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On October 16 2012 06:25 SnipedSoul wrote:
Do something with the colossus. It's everything wrong with the game. It pretty much has to be in a deathball and has little to no capacity for micro beyond basic repositioning and focus firing.
It could be cool in a speed prism though, no? Much like a reaver drop 
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On October 18 2012 03:11 StandAloneComplex wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2012 01:42 FancYCaT wrote:
I would like to hear you opinion on making equal times for warp cooldown (Warpgate) and build time (Gateway) while adding a 20% reduced cost in gas and minerals if a unit is build in a gateway. (I say 20% here cause it would feel like a very round number right now, might be too much (Stalker would be 100/40, Zealot 80, Senry 40/80) this would allow protoss to produce units the "standard" way and allow to trade these more cost efficent while you still have the possibility to keep some gates warpgates for defense or harrasment via warp prism or an all in.
Please keep in mind that I just threw some numbers in here, so don't pay too much attention to them. 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.
i think the developer knew exactly what they were doing by creating warpgate.
They originally intended for wg to work as a harass tool, but wanted to balance it out so that the harass doesnt snowball out of control. To make toss not to dependent on successful harass, they created the high-tier power units colossus and ht to make the army composition strong enough to fight in late game. To give toss a tool to not loose the game immediately to an early all-in they created the sentry as the strongest defensive unit in the game.
And then the problems begin.
They nerfed gateway to the point where it cant fight offensively as long as you dont all in. The problem is that toss basic unit design is high hp low dps, which makes them bad as harass-units. As a result gw-units are so immobile, expensive, and weak in dps that every harass is a great risk with low reward. The result is that it's only being used in the way it was intended in pvp to counterattack or in pvz late as mineral sink. The idea of harass just didnt get in the game. Instead toss became a turtling high-tech race.
i like your idea of making wg energy based, but i think 200 is to much. making it like 50 energy seems more like the cooldown they should have, it's still increasing the cooldown by like 70 seconds. of course they would need to rebalance stalker, zealot, colossus and potentially sentry and ht.
btw they removed energyze from hots
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Blizzard would be crazy not to remove Colossus from HotS. It could be the worst designed RTS unit of all time.
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On October 18 2012 05:34 Blackfeather wrote:
They nerfed gateway to the point where it cant fight offensively as long as you dont all in. The problem is that toss basic unit design is high hp low dps, which makes them bad as harass-units. As a result gw-units are so immobile, expensive, and weak in dps that every harass is a great risk with low reward. The result is that it's only being used in the way it was intended in pvp to counterattack or in pvz late as mineral sink. The idea of harass just didnt get in the game. Instead toss became a turtling high-tech race.
Any proof for this? As far as I remember there hasn't been any crucial unit buffs/nerfs for gateway units, apart from the sentry nerf. (all in the WoL beta)
-10 HP for zealot (nerf), charge hit guarantee (buff)
+2dmg for stalker, -1vs armor per upgrade
-2damage for sentries
Any other nerfs were nerfs to warpgate and blink timings, so that they actually dont have to nerf stalkers or zealots or sentries.
They never touched gateway units.
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Some of these posts had me thinking that yes it sure is tough for Protoss to be interesting once the other races get anti air superiority. Beefy units that don't get countered by anti air are restricted to the archon and immortal, two a-move units. Bring back reavers at T3 and make sure they slow as slugs so they need warp prism investments and u put that good bw feel back in the game.
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@Big J They obviously did it when they designed the units, because that's the way every person with a brain would do it. Btw it is the way e.g. DoW did it with the eldar. If you watch gateway and compare it to bw you will immediately notice that the units became weaker than their counterpart, while marines were buffed and zerg got a new t1.5 ground fighting unit (roach). the whole colossus and sentry design makes only sense in combination with that.
edit: bringing back the reaver wont change much. toss still has no map control and the reaver in a way also has the air weakness.
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Blizzard we are begging you to fix the colossus, next to the oracle its most likely the worst unit ever made in this game.
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Make gateways build faster than warpgate
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On October 18 2012 05:34 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2012 03:11 StandAloneComplex wrote:On October 18 2012 01:42 FancYCaT wrote:
I would like to hear you opinion on making equal times for warp cooldown (Warpgate) and build time (Gateway) while adding a 20% reduced cost in gas and minerals if a unit is build in a gateway. (I say 20% here cause it would feel like a very round number right now, might be too much (Stalker would be 100/40, Zealot 80, Senry 40/80) this would allow protoss to produce units the "standard" way and allow to trade these more cost efficent while you still have the possibility to keep some gates warpgates for defense or harrasment via warp prism or an all in.
Please keep in mind that I just threw some numbers in here, so don't pay too much attention to them. 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.
i think the developer knew exactly what they were doing by creating warpgate. They originally intended for wg to work as a harass tool, but wanted to balance it out so that the harass doesnt snowball out of control. To make toss not to dependent on successful harass, they created the high-tier power units colossus and ht to make the army composition strong enough to fight in late game. To give toss a tool to not loose the game immediately to an early all-in they created the sentry as the strongest defensive unit in the game. And then the problems begin. They nerfed gateway to the point where it cant fight offensively as long as you dont all in. The problem is that toss basic unit design is high hp low dps, which makes them bad as harass-units. As a result gw-units are so immobile, expensive, and weak in dps that every harass is a great risk with low reward. The result is that it's only being used in the way it was intended in pvp to counterattack or in pvz late as mineral sink. The idea of harass just didnt get in the game. Instead toss became a turtling high-tech race. i like your idea of making wg energy based, but i think 200 is to much. making it like 50 energy seems more like the cooldown they should have, it's still increasing the cooldown by like 70 seconds. of course they would need to rebalance stalker, zealot, colossus and potentially sentry and ht. btw they removed energyze from hots
Your tongue is as sharp as your thinking.
I knew that they patched out energize , but that must not mean that it wont come back. Im not to keen on developerbashing. Generally i liked what they did in WOL a lot (creepspread,baelings,hellions,medivec,phonix...). Im just slightly mad about what they did in Hots so far with protoss, especially with the oracle. But beta had only started a few weeks ago and so they have time for changes.
At the moment i wrote it, i didn't thought about how slow energy is accumulating in SC, so you are absolute right, 200 energy for one zealot/starker warpin is to much, round about the factor 4. So warpgate should only accumulate up to 50 energy max and not up to 200 as it is the case for the nexus. That is also needed because their shoudnt be multiple warpins per warpgate able at once.That would mean, that the mothershipcore would get a max energy about 200 and to warpin one colossus/immortal would be done from the MSC for 100 energy.
On October 18 2012 05:46 HowardRoark wrote:
Blizzard would be crazy not to remove Colossus from HotS. It could be the worst designed RTS unit of all time.
The colossus is not the worst unit. Oracle is even worst, in its current form. That there are only twelve answers in the poll allowed and that content is still shifting in the beta, are the reasons why i dint include the hots units in the redone - poll.
On October 18 2012 07:26 sona wrote:
Blizzard we are begging you to fix the colossus, next to the oracle its most likely the worst unit ever made in this game.
They don't hear you in this forum, so if you like this post feel free to put an post with an link to this post in the us-battlenet-hots betaforum.
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/5671338/
I also want to thank SC2John for his comment in this post. I think it was pretty good.
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On October 18 2012 08:09 StandAloneComplex wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2012 05:34 Blackfeather wrote:On October 18 2012 03:11 StandAloneComplex wrote:On October 18 2012 01:42 FancYCaT wrote:
I would like to hear you opinion on making equal times for warp cooldown (Warpgate) and build time (Gateway) while adding a 20% reduced cost in gas and minerals if a unit is build in a gateway. (I say 20% here cause it would feel like a very round number right now, might be too much (Stalker would be 100/40, Zealot 80, Senry 40/80) this would allow protoss to produce units the "standard" way and allow to trade these more cost efficent while you still have the possibility to keep some gates warpgates for defense or harrasment via warp prism or an all in.
Please keep in mind that I just threw some numbers in here, so don't pay too much attention to them. 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.
i think the developer knew exactly what they were doing by creating warpgate. They originally intended for wg to work as a harass tool, but wanted to balance it out so that the harass doesnt snowball out of control. To make toss not to dependent on successful harass, they created the high-tier power units colossus and ht to make the army composition strong enough to fight in late game. To give toss a tool to not loose the game immediately to an early all-in they created the sentry as the strongest defensive unit in the game. And then the problems begin. They nerfed gateway to the point where it cant fight offensively as long as you dont all in. The problem is that toss basic unit design is high hp low dps, which makes them bad as harass-units. As a result gw-units are so immobile, expensive, and weak in dps that every harass is a great risk with low reward. The result is that it's only being used in the way it was intended in pvp to counterattack or in pvz late as mineral sink. The idea of harass just didnt get in the game. Instead toss became a turtling high-tech race. i like your idea of making wg energy based, but i think 200 is to much. making it like 50 energy seems more like the cooldown they should have, it's still increasing the cooldown by like 70 seconds. of course they would need to rebalance stalker, zealot, colossus and potentially sentry and ht. btw they removed energyze from hots Your tongue is as sharp as your thinking. I knew that they patched out energize , but that must not mean that it wont come back. Im not to keen on developerbashing. Generally i liked what they did in WOL a lot (creepspread,baelings,hellions,medivec,phonix...). Im just slightly mad about what they did in Hots so far with protoss, especially with the oracle. But beta had only started a few weeks ago and so they have time for changes. At the moment i wrote it, i didn't thought about how slow energy is accumulating in SC, so you are absolute right, 200 energy for one zealot/starker warpin is to much, round about the factor 4. So warpgate should only accumulate up to 50 energy max and not up to 200 as it is the case for the nexus. That is also needed because their shoudnt be multiple warpins per warpgate able at once.That would mean, that the mothershipcore would get a max energy about 200 and to warpin one colossus/immortal would be done from the MSC for 100 energy. ...
Well thank you^^. I dont want to bash the developers, i also liked sc2 a lot and many things they tried and i dont think they are incompetent in any way nor that i would do a better job. But i'd love them more if they fixed the things that didnt work, since I wish for sc2 to be the perfect rts
i think the idea of warpgate is pretty cool on paper, almost as cool as the DoW eldar gates, but similar to the eldar gates it is hard to balance and has to have some drawback in order not to be op. The fact that toss is a low dps race with low mobility is a way to balance it out anyways. In addition the fact that all three races have strong defensive mechanisms (creeps, wall-in+repair, warp-in) makes this pretty ineffective too. The result is just that it is too much drawback to use it for harass except for dumping mins in late game. Therefore toss dont use the one way mobility for something else than all-ins.
The result is that warpgate is a concept that is used for all-ins and instantly resupplying the dying army, which makes it hard to buff the toss units to a point where harass could be good. A friend of mine thought that they should just change the way the cooldown works to the way the normal gateway works, so that all-ins come in like 30 seconds later and that resupplying isnt possible in 5 seconds but in 35, which seems reasonable to me. Afterwards gateway-units could be buffed to the point where the push would be 30 seconds later (so one more round of warp-in) and you would have pretty much the same situation balance wise (although not exactly cost-wise). Afterwards the colossus and the phoenix or the vr could be rebalanced to normal units.
ofc this is a ton of work, i highly doubt that blizz wants to pay that much just to fix the issues one race has with their mechanic. But creating something like harder hitting blink stalker that are used to harass could be worth it in terms of fun by watching.
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On October 18 2012 07:12 Blackfeather wrote:
@Big J They obviously did it when they designed the units, because that's the way every person with a brain would do it. Btw it is the way e.g. DoW did it with the eldar. If you watch gateway and compare it to bw you will immediately notice that the units became weaker than their counterpart, while marines were buffed and zerg got a new t1.5 ground fighting unit (roach). the whole colossus and sentry design makes only sense in combination with that.
edit: bringing back the reaver wont change much. toss still has no map control and the reaver in a way also has the air weakness.
zealot BW: 18.8dps
dragoon BW: 8.3 (12.5 vs med, 16.6 vs large) dps
zergling BW (without adrenalin glands): 15.625 dps
hydralisk BW: 8.3 (12.5 vs med, 16.6 vs large) dps
marine BW(pre stim): 10dps
firebat BW(pre stim): 4.54 (9.09 vs medium, 18.18 vs small) dps
(real seconds, fastest speed)
+ Show Spoiler +zealot SC2: 13.3 dps
stalker SC2: 6.9 (9.7 vs armored) dps
zergling SC2 (without adrenalin glands): 7.2 dps
roach SC2: 8 dps
marine SC2(pre stim): 7dps
marauder SC2(pre stim): 6.7 (13.4) dps
(blizzard seconds, fastest speed)
zealot SC2: 18.354 dps
stalker SC2: 9.52 (13.39 vs armored) dps
zergling SC2 (without adrenalin glands): 9.94 dps
roach SC2: 11.04 dps
marine SC2(pre stim): 9.66dps
marauder SC2(pre stim): 9.24 (18.49) dps
(real seconds, fastest speed)
No, I don't see what you are saying.
There have been a few shifts, marines have more health but stim is also only 50% more damage instead of 100% compared to BW, zerglings have been nerfed hugely.
Roaches and Marauders are a factor, so is pathing. In the end its a different game - and that's the crux. BW bio was not playable vs Protoss for several reasons, therefore it didn't matter all that much that marines wreck basic gateway units.
BW hydrabusts? Of course they were a thing. Pretending the roach is the problem is just wrong, hydras also had the potential to destroy pure gateway units.
And it's a simple myth that you have to nerf gateway units to introduce warpgate. You can just nerf warpgate over and over again if there is a problem with timings. Oh, wait, that's what they did. Now Protoss has to sit in his base for a while before a warpgate rush and then move his initial army over the whole map, just like any other race. Reinforcement distance is just a small part of the package that is defenders advantage and only influences the amounts of units you have to stockpile to move out initially and to reinforce with.
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On October 18 2012 07:12 Blackfeather wrote:
@Big J They obviously did it when they designed the units, because that's the way every person with a brain would do it. Btw it is the way e.g. DoW did it with the eldar. If you watch gateway and compare it to bw you will immediately notice that the units became weaker than their counterpart, while marines were buffed and zerg got a new t1.5 ground fighting unit (roach). the whole colossus and sentry design makes only sense in combination with that.
Actually, it's not obvious. It's especially not obvious when the developers say that this is not the case. Yet the myth continues. Big J articulates the numbers well above, so I don't need to elaborate the point. Simply put, Gateway units are not weak.
(To be honest, I have no idea how you came by the notion that Protoss is high HP and low DPS. We are the manly race.)
Think hard about when and in what context Gateway units appear weak. Against Terran, by and large it is when Terran production and research has kicked in (typically stim or especially, stim and medivacs). Against Zerg, by and large it is when Zerg production kicks in (along with research like speed on lings). This is complicated by the hard counters implemented in the game. In this instance, it is that the Roach counters the Zealot and the Marauder hard counters the Stalker.
This results in Protoss being reliant on a melee unit vs Terran whose army is made up of ranged units. This is why +1 armour is so important, and Charge, and the Sentry. The armour allows tanking so that Zealots can get in range, and forces kiting from Terran thus minimising overall DPS damage against Protoss. Charge serves a similar function. The Sentry FF prevents kiting, or more generally, adds +2 by way of Guardian Shield to support closing Zealots. Against Zerg, Protoss is reliant on the Stalker. Unfortunately, the Stalker is a generalist unit which has low DPS. It is strong in the early game, but weak in the mid-game until it has access to Blink research. Then it can be very powerful indeed. This does mean, however, that its raw DPS cannot be too high. If it were, that damage output combined with good Blink micro would make it OP. In this matchup damage output is usually prioritized leading to fast weapons upgrades, but more important is the Sentry and the control of opposing unit numbers by good FF. Without these, core Protoss gateway units just die to the sheer number of units produced by the swarm.
At these times, Protoss require higher tech to compete in the form of Colossus and High Templar. And so the game goes.
I have no idea what nonsense about swapping Gateway and WG timings etc is meant to achieve. If anything, it will incentivise greater Protoss turtle play, especially if Gateway timings are faster than current WG timing. I'll simply sit in my base and max to 200/200 faster before converting to WG (with stored Chrono) and march out to attack. Other notions involve giving Protoss more clicks for Gate/WG management when I am still surprised by the number of top Protoss players I see with their WG on cooldown but not producing (Gateway macro production is easier). It also confuses adding clicks to adding meaningful clicks. Simply adding an APM requirement does nothing significant to the game or Protoss if those clicks are meaningless.
So many touted changes to Protoss ignore the fact that Protoss design is not isolated, and is part of a greater game design (i.e. inclusive of Terran and Zerg). Any substantive changes to "fix" Protoss must also consider changes to the other races those "fixes" would necessitate; and therefore, probable wholesale changes to the basics of the game itself.
Simple wish-lists that "solve" Protoss won't achieve anything.
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Why is everyone so keen on removing warpgate tech? It puts a lot of restrictions on the race (just like other things in this game: larvae mechanics, marines ...) but it's a unique dynamic which can't be found in any other game out there and interesting to play with/against. Right now the balance is also quite fine.
Most people that say changes are needed don't seem to realise that the whole game (or at least the whole protoss race needs to be changed) if you change warpgates. We have seen already with the old 160sec warpgate proposal from Blizzard that even -5sec buildtime on zealot and stalker was too much in the early game and it no matter how high in the tech tree you move warpgates up, you still can't really buff those units due to lategame mass reinforcement possibilities. From all units that can be warped in chargelots and blink stalkers are the only fighting unit that is rdy from the get-go (apart from archons which are a bit delayed and not always worth the 300gas cost ... normally you would need to wait for storm energy).
Dustin Browder also stated in the official Blizzard forums already that warpgates are not the reason gateway units are not as cost efficient as others. It's the synergy with sentries which can be really strong if used correctly and later on the synergy with aoe units which lets them be cost efficient and fine as they are. No change needs to be made here in the current state.
Changing warpgates is like saying "change the marine". It's as substantial to the terran race as warpgates are to protoss and require a whole redesign of the race and every single timing/build orders/unit compositions would be screwed and sc2 balance would start from wol-beta-state again.
Last point that has been brought up a lot in this thread again, why is everyone so keen on removing sc2 units and replacing them with sc:bw units? It's a new game and apart from a higher screen resolution it should be different from sc:bw. There are a million ways to balance the game and introduce new units and Blizzard is trying the right approach in thinking of cool new stuff and giving it a try. If things don't work out they are cut from the game or altered to fit in accordingly.
If you want goliaths and reavers etc all back, install sc:bw again on your pc and play it. It's perfectly balanced and you have all there you want. Don't forget that it took sc1 quite a while to be balanced as well and sc:bw also took a while to be where it is now. You can't expect sc2 with the first addon not even out yet for a few more months to be the same and still sc:wol has already a pretty good overal balance so so far.
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I don't think you're getting the point here. The game is well balanced, that's not the problem but the protoss race is getting boring because it is restricted to use sentries/colossus throughout every game because gateway units are just too weak without them.
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On October 18 2012 20:24 rollAdice wrote:
I don't think you're getting the point here. The game is well balanced, that's not the problem but the protoss race is getting boring because it is restricted to use sentries/colossus throughout every game because gateway units are just too weak without them.
I definitely get the point. But a lot of people (including yourself it seems) don't seem to get that about 2 years (maybe even more) of Blizzard's work on unit design and balancing would be gone. It's too late to change the whole dynamic of a race that requires a complete redesign of several units key units at once. It's already way more than enough work to tweak the new units and change some of the old ones.
One important point I tried to get across is though that also the other races in SC2 have things that put a lot of restrictions on them. For example marine dps and versatility and general high stim dps (means terran can't have matching aoe to protoss), larvae mechanics, creep vision + speed (zerg low tier will never ever be able to stay on par with the other two races here due to these mechanics), late game zerg tech switches because only one building is required (if zerg needs to build multiple spires mutas would have way way stronger stats for example) and many more. Some aspects might be possible to rework at this stage of the game (hots beta in the works, wol came out 2 years ago) but others won't. I simply can't see a complete redesign of a race working. No matter how you would do it, apart from the huge work it would create it would also introduce new issues.
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On October 18 2012 20:24 rollAdice wrote:
I don't think you're getting the point here. The game is well balanced, that's not the problem but the protoss race is getting boring because it is restricted to use sentries/colossus throughout every game because gateway units are just too weak without them.
And why is that a bad thing? Protoss has an airpath a mechanical path and a high tech gateway path to complement those basic gateway units.
Look at how the other races play:
Terran bio: marine/marauder needs ghosts, vikings and medivacs as complementation and in TvZ
Terran mech: Tank/Hellion/Thor needs banshees and Vikings as complementation and early on some marines to get going
Zerg: Needs basically all of their units in all matchups, in most games (minus hydralisks)
And yes, it's boring if there aren't a lot of options and you need sentry/Colossus every game. That's why blizzard tries hard to really make that airtech option available in HotS.
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The bad thing is that protoss has to get gas-heavy units (sentries) to be able to compete with simple marine/marauder or roach or ling/baneling compositions that are also much more cost-efficient. Gas that could be invested into tech. With the gas that is left for tech you need a robo in most cases and colossus tech in order to further compete with upgrades like stim and medivacs. There is resource-wise not much room for other units/tech. And when colossi are on the field the enemy will have air-superiority, all the new units that are getting introduced for protoss are air units and you will not see them used very often when protoss still has to rely on sentries/colossus because of mentioned reasons.
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On October 18 2012 16:51 aZealot wrote:
Actually, it's not obvious. It's especially not obvious when the developers say that this is not the case. Yet the myth continues. Big J articulates the numbers well above, so I don't need to elaborate the point. Simply put, Gateway units are not weak.
(To be honest, I have no idea how you came by the notion that Protoss is high HP and low DPS. We are the manly race.)
The numbers are fairly obvious to me.
Cost comparison:
100 minerals and 2 supply of zealot is: 13.3dps. 150 hp
100 minerals and 2 supply of zerglings are: 28.8dps, 140 hp(no armor)
100 minerals and 2 supply of marines are: 14dps(21 with stim), 90 hp(no armor)
Stalker is harder to compare since it is significantly more gas heavy than its counterparts. But if we count 1:1 conversion, which is very favorable to the stalker, these are the numbers:
1 stalker = 175 res, 1 roach = 100 res, 1 marauder = 125 res.
4 stalkers are: 640 hp and 27.6 dps(38.8 to armor)
5 stalkers are: 800 hp and 34.5 dps(48.5 to armor)
7 roaches(4 stalkers) are: 1015 hp and 56 dps. If you count 6 roaches and 1 overlord due to extra supply, it is 870 hp and 48 dps.
7 marauders (5 stalkers): 875 hp and 46.9 dps(93.8 to armor, 70.35/140.7 with stim). 6 marauders and supply depot is 750 hp and 40.2dps (80.4 to armor)
Conclusion:
Protoss units have a significantly lower dps per cost, even taking into account the fact that stalkers are very supply efficient. Im not even talking about the fact that stalkers scale less well than their counterparts from upgrades.
The zealot has the highest hitpoint / cost ratio in the game, according to this: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=317592 . The stalker has 80hp / supply, which is more than zealots and zerglings and before T3, more than anything in fact.
Think hard about when and in what context Gateway units appear weak. Against Terran, by and large it is when Terran production and research has kicked in (typically stim or especially, stim and medivacs). Against Zerg, by and large it is when Zerg production kicks in (along with research like speed on lings). This is complicated by the hard counters implemented in the game. In this instance, it is that the Roach counters the Zealot and the Marauder hard counters the Stalker.
Stim only increases an already existing difference. Bio gets even less health and even more damage compared to gateway units. There are two reasons why bio gets better as the game progresses. First it is because they are all ranged with much better damage to cost ratio. Meaning you can kill stuff before it gets close, and that means the fight is skewed from the get go. Melee units always get worse in larger numbers because of this and the ultralisk is suffering from this exact issue.
Secondly, you can chose when to fight with bio. In fact, against protoss, both races can pick their fights. The issue is that there is a considerable speed difference in the mid game. Look at these numbers:
Speed baseline:
Marine/Marauder/Zealot/Sentry/Roach: 2.25
Stalker/Zergling: 2.95
Speed upgraded:
Sentry: 2.25
Zealot: 2.5
Stalker: 2.95
Roach: 3.0
Marine/Marauder(counting stim): 3.3
Zergling: 4.7
Thats not even including creep. On creep, both roaches and lings are as fast or faster than stalkers even without speed upgrades.
What does speed cost?
Lings: 100/100
Roach: 100/100
Stim: 150/150 +50/25 for tech lab
Blink: 150/150 +150/100 for TC
Charge: 200/200
How long does it take?
Ling: 130s
Roach: 110s
Stim: 180s +25s
TC: 50s
Charge/Blink: 140s
Not only is it significantly slower to research speed upgrades for protoss, even compared to stim. It also costs more than much more. I know it is not fair to consider stim a permanent 3.3 movement speed, but as far as mobility in combat goes, it has a pretty good uptime. I also chose to not include CC at all since it complicates things a fair amount. Cyber core and roach warren are considered trivial in their cost since you want them anyway. Technically speaking the tech lab falls under the same cathegory, but I wanted to make a point with the stim research.
Cost for cost, roaches destroy stalkers in a straight up fight. Blink is good, but on creep against speed roaches, you are at an almost 1.0 difference.
Even without medivacs, bio rolls over gateway units if there are no force fields. And how exactly do you catch these units when you are travelling 1.05 speed slower than them?
At these times, Protoss require higher tech to compete in the form of Colossus and High Templar. And so the game goes.
So many touted changes to Protoss ignore the fact that Protoss design is not isolated, and is part of a greater game design (i.e. inclusive of Terran and Zerg). Any substantive changes to "fix" Protoss must also consider changes to the other races those "fixes" would necessitate; and therefore, probable wholesale changes to the basics of the game itself.
Simple wish-lists that "solve" Protoss won't achieve anything.
Protoss is always the first to go for tech in almost every game. From the start you know you are going to expand and get colossus or templars. The matchup doesnt even matter in that regard. You can do a 6-7-8 gate allin, but frankly people stopped doing it for two reasons. Reason number 1 is that when scouted it gets stopped. Reason number 2 is that it is a dead end. You leave yourself with almost no option if you agression fails. A terran or zerg can at least fall back and rely on a stronger T1 to catch back up.
Obviously people are aware that the races are not isolated. By pointing out that they want gateway units to become stronger, they mean precisely that. Stronger compared to everything. Even PvP will stand to benefit from stronger baseline units, as colossus wars will be much less prominent.
The only hitch is that with every change to gateway units, warp tech becomes stronger as well. Hence they suggest warp tech be changed to have less of an impact, at least in the early and mid game. Late game remaxes are still an issue but not at all as big as the early game issues would be.
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Another good point, part of the problem are the roach and marauder. From the other side of the table you could also rework/remove these units together with sentries and things look much better for gateway units. But then again would blizzard go as far as committing to the removal of three of their own non-bw unit designs?
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On October 18 2012 15:49 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2012 07:12 Blackfeather wrote:
@Big J They obviously did it when they designed the units, because that's the way every person with a brain would do it. Btw it is the way e.g. DoW did it with the eldar. If you watch gateway and compare it to bw you will immediately notice that the units became weaker than their counterpart, while marines were buffed and zerg got a new t1.5 ground fighting unit (roach). the whole colossus and sentry design makes only sense in combination with that.
edit: bringing back the reaver wont change much. toss still has no map control and the reaver in a way also has the air weakness. zealot BW: 18.8dps dragoon BW: 8.3 (12.5 vs med, 16.6 vs large) dps zergling BW (without adrenalin glands): 15.625 dps hydralisk BW: 8.3 (12.5 vs med, 16.6 vs large) dps marine BW(pre stim): 10dps firebat BW(pre stim): 4.54 (9.09 vs medium, 18.18 vs small) dps (real seconds, fastest speed)+ Show Spoiler +zealot SC2: 13.3 dps
stalker SC2: 6.9 (9.7 vs armored) dps
zergling SC2 (without adrenalin glands): 7.2 dps
roach SC2: 8 dps
marine SC2(pre stim): 7dps
marauder SC2(pre stim): 6.7 (13.4) dps
(blizzard seconds, fastest speed) zealot SC2: 18.354 dps stalker SC2: 9.52 (13.39 vs armored) dps zergling SC2 (without adrenalin glands): 9.94 dps roach SC2: 11.04 dps marine SC2(pre stim): 9.66dps marauder SC2(pre stim): 9.24 (18.49) dps (real seconds, fastest speed)No, I don't see what you are saying. There have been a few shifts, marines have more health but stim is also only 50% more damage instead of 100% compared to BW, zerglings have been nerfed hugely. Roaches and Marauders are a factor, so is pathing. In the end its a different game - and that's the crux. BW bio was not playable vs Protoss for several reasons, therefore it didn't matter all that much that marines wreck basic gateway units. BW hydrabusts? Of course they were a thing. Pretending the roach is the problem is just wrong, hydras also had the potential to destroy pure gateway units. And it's a simple myth that you have to nerf gateway units to introduce warpgate. You can just nerf warpgate over and over again if there is a problem with timings. Oh, wait, that's what they did. Now Protoss has to sit in his base for a while before a warpgate rush and then move his initial army over the whole map, just like any other race. Reinforcement distance is just a small part of the package that is defenders advantage and only influences the amounts of units you have to stockpile to move out initially and to reinforce with.
marines got 1 of their upgrades for free (150/150 before), and 5 health +10 with an upgrade, which is essentially an increase by over 1/3. Therefore stim now also costs less. How is that not being buffed?
Zergling got nerfed, but since zerg got a faster production creating roach-armies is way easier and roaches need less upgrades to be effective.
While you compare the dps of these units, you completely ignore that zealots had 10 and dragoons 20 health more, zealots and dragoons scaled better with upgrades and zealots didnt have multiple attacks that scale down against armor and have a slower attack animation. There's nothing mythical about it.
if toss has to move the whole army over the mapi dont see how you can say that warpgate was a success.
the reason of my wish for a buff of gateway units (which results in the need for a nerf for warpgate) with warpgate is that it potentially could make warpgate a harass tool, something i would have created it for. If you ask the average viewer he will tell you that he hates toss. Not because toss is bad by art design or something, but because toss mu are turtle into deathball into one big battle that decides the game. Even the other two races mirrors are more interesting in terms of action and harass than every single toss mu. The reason is that toss lacks the possibility to harass, because the "cheap" units are slow and have low dps. And the only reason i could imagine for that is warpgate.
In hots blizz obviously tries to bring in more harass options because they recognized that. That's the reason for the oracle to give a lot of harass/cost and why the tempest is tweaked into what blizz thinks could become a harass unit with a late game upgrade. And why the msc gets recall to give warp ins a way to get back.
Btw the bad thing about sentry into colossus is that both units are 100% deathball units.
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