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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. We’ve also noticed that scouting in Heart of the Swarm is more important than ever due to new threats out there.
We’re comfortable with the current power level of gateway units and their fit in the Protoss arsenal. It’s not uncommon for mass Zealots or lots of Stalkers to do awesome things. Perhaps Sentries can be a bit difficult to utilize, but this is only because this unit revolves so much around good Force Field usage.
-David Kim
Here David Kim suggests lowlevel players are vocal about the Gateway/Warpgate dynamic but ultimately states that it is not really an issue.
Thanks for the post! There is a lot of good detailed feedback here. I don't agree with everything but it's a great discussion. For example I don't believe that "Gateway units are weak because of warp-in." I do agree that Sentry is core to Gateway and that Gateway units are balanced around the use of Sentry. What makes this worse is that Sentries are hard to use. Guardian Shield isn't too difficult to manage, but Force Fields can be very difficult to use correctly. We are talking about ways to make the Sentry easier to use so more Protoss players can get value out of him.
-Dustin Browder
Here Dustin Browder reconfirms Blizzard's stance that Warpgate's are not the reason Gatway units are weak.
To high-level players (presumably masters and above), is Blizzard right or wrong about Gateway/Warpgate?
1. Are Gateway units weak?
+ Show Spoiler +Poll: Gateway units are...Weak (148) 58% Strong (59) 23% Neither (48) 19% 255 total votes Your vote: Gateway units are... (Vote): Strong
(Vote): Weak
(Vote): Neither
2. If you think Gateway units are weak, is it because Warpgate is too strong OR too early in the tech tree OR too cheap (50 mins and 50 gas)? (N/A if you don't think Gateway units are weak)
+ Show Spoiler +Poll: Gateway units are weak because CURRENT Warpgate is too good?Agree (132) 71% Disagree (53) 29% 185 total votes Your vote: Gateway units are weak because CURRENT Warpgate is too good? (Vote): Agree
(Vote): Disagree
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Define 'Gateway units'. I mean, zealot and stalker are weakish. But when you add the sentry, also a gateway unit, they are pretty strong, and if you add High Templar, another gateway unit, they are very strong.
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I think gateways weakness is more a combination of forcefield and warpgate than just warpgate.
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On October 13 2012 07:06 Grendel wrote:
Define 'Gateway units'. I mean, zealot and stalker are weakish. But when you add the sentry, also a gateway unit, they are pretty strong, and if you add High Templar, another gateway unit, they are very strong.
I do agree that Sentry is core to Gateway and that Gateway units are balanced around the use of Sentry.
Dustin counts Sentry as part of Gateway unit.
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is the archon a gateway unit?
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I think blizzard misinterpreted the issue... it's not a balance issue... it's a design issue. Warpgates forces gateway units to be weaker, which leads to a reliance on FF's and Colossi
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On October 13 2012 07:09 rpgalon wrote:
is the archon a gateway unit?
I guess. It benefits from Warp-ins so it's relevant.
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Everybody knows that gateway units aren't cost efficient against bio and roach/ling. It's not just a low level issue.
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as a mech player, gateway units are damn strong.
as bio, the gateway units bar templar/archon are damn weak.
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It used to be that Zeals were harder to deal with (TvP) at lower levels, ironically. When your micro is sub-par, you can't kite very well, even with concussive shells. With the inclusion of Battle Hellions, Zeals are much more easily dealt with. Thus, Gateway units as a whole seem weaker because Zeals are less effective against Bio.
Stalkers have always been crap against Marauders, so end of story there.
Sentries have no fighting capabilities whatsoever, but Blizz has a point here. Early game Toss is based around FF. If you can't use FF effectively, you die easily to early aggression.
As for PvZ, Gateway units have been weak ever since Stephano started using Roaches.
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Forcefields aren't as difficult to use as Dustin Browder makes them out to be. The only difficult thing is probably watching your ramp or front door and forcefielding in time.
David Kim really needs to do some critical thinking about this issue... This is one of the first times that he sounds genuinely naive about a situation.
If warpgate was a lot weaker or even nonexistent, pretty much every warpgate timing wouldn't be viable anymore due to the long walking distances, cyber tech gateway units would officially be the weakest for timing attacks.
Balancing around Forcefield is also stupid. That's saying protoss cant even engage in a head on battle and has to engage only parts of their army, this is self evident proof that gateway units are weak, it makes gateway units too much of a glass cannon.
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Alright time for an essay.
Why Warp Gate breaks Protoss early game + Show Spoiler +
The Warp Gate is strictly dominant over the Gateway. It builds every unit more quickly, and allows them to be warped in anywhere, negating defender's advantage. Even if it did not allow the meat of the ability (the warp in anywhere) it would still be strictly dominant over the gateway simply because it reduces the build times of all gateway units by about 10 seconds.
This is the reason why the 4gate, and other "fast Warp Gate" issues have appeared. As soon as that research finishes, Protoss has a HUGE surge in power. Gateway production cycle finishes, transform to Warp Gate, instantly warp in more units. Obviously conducive to strong all-in at this timing.
Furthermore, the boost in production means that Protoss is also in an exceptionally good position to continue their all-in. The negation of defender's advantage regardless of the size of the map, and the ability to ignore ramps by warping in on the high ground together added up to an incredibly powerful early game that does directly result in the zealot and stalker being weaker than perhaps they should be.
In terms of raw numbers, gateway units are weaker than they were in Brood War. The zealot has less shield than in BW, and is a melee unit which has been indirectly nerfed by the engine. The stalker has less HP and considerably less damage than the dragoon, not to mention its lack of a range upgrade. True, it has a higher movement speed, but in terms of actual combat power, it is considerably weaker. Warp Gate is the cause. This even applies to templar tech. High Templar with warp in was such a problem that they removed the energy upgrade. DT warp in would be an issue if it weren't delayed by the most expensive and useless tech structure in the game, with a tremendous build time. Warp Gate broke the gateway units by buffing their logistics so much their actual power had to be reduced.
Protoss early game is thus weak. And they are dependent on Sentries, forcefield, and map design to stay alive.
Why Warp Gate breaks Protoss macro + Show Spoiler +
Alright now onto why the macro mechanic of warp-in is fundamentally flawed from an economic/industrial standpoint.
Plain and simple, Warp Gate causes your unit production to be front-loaded to paying for it. Rather than spend money, wait for unit to be produced, and then receive unit, the warp gate is effectively "producing" the unit for no cost while you wait for its cooldown. You are paying for the unit at the END of its production cycle, rather than the beginning. This is a huge change.
You only pay for the unit when you actually want or need it. If you are building constantly out of all your warp gates, this doesn't really matter that much. It certainly matters that warp gates build units considerably faster, meaning you need fewer warp gates than you would gateways. But if you always purchase when the cooldown is up, it does not really matter if the cost is at the beginning or the end. There is a small efficiency gain from getting to pay later, but it's not really a big deal. The big issue comes from warp gates with their cooldowns up, but which the player either cannot build from, or does not need to build from at that time. See the section on protoss endgame.
Why Warp Gate breaks Protoss endgame + Show Spoiler +
In the extreme late game, protoss has the option of building more warp gates. This is HUGE. With a large bank and 50 warp gates on standby, the Protoss now has 100 more supply available than they actually have in play. After, or even during a battle, the Protoss can immediately warp in more units.
Every warp gate effectively builds a unit, and then keeps it in reserve. These units in the warpgates do not cost supply to maintain, and they don't even cost resources until you actually want to put the unit on the board. Which you can do in any location you please, including directly into the battlefield to reinforce your army.
The effect of gateway units being "stored" in warpgates on top of your maxed army should not be underestimated. It gives protoss armies incredible momentum in maxed army confrontations. Even if Protoss and their opponent are both largely destroyed in the confrontation, the warped-in reinforcements hit immediately.
For Terran and Zerg, you pay for your units and then wait for them to build. Zerg can massively parallelize their production across larvae and hatcheries, so this cost is not as great. But for Terran, production facilities simply cannot compete with warp gates. Both sides are maxed, armies clash, both sides suffer casualties. Terran BEGINS production of their new units, while Protoss warps new ones in immediately. This difference in production is the NUMBER ONE REASON why mech does not work against protoss- because losing units against a protoss is an immediate loss due to inability to replace those units fast enough, even if you have the bank and production facilities to do so. You simply cannot wait one or two tank or thor build times without losing the game.
Essentially I am saying three things. Firstly, that the potential to abuse warpgates early game (warp into base, timing when warp gate research finishes, extra production after research finished) weakens gateway units. Secondly, Warp Gate production is front-loaded to actually paying for the unit. And thirdly, when Protoss is maxed, every Warp Gate they possess is effectively an extra unit that they haven't paid for yet, which can be actualized on the field anywhere, immediately.
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Holy fucking shit how insulting.
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.
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As a Master+ Zerg and low Master Terran I feel that gateway units are too strong (coupled with sentries) when used properly against Z. However when I play Terran I laugh at gateway units. Blink all you want, it won't do anything! Lol.
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On October 13 2012 08:53 Mistakes wrote:
As a Master+ Zerg and low Master Terran I feel that gateway units are too strong (coupled with sentries) when used properly against Z. However when I play Terran I laugh at gateway units. Blink all you want, it won't do anything! Lol.
This is completely accurate from my experience. This is why a large portion of protoss players do 2 base all ins against zerg. I suggest making gateway units produce faster from gateways (defenders advantage), but produce slower at a range (warpgate). Currently there is no single reason what so ever to turn your warpgates into gateways. This would also delay aggression, which would make all ins against zerg worse. And if you want to warp in, youll have to wait longer for a warp in -> makes it easier for zerg to deal with.
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They're comfortable with how they fit in the protoss arsenal? The most expensive early game units are meat shields after 10 minutes.
I lol'd.
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On October 13 2012 07:39 AndAgain wrote:
Everybody knows that gateway units aren't cost efficient against bio and roach/ling. It's not just a low level issue.
Yes everybody knows that, but it not an 'issue'. Gateways units are fine balance wise as they are.
It's a design concept as someone else has said. Personally I don't mind warp gate how it is but would be open to changes also.
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Masters player here, when ppl say gateway units are weak I just cring and assume its a low league toss player expressing his sense of entitlement. Every single gateway unit is quite fine, not a weak one among them. I play all races btw.
I mean, I can beat masters toss and terran players with never making a single stargate unit or a single colossus in macro games no less...so ya, I'm thinking gate units are fine.
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Three stalkers and a zealot costs 475 minerals and 150 gas. You would be hard pressed to find a composition of terran or zerg units of the same cost which is actually beaten by this protoss force. A terran can get 5-ish marauders for that, depending on how you want to equate the value of minerals to gas. And a zerg can get 6-7ish roaches.
I myself am a masters terran. I think gateway units should be more effective against bio, and mech should be more effective against gateway units. Higher cost per supply should be stronger than lower cost per supply, and gateway costs more than bio, and mech costs more than gateway units.
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Fixing warp gate is so Easy
Make each type of gate way unit have a seperate warp in time.
instead of all gateway units currently having 5 seconds.
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remove the W key, problem solved
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On October 13 2012 08:49 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:
Holy fucking shit how insulting.
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.
This is why there is seperate opinions of high and low level players. if you dont understand why having warpgate available from the get go is an issue than why are you commenting on it. It's these really strong opinions like yours from players that don't really get the game anyway that are just plain silly, and it can be really frustrating for blizzard having to read through all of them. What you 'think' would make an exciting game actually would not.
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calm the fuck down everyone
We have said on repeated occasions that we will be addressing Swarm units before we look to address WoL units. Please keep that in mind.
We are paying attention, even if it doesn't seem that way to you.
-Cloaken
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6864316601#11
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On October 13 2012 11:26 MateShade wrote:
What you 'think' would make an exciting game actually would not.
The early game can be addressed, the mid to late game having warp as the only choice is where they could improve the game with a tradeoff decision. If you can't see how this could be more interesting then IDKWTF.
Also, I got the idea from a few posts here and agreed with it, it's been an idea pushed on TL by many, many experienced players for a very long time. The blanket post by Blizzard that it's something only the newbs are requesting is clearly insulting to many high skilled players. Trying to rope my lack of skill into it as if it's my idea is ridiculous. Argue with the rest of the thread, don't take the easy pickings because I'm honest enough to admit my skills.
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On October 13 2012 11:32 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2012 11:26 MateShade wrote:
What you 'think' would make an exciting game actually would not. The early game can be addressed, the mid to late game having warp as the only choice is where they could improve the game with a tradeoff decision. If you can't see how this could be more interesting then IDKWTF. Also, I got the idea from a few posts here and agreed with it, it's been an idea pushed on TL by many, many experienced players for a very long time. The blanket post by Blizzard that it's something only the newbs are requesting is clearly insulting to many high skilled players. Trying to rope my lack of skill into it as if it's my idea is ridiculous. Argue with the rest of the thread, don't take the easy pickings because I'm honest enough to admit my skills.
I'm not trying to have a go at you personally. But I actually dont believe that a high % of high level players want warpgate changed. Sure people have been vocal about it but in reality, most of the top players think its quite okay and would rather many other things be changed first before that is looked at.
I'm not looking at your skill to say your idea is rediculous. Your idea is just rediculous. Warp gate available straight away would compeltely break the game. The fact that youre a low level player simply provides an explanation as to why you have such a bad idea.
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On October 13 2012 12:19 MateShade wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2012 11:32 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:On October 13 2012 11:26 MateShade wrote:
What you 'think' would make an exciting game actually would not. The early game can be addressed, the mid to late game having warp as the only choice is where they could improve the game with a tradeoff decision. If you can't see how this could be more interesting then IDKWTF. Also, I got the idea from a few posts here and agreed with it, it's been an idea pushed on TL by many, many experienced players for a very long time. The blanket post by Blizzard that it's something only the newbs are requesting is clearly insulting to many high skilled players. Trying to rope my lack of skill into it as if it's my idea is ridiculous. Argue with the rest of the thread, don't take the easy pickings because I'm honest enough to admit my skills. I'm not trying to have a go at you personally. But I actually dont believe that a high % of high level players want warpgate changed. Sure people have been vocal about it but in reality, most of the top players think its quite okay and would rather many other things be changed first before that is looked at. I'm not looking at your skill to say your idea is rediculous. Your idea is just rediculous. Warp gate available straight away would compeltely break the game. The fact that youre a low level player simply provides an explanation as to why you have such a bad idea.
I don't want warp gate straight away, that's a ridiculous suggestion. I'm being facetious when I say thatperhaps it's not obvious enough?
It's very obvious why it shouldn't be there right away.
The issue is that the gateway becomes utterly irrelivant after about 5 minutes and it becomes a warpgate only game. I'm posing the idea that having gateway units building faster (not slower) than warpgate units, adds a different dynamic to the game and how it plays out. As I stated earlier,.. a trade off.
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I don't know, as a zerg I've lost plenty of games to blink-stalker, and zealot archon, and if I don't handle early game zealot/sentry harass correctly I lose units. I'm not convinced that gateway units need to be any stronger.
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On October 13 2012 10:19 ledarsi wrote:
Three stalkers and a zealot costs 475 minerals and 150 gas. You would be hard pressed to find a composition of terran or zerg units of the same cost which is actually beaten by this protoss force. A terran can get 5-ish marauders for that, depending on how you want to equate the value of minerals to gas. And a zerg can get 6-7ish roaches.
I myself am a masters terran. I think gateway units should be more effective against bio, and mech should be more effective against gateway units. Higher cost per supply should be stronger than lower cost per supply, and gateway costs more than bio, and mech costs more than gateway units.
lol I could make that same comparison for every race, what a joke.
Durr for the cost of 6 roaches a terran can get like 5 marauders and just kite them endlessly! Omg for the cost of 10 marines 2 banelings and a few lings can just kill them so clearly zerg and terran tier 1 units are too weak as well blizzard seriously needs to fix this shit.
making silly little comparisons like that do not strengthen your argument.
Also for people who think Gateway units are weak...just stop. The real lesson here is that you simply don't know how to use your units properly. Now, some say "gateway" units and only really mean Zealots/Stalker...which is retarded because there are another 4 whole units you can bust out of your gateway at the drop of a hat and if you only are crying about Stalker/Zealot then say Stalker/Zealot.
I guess all I really want to say is that Protoss players in general are still really bad in the strategy department, they lied to the community a while ago and said they were getting better and they stopped crying about "stephano style" mass roach [a hilariously easy strat to beat when any common ladder player attempts it] but in reality most Toss players have not really evolved much at all. Like, do you Toss players even realize you have a thing called a Warp Prism which is basically an incredibly inexpensive flying Nydus which allows you to push your "weak" gateway units into incredibly favorable and cost effective positions? No, I doubt you did know that since most Protoss players think the only use for Warp Prism is to pull off a cheese build where they drop Sentry in the main and FF the ramp.
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In my opinion, Warp Gate and Larva Injects are what killed the game. Just look at all the match ups. NO ONE uses the Gateway once the Warp Gate is finished researching because the Warp Gate offers no negatives. And because of how fast Warp Gate reinforces, Gateway units must be made weaker to compensate. Just think of Roach vs Stalker and how it is a complete joke. Thus Protoss is pigeonholed into having to rely on boring units like the Colossus, abilities like Force Field and turtling into a deathball in order to actually have a chance. In my opinion, Warp Gates should be changed so that they can only be used in conjunction with the Warp Prism and have the Stalker buffed.
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Are we still talking about warpgate as if it was a thing that would ever change or go away. Its nearly 2013, I think that ship has sailed.
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on the first page I just told how to correctly balance warp gate in a very simple way.
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Masters here, but I consume pro games mostly these days. Warpgate doesn't affect much with unit balance. Defender's advantage has always been circumventable, so it's not really a fundamental balance issue.
It's more the Sentry dependence. Stalkers need their Guardian Aura to trade well, Zealots need their Forcefields to reach things. Stalkers get Blink eventually so they overcome their dependence, but Charge doesn't really fix things nearly as well.
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On October 13 2012 13:29 Plansix wrote:
Are we still talking about warpgate as if it was a thing that would ever change or go away. Its nearly 2013, I think that ship has sailed.
Go away, ship has sailed - but change? We still have hope.
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On October 13 2012 12:57 BeeNu wrote:which allows you to push your "weak" gateway units into incredibly favorable and cost effective positions?
This is the whole point. Warp gate (including with warp prisms) lets the protoss put their units into favorable positions. Most importantly, in or around the opponent's base instead of their own, requiring time to reinforce.
Let me put this another way. As soon as the warp gate research finishes, and the protoss finishes a production cycle, converts their gateways, and immediately warps in, would that not be an excellent time to attack? And after that point, all their units build 10 seconds faster. This is why the 4gate, as the leanest fast warp gate build, has been such a sticky, recurring problem. Because the basic principle of "research warp gate, attack" is fundamentally a good idea. If you think this has had no effect on the nature of gateway units, you are a fool.
And I wasn't naming the compositions that do work against gateway units. I was challenging the reader to come up with any way to spend those resources that would lose. There are not many of them, which is odd considering the cost of gateway units. Due to forcefield, these units have the option of fighting very favorably, and the option of not fighting at all if there is a choke to block. These factors are also very significant. Especially as it allows protoss to defend regardless of early game military strength; force field ignores unit strength, map design permitting.
And then there is the fact that warp gate front-loads the production time of the gateway. The protoss pays for their production at the end of the production cycle, not the beginning. In terms of economic efficiency gain, this is marginal. However in terms of logistical strength in a maxed-army situation, it is invaluable. Each warp gate with warp ready can throw in another unit onto the board in 5 seconds flat. The opponent has to start producing units after they sustain casualties. The protoss' production keeps going regardless of whether they can pay for it, in resources or supply, and consequently when they can pay for it they have no need to wait.
What I suggest is to balance Protoss production around Gateways, and have Warp Gate be a useful technique that is strictly less efficient for mass production, and significantly less efficient that you are paying for the convenience each time you use it. I don't think it is unsalvageable or inherently an unworkable idea, but the way the numbers are right now it is ridiculous, and has a serious effect on the usefulness and utility of gateway units.
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On October 13 2012 14:16 ledarsi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2012 12:57 BeeNu wrote:which allows you to push your "weak" gateway units into incredibly favorable and cost effective positions? This is the whole point. Warp gate (including with warp prisms) lets the protoss put their units into favorable positions. Most importantly, in or around the opponent's base instead of their own, requiring time to reinforce. Let me put this another way. As soon as the warp gate research finishes, and the protoss finishes a production cycle, converts their gateways, and immediately warps in, would that not be an excellent time to attack? And after that point, all their units build 10 seconds faster. This is why the 4gate, as the leanest fast warp gate build, has been such a sticky, recurring problem. Because the basic principle of "research warp gate, attack" is fundamentally a good idea. If you think this has had no effect on the nature of gateway units, you are a fool. And I wasn't naming the compositions that do work against gateway units. I was challenging the reader to come up with any way to spend those resources that would lose. There are not many of them, which is odd considering the cost of gateway units. Due to forcefield, these units have the option of fighting very favorably, and the option of not fighting at all if there is a choke to block. These factors are also very significant. Especially as it allows protoss to defend regardless of early game military strength; force field ignores unit strength, map design permitting. And then there is the fact that warp gate front-loads the production time of the gateway. The protoss pays for their production at the end of the production cycle, not the beginning. In terms of economic efficiency gain, this is marginal. However in terms of logistical strength in a maxed-army situation, it is invaluable. Each warp gate with warp ready can throw in another unit onto the board in 5 seconds flat. The opponent has to start producing units after they sustain casualties. The protoss' production keeps going regardless of whether they can pay for it, in resources or supply, and consequently when they can pay for it they have no need to wait. What I suggest is to balance Protoss production around Gateways, and have Warp Gate be a useful technique that is strictly less efficient for mass production, and significantly less efficient that you are paying for the convenience each time you use it. I don't think it is unsalvageable or inherently an unworkable idea, but the way the numbers are right now it is ridiculous, and has a serious effect on the usefulness and utility of gateway units.
Don't get me wrong, I've always thought it was a bit silly that Gateways don't have any value aside from being the stepping stone to Warpgates and it'd be nice to be changed, but I'm more talking about the common opinion OP is referring to that Gate units are weak because of Warpin. The units are strong but obviously balanced to not be op in conjunction with warp-in and obviously if they did something like remove warp gates they would have to change and buff gate units but so what? None of this means Gate units are weak, no matter what whether you got your Gate units from a Gateway or a Warpgate they would still be relatively the same strength in the overall scheme of the game since thats how blizzard would balance it.
The argument shouldn't be "wahh Gate units are made weak to compensate for warp-in blizz plz change it" but rather "Hey blizzard you have a perfectly good normal gateway mechanic which could be further utilized in conjunction with warp-in which could potentially add a lot of depth to how Protoss is played"
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That's complete bs. They say that is the exactly same patch that they changed spores and sentries. They're lieing through their teeth due to their incompetitency after alienating more than half of their players. I like many other have lost faith in blizzard game making abilities. Frankly I'd pay more you have certain staff fired than i would for hots. I've even talked directly to the development staff for hots and seen their resume; they are completely clueless and even unaware of their other staff.
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So you are simply considering the logistical features of producing the unit as a part of the unit's total utility. While that makes sense, it seems inappropriate to apply to Protoss because there are in fact two entirely different possible means of production for those units.
The way I use the term, the strength of the unit is a function of how it performs, mainly its combat stats. So when I talk about gateway units being "weak" I am not saying that their total utility is less than it should be, only that their intrinsic independent performance on the board is subpar. They are obviously useful as they are now, with the stats they have and their logistical advantages with warp gate, and the win rates suggest they are "balanced." They are used with warp gate, without gradual reinforcements, with sentry support for forcefield battle control, etc. etc. and it works, and is fair. That's not the point.
I consider warp gate creating weaker gateway units a design flaw, not a balance issue. It contributes to weak protoss early game, requirements to tech, reliance on forcefield, reliance on colossi and high templar, and deathball play. Buffing zealots and stalkers in return for a warp gate and gateway time rework would make protoss stronger at all stages of the game, without relying on a one-off unit like the Mothership Core for early defense. Suitably strong gateway units would help break up the deathball as they could fight in smaller groups without reliance on sentries, or few big units (colossi), or on strength in numbers to be effective. Protoss players would choose whether they wanted more industrial efficiency from gateways, or the ability to warp in anywhere for immediate reinforcements, or for warp prism harass, etc. Protosses would have a reason to convert gateways back and forth as their needs change.
Additionally, forcefield and warp gate are both big culprits in giving protoss extra power and options in pretty arbitrary and bad ways. Ideally forcefield would be changed so it is not an invincible absolute protection barrier. In conjunction with having gateway units that are the strongest and most expensive T1 units, forcefield and map chokes are not mandatory to avoid death. And destructible forcefields promote interaction between players, rather than a Protoss ultimatum that ye shall not pass.
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What if Warpgate units received their "buff" that players have been desiring in the form of a boost to health, and when units are warped in, they receive no energy shields. This way, defenders advantage should exist in that Standard Gateways would benefit defender as his units pop out with shielding, offender can re-enforce but its not as strong as his units have no shielding, and only start to regenerate it.
Then high level players would have a mix of warpgates and regular gates, and be warping in low-shield units with warpgates, high shield units by regular building... and the game would be more exciting. Warpin times could be tweaked, or left as is.
Too hard to balance?
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how the hell are gateway units weak? i love how in every protoss qq thread everything starts with a retarded assumption. zealots destroy bio easy, if you can't use forcefields that sucks for you but don't tell me zealots, stalkers and templars are weak wtf. And you got op freakin warp gate so your "weak" units can spawn right in the middle of the fight and not have to walk all the way across the map like the dumb kids are doing. get some common sense ffs.
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On October 13 2012 14:59 Kabras wrote:
how the hell are gateway units weak? i love how in every protoss qq thread everything starts with a retarded assumption. zealots destroy bio easy, if you can't use forcefields that sucks for you but don't tell me zealots, stalkers and templars are weak wtf. And you got op freakin warp gate so your "weak" units can spawn right in the middle of the fight and not have to walk all the way across the map like the dumb kids are doing. get some common sense ffs.
Play Protoss for a month and see how many games you win with just Zealot/Stalker/Sentry.
Stop including Templar in "Gateway" units btw as they are T3 units.
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On October 13 2012 15:00 KrazyTrumpet wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2012 14:59 Kabras wrote:
how the hell are gateway units weak? i love how in every protoss qq thread everything starts with a retarded assumption. zealots destroy bio easy, if you can't use forcefields that sucks for you but don't tell me zealots, stalkers and templars are weak wtf. And you got op freakin warp gate so your "weak" units can spawn right in the middle of the fight and not have to walk all the way across the map like the dumb kids are doing. get some common sense ffs. Play Protoss for a month and see how many games you win with just Zealot/Stalker/Sentry. Stop including Templar in "Gateway" units btw as they are T3 units.
But they are still warped in from the Gateway, thus they are called Gateway units. By your logic we shouldn't call Carriers Stargate units either because they are tier 3 as well.
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I can't say if gateway units are too weak, but I will say that their effectiveness is closely tied to the warpgate mechanic.
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On October 13 2012 15:09 GARcher wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2012 15:00 KrazyTrumpet wrote:On October 13 2012 14:59 Kabras wrote:
how the hell are gateway units weak? i love how in every protoss qq thread everything starts with a retarded assumption. zealots destroy bio easy, if you can't use forcefields that sucks for you but don't tell me zealots, stalkers and templars are weak wtf. And you got op freakin warp gate so your "weak" units can spawn right in the middle of the fight and not have to walk all the way across the map like the dumb kids are doing. get some common sense ffs. Play Protoss for a month and see how many games you win with just Zealot/Stalker/Sentry. Stop including Templar in "Gateway" units btw as they are T3 units. But they are still warped in from the Gateway, thus they are called Gateway units. By your logic we shouldn't call Carriers Stargate units either because they are tier 3 as well.
When you are discussing the relative strengths of t1/1.5 units, you cannot include T3 units in the discussion...
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Gateway units are quite in the right spot, maybe a little too Forcefield-reliant (mostly against roaches and zerglings).
The thing is, people want Stalkers and Zealots to be strong on their own, which may give Protoss a little more noncommital combat strength - but also makes Warpgate and Blink allins imbalanced.
There is also a basic problem with Gateway Units: There are 6 of them, people only talk about 3 of them and only 2 of them are units that can really be used for early pressure (and even that's not really true; TvP and PvP we sometimes see offensive forcefields outside of allins).
It's quite impossible to strongly buff the Stalker and the Zealot, even if there were no Sentries or Warpgates, simply because the Gateway still has Stormtemplar and Archons on its techpath and would probably be overpowered in its T3 stage, if Stalker/Zealot could already stand up to bio and roach/ling cost for cost.
Outside of PvZ (were Protoss cannot really get on the map at all), Stalkers also provide a lot of mapcontrol and early pressure - which is quite a good indication that this unit isn't that bad. All it needs is a little bit of room and a blink upgrade to be quite a powerful tool against Terran.
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On October 13 2012 08:53 Mistakes wrote:
As a Master+ Zerg and low Master Terran I feel that gateway units are too strong (coupled with sentries) when used properly against Z. However when I play Terran I laugh at gateway units. Blink all you want, it won't do anything! Lol.
That's somewhat true. But the reason why they seem to be too "strong" in PvZ can (to a very large extend) be attributed to Warpgate. If Protoss couldn't instantly reinforce its army right in the battlefield, then this would be much less of an issue. This would not even mitigate Protoss itming pushes, it also allows to Zerg to catch reinforcements and gain time. So in the end, the true problem is Warpgate, not Gateway units.
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I don't think gateway units are weak, I think they can become weak if you 1) don't have the right composition, e.g. lots of stalkers against terran bio or too many sentries, 2) don't upgrade them appropriately and at the right times, e.g. there is a certain point in PvT where you need charge on your zealots and double forge upgrades going, or 3) don't support them with tech in various mid to late game situations, e.g. immortals/colo against 3 base roach, or colo or templar once medivacs kick in in PvT.
The one exception I would make to these rules is PvP, because lategame PvP is infamously stupid with mass colossus being the most powerful unit composition in just about every situation. Perhaps the new Tempest will resolve this, as stalkers will become viable against tempest, and charge lots trade decently well with stalkers, but time will tell in this regard.
Also I personally like the fact that gateway units are partially balanced against the warpgate mechanic, it is an example of asymmetric balance, and is no different to zerg units being balanced around the larva mechanic.
I will add that I think the suggestion that gateway units are too weak may be because of the high level of micro required by the Protoss in the early to mid game, things like keeping your stalkers alive while target firing marauders against terran, using forcefields within your Simcity at your natural against Zerg, using forcefield defensively on the 'stalker side' of your army when engaging Zergs, and then there's blink micro which every player can work on until their GM. These may be difficult for more casual/low level players, and would make gateway units seem more fragile than they are.
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This is pathetic. Blizzard is attempting to ignore all the threads and complaints that protoss players have vocalized by claiming that it is only lower level players who harbor these complaints.
Let me assure you that this is not the case. With every single balance patch, and with every single response that Blizzard posts, it becomes obvious that there is a massive disconnect between the game makers and the game. They clearly do not understand what we are complaining about.
I understand their point. The qualm comes from the fact that a high level player can still make our cost inefficient units work by utlizing things like force field efficiently and teching to T3. No one is saying that Protoss is not capable of winning vs the other races. We are simply saying that the Protoss style that is necessary to do so is frustrating for both players, and frankly, I am pissed off that they're trying to disregard our complaints by saying that these concerns are coming solely from low level players.
I have never tooted my own horn or posted y rank on this forum, but I will now. I am a high masters Protoss player who has even been lucky enough to beat the likes of Destiny, Stalife, ajtsl (back in the day) and played (but lost) to CatZ and Kawaiirice. I am not a pro, but I am not bad either.
These concerns are not coming from "low level players." This is simply an attempt for Blizzard to brush their mistakes under the rug.
It's time we scream even louder. This is simply offensive.
Edit: our entire argument is that our units are weak without warpgate and forcefield. This is not fun. I don't want to rely on putting myself in a golden position during a timing attack and effectively making all of my zerg opponent's units useless with FF. If I don't? Zreglings and roaches will decimate my army that costs 2x as much. This is not fun. Protoss is becoming more and more gimmicky, and if the most stale race by far, because we absolutely need to turtle with FF and get to the death ball while protecting our T3 units.
Fuck the colossus. Fuck FF. Fuck warpgate. Protoss sucks, and they refuse to admit it, instead saying "oh, only low level players think so."
Fuck blizzard.
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On October 13 2012 13:58 Cloak wrote:
Masters here, but I consume pro games mostly these days. Warpgate doesn't affect much with unit balance. Defender's advantage has always been circumventable, so it's not really a fundamental balance issue.
It's more the Sentry dependence. Stalkers need their Guardian Aura to trade well, Zealots need their Forcefields to reach things. Stalkers get Blink eventually so they overcome their dependence, but Charge doesn't really fix things nearly as well.
As opposed to marines and marauders requiring medivacs to trade remotely well as well as concussive shell and stim.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but in BW gateway units were relatively strong, and thus were the `core' of your army, not just in a meatshield sense like they are now, but also in the sense of damage output.
I prefer this dynamic because it spreads out the damage dealing, allowing for more reward for multitasking. Also, If you don't rely on the sc2 style of protecting your heavy hitters with low damage meatshields/anti-air (stalkers), it becomes an anti-deathball mechanism.
If gateway units were more powerful then collosi could be tuned differently. It wouldn't need to be a sustained dps unit to counteract low damage of gateway units. Perhaps it could be a high burst damage unit instead of spread DPS, and would then be used more tactically (rather than 'a-move' strategically). In any case it gives it room to become a more exciting unit than the unit it is now, which few people would disagree is a little dull.
I think I'm just recreating BW here though (reaver back anyone?)
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Lower level players are the ONLY people complaining that they're losing games because gateway units are weak. High-Master Protoss here... Gateway units when used properly are absolutely amazing as core units for Protoss. However, they are much harder to use than their Terran/Zerg counterparts. Marine/Maruder and Ling/Roach are pretty A-movey.
What high level players are arguing, is not that gateway units are too weak and that they are losing games because of this weakness, but rather that specifically the Stalker doesn't do the job well of being a robust defensive unit. Thus requiring Protoss to be overly reliant on FF and thus requiring maps to have easy to access 3rds, 1wide ramps into the main, and a secondary choke at the natural to allow for FFE. Any map that does not have all 3 of these features is an immense hindrance to Protoss because the stalker does such a little amount of damage and is unable to abuse its mobility very well on defense. Often times your nexus will die while you're trying to chip down an army with stalkers.
High level players would like to see an SC2 where these currently required map features are unnecessary. A world where the Stalker can be a robust defensive unit allowing for a Protoss army which is able to exist outside of the "ball" for the early-mid game. Stalkers are great for their mobility, they're a balanced unit, but mobility does not provide a defensive advantage, only an offensive advantage.
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On October 13 2012 15:00 KrazyTrumpet wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2012 14:59 Kabras wrote:
how the hell are gateway units weak? i love how in every protoss qq thread everything starts with a retarded assumption. zealots destroy bio easy, if you can't use forcefields that sucks for you but don't tell me zealots, stalkers and templars are weak wtf. And you got op freakin warp gate so your "weak" units can spawn right in the middle of the fight and not have to walk all the way across the map like the dumb kids are doing. get some common sense ffs. Play Protoss for a month and see how many games you win with just Zealot/Stalker/Sentry. Stop including Templar in "Gateway" units btw as they are T3 units.
I am a masters protoss, and I regularly win PvZs and PvPs with only zealots and stalkers.
In my opinion, the problem with gateway units is stim. Gateway units can absolutely hold their own against pre-stim bio, and we regularly see very effective PvT gateway all-ins. Terran T1 just gain insane damage and mobility at the start of the midgame. Coupled with the fact that marines have the smallest collision radius in the game, zealots and stalkers just don't have a chance. I believe stim is, balanced, but the balance is dependent on Colossi and HTs making up the damage difference that stim gives to a bio ball.
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On October 13 2012 08:49 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:
...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.
This is definitely the most obvious problem with warp gate.
ANY DESIGN THAT YIELDS A DOMINANT STRATEGY I A FLAWED DESIGN.
The fact that making warp gates is an automatic decision makes the game more boring. To make things worse, in this case, the dominant strategy ruins the game by forcing the weakening of gate units and relying on very few, specific and not fun strategies (warp ins, ffs, vortex).
There are a few possible solutions to this. I really don't know which will work best but I am certain that the direction is to make warpgate a tradeoff to gateway and not an auto decision:
1. Buff gate units and have warped in units warp with only 75% shields. (number is just an example, could be 50% or what ever will be balanced)
2. Buff gate units and have Warp in units warp with a Warp Sickness debuff that lowers their stats abit (maybe to how they currently are) for 60 seconds. (at the end of which their stats return to normal.)
3. As Sanchez stated above, make warp gates have longer cool downs than gateways.
I will end on a pessimistic note, the fact the David kim makes statements like "I want mech play to revolve around the Widow mine" shows how little he understands about balancing a game. What he should want is players having a really hard time deciding which tech path to take since they are all so cool and viable. Only after the tech paths of a race are balanced between them should he balance between the races.
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On October 13 2012 23:43 Kaw wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2012 15:00 KrazyTrumpet wrote:On October 13 2012 14:59 Kabras wrote:
how the hell are gateway units weak? i love how in every protoss qq thread everything starts with a retarded assumption. zealots destroy bio easy, if you can't use forcefields that sucks for you but don't tell me zealots, stalkers and templars are weak wtf. And you got op freakin warp gate so your "weak" units can spawn right in the middle of the fight and not have to walk all the way across the map like the dumb kids are doing. get some common sense ffs. Play Protoss for a month and see how many games you win with just Zealot/Stalker/Sentry. Stop including Templar in "Gateway" units btw as they are T3 units. I am a masters protoss, and I regularly win PvZs and PvPs with only zealots and stalkers. In my opinion, the problem with gateway units is stim. Gateway units can absolutely hold their own against pre-stim bio, and we regularly see very effective PvT gateway all-ins. Terran T1 just gain insane damage and mobility at the start of the midgame. Coupled with the fact that marines have the smallest collision radius in the game, zealots and stalkers just don't have a chance. I believe stim is, balanced, but the balance is dependent on Colossi and HTs making up the damage difference that stim gives to a bio ball.
Yes and if it weren't that way, bio would not be a playable style.
Barracks are more limited than hatcheries and gateways/warpgates in amount of units and in support roles and the units on it have their own upgrade path and barracks+addons cost considerably more than gateways and hatcheries+queens.
On top of that, those units still require support units (medivacs, tanks, vikings) to really work well.
Stop comparing Terran "T1" to Protoss "T1". One of them needs a setup that is a complete techpath on its own, the other one doesn't and therefore is weaker in the longrun, yet other techpaths give you the support needed.
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On October 13 2012 23:39 DarkblueRH wrote:
What high level players are arguing, is not that gateway units are too weak and that they are losing games because of this weakness, but rather that specifically the Stalker doesn't do the job well of being a robust defensive unit. Thus requiring Protoss to be overly reliant on FF and thus requiring maps to have easy to access 3rds, 1wide ramps into the main, and a secondary choke at the natural to allow for FFE. Any map that does not have all 3 of these features is an immense hindrance to Protoss because the stalker does such a little amount of damage and is unable to abuse its mobility very well on defense. Often times your nexus will die while you're trying to chip down an army with stalkers.
I am far from a high level player, but I have always thought that Stalkers are just right balance wise and Immortals are too weak. I never understood why they have less range than stalkers. Can someone highlight what will get broken balance-wise if ever Immortals got the same range as Stalkers? Immortals should be the robust defensive unit the Stalkers are not right?
I think a change to Immortals can greatly influence how effective the Gateway units are.
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On October 14 2012 00:28 Don.681 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2012 23:39 DarkblueRH wrote:
What high level players are arguing, is not that gateway units are too weak and that they are losing games because of this weakness, but rather that specifically the Stalker doesn't do the job well of being a robust defensive unit. Thus requiring Protoss to be overly reliant on FF and thus requiring maps to have easy to access 3rds, 1wide ramps into the main, and a secondary choke at the natural to allow for FFE. Any map that does not have all 3 of these features is an immense hindrance to Protoss because the stalker does such a little amount of damage and is unable to abuse its mobility very well on defense. Often times your nexus will die while you're trying to chip down an army with stalkers.
I am far from a high level player, but I have always thought that Stalkers are just right balance wise and Immortals are too weak. I never understood why they have less range than stalkers. Can someone highlight what will get broken balance-wise if ever Immortals got the same range as Stalkers? Immortals should be the robust defensive unit the Stalkers are not right? I think a change to Immortals can greatly influence how effective the Gateway units are.
Immortals have had the same range as Stalkers since September 2011.
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The speed of which discussion degenerates in these threads makes me lose more and more hope in the future of SC2. At least in ItWhoSpeeks thread we had some rationality and objective support from other races.
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On October 14 2012 00:41 CikaZombi wrote:
The speed of which discussion degenerates in these threads makes me lose more and more hope in the future of SC2. At least in ItWhoSpeeks thread we had some rationality and objective support from other races.
I think many of the people replying in this thread are, ironically, missing the point when they state that gateway units can be strong in warpgate timing attacks. The question was whether T1 gateway units are relatively weak (compared to BW or just in general) because the warp gate mechanic would make them too strong otherwise. It's not a coincidence that Protoss rely on timing attacks so much when their core units are balanced around warpgate.
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Gateway units are weak early on but after twilight upgrades they become pretty deadly with proper control and support, similar to the other races early units.
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Its pretty simple to me, if you miss your timing are you behind?
The answer is always gonna be 'hell yea', so gateway units have a problem.
And any other unit that is only balanced during timing attacks, also has a problem.
I don't mind timing attacks, they're inevitable! But better that timing attacks be discovered than be expected.
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I always thought if the warpgate cooldown was about 3 times as large as it is now for units but that the cooldown will keep going when the structures are in gateway mode would be a good way to balance. You can use warpgates still, just not as often. Sure there will be a rush of units from time to time but it will only happen if the player has good macro as they still have to transform gateways to and from warpgates.
Things like exactly how much longer the warpgate cooldowns need to be and how fast you can transform from gateways to warpgates might need to be adjusted but it would at least help in the early/mid game troubles.
Not sure if it would balance out with end game armies though. If you have 20 gateways that's still 40 supply very quickly.
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They are weak in the early game so as to compensate for their strength in timing attacks, and timing attacks are designed to punish vulnerabilities in opponent's build. Gateway units being weak means that protoss itself is very vulnerable to timing attacks at certain phase of the game. I don't get why they want to design a race that is so heavy reliant on build orders at least in the early-mid game.
The way i see it, there are 3 main aspects in starcraft.
- Strategy. Build orders that include tech choice and how you want to balance between army, economy, tech. They are hugely affected by the map layout.
- Tactics. Maneuvering of army. A huge part of this includes on how you deal with your own reinforcements and enemy reinforcements.
- Engagements. Micro.
A huge portion is being removed from protoss gameplay which is why their matchups are relatively boring to watch, including macro games. You don't need to think much to know where to reinforce. It's all reactive. Even protoss' multi-pronged aggression is all about your mechanics, throwing the ball into your opponent's court and letting them deal with it. Whereas with other races, you actually have to think ahead of your opponent. It's 2-way interaction in this case.
Yes the race itself can be balanced, but only towards the direction of strategy. This makes the game stale for both the players and spectators.
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On October 14 2012 00:54 Salient wrote:Show nested quote +On October 14 2012 00:41 CikaZombi wrote:
The speed of which discussion degenerates in these threads makes me lose more and more hope in the future of SC2. At least in ItWhoSpeeks thread we had some rationality and objective support from other races. I think many of the people replying in this thread are, ironically, missing the point when they state that gateway units can be strong in warpgate timing attacks. The question was whether T1 gateway units are relatively weak (compared to BW or just in general) because the warp gate mechanic would make them too strong otherwise. It's not a coincidence that Protoss rely on timing attacks so much when their core units are balanced around warpgate.
Yup I think that's pretty apparent. It is almost never seen without an all in. There is no coming home from that "aggression", and if you can only defeat an army with constant warp ins at their base it is easy to understand where posts like this have been coming from for the last couple of years. But people don't understand balance from design and game play.
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I think warpgate should allow gateway units to warp in near a nexus only (like 13 range radius around a nexus.)
Also i think sentries forcefield should be changed to an outward burst from the sentry that pushes units back. Better players can wait til the last second and stuff. However you will possibly have to change the statistics of zealots stalkers and sentries because now that they dont have proxy warp in power any more, gateway vs bio or ling roach will no longer have ff's to trade evenly. Could make forcepush a low energy costing ability for sentries and remove FFs. Just an idea i think would work well if tweaked a bit.
Fus Roh Dah!!
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I think the comments by Kim and Browder show a lot of ignorance or arrogance. Even for pros it is a problem for early PvP: there is no defenders advantage and this results in some rather short games where one small mistake can ruin the game. The solution is to remove the cooldown reduction - which you gain through the Warp Gate research - from Warp Gates and put it on Gateways. That way the attacker can warp into the defenders base, but the defender will have the numerical advantage through Gateway production.
The units themselves are ok as they are ... even without removing the Hallucination research.
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If you could actually kite stalkers like you did in BW that would go a huge way to making them much more viable earlier in the game and maybe even be a soft boost against muta packs that unconditionally rape them.
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the gateway units just depend on each other so much which make them weak individually and strong together. But some timings with twilight tech upgrades are so strong.
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Blizzard have tried to buff gate way units before by decreasing the build time. 2 gate zealot pressure was to strong so it was reverted back for the zelot and stalker but they keept for the sentry. Same patch also change root time for spore from 12-6 ( opening void rays was allot better before the patch). Decreased warp gate time also effected pvz in the long run even if it was targeted for pvp.
There is a post on liquid on the changes from the patch:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=216605
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On October 14 2012 01:49 Emuking wrote:
I think warpgate should allow gateway units to warp in near a nexus only (like 13 range radius around a nexus.)
Also i think sentries forcefield should be changed to an outward burst from the sentry that pushes units back. Better players can wait til the last second and stuff. However you will possibly have to change the statistics of zealots stalkers and sentries because now that they dont have proxy warp in power any more, gateway vs bio or ling roach will no longer have ff's to trade evenly. Could make forcepush a low energy costing ability for sentries and remove FFs. Just an idea i think would work well if tweaked a bit.
Fus Roh Dah!!
I've been advocating this for a long time. This is such an easy change and the only effect this will have on the game will be an increased defenders advantage. I don't even think huge changes to gateway units are necessary. Stalker cost maybe could be reduced slightly (like 115/50), to make gateway units slighty better.
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I really do not understand why people want to make gateway units stronger, gateway units are very boring and it is impossible to do anything else but A move with zealots because of the charge mechanic. I think that current game mode is fine and fun, who cares if you need to get T3 units if they make a good game.
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On October 14 2012 04:43 moskonia wrote:
I really do not understand why people want to make gateway units stronger, gateway units are very boring and it is impossible to do anything else but A move with zealots because of the charge mechanic. I think that current game mode is fine and fun, who cares if you need to get T3 units if they make a good game.
In my opinion, the way T1 Gateway units are balanced right now, they are best used as part of a death ball because they are so bad individually or in small groups.
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On October 13 2012 08:49 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:
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.
i like this idea. any time you force players to make a choice it is good. well not any time but you know what i mean. and it is logical and seeing people switch gates back and forth as a game goes one would be great. "oh why is he converting those two gates? what is he going to do now?"
but the game is built to be too simple so everyone researches warp as soon as the can and make all their gates warp and that is that
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On October 14 2012 05:02 SarcasmMonster wrote:Show nested quote +On October 14 2012 04:43 moskonia wrote:
I really do not understand why people want to make gateway units stronger, gateway units are very boring and it is impossible to do anything else but A move with zealots because of the charge mechanic. I think that current game mode is fine and fun, who cares if you need to get T3 units if they make a good game. In my opinion, the way T1 Gateway units are balanced right now, they are best used as part of a death ball because they are so bad individually or in small groups.
I don't understand this argument, for starters basically no unit is good individually, a single thor gets magic boxed, a single marine does nothing, etc etc. Secondly, protoss units are plenty strong in small groups, have you ever even tried sending handfulls of chargelots to various expansions or in the main base of a zerg or terran? They tear shit up and can be a huge pain to deal with...so ya what exactly are you wanting?
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Everyone with the oppinion that gateway units are weak has absolutely no clue about the game. Gateway units are very strong, but they have to work together - they are synergetical units. While Zerg and Terran can mass certain units and be fine to a certain degree, for Protoss this doesn't work so well. (with the exception of blink stalkers in some situations).
Warpgate Allins like the 7-gate wouldn't be relevant in the metagame anymore if gateway units were weak!
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On October 14 2012 05:17 rembrant wrote:Show nested quote +On October 14 2012 05:02 SarcasmMonster wrote:On October 14 2012 04:43 moskonia wrote:
I really do not understand why people want to make gateway units stronger, gateway units are very boring and it is impossible to do anything else but A move with zealots because of the charge mechanic. I think that current game mode is fine and fun, who cares if you need to get T3 units if they make a good game. In my opinion, the way T1 Gateway units are balanced right now, they are best used as part of a death ball because they are so bad individually or in small groups. I don't understand this argument, for starters basically no unit is good individually, a single thor gets magic boxed, a single marine does nothing, etc etc. Secondly, protoss units are plenty strong in small groups, have you ever even tried sending handfulls of chargelots to various expansions or in the main base of a zerg or terran? They tear shit up and can be a huge pain to deal with...so ya what exactly are you wanting?
Terran units are amazing in small groups, especially the Marines. For example, 2 stimmed marines have more than 50% DPS than 1 zealot, plus range and speed makes them amazing at doing lots of economical damage in a short period of time before your opponent defense comes.
Marine drops are devastating because of their amazing DPS, whereas Zealot/Stalker drops are eh. Hellion drops vary greatly in effectiveness.
Protoss T1 gateway are better at meatshielding your deathball because of their high HP and low DPS.
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If the gateway units+ warpgate is too stong early and too weak late game, just give them better upgrades, either at Forge, or add additional upgrades at twilight council, similar to combat shield, blue flame, ex.
Warpgate is great, and should stay as is. When you get a hatchery and quin, or barraks with reactor, they are plain better than without quen or reactor. Isee no reason why warpgates should follow different logic.
As for late game, every race has an option to power beyond the max supply.
Terran can get more orbitals and sack SCVs, so their maxed army is the most supply-powerfull, if you invest resourses and get more production.
Zerg can have remax at the time of producing a single unit is you get enought hatcheries, and very easy tech switches.
Protoss can add up additional warpgates.
Apart from Terran T3 unist vulrnability to feedback, and BL-infestor-archonToilet finall of PvZ, lare game is perfectly fine.
On October 14 2012 05:26 SarcasmMonster wrote:Show nested quote +On October 14 2012 05:17 rembrant wrote:On October 14 2012 05:02 SarcasmMonster wrote:On October 14 2012 04:43 moskonia wrote:
I really do not understand why people want to make gateway units stronger, gateway units are very boring and it is impossible to do anything else but A move with zealots because of the charge mechanic. I think that current game mode is fine and fun, who cares if you need to get T3 units if they make a good game. In my opinion, the way T1 Gateway units are balanced right now, they are best used as part of a death ball because they are so bad individually or in small groups. I don't understand this argument, for starters basically no unit is good individually, a single thor gets magic boxed, a single marine does nothing, etc etc. Secondly, protoss units are plenty strong in small groups, have you ever even tried sending handfulls of chargelots to various expansions or in the main base of a zerg or terran? They tear shit up and can be a huge pain to deal with...so ya what exactly are you wanting? Terran units are amazing in small groups, especially the Marines. For example, 2 stimmed marines have more than 50% DPS than 1 zealot, plus range and speed makes them amazing at doing lots of economical damage in a short period of time before your opponent defense comes.
2 stimmed marines versus a chargelot?
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On October 14 2012 05:36 naastyOne wrote:If the gateway units+ warpgate is too stong early and too weak late game, just give them better upgrades, either at Forge, or add additional upgrades at twilight council, similar to combat shield, blue flame, ex. Warpgate is great, and should stay as is. When you get a hatchery and quin, or barraks with reactor, they are plain better than without quen or reactor. Isee no reason why warpgates should follow different logic. As for late game, every race has an option to power beyond the max supply. Terran can get more orbitals and sack SCVs, so their maxed army is the most supply-powerfull, if you invest resourses and get more production. Zerg can have remax at the time of producing a single unit is you get enought hatcheries, and very easy tech switches. Protoss can add up additional warpgates. Apart from Terran T3 unist vulrnability to feedback, and BL-infestor-archonToilet finall of PvZ, lare game is perfectly fine. Show nested quote +On October 14 2012 05:26 SarcasmMonster wrote:On October 14 2012 05:17 rembrant wrote:On October 14 2012 05:02 SarcasmMonster wrote:On October 14 2012 04:43 moskonia wrote:
I really do not understand why people want to make gateway units stronger, gateway units are very boring and it is impossible to do anything else but A move with zealots because of the charge mechanic. I think that current game mode is fine and fun, who cares if you need to get T3 units if they make a good game. In my opinion, the way T1 Gateway units are balanced right now, they are best used as part of a death ball because they are so bad individually or in small groups. I don't understand this argument, for starters basically no unit is good individually, a single thor gets magic boxed, a single marine does nothing, etc etc. Secondly, protoss units are plenty strong in small groups, have you ever even tried sending handfulls of chargelots to various expansions or in the main base of a zerg or terran? They tear shit up and can be a huge pain to deal with...so ya what exactly are you wanting? Terran units are amazing in small groups, especially the Marines. For example, 2 stimmed marines have more than 50% DPS than 1 zealot, plus range and speed makes them amazing at doing lots of economical damage in a short period of time before your opponent defense comes. 2 stimmed marines versus a chargelot?
8 dropped stimmed marines are much scarier than 4 dropped Chargelots yes.
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SC2 Zealots and Stalkers are straight-up weaker than Brood War zealots and dragoons. In open terrain, they lose badly to equal cost Rine/Rauder or Roach/Ling. It's true that Sentries are an equalizer, because with good Forcefields a Protoss tier-1 army can beat an equal cost zerg/terran army quite handily. It's also true that the stats of Zealots and Stalkers are limited by the power of Warp Gates; in the current metagame any straight-up zealot/stalker buff would make Warp Gate all-ins way too strong.
With all that in mind, logically speaking there are two ways to buff Gateway units without completely destroying the metagame:
1) Buff zealots and stalkers, and nerf Warp Gates.
2) Buff sentries.
Although I personally agree that Warp Gates should be nerfed, it is also true that #2 is a "cleaner" game design choice than #1.
#1 would have multiple late-game repercussions. The colossus-based deathball would be stronger due to a better Zealot meatshield. Expansion defense against harassment would be more difficult due to a weaker Warp-In. If that led to a colossus nerf and photon cannon buff, I would applaud enthusiastically. However, it sounds like Blizzard doesn't want to rock the boat by rebalancing multiple Protoss units at once.
#2 improves the power of early-game Gateway compositions and actually helps with defender's advantage as Force Field is much stronger on defense than offense. However, it doesn't dramatically change the power of the lategame deathball (vikings, ghosts, broodlords, and ultras don't care about FF) and it doesn't change the usability of Warp-In for harassment defense.
So although I disagree with him I can see why David Kim wants #2.
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On October 14 2012 05:24 TeeTS wrote:
Everyone with the oppinion that gateway units are weak has absolutely no clue about the game. Gateway units are very strong, but they have to work together - they are synergetical units. While Zerg and Terran can mass certain units and be fine to a certain degree, for Protoss this doesn't work so well. (with the exception of blink stalkers in some situations).
Warpgate Allins like the 7-gate wouldn't be relevant in the metagame anymore if gateway units were weak!
Missing the point. Notice the differnce between warpgate and gateway plz.
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On October 14 2012 05:41 SarcasmMonster wrote:Show nested quote +On October 14 2012 05:36 naastyOne wrote:If the gateway units+ warpgate is too stong early and too weak late game, just give them better upgrades, either at Forge, or add additional upgrades at twilight council, similar to combat shield, blue flame, ex. Warpgate is great, and should stay as is. When you get a hatchery and quin, or barraks with reactor, they are plain better than without quen or reactor. Isee no reason why warpgates should follow different logic. As for late game, every race has an option to power beyond the max supply. Terran can get more orbitals and sack SCVs, so their maxed army is the most supply-powerfull, if you invest resourses and get more production. Zerg can have remax at the time of producing a single unit is you get enought hatcheries, and very easy tech switches. Protoss can add up additional warpgates. Apart from Terran T3 unist vulrnability to feedback, and BL-infestor-archonToilet finall of PvZ, lare game is perfectly fine. On October 14 2012 05:26 SarcasmMonster wrote:On October 14 2012 05:17 rembrant wrote:On October 14 2012 05:02 SarcasmMonster wrote:On October 14 2012 04:43 moskonia wrote:
I really do not understand why people want to make gateway units stronger, gateway units are very boring and it is impossible to do anything else but A move with zealots because of the charge mechanic. I think that current game mode is fine and fun, who cares if you need to get T3 units if they make a good game. In my opinion, the way T1 Gateway units are balanced right now, they are best used as part of a death ball because they are so bad individually or in small groups. I don't understand this argument, for starters basically no unit is good individually, a single thor gets magic boxed, a single marine does nothing, etc etc. Secondly, protoss units are plenty strong in small groups, have you ever even tried sending handfulls of chargelots to various expansions or in the main base of a zerg or terran? They tear shit up and can be a huge pain to deal with...so ya what exactly are you wanting? Terran units are amazing in small groups, especially the Marines. For example, 2 stimmed marines have more than 50% DPS than 1 zealot, plus range and speed makes them amazing at doing lots of economical damage in a short period of time before your opponent defense comes. 2 stimmed marines versus a chargelot? 8 dropped stimmed marines are much scarier than 4 dropped Chargelots yes.
Don't give them the medivac and see what happens. Also what you forget is that Warp Prism can "drop" more units than it can carry by using Warp Gate mechanics. Those 4 Chargelots can be followed up immediately by X number of DTs.
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Balancing Protoss T1 may be quite difficult. They actually are quite effective vs Terran bio at any stage of the game, and I think in a very balanced manner. Even though they feel a bit weaker than MMM, the warp gate allows for instant reinforcements and allows Toss to overrun Terran after quite close battle (by close I mean all/most of the colossi/ghosts got killed).
On the other hand, they are extremely weak vs Z and P.
They get absolutely raped by colossi. This causes macro PvPs(luckily they seldom go past 2 bases) to be hellishly boring lazerwarz.
Vs Z, they are quite strong in 2 base all ins, but get more and more weaker up to trash tier units in the very late game. Zealots with upgrade advantage rend through any number of zerglings, but are getting obliterated by cracklings. Moreover, they are completely useless vs roaches. Blink stalkers are very effective vs roaches early on, but once Zerg catches up with upgrades or gets infestors, they become incredibly weak.
Even archons seem to weak. A well upgraded archon in bw could take on endless stream of lings. Now, cracklings are actually cost efficient vs archons(i think 12 are the number required to take down an archon, 250 mins vs 100 mins 300 gas). Again, just like zealots, they simply don't cut it vs roaches.
The solutions that come to my mind:
- make the zealot and the stalker a little bit bigger, so they don't melt to colossi and fungals so easily
- add a T3 upgrade for zealot (requires Templar Archives/Dark Shrine). This could be a further increase in movement speed, additional dmg or some original stuff, can't think of anything fun right now)
- change the way the damage vs armored of stalker scales - add +2 instead of +1 (vs others it stays the same)
- change the archon splash to cover a wider area, that should come with a range reduction though.
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On October 14 2012 05:08 nevermindthebollocks wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2012 08:49 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:
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.
i like this idea. any time you force players to make a choice it is good. well not any time but you know what i mean. and it is logical and seeing people switch gates back and forth as a game goes one would be great. "oh why is he converting those two gates? what is he going to do now?" but the game is built to be too simple so everyone researches warp as soon as the can and make all their gates warp and that is that
It's not even about the flipping of them too though, I mean it's about deciding when to do the flip to warpgate, do they make that decision at all, why can't the regular gateway be a viable choice and the warpgate harassment behind enemy lines be more of a rare thing? I'm not saying I don't like warpgate harassment but it would be cool to have it being at least somewhat more unique.
Also defenders advantage in PvP gateway (faster build time for units) vs warpgate (slower cooldown) might make PvP far more interesting, sigh sig sigh and fuck.
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The biggest issue is that if Warpgates were nerfed so that Protoss must respect greater map sizes. Something else must be done so that Protoss can be a threat early-game. Without warpgates, with the current design of SC2, Protoss actually just isn't a threat to anyone and would be forced into a turtle game every game. That's not proper game design.
Also, people need to understand that late-game if the cooldown time of warpgates is nerfed, Protoss will just make more gateways... Doesn't solve a problem, just increases it's cost at a time when cost is close to a non-factor and neuters Protoss's early-game.
Buffing gateway units anything above what they are now would give P almost 0 reason to make tech units since even currently P can win with gateway+immortals in every MU... Consistently...
The only problem with warpgates is that it makes Protoss not care about map sizes. Making Protoss care about map size can be done in other means, I.e. like having only HT's be a unit which cannot be warped. Or adding a debuf to gateway units for being warped in far from a gateway.
The only problem with gateway units in this current design of the game is that they force 1wide ramps, chokes at naturals, and close-by 3rds from map creators... And Blizzard disrespects this all the time. This is not a BALANCE issue, it's a game design issue. Protoss is arguably the strongest race right now because of how good gateway units are are offense. They're not as great on defense, which forces these three map design features.
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On October 14 2012 14:29 DarkblueRH wrote:
The biggest issue is that if Warpgates were nerfed so that Protoss must respect greater map sizes. Something else must be done so that Protoss can be a threat early-game. Without warpgates, Protoss actually just isn't a threat to anyone and would be forced into a turtle game every game. That's not proper game design.
Also, people need to understand that late-game if the warp-in time or cooldown time is nerfed, Protoss will just make more gateways... Doesn't solve a problem,.
I'm not actually convinced there is a 'problem' - I want the idea because it could add more to the game, not because there's something missing or broken. Tradeoffs are cool! (Reaver, Seige tank)
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Warp gate is terrible. It basically makes any attack by protoss at any point in the game all in. If you dont do enough damage to were whoever you attack is crippled, you lose. If you attack and lose your army, there is no coming back which means you lose. If you are caught warping in somewhere and you get attacked, you are stuck waiting for another warp in cycle which means you probably lose.
Warpgate is just a terrible mechanic all around imho.
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On October 14 2012 14:57 LgNKami wrote:
Warp gate is terrible. It basically makes any attack by protoss at any point in the game all in. If you dont do enough damage to were whoever you attack is crippled, you lose. If you attack and lose your army, there is no coming back which means you lose. If you are caught warping in somewhere and you get attacked, you are stuck waiting for another warp in cycle which means you probably lose.
Warpgate is just a terrible mechanic all around imho.
You just stated a problem of attacking in a place where you were unable to attack. Not a problem with warpgates. All races if they lose a ton of units without dealing crippling damage are in a bad position. Protoss is just the worst at escaping units from a bad situation. Again... not a problem with warpgates lol.
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I think the WG mechanic is great, it allows some wiggle room for toss to delay the expensive gateway units while getting tech out faster. Or expand faster.
I think the problem is in pylons and the power matrix.
If they redesigned the power matrix so that Nexus grants the initial, very wide power field (similar to how creep works) and then pylons extend that, you would never have any problems with WG being aggressively too potent. Also all the proxy gate and cannon rush plays would vanish.
And simcitying things would be so much easier and better.
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On October 14 2012 18:57 ledgerhs wrote:
I think the WG mechanic is great, it allows some wiggle room for toss to delay the expensive gateway units while getting tech out faster. Or expand faster.
I think the problem is in pylons and the power matrix.
If they redesigned the power matrix so that Nexus grants the initial, very wide power field (similar to how creep works) and then pylons extend that, you would never have any problems with WG being aggressively too potent. Also all the proxy gate and cannon rush plays would vanish.
And simcitying things would be so much easier and better.
Taking away the ability to cheese is not a good thing.
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On October 14 2012 14:29 DarkblueRH wrote:
[b]Buffing gateway units anything above what they are now would give P almost 0 reason to make tech units since even currently P can win with gateway+immortals in every MU... Consistently...
They can win with that composition because of warpgate. If protoss had to wait for their reinforcements to cross the map, those pushes wouldn't be nearly as potent, even with substantially stronger gateway units.
Unless you're not talking about timing attacks and including templar tech in "gateway", because in that case you're just flat out wrong. Sooner or later you have to build colossi, assuming things are roughly even going into the lategame. Especially in pvp/pvt.
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Masters here as well. Toss gate way units are very strong especially late game with blink and charge.
Charged zealots shredding bio are the reasons hellbats were invented.
So ye David kim is right.
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On October 14 2012 20:28 DaveVAH wrote:
Masters here as well. Toss gate way units are very strong especially late game with blink and charge.
Charged zealots shredding bio are the reasons hellbats were invented.
So ye David kim is right.
What? that's so wrong, hellbats are there to protect tanks from zealots, not bio.
I agree that supplywise gateway units are really strong though.
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As I see it the issue can be explained like this:
When a probe has mined some resources, those resources can be spent to produces a gateway unit almost instantaneously right where it is needed. The consequence is that the resource value of the protoss army will (minus ifrastructure, tech and losses) be that of all resources mined up to that point in time. For zerg and terran, any unit that is on the battlefield right where it is needed would have to be built a couple of minutes earlier, so for them the resource value of the army will (minus ifrastructure, tech and losses) be all resources mined up to two minutes ago. This is of course a huge simplification, but a useful one. Assuming similar mining rates and spending rates, the protoss army will always have a higher resource value. Then game balance is applied, and to make the outcomes of battles even, the gateway units will necessarily have to be less cost efficient.
One question I would ask is that could this be changed by making gateway units stronger, but diminishing protoss income, for instance by blocking chrono boost from being used on nexuses?
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When a probe has mined some resources, those resources can be spent to produces a gateway unit almost instantaneously right where it is needed. The consequence is that the resource value of the protoss army will (minus ifrastructure, tech and losses) be that of all resources mined up to that point in time. For zerg and terran, any unit that is on the battlefield right where it is needed would have to be built a couple of minutes earlier, so for them the resource value of the army will (minus ifrastructure, tech and losses) be all resources mined up to two minutes ago. This is of course a huge simplification, but a useful one. Assuming similar mining rates and spending rates, the protoss army will always have a higher resource value. Then game balance is applied, and to make the outcomes of battles even, the gateway units will necessarily have to be less cost efficient.
I don't think this is unclear to anyone. The problem is that protoss units cannot be produced linearly while expanding, the cost is too high. This is why WG is a great mechanic. It allows protoss to backload the production after the nexus is down. Toss can't go 2gate expo effectively the same way terran can 2rax expo.
I think the real deal here is that the power matrix need to be changed so that nexus grants the initial power grid and pylons extend that, but they have to be connected. This way all the cannon rushing, 4gating, proxygating, proxy teching, proxy stargating play is done with. And the WG units can get a slight buff to be somewhat more effective. Also, if stalker's design is gonna change to be more effective raiding unit in the early game and early midgame, the sentry can get a nerf like "can only use FF on a ground that's covered by a grid".
It also would make it easier to simcity and place cannons right to make it easier to defend against drops, mutas and banshees.
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On October 14 2012 19:28 robopork wrote:Show nested quote +On October 14 2012 14:29 DarkblueRH wrote:
[b]Buffing gateway units anything above what they are now would give P almost 0 reason to make tech units since even currently P can win with gateway+immortals in every MU... Consistently... They can win with that composition because of warpgate. If protoss had to wait for their reinforcements to cross the map, those pushes wouldn't be nearly as potent, even with substantially stronger gateway units. Unless you're not talking about timing attacks and including templar tech in "gateway", because in that case you're just flat out wrong. Sooner or later you have to build colossi, assuming things are roughly even going into the lategame. Especially in pvp/pvt.
No, I was not including Templar in gateway units. I was speaking of early-mid game compositions before either side has splash damage and with an upgrade advantage. Gateway units + Immortals can be very potent for a very long time if you maintain an upgrade advantage. Not in PvP mostly because of your inability to break FF's rather than because of your lack of splash.
And yes, I concede that you are correct in that this style would be much weaker in the absence of warpgates. I was moreso addressing the individuals just blanket-ly saying that "gateway units are weak". But yes, if warpgates were removed or nerfed then a buff of gateway units wouldn't obscenely buff the low-tech composition because of the lack of re-inforcements.
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On October 13 2012 23:03 Evangelist wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2012 13:58 Cloak wrote:
Masters here, but I consume pro games mostly these days. Warpgate doesn't affect much with unit balance. Defender's advantage has always been circumventable, so it's not really a fundamental balance issue.
It's more the Sentry dependence. Stalkers need their Guardian Aura to trade well, Zealots need their Forcefields to reach things. Stalkers get Blink eventually so they overcome their dependence, but Charge doesn't really fix things nearly as well. As opposed to marines and marauders requiring medivacs to trade remotely well as well as concussive shell and stim.
Different dependencies. Marines and Marauders, once they have Stim/Conc at their earlier tech level, are at maximum unit potential. Medivacs only enable that further by giving them extreme survivability and airlift. That maximum achieved potential goes way beyond what Charge gives to a Zealot. I would say that Blink accomplishes an equivalent potential for Stalkers, though.
Ultimately, Zealots lost their stop micro potential since BW, and now are tanky a-movers. Their own stutter step is on par with Marine micro but you never see it used. I'm confident that with number tweaks, Zealots can have a balance of meat and some micro.
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10387 Posts
On October 14 2012 08:25 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:Show nested quote +On October 14 2012 05:08 nevermindthebollocks wrote:On October 13 2012 08:49 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:
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.
i like this idea. any time you force players to make a choice it is good. well not any time but you know what i mean. and it is logical and seeing people switch gates back and forth as a game goes one would be great. "oh why is he converting those two gates? what is he going to do now?" but the game is built to be too simple so everyone researches warp as soon as the can and make all their gates warp and that is that It's not even about the flipping of them too though, I mean it's about deciding when to do the flip to warpgate, do they make that decision at all, why can't the regular gateway be a viable choice and the warpgate harassment behind enemy lines be more of a rare thing? I'm not saying I don't like warpgate harassment but it would be cool to have it being at least somewhat more unique. Also defenders advantage in PvP gateway (faster build time for units) vs warpgate (slower cooldown) might make PvP far more interesting, sigh sig sigh and fuck.
That sounds like it'd be really interesting, never did like how Gateway is basically useless after warpgate research lol
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I think it's more because of FF than warpgate. But yeah, gateway units are terrible for their cost.
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Why don't we just make the change to warp gate revertable? When you want to macro as fast as possible, you build out of gateways. when you want cross map deployment, you can turn some gates into warpgates, warping until you want to change them back. it would be a mode for the building, similar to siege mode, with a conversion time.
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CYFAWS- you can already revert them. The button is there. However warp gates are strictly superior to gateways in every way. They build all units faster, and allow warp in anywhere. So you should always use warp gates. And the game needs to be balanced around protosses always using warp gate, which is an obvious logistical advantage. Hence the entire problem.
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Please check out my thread. This will fix warp gate and add to the strength of gateway units. Its not huge changes, but I think it would help. Essentially buff stalker damage from 10 (+4 light) to 15. In exchange, make warp gate research require twilight council and cost 100/100. Also, make forcefield researchable in the twilight council (now, 1 key upgrade for each staple gateway unit in TC, and remember hallu is now part of sentry for free). Then, reduce gateway build time to an average between the build times of warp gates and gateways at the moment. Further, reduce the roach HP from 145 to 100, and then make them only cost 1 supply:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=375409#9
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On October 15 2012 03:18 ArvickHero wrote:Show nested quote +On October 14 2012 08:25 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:On October 14 2012 05:08 nevermindthebollocks wrote:On October 13 2012 08:49 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:
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.
i like this idea. any time you force players to make a choice it is good. well not any time but you know what i mean. and it is logical and seeing people switch gates back and forth as a game goes one would be great. "oh why is he converting those two gates? what is he going to do now?" but the game is built to be too simple so everyone researches warp as soon as the can and make all their gates warp and that is that It's not even about the flipping of them too though, I mean it's about deciding when to do the flip to warpgate, do they make that decision at all, why can't the regular gateway be a viable choice and the warpgate harassment behind enemy lines be more of a rare thing? I'm not saying I don't like warpgate harassment but it would be cool to have it being at least somewhat more unique. Also defenders advantage in PvP gateway (faster build time for units) vs warpgate (slower cooldown) might make PvP far more interesting, sigh sig sigh and fuck. That sounds like it'd be really interesting, never did like how Gateway is basically useless after warpgate research lol
I know! but people (like Blizzard and in this thread) seem to assume I hate warpgate or I think warpgate units suck or something. They don't and I don't think it's op, it could just be even better
I've tried posting it multiple times @ Blizz forums but they either dont' get it or dont' want to deal with such a fundamental change.
To be honest, it boggles my mind that they designed it the way they did, it makes no sense at all to me.
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On October 15 2012 05:37 CYFAWS wrote:
Why don't we just make the change to warp gate revertable? When you want to macro as fast as possible, you build out of gateways. when you want cross map deployment, you can turn some gates into warpgates, warping until you want to change them back. it would be a mode for the building, similar to siege mode, with a conversion time.
It 100% is revertable, it costs 10 minerals.
NO ONE DOES IT, because once you have warpgate, it's stupid to use gateways.
Longer build time and the lack of convienience building units anywhere.
This is why people like me think it should be made that gateway = shorter build time, warpgate = longer build time, the tradeoff in build time is more logical.
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On October 13 2012 08:40 ledarsi wrote:Alright time for an essay. Why Warp Gate breaks Protoss endgame + Show Spoiler +
In the extreme late game, protoss has the option of building more warp gates. This is HUGE. With a large bank and 50 warp gates on standby, the Protoss now has 100 more supply available than they actually have in play. After, or even during a battle, the Protoss can immediately warp in more units.
Every warp gate effectively builds a unit, and then keeps it in reserve. These units in the warpgates do not cost supply to maintain, and they don't even cost resources until you actually want to put the unit on the board. Which you can do in any location you please, including directly into the battlefield to reinforce your army.
The effect of gateway units being "stored" in warpgates on top of your maxed army should not be underestimated. It gives protoss armies incredible momentum in maxed army confrontations. Even if Protoss and their opponent are both largely destroyed in the confrontation, the warped-in reinforcements hit immediately.
For Terran and Zerg, you pay for your units and then wait for them to build. Zerg can massively parallelize their production across larvae and hatcheries, so this cost is not as great. But for Terran, production facilities simply cannot compete with warp gates. Both sides are maxed, armies clash, both sides suffer casualties. Terran BEGINS production of their new units, while Protoss warps new ones in immediately. This difference in production is the NUMBER ONE REASON why mech does not work against protoss- because losing units against a protoss is an immediate loss due to inability to replace those units fast enough, even if you have the bank and production facilities to do so. You simply cannot wait one or two tank or thor build times without losing the game.
I can't really agree with you here. Zerg can make building and cancel them to go to 250/200 supply when they have a huge bank, et terran can replace vcs by mules with a lot of orbital command. (And when it's 130 protoss army supply vs 180 terran army supply you really need these 50 gates
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So...
What if the further away you are from your gateways, the longer the warp-in would be?
Gives defenders advantage, possibility to all-in still, and some cool choices between mixing warp vs normal gateways.
Also, Warp Prisms could be an exception to the rule which would be more of an incentive to use.
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On October 15 2012 08:35 vman44 wrote:Please check out my thread. This will fix warp gate and add to the strength of gateway units. Its not huge changes, but I think it would help. Essentially buff stalker damage from 10 (+4 light) to 15. In exchange, make warp gate research require twilight council and cost 100/100. Also, make forcefield researchable in the twilight council (now, 1 key upgrade for each staple gateway unit in TC, and remember hallu is now part of sentry for free). Then, reduce gateway build time to an average between the build times of warp gates and gateways at the moment. Further, reduce the roach HP from 145 to 100, and then make them only cost 1 supply: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=375409#9
These kind of huge changes are madness, Blizzard simply won't go for it, it's going to be hard enough to push for them to 'flip' the build times from warpgates / gateways (which in my opinion, is pretty much all that's needed) maybe an even longer 30s more build time on the warpgate research, maybe - but I'd just like to see that to begin with.
I mean you would see a significant impact in the army size if the Protoss player insisted on using warpgates with a longer build time, vs gateaways with a shorter - that tradeoff decision would be really interesting 
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On October 15 2012 08:59 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2012 05:37 CYFAWS wrote:
Why don't we just make the change to warp gate revertable? When you want to macro as fast as possible, you build out of gateways. when you want cross map deployment, you can turn some gates into warpgates, warping until you want to change them back. it would be a mode for the building, similar to siege mode, with a conversion time. It 100% is revertable, it costs 10 minerals. NO ONE DOES IT, because once you have warpgate, it's stupid to use gateways. Longer build time and the lack of convienience building units anywhere. This is why people like me think it should be made that gateway = shorter build time, warpgate = longer build time, the tradeoff in build time is more logical.
Come on implement this right here blizzard can't believe they haven't even tried this out yet, this beta is the time for this cool ass change
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Everyone seems to want this "tension" of choosing between gateway and warpgate. However, this is a completely different issue.
For example, what does concussive shells do? It makes marauders better because they can slow units. It doesn't make them worse in any way, and it doesn't have any tension between using it and not using it. The only reason someone may not get it early on in TvP is if they don't want to spend that 50/50 right then. That's what warpgate is. It's an UPGRADE! It costs resources and time, and gives the protoss player something, in this case better unit production and deployment.
Asking for a tradeoff between warpgate and gateway is missing the problem entirely. Instead we should be looking at what the warp gate upgrade does, and how available it is. Then consider how that affects the balancing of gateway units.
There are two main options if you want to nerf warpgates to make gateway units better:
1. If you want to keep the ability as it is, it would make sense to make it harder to get. Move the upgrade and/or make it more costly.
2. Otherwise, you can change the warpgate ability to include the normal gateway build time before you are allowed to warp in.
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On October 15 2012 09:15 PVJ wrote:
So...
What if the further away you are from your gateways, the longer the warp-in would be?
Gives defenders advantage, possibility to all-in still, and some cool choices between mixing warp vs normal gateways.
Also, Warp Prisms could be an exception to the rule which would be more of an incentive to use.
Your suggestion is effectively what I'm promoting,............... and it's difficult for Blizzard to manage - my solution is better (sorry)
Gateway = builds at home, short build time, less convienient.
Warpgate = builds anywhere, longer build time (cooldown) - more convienient.
So that instantly gives a defenders advantage for the player using gateways and an attacker disadvantage for the player using warpgates for harass, it's all about the build timings.
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You don't fix warp gate by creating bizarre rules based on distance from nexus and such. If Blizzard wants to change warpgate they can move the research to twilight council and make it a bit more expensive. They won't, because they want it to feel like a very powerful macro option for all of protoss - not as a stylistic choice - right from the start. If you don't address this argument and convince Blizzard otherwise, then there never is going to be any chance to it outside of some very minor tweak to build or research times.
This issue illustrates why the community as a whole is bad at game design. They look at the current metagame and come up with fixes based on that, without thinking of new players and without thinking of how the game will be played a year in the future.
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On October 15 2012 09:35 Grumbels wrote:
You don't fix warp gate by creating bizarre rules based on distance from nexus and such. If Blizzard wants to change warpgate they can move the research to twilight council and make it a bit more expensive. They won't, because they want it to feel like a very powerful macro option for all of protoss - not as a stylistic choice - right from the start. If you don't address this argument and convince Blizzard otherwise, then there never is going to be any chance to it outside of some very minor tweak to build or research times.
This issue illustrates why the community as a whole is bad at game design. They look at the current metagame and come up with fixes based on that, without thinking of new players and without thinking of how the game will be played a year in the future.
This is my ideal solution as well. One of the best (if not the best) upgrade in the game should not be at the first tech structure and cost only 50/50. Balancing around that is a nightmare.
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isn't that zealot building time was increased and shield was decreased in earlier WOL because how strong they were in early game pressure even though the original stats was the same as in BW but i can't remember if they are stronger because of wapgate (nullified the time to travel to the enemy base and instant back up army) or because of the size of the map at that time which is still can be nullified by the warpgate.. and this is happen in all league and not just lower level eh?
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On October 13 2012 10:20 Zergrusher wrote:
Fixing warp gate is so Easy
Make each type of gate way unit have a seperate warp in time.
instead of all gateway units currently having 5 seconds.
warp in time really isn't the issue, thinking that it is shows how little you know.
The issue with warpgates is the fact that toss can reinforce so fast in the late game. If you have 15 warpgates you just have to wait until they are all off cooldown before you engage and you can have almost another full army during that fight and another almost full army right after the fight finishes. Changing how long it takes to warp in a unit won't fix that. Changing the cooldowns on warp-ins is the only change that would make any difference.
I'm fine with warpgates as they are, gateway units seems plenty powerful but i'm no pro and so what I think is not relevant anyhow.
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On October 15 2012 09:43 hisoga wrote:
isn't that zealot building time was increased and shield was decreased in earlier WOL because how strong they were in early game pressure even though the original stats was the same as in BW but i can't remember if they are stronger because of wapgate (nullified the time to travel to the enemy base and instant back up army) or because of the size of the map at that time which is still can be nullified by the warpgate.. and this is happen in all league and not just lower level eh?
Here's the Zealot history:
Patch 1: 60shield/33second(23 warpgate)
Patch 3: 50shield/33second(23 warpgate)
Patch 16: 50shield/38second(28 warpgate)
Patch 17: 50shield/33second(28 warpgate)
Patch 1.1: 50shield/38second(28 warpgate)
The shield nerf was at the start of beta. Then they kept toying around with the build time.
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I was under the impression that virtually all protoss players would initially build more warpgates than they could support, then leave them largely idle while powering tech / eco. Flipping warp gate / gateway build times would definitely hinder warpgate all-ins by forcing protoss players to build extra gates in preparation, but how would it change a macro game?
You'd have stronger early-game pressure (you'll have to give the barracks treatment to the Gateway to keep proxies from becoming too powerful, although they'll still be more powerful), but I can't see the change doing anything for the deathball situation without making Gateway units somewhat threatening when not accompanied by sentry / colossus / templar past the 8 minute mark.
Blizzard would have to completely re-tune the entire game to make anything happen, honestly. This is looking really rough 
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Blizz wouldn't have to retune the game. Changing warp gate research to 100/100 and requiring a twilight council could be compensated by adding a little damage output to stalkers (15 to all instead of 10 +4 to armored). Further, forcefield should be a twilight council upgrade for 150/150 or 100/100. Each core unit should have a game changing upgrade in the twilight council. It makes sense, and is intuitive. Also, roach should be reduced in HP to compensate for later more expensive FF research, and later more expensive warp gate research.
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The problem is, if you put it on the twilight council, it means that if you open other tech branches, you dont have access to that option without throwing down another building. Thats the beauty of having it on the cy core, which is the point of divergence for the toss tech tree: each tech path can access warpgates.
If you want my opinion, it should be an expensive upgrade, maybe 150/150 and a decently long build time (less than now though) on the cy core or even the gateway itself. It would be unlocked after a tier 2 structure has been built (either robo, stargate or twilight council.
Once completed, the gateway would build units at -10 second build time, just like warpgates do now, and warpgates would build units at +10-15 seconds build time, plus 8-10 seconds of actually warping in.
Benefits?
1) Takes the protoss macro advantage out of the volatile early stage of the game (one benefit: no worries about proxy zealots with reduced build times, but it wouldnt help if zeals were buffed in other ways)
2) Forces a commitment to it in terms of time and resources (expensive upgrade has to fit into build orders)
3) Ensures Gateways are still better than warpgates for pure macro.
4) Ensures Warpgates are still strong for harass and defending drops, but not too good so the toss is reliant on that.
5) Helps with concerns about huge late game warp ins. Units will now take a few seconds longer before they actually warp in allowing good players more time to snipe these units and pylons.
Frankly, if they wanted to buff gateway units, they would do something like this to gateways, and then make their twilight council upgrades significantly less expensive. Charge should not be 200/200. They could also make the units scale a bit better with upgrades, or add flat out health, range, damage upgrades to twilight council. Basically, buff gateway upgrades instead of the units themselves.
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so Blizzard doesn't think warpgates make gateway units weak..
Imagine that the US was at war with Tajikistan and no other country got involved. Lets say that the US and Tajikistan were just as good at killing each other with their guns. Their guns cant quite shoot far enough since their on the opposite sides of the world, but they try. Suddenly, the Tajikistanians discover an ancient Tajikistanian teleporting device. The Tajikistanians start popping up right next to the white house and their guns can finally reach. The UN guys come in and say "woah woah woah, your ancient Tajikistanian teleporting device is way too good. Your guns need to be not as good at killing things, otherwise I'm going to have to step in"
"How does this apply MasterCynical?"
Well, just replace "US" with "Terran", "Tajikistan" with "Protoss", "guns" with "units", "Tajikistanian teleporting device" with "Warpgates", "white house" with "Terran base", and "The UN guys" with "Dustin Browder".
"Oh, it makes alot of sense now MasterCynical" You're welcome.
Sorry. I saw the Baller fanclub and just had to.
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Blizzard refuse to even answer posts on this with anything more than "newbies are complaining about warpgates" instead of getting an understanding of what people are trying to ask for.
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On October 14 2012 20:36 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On October 14 2012 20:28 DaveVAH wrote:
Masters here as well. Toss gate way units are very strong especially late game with blink and charge.
Charged zealots shredding bio are the reasons hellbats were invented.
So ye David kim is right. What? that's so wrong, hellbats are there to protect tanks from zealots, not bio. I agree that supplywise gateway units are really strong though.
Watch the blizcon video of the battle hellions and their reasons for creating it. it was to counter charglots specificly. they still want it used with bio as well as mech builds hence the bio tag.. but it is still not happening because the tech path is too far and costly atm.
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i don't think gate way units are that weak but I agree with the consensus that gateways should have an advantage over warpgates.
Like many have said, make gateways produce units more frequent than warpgates.
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On October 15 2012 14:13 DaveVAH wrote:Show nested quote +On October 14 2012 20:36 Big J wrote:On October 14 2012 20:28 DaveVAH wrote:
Masters here as well. Toss gate way units are very strong especially late game with blink and charge.
Charged zealots shredding bio are the reasons hellbats were invented.
So ye David kim is right. What? that's so wrong, hellbats are there to protect tanks from zealots, not bio. I agree that supplywise gateway units are really strong though. Watch the blizcon video of the battle hellions and their reasons for creating it. it was to counter charglots specificly. they still want it used with bio as well as mech builds hence the bio tag.. but it is still not happening because the tech path is too far and costly atm.
Oh god. When will people stop with that "counter to X" mentality, because blizzard showed a video. Guess what, if they want to show it, then they have to show it against units, else it's not interesting.
And if you really want to talk that video, ask yourself what did they show? They showed hellion/siege tank fight zealot/archon. Not hellion+bio. Not pure hellion. Hellion+siege tank, with 4 factories in the background.
And you know what Dustin Browder said: "... Hellions, ordinarily very unhappy with all the splash damage coming down on their heads from their own siege tanks..."
It's siege tanks, siege tanks, siege tanks, all the way in that video.
Yes, they are good vs zealots. But they are also good just for tanking extra hits against nearly anything. Their HP/cost ratio is roachish, zealotish.
And they created that biotag because they wanted it to get healed by medivacs, so that people can experiment with that. Whether you play those medivacs because of the presence of hellions (mech), or the hellions because of the presence of medivacs (bio) is up to you and other people, how you want to play them and how it will be figuered to be played best.
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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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It is simple realism. Or pessimism born from reading Blizzard interviews and seeing how they've handled SC2 (campaign, unit/faction design, balancing) thus far, seeing how they've handled themselves with D3, and not liking it. What they've shown is that they don't really know what they're doing. They have some vision of how some things should work when practical experience says it doesn't work period, but apparently if a horrible design can be balanced it should be kept. Innovation, yay.
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I am with the coffee zombie. Although if someone makes a compelling enough custom map that people start playing it over ladder, I expect Blizzard is able enough to copy it. They clearly have no idea what they are doing, and need a model to follow.
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On October 16 2012 07:10 ledarsi wrote:
I am with the coffee zombie. Although if someone makes a compelling enough custom map that people start playing it over ladder, I expect Blizzard is able enough to copy it. They clearly have no idea what they are doing, and need a model to follow.
Someone should seriously make a custom map with the warp gates / gateway build times reversed, just that.
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On October 16 2012 05:40 SarcasmMonster wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Have you been following them for the last couple of years? There's not a goddamn hope in hell they'd change fundamentals unless it's a full blown sequel or expansion pack.
HoTS is an expansion pack and they still won't even consider looking at this, they don't believe it's a problem, if they won't do it for a BETA for an unrealeased full expansion, we're all kind of wasting our time, sadly.
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Any matchups involving protoss are about a deathball fighting another deathball. That is, of course, after the Protoss sits on 3bases (because there are no reasons to get a 4th base before the main is mined out).
PvP is broken x2. Honestly, does Blizzard really think this matchup is interesting? Seriously now... How can they acknowledge that whining about warpgate is a low level thing.. it's not. It has nothing to do with balance, it has something to do with how we want the game to be played. We want macro games, not timings.
Edit: Just wanted to add that I find quite sad the fact that Blizzard is so arrogant towards its fanbase. This company has the biggest fan following, and it seems that in these recent years, all they've done was test their tolerance..
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On October 16 2012 05:55 ledarsi wrote:
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.
This. Exactly what I wanted to say.
The macro/race mechanics of Zerg and Protoss were so poorly designed with obviously zero thought put in. Orbital spells can be used in different situations for different types of game-play and that creates strategy and depth. Queens still are extremely one-dimensional and only of late have they "grown" and even still it is very hard to incorporate them and create new strategies with them. What do most of them do beyond act as a tumor on the side of a hatchery in most games? Same goes for warp-gate, where is the trade-off? Might as well just make Cybernetics Core cost 50 more minerals and gas and make it take an additional 160 in-game seconds to create. There would be no difference (ignoring the need for Sentries and Stalkers). This is disrupting to the game and it's flow, balance, and just sloppy design.
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I'm not sure the larvae inject by itself is a bad idea (it is a macro-heavy mechanic.. it differenciates the zerg who never misses his injects from the one who forgets them from time to time).. but the number of larvaes might be. It seems like the capacity of Zergs to drone in early to mid game (or commit to a ling bling all-in) is too high.
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On October 16 2012 12:08 Rumpus wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2012 05:55 ledarsi wrote:
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. This. Exactly what I wanted to say. The macro/race mechanics of Zerg and Protoss were so poorly designed with obviously zero thought put in. Orbital spells can be used in different situations for different types of game-play and that creates strategy and depth. Queens still are extremely one-dimensional and only of late have they "grown" and even still it is very hard to incorporate them and create new strategies with them. What do most of them do beyond act as a tumor on the side of a hatchery in most games? Same goes for warp-gate, where is the trade-off? Might as well just make Cybernetics Core cost 50 more minerals and gas and make it take an additional 160 in-game seconds to create. There would be no difference (ignoring the need for Sentries and Stalkers). This is disrupting to the game and it's flow, balance, and just sloppy design.
Queens Heal is being used quite commonly and is a core ability when it comes to defending banshee/hellion early on and people make the tradeoff to pull their queens away from hatcheries a lot of times.
And warpgate would not even be an upgrade, if it wasn't for early timings, blizzard has stated that more than once. It's simply not meant to be a tradeoff, gateways would have probably not even made it into the game, if there weren't early balance issues.
I don't get why people want zerg to build more hatches than inject, apart from being too bad to inject constantly and rather prefer the attentionless larvaproduction.
Balancewise it is absolutly needed that zerg gets +150% production from 150minerals instead of +100% from 350minerals. Outside of balance it is tomato - tomato. More hatches instead of more queens wouldn't make any difference if they were balanced to make the same amount of larva for the same money. If not, then all you do is nerf zerg into the ground.
On October 16 2012 12:24 Patate wrote:
I'm not sure the larvae inject by itself is a bad idea (it is a macro-heavy mechanic.. it differenciates the zerg who never misses his injects from the one who forgets them from time to time).. but the number of larvaes might be. It seems like the capacity of Zergs to drone in early to mid game (or commit to a ling bling all-in) is too high.
that's not an inject issue, that's a general issue created by too many ressources per base.
The high amount of larva, the production speed of warpgates and reactors and generally all unit production speeds are balanced around granting a certain amount of production per income and are only so high because of the high income.
The ability of zergs droning is just slightly above a Terrans 3OC opening. Similarily for Protoss, just that we hardly ever see this in games because P can't place a third nexus early on.
All races have those insane macro capabilities (due to how much income a base gives a player), it's just that with zerg those strategies are standard.
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On October 16 2012 05:40 SarcasmMonster wrote:Show nested quote +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.
I just follow what Dayvie and DB have been saying. They've explicitly said a couple times that they don't believe Warpgate has made Gateway weaker, and they don't believe Gateway is weak to begin with. I partially agree in one sense, but their small scale viability could definitely use a facelift.
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I guess I don't understand how increasing gateway unit effectiveness while decreasing the effectiveness of warpates via timing, build time, warp in time, etc wouldn't be viable. I understand reasons Blizzard has for not wanting to do that but if enough of the community is asking for it I think they should.
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Why shouldn't gateway units' strength revolve around good FF usage? After all, Terran bio revolves around good stutter step. Zerg has it's micro too.
Personally I enjoy how the sentry fits in. It makes protoss an interesting race.
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supply per supply, even the stalker looks good.
supply
1 stalker = 2 marines = 1 roach = 4 zerglings
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And we haven't even touched on the issue on chronoboost speeding up upgrades, further weakening gateway units, or they will be too strong at certain timings. Chrono might seem to be the better macro mechanic which requires protoss to make choices. But some things do not need to be that complicated, especially such an integral part of the game like upgrade timings. If you want to have a head start over upgrades, you should sacrifice economy. While some may argue that the game balance already take into consideration the chrono not spent on nexus slows down economy, it's just too hard to balance properly until all the optimal build orders (spending of chrono) have been mapped out completely.
Cost of queen (larva injects) has been internalised into zerg's production cost, just like how terran reactors require gas, etc. It's not really a big deal since zerg macro is just too easy with MBS and without injects. That being said, i would still prefer them to nerf zerg production (indirectly economy growth) and make zerg units stronger, so they can have a proper mid game instead of relying on gimmicky tech and spells. The heavy reliance on hive and infestor tech is due to weak zerg units + melee units not scaling well as they increase in numbers. But knowing Blizzard, if they hesitate on something like warp gates, they already show that they won't want to re-balance the entire race.
The most crucial is still warpgate though. Reinforcing mechanics should never ever be touched in a rts game. I would expect sc2 to be a much better game if warpgate doesn't exist even if there are other game design flaws.
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1) Gateway units aren't weak, it is the Stalker that is weak. Zealots are in a good place balance wise, and Sentries are OP (to make up for Stalkers being UP) early game. Stalkers do around the same DPS/resource as a WORKER. Let that sink in. Now all those times you see a flock of SCVs force back a group of stalkers makes sense. They also suffer severely from overkill due to slow attack speed and projectile speed. Stalkers IMO should be made into a specialized mobile harass/AA unit (2 areas which protoss lacks early game), and the Immortal moved to the gateway (and rebalanced obviously) to function as the core ranged support unit. Sentry would also have to changed (possibly moved to robotics to replace Immortal) as zealot/immortal/sentry early on would be too powerful. This eliminates protoss early reliance on sentries.
They can even make it so Immortals can't be warped-in to create an interesting game dynamic having to choose between constant immortal production from gateways or to change them to warpgates so you can reinforce with Zealots.
2) Having a warp mechanic doesn't necessarily mean you have to make gateway units weak, but then you have to give defenders more of a defender's advantage to compensate. It's bad game design though, no doubt about it. I would actually change the warp-gate mechanic so that you can only warp in near a nexus. This eliminates its offensive potential but keeps its defensive potential intact.
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I agree that its not the zealot that is weak, just the stalker. The zealot is a great tanking unit that can do some damage if it gets hits in. The stalker just doesn't do enough dps in combination with the zealot. However other things would need to change if the stalker was fixed.
I recommended the following and no one provided any good arguments against it:
-Stalker damage from 10 (+4 to armored) to 15 vs everything
-Warp gate now requires twilight council and costs 100/100... the upgrade is still in the cyber core though.
-Gateways and warpgates have the same build time, although i'm OK with having the built times switched so that gateways build faster. If the builds are the same, then the research is more of an "upgrade" and should cost 100/100 for allowing offensive warp ins. If the build time is actually INCREASED with warp gates, the upgrade should cost 50/50, but still require twilight council.
-Require a twilight council upgrade for forcefield costing 150/150. This would compensate for the additional damage from stalkers in the early game.
-Slight reduction of DPS for the colossus to keep the stalker / colossus composition having the same damage output in light of the new stalker damage vs light.
-I also recommended reducing roach hit points without changing cost and making it a true 1 supply unit (reducing hit points from 145 down to 100 or so), with the power / cost of a true 1 supply unit. This nerf to early game roach (but buff late game b/c of reduced supply) would equalize the no early forcefield from toss. This would also increase the roach effectiveness in a maxed composition for hit and runs, and expansion snypes. I think its silly that zerg has a .5 supply unit, and 2 supply units, but no army 1 supply unit. Plus, I think it is horrible design to have a unit that is blatantly too high in supply cost, but blatantly too low in resource cost. I think this is one of the major contributing factors in the horribleness that is pvz.
-Finally I recommended raising the hit points of hydras from 80 to 120. These units need to be used more. This will also help counteract the +5 damage buff vs them by the stalker. Hydras will remain a strong counter to any 2 base, or later (because of the twilight council requirement) 1 base warp gate allins.
This is a solution that I'm 99.9% confident WOULD be close to balanced (I'm a masters protoss player that watches a ton of pro games too), whether you like the solution or not. I think it also addresses all the problems that people have about protoss, and pvz.
The only thing that I think would maybe need a SLIGHT adjustment if something like this were tried would be blink stalker allins vs terran since stalkers would be better vs marines. Terran's may need a SLIGHT tweek to compensate for the +5 damage to marines from stalkers. However, the widow mine how it stands may be enough to combat blink stalker allins.
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On October 16 2012 12:44 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2012 12:08 Rumpus wrote:On October 16 2012 05:55 ledarsi wrote:
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. This. Exactly what I wanted to say. The macro/race mechanics of Zerg and Protoss were so poorly designed with obviously zero thought put in. Orbital spells can be used in different situations for different types of game-play and that creates strategy and depth. Queens still are extremely one-dimensional and only of late have they "grown" and even still it is very hard to incorporate them and create new strategies with them. What do most of them do beyond act as a tumor on the side of a hatchery in most games? Same goes for warp-gate, where is the trade-off? Might as well just make Cybernetics Core cost 50 more minerals and gas and make it take an additional 160 in-game seconds to create. There would be no difference (ignoring the need for Sentries and Stalkers). This is disrupting to the game and it's flow, balance, and just sloppy design. Queens Heal is being used quite commonly and is a core ability when it comes to defending banshee/hellion early on and people make the tradeoff to pull their queens away from hatcheries a lot of times.
I know, and I don't argue that at all, but unless you are making Queens that will be standing around and banking energy while doing NOTHING ELSE that is the only way you will have those heals. It adds nothing else to the game. As for dealing with early game situations, the Queen has simply been buffed into this position. And injections aren't constant so yeah, people can afford to pull them quickly. But neither of the things I mentioned above can hardly be considered "trade-offs."
Look back at the Queen before it's last buff(s), they could have been replaced by an Orbital-like upgrade and not much about Zerg strategy and depth would've changed. This is an inherit issue with the design of the Queen. I think it should bring the same capabilities an Orbital does, which provides you options fitting to what strategy you decide to carry out.
And warpgate would not even be an upgrade, if it wasn't for early timings, blizzard has stated that more than once. It's simply not meant to be a tradeoff, gateways would have probably not even made it into the game, if there weren't early balance issues.
Then this directly supports what I said, what is even the point of the upgrade if you have to get it? To me that shows nothing but inability to properly design and balance a situation (in this case PvX early game). Warp-gate is nothing but a required band aid on top of an issue.
I don't get why people want zerg to build more hatches than inject, apart from being too bad to inject constantly and rather prefer the attentionless larvaproduction.
Balancewise it is absolutly needed that zerg gets +150% production from 150minerals instead of +100% from 350minerals. Outside of balance it is tomato - tomato. More hatches instead of more queens wouldn't make any difference if they were balanced to make the same amount of larva for the same money. If not, then all you do is nerf zerg into the ground
I don't want to have to build more hatcheries, I never even said that. And for the record, my injections are pretty spot on ^_^ but the way interaction is carried out, and how it is forced between Queen and hatchery are very dull to me. Why not remove the energy cost, keep the cool down, and give the Queen the abilities to be a little more exciting? Other then that I completely agree with you, it is completely necessary that Zerg has those injections.
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On October 13 2012 08:40 ledarsi wrote:Alright time for an essay. Why Warp Gate breaks Protoss early game + Show Spoiler +
The Warp Gate is strictly dominant over the Gateway. It builds every unit more quickly, and allows them to be warped in anywhere, negating defender's advantage. Even if it did not allow the meat of the ability (the warp in anywhere) it would still be strictly dominant over the gateway simply because it reduces the build times of all gateway units by about 10 seconds.
This is the reason why the 4gate, and other "fast Warp Gate" issues have appeared. As soon as that research finishes, Protoss has a HUGE surge in power. Gateway production cycle finishes, transform to Warp Gate, instantly warp in more units. Obviously conducive to strong all-in at this timing.
Furthermore, the boost in production means that Protoss is also in an exceptionally good position to continue their all-in. The negation of defender's advantage regardless of the size of the map, and the ability to ignore ramps by warping in on the high ground together added up to an incredibly powerful early game that does directly result in the zealot and stalker being weaker than perhaps they should be.
In terms of raw numbers, gateway units are weaker than they were in Brood War. The zealot has less shield than in BW, and is a melee unit which has been indirectly nerfed by the engine. The stalker has less HP and considerably less damage than the dragoon, not to mention its lack of a range upgrade. True, it has a higher movement speed, but in terms of actual combat power, it is considerably weaker. Warp Gate is the cause. This even applies to templar tech. High Templar with warp in was such a problem that they removed the energy upgrade. DT warp in would be an issue if it weren't delayed by the most expensive and useless tech structure in the game, with a tremendous build time. Warp Gate broke the gateway units by buffing their logistics so much their actual power had to be reduced.
Protoss early game is thus weak. And they are dependent on Sentries, forcefield, and map design to stay alive.
Why Warp Gate breaks Protoss macro + Show Spoiler +
Alright now onto why the macro mechanic of warp-in is fundamentally flawed from an economic/industrial standpoint.
Plain and simple, Warp Gate causes your unit production to be front-loaded to paying for it. Rather than spend money, wait for unit to be produced, and then receive unit, the warp gate is effectively "producing" the unit for no cost while you wait for its cooldown. You are paying for the unit at the END of its production cycle, rather than the beginning. This is a huge change.
You only pay for the unit when you actually want or need it. If you are building constantly out of all your warp gates, this doesn't really matter that much. It certainly matters that warp gates build units considerably faster, meaning you need fewer warp gates than you would gateways. But if you always purchase when the cooldown is up, it does not really matter if the cost is at the beginning or the end. There is a small efficiency gain from getting to pay later, but it's not really a big deal. The big issue comes from warp gates with their cooldowns up, but which the player either cannot build from, or does not need to build from at that time. See the section on protoss endgame.
Why Warp Gate breaks Protoss endgame + Show Spoiler +
In the extreme late game, protoss has the option of building more warp gates. This is HUGE. With a large bank and 50 warp gates on standby, the Protoss now has 100 more supply available than they actually have in play. After, or even during a battle, the Protoss can immediately warp in more units.
Every warp gate effectively builds a unit, and then keeps it in reserve. These units in the warpgates do not cost supply to maintain, and they don't even cost resources until you actually want to put the unit on the board. Which you can do in any location you please, including directly into the battlefield to reinforce your army.
The effect of gateway units being "stored" in warpgates on top of your maxed army should not be underestimated. It gives protoss armies incredible momentum in maxed army confrontations. Even if Protoss and their opponent are both largely destroyed in the confrontation, the warped-in reinforcements hit immediately.
For Terran and Zerg, you pay for your units and then wait for them to build. Zerg can massively parallelize their production across larvae and hatcheries, so this cost is not as great. But for Terran, production facilities simply cannot compete with warp gates. Both sides are maxed, armies clash, both sides suffer casualties. Terran BEGINS production of their new units, while Protoss warps new ones in immediately. This difference in production is the NUMBER ONE REASON why mech does not work against protoss- because losing units against a protoss is an immediate loss due to inability to replace those units fast enough, even if you have the bank and production facilities to do so. You simply cannot wait one or two tank or thor build times without losing the game.
Essentially I am saying three things. Firstly, that the potential to abuse warpgates early game (warp into base, timing when warp gate research finishes, extra production after research finished) weakens gateway units. Secondly, Warp Gate production is front-loaded to actually paying for the unit. And thirdly, when Protoss is maxed, every Warp Gate they possess is effectively an extra unit that they haven't paid for yet, which can be actualized on the field anywhere, immediately.
Agree mostly, but you have to consider the level of players also
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On October 16 2012 10:32 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:
Someone should seriously make a custom map with the warp gates / gateway build times reversed, just that.
You know, this should be like a rule for any thread that proposes these kinds of tweaks to the game.
Why incite page after page of theorycrafting + raging + vitriol when you can simply be like "Here, I made these changes that I think would be good. Would any good players like to try it and offer feedback?"
I'm sure there are a lot of adept data editors around TL other than myself (or, failing that, SC2mapster) that can implement just about every change mentioned in every balance thread I've read in a few minutes.
Well, except for the 'build time scales by distance from warp gate'. That would actually be really complex to do, and involve triggers and scripts.
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Its been stated many times here. I think the issue is that when the early units, hell all of the gateway units (minus the DT) without a sentry are really just cannon fodder. Cant really suggest how to fix as it could break the game as we like it.
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On October 17 2012 09:37 Rumpus wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2012 12:44 Big J wrote:On October 16 2012 12:08 Rumpus wrote:On October 16 2012 05:55 ledarsi wrote:
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. This. Exactly what I wanted to say. The macro/race mechanics of Zerg and Protoss were so poorly designed with obviously zero thought put in. Orbital spells can be used in different situations for different types of game-play and that creates strategy and depth. Queens still are extremely one-dimensional and only of late have they "grown" and even still it is very hard to incorporate them and create new strategies with them. What do most of them do beyond act as a tumor on the side of a hatchery in most games? Same goes for warp-gate, where is the trade-off? Might as well just make Cybernetics Core cost 50 more minerals and gas and make it take an additional 160 in-game seconds to create. There would be no difference (ignoring the need for Sentries and Stalkers). This is disrupting to the game and it's flow, balance, and just sloppy design. Queens Heal is being used quite commonly and is a core ability when it comes to defending banshee/hellion early on and people make the tradeoff to pull their queens away from hatcheries a lot of times. I know, and I don't argue that at all, but unless you are making Queens that will be standing around and banking energy while doing NOTHING ELSE that is the only way you will have those heals. It adds nothing else to the game. As for dealing with early game situations, the Queen has simply been buffed into this position. And injections aren't constant so yeah, people can afford to pull them quickly. But neither of the things I mentioned above can hardly be considered "trade-offs." Look back at the Queen before it's last buff(s), they could have been replaced by an Orbital-like upgrade and not much about Zerg strategy and depth would've changed. This is an inherit issue with the design of the Queen. I think it should bring the same capabilities an Orbital does, which provides you options fitting to what strategy you decide to carry out. Show nested quote +And warpgate would not even be an upgrade, if it wasn't for early timings, blizzard has stated that more than once. It's simply not meant to be a tradeoff, gateways would have probably not even made it into the game, if there weren't early balance issues. Then this directly supports what I said, what is even the point of the upgrade if you have to get it? To me that shows nothing but inability to properly design and balance a situation (in this case PvX early game). Warp-gate is nothing but a required band aid on top of an issue.
But that's the point of every energy unit there has ever been (apart from the defiler and the viper). They need to bank energy over time. The queen is even one of the more active ones, when it comes to constantly spending it.
And I disagree that queens could have been "orbitals" before the last patch. They have always been important to block hellions and to fight hellions that are in your base, to fight early rushes and most importantly to fight air. You can't achieve their AA role in the same way with an upgrade, just look at how often blizzard has changed purify up to now.
The only thing I would like to see changed with the queen in terms of "more active"abilities is that I think that heal should be remade to a "heals until the unit is full, or the queen is out of energy 2HP/energy"-spell to allow transfusion of small units early on and small/medium units during all of the game.
For warpgates... that is how you balance such an ability. If something is meant to be in the game, but doesn't work out timingwise, you make it an upgrade. Like speedupgrades for roaches and zerglings. Those are not meant to be "you pay a fair prize and get something for it", those are "this is necessary if you want to play with that unit" upgrades. Warpgate is meant to be researched, yet not asap, but it turns out that for 50/50 everybody will research it asap, just like 95% of all zerg spend their first 100gas on zergling speed. That's what "figuering" is called and sometimes people will even try to skip such things. For warpgate this just never worked out.
Show nested quote +I don't get why people want zerg to build more hatches than inject, apart from being too bad to inject constantly and rather prefer the attentionless larvaproduction.
Balancewise it is absolutly needed that zerg gets +150% production from 150minerals instead of +100% from 350minerals. Outside of balance it is tomato - tomato. More hatches instead of more queens wouldn't make any difference if they were balanced to make the same amount of larva for the same money. If not, then all you do is nerf zerg into the ground I don't want to have to build more hatcheries, I never even said that. And for the record, my injections are pretty spot on ^_^ but the way interaction is carried out, and how it is forced between Queen and hatchery are very dull to me. Why not remove the energy cost, keep the cool down, and give the Queen the abilities to be a little more exciting? Other then that I completely agree with you, it is completely necessary that Zerg has those injections.
Sry, didn't declare that properly. It was meant to be a respond to ledarsi, ywho ou quoted originally.
Yeah, injecting is a bit boring, but so is unit production for Terran imo. I think it would be better if you didn't have to click the hatcheries to inject, so that you could do it more quickly in the middle of doing something else
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I think that warpgates are not the biggest issue of toss in WOL . But i admit that they are an issue . Their is no need to denial that.
In my opinion the best solution for the warpgate would be to switch the building times of gateway and warpgate, like it was said in posts before.So that the warpgates take longer to warp in then the gateways to build an unit. I think the developer took the idea of warping in units a little bit too far,because the don't realized that warping in units on nearly every point on the map, is an powerful ability on its own and that adding also the benefit of shorter buildtimes than the gateway has causes balancing issues.
Switching buildtimes between warpgate and gateway has the following benefits:
1. It would add an strategic reason for transforming an warpgate back into an gateway. This would lead to an deeper gameplaymechanic, where the players must figure out at which time is it good to have which amount of gateways and which amount of warpgates. And so the gateways would become useful in the lategame.
2.Early units could be made a bit stronger, because of the cooldown nerf and so toss would feel more powerful in the earlygame.
The Downside would be, that their would be no more intense timing-pushes where you try to hold on against an pushing toss and even if you kill his units he is warping in again and again.
So even better is the idea of giving warpgates energy instead of cooldown , in an way like the nexus has it for chronoboost or the commandcenter has it for mules.You could balance the energy which is needed for one warpin so, that the time between warpins would take longer then the gateway needs to build.This would have following
additional benefits:
In combination with an alter version of the mothershipcore´s abillity energize , could it be possible, in my opinion, to balance warping in bigger units like the colossus or immortal.
This would work as follow:
The gateway could save up a max of 200 energy. Zealot and stalker coast each 200 energy to warp in but , and this would be the important point, i would give the mothershipcore the ability to suck up 800 energy max with the reinvented ability energize, similar to the viper sucking up energy, only with the difference that the mothershipcore would not damage the building but rater transports the energy from the building to itself and from their, if the player wants, to another building or unit , which can save energy. So that the new energize works in both directions , suck up energy and save it on the mothershipcore and the other direction would be to give an unit/building energy form the mothersipcore.
And if the mothershipcore sucks 4 warpgates dry and gets up to 800 energy it could generate an stationary field and warp in 2 Immortals or 2 Colossi for the warpin-coast of 400 for each warping in an unit out of the robotic facility.
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On October 16 2012 07:10 ledarsi wrote:
I am with the coffee zombie. Although if someone makes a compelling enough custom map that people start playing it over ladder, I expect Blizzard is able enough to copy it. They clearly have no idea what they are doing, and need a model to follow.
This suggestion should be implemented! I'm a complete noob with the editor but there are lots of people in the community with the ability to make this custom map! I think this would be a great step towards giving Blizz some useful feedback from players of every skill level.
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warpgate unit weak ! The templar and archon are like the most powerfull unit in the game.
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EPT
