fields, or how the marine does basically 0 damage to a zealot charging and killing the marine in 3 hits? So your point is that in a vacuum (or on paper) there is more dps in bio units? I suppose this is true, however it's only a slight advantage in terms of numbers, and mostly cannot be used as colossus and stalker outrange bio, not to mention storm melts terran that let their units clump. Also force fields can cut them in half, or guardian shield can be used, and blink micro, plus the protoss units all have more hp/shields. Stalkers for example have about 4x as much as a marine, so considering a marine has 0.1 more dps suddenly doesn't sound as strong, especially if you factor in the 10 hp loss for stim that is 35 hp for a marine and 160 total hp/shield for stalker. Maybe for the 1-2 seconds before it is obliterated by a single storm or a colossus there is more damage output from a bioball, but the simple fact is that protoss has the strongest deathball, and terran "bioball" melts in seconds is not a strategy, it is a byproduct of the pathing and actually hurts the terran in basically all engagements.
I wrote the post because I thought you were suggesting that Zealot/Stalker out-dps's Marine/Marauder. Maybe you weren't.
DPS is a big decider of what makes a unit good in small groups/drops because of how much damage they can inflict before your opponents can react.
High HP/low DPS (Zealot + Stalker) makes them better at meatshielding your deathball, so works better in bigger groups.
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On October 13 2012 08:49 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:
I am a VERY low level player but a very very large consumer of pro games, I watch hours and hours and hours of matches. I don't want warpgate changed for me, I couldn't care less for me. I want warpgate and gateway changed because it is illogical.
Why should the more convienient option (warpgate) have a better cooldown than the gateway?
Why not just make them fucking warpgates to begin with?
No, I want them flipped so that there's a tradeoff, a risk / reward. I want more exciting games to watch. I want to see players have to balance between gateways and warpgates and make a tactical decision if they have all gates, all warps or a mix of both. It could make for more exciting battles.
They just don't get it, just fucking remove the gateway and be done with it.
Removing the BM, it's all my words ^^
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On October 15 2012 23:55 ZeroClick wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2012 08:49 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:
I am a VERY low level player but a very very large consumer of pro games, I watch hours and hours and hours of matches. I don't want warpgate changed for me, I couldn't care less for me. I want warpgate and gateway changed because it is illogical.
Why should the more convienient option (warpgate) have a better cooldown than the gateway?
Why not just make them fucking warpgates to begin with?
No, I want them flipped so that there's a tradeoff, a risk / reward. I want more exciting games to watch. I want to see players have to balance between gateways and warpgates and make a tactical decision if they have all gates, all warps or a mix of both. It could make for more exciting battles.
They just don't get it, just fucking remove the gateway and be done with it.
Removing the BM, it's all my words ^^
When the argument for this trade-off is: "I don't like warpgates. Let's invent a way to phase out warpgates, except for these edge cases where I think they're neat." then I don't think Blizzard should listen to the community. It's better design to simply remove the warpgate then, instead of pointlessly handicapping it. Imagine anyone actually playing a game which constantly forces you to use gateways for efficiency reasons when warpgates are cooler and conceptually the superior alternative without those handicaps.
The simpler solution is to just move warpgate up in the tech tree and accept that protoss players will have to adjust to a switch in macro mechanics in mid-game. The other solution is to remove gateways and add an upgrade along the lines of "before this upgrade it takes 30 seconds to warp in a unit and they take additional damage, now it takes 3 seconds and no additional damage".
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Warpgate/gateway cool-down/build times should be reversed. The main advantage of warpgate should be the nearly instant units anywhere you have a power field, not shorter cool-down/build time but longer.
Once warpgates are researched, gateways should automatically change and units should still be able to get built out of the warpgates directly. If you want to warp-in units, you will have to press a warp-in key, and then the unit.
With this change, I think the mothership core and mothership should should have a power field after an upgrade from Twilight, and warp prism power field may get a buff.
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Blizzard is never going to touch the fundamentals, but since we want to add more choice to the fundamental macro mechanics for kicks. I wanted to look at the Mule and Larva Inject. They're such no-brainers.
How about the Larva Inject larvae produce units that produce retarded units, with only 75% of the stats but same supply and cost? Does the Zerg want more stuff or higher quality stuff?
And for the Mule, it should destroy double the resources it mines. Speeding up harvesting but lower overall harvesting.
Sooo maaany chooices.
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On October 15 2012 22:53 GorGor wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2012 21:56 SarcasmMonster wrote:On October 15 2012 21:48 GorGor wrote:On October 15 2012 21:08 loko1275 wrote:On October 15 2012 20:58 GorGor wrote:
I guess what I am trying to say is, if gateway units are so weak then why is protoss so OP? Maybe because protoss is anything but OP ? Stalker has less dps than a single marine or zergling ... Marauder has even less dps, and nearly half the dps of a zealot. Marauder DPS, No stim: 6.7 (13.4 vs armor) DPS, Stim,: 10 (20 vs armor) Range: 6 Supply: 2 Zealot DPS: 13.3 Range: Melee Supply: 2 Marine DPS No stim: 7 Stim: 10.5 Supply: 1 Stalker DPS DPS: 6.9 (9.7 vs armor) Range: 6 Supply: 2 In terms of DPS, the bioball out-DPSs Zealot-Stalker ball by a crazy amount (mostly because Marines deal 10.5 dps per supply, the highest DPS per supply in the game after Zerglings (?)). If marines deal so much dps then answer this simple question: How much dps does a marine do to a stalker that is kiting it? What if the stalker blinks away right after it's shields go down? I guess there is a bit more to the discussion than quoting the dps numbers... I don't get it anyway. You are factoring the dps with stim? Are you also going to factor in that stim reduces the health so the marines die much easier? Why don't you factor in guardian shield too, or the fact that marines can't do any dps while a stalker is kiting or blinking away into the main to kill all of your scvs, or while it is trapped helplessly behind force fields, or how the marine does basically 0 damage to a zealot charging and killing the marine in 3 hits? So your point is that in a vacuum (or on paper) there is more dps in bio units? I suppose this is true, however it's only a slight advantage in terms of numbers, and mostly cannot be used as colossus and stalker outrange bio, not to mention storm melts terran that let their units clump. Also force fields can cut them in half, or guardian shield can be used, and blink micro, plus the protoss units all have more hp/shields. Stalkers for example have about 4x as much as a marine, so considering a marine has 0.1 more dps suddenly doesn't sound as strong, especially if you factor in the 10 hp loss for stim that is 35 hp for a marine and 160 total hp/shield for stalker. Maybe for the 1-2 seconds before it is obliterated by a single storm or a colossus there is more damage output from a bioball, but the simple fact is that protoss has the strongest deathball, and terran "bioball" melts in seconds is not a strategy, it is a byproduct of the pathing and actually hurts the terran in basically all engagements.
Do you have any idea what we're talking about in this thread?
No one is saying Protoss is underpowered, which seems to be what you're arguing against. What we're saying is that Protoss Tier 1 units are weak when compared to other race's T1 units. This isn't a balance whine, it's a fact. It leads to some of the very situations you're complaining about too.
If warpgate were removed, it would mean Protoss T1 could be buffed. If Protoss T1 were buffed, Colossus/Storm could be nerfed. This would lead to way less turtling until T3, which is the go-to play for Protoss in WoL. It's boring to play. It's not fun to watch. Even though it's balanced, it's not good for the game as a whole.
That's what we're talking about here. If you want to discuss balance, there's plenty of other places to do so.
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On October 16 2012 03:15 Cloak wrote:
Blizzard is never going to touch the fundamentals, but since we want to add more choice to the fundamental macro mechanics for kicks. I wanted to look at the Mule and Larva Inject. They're such no-brainers.
How about the Larva Inject larvae produce units that produce retarded units, with only 75% of the stats but same supply and cost? Does the Zerg want more stuff or higher quality stuff?
And for the Mule, it should destroy double the resources it mines. Speeding up harvesting but lower overall harvesting.
Sooo maaany chooices.
I've seen lots of people say this. Is this pessimism or is there some strong reason to believe this.
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The problem with queens and larvae inject is that you don't actually build many hatcheries, which was an important focus of economic management in brood war for zerg. The queen's existence as an early game anti-air in a useless-hydralisk game makes sense. However it really does not need to produce larvae. Zergs would simply build more hatcheries to get more larvae. Similar to warp gate being strictly dominant over gateways, hatch plus queen for larvae production is strictly dominant over multiple hatcheries. And the problem with MULEs is that they add a lump sum of only minerals very quickly, making terran considerably better at making mineral-intensive units off low economy.
Very few of SC2's new units or changes have improved the game. Removing the selection limit, better unit handling, multiple building select, engine improvements, etc. are all very well done. However most of the gameplay changes are ill-considered at best, and outright silly and gimmicky at worst. Such as destructible rocks as a "feature." Or Warp Gate as opposed to actually having gateway units be the strongest T1 units.
The SC2 design team should have taken Brood War as a baseline, and only made changes where there was a concrete gameplay gain from doing so. Taking out pieces because they wanted to include something and there "wasn't room" should have sent up red flags that the new content was going to be a problem.
I for one would be quite OK with having 15-20 units per race, rather than being set on a strict limit matching Brood War.
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You know what I think is just flat out wrong about all those "gateway units are weak because of warp gates and sentries arguements"?
Throughout all of WoL, there were like 3 real changes to gateway units stats, all of them during the WoL beta:
-10shields for zealots
+2dmg vs nonarmored targets for stalkers (and the upgrade change to make them en par with all the other units; no upgrade before correctly rounded)
-2 damage for sentries
Basically those units were designed and anytime there was a problem with warpgates (or blink), the research time got changed. The units were basically never touched. The game did not get balanced around warpgate or forcefields, warpgates got balanced around the units.
What people simply want to ignore is that an antigateway unit got introduced - the roach - and bio is now playable because of the reduced AoE and the tankier marauder that does not get shredded too hard by AoE.
Add on top of that there is the huge fact that it is simply different to control 48zerglings vs 12zealots in BW than it is SC2 and therefore Protoss got quite a nerf, not because the units are worse, but because the units that have always been superior to gateway units are now controllable.
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EPT
