In 2503, the Protoss set aside their honor in the pursuit of vengeance. Through the first Great War, the Conclave’s laws forbid methods of war considered cruel or low. Even the mighty Tassadar aimed to bring swift death to the Overmind. The days of compassion have long since passed. Aiur has fallen; the Matriarch lies slain, alliances have broken, and the enemy is legion. With so many crimes there is but one recourse: the activation of the Dread Machines. Justice is long overdue: Death has come to the enemies of Auir, and there is no ground high enough to save them.
Identity and Mechanics
The Colossus is war engine so powerful, so terrible, that the Protoss sealed them away on faraway worlds, never to be used again. Colossus were never tools of peace like the Reaver and Observer, they have been, and always will be tools of genocide. This walker is intended to stride above the ruins of besieged settlements and incinerate the fleeing populous, military and civilian.There is no compassion, no honor, only killing. This grim power is mechanically reflected in its towering size and it’s sweeping thermal lance weapons. Cliffs and barricades are no obstacle for this construct; no place is safe. Its horizontal linear attack communicate that infantry and workers are ideal targets. So long as a Colossus walks upon the map, the enemy should know fear. Thematically, the Colossus is a fantastic face for a new, more vengeful Protoss.
Mechanics and Gameplay
The Colossus is one of the more controversial additions to the Protoss army. Due to the current structure of Protoss and the metagame, it is essential to bring powerful support units with AoE to the field of battle. However, the Colossus’s current iteration creates problems from a gameplay standpoint. Unlike Storm, EMP, or Siege Tank, Widow Mines, or Banelings, the Colossus is a unit with high reward and low risk, and requires less planning than its counterparts to be effective. Furthermore, colossus based armies can create a runaway power effect, snowballing into an overwhelming victory for Protoss. This is a common sight across all matchups. For a ready example of this snowball effect, look at the recent HerO vs Parting match on Cloud Kingdom during the Blizzard World Championship . To understand why this dynamic exists, lets look at the Colossus versus other powerful support units in Starcraft 2.
Name Cost HP Damage DPS Range Movement Colossus 300/200/6 150/200 15x2 (AOE) 18.2 6+3 2.25 Tempest 300/200/4 150/300 25+35 Mass 7.58 19 1.875 High Templar 50/150/2 40/40 80 AOE spell 20 9 1.88 Siege Tank 150/125/3 160 35+15 Armored 16.7+1.7 13 2.25/0 Raven 100/200/2 140 100+diminish AOE-- 6 2.25 Broodlord 300/250/4 225 20 (+20 first strike) 8 9 1.4 Infestor 100/150/2 90 30 +10 A AOE Spell 7.5 9 2.25
The first point to note is that many support units with either great range or AoE are slow. The Siege Tank forgoes all movement to gain its range and aoe damage. The Tempest is slow and must rely upon spotting units to maximize its effectiveness. The High Templar is slow and fragile for its cost and can only use its absurdly powerful AOE spell twice in any given encounter. Broodlords have long range and produce living walls to hold the enemy in place, however, they have no aoe. Meaning that large numbers of mobile units like stalkers or stimmed marines can jump on and destroy Broodlords with relative ease (at least until they reach a critical number.) The Raven has the most damaging spell in the game, however it requires the Raven to close to accurately deliver its payload and only one Missile is allowed per Raven in a fight. All of these things produce tension and allow counterplay (Fungal+Broodlings is the notable and lamentable exception). The Colossus’s issue is that it has so much power without opportunity for counterplay (using AA against a colossus is not real counterplay, that is “fielding counters”). The Colossus can have siege range AoE at a standard movespeed and only slightly less DPS than a High Templar’s Psionic Storm ability as an auto attack. As is, the Colossus provides a false choice between Stargate and Robo Support, you can have an expensive set of units without aoe with good range, or you can have a support unit that scales with standard army upgrades, requires less positioning and management to be effective, and has fewer means of countering it. AA works on both tech paths, but the Colossus smokes Marines and Hydras. In its current implementation, the Colossus actively hinders good stargate play without bringing much gameplay to the table.
Uncertainty, Anticipation and Skill
The big thing to take away from this is not that the Colossus is an inherently bad unit idea. It isn’t. In fact, it has one HUGE thing up on the Reaver which Day9 mentioned: it’s attacks are not random unlike Scarab pathing, which would punish players even when they were making good decisions. Now I know the traditionalist response here. “Randomness makes the game more exciting become the outcome is uncertain.” Yes, this is true, but let me run this strawman through: randomness is a cheap and insubstantial way of producing uncertainty. Uncertainty is a core element of fun, but it needs to be done in a way that rewards skill in an esport. The thing the Reaver DID do so much better is the building sense of anticipation as the Scarab streaked wildly to its target. THAT element is missing from the Colossus, and Protoss in general. The Raven and the Baneling do these things, Widow Mines will eventually do this.
What I find so startling is just how close the Colossus is to being one of the best esport units ever made. It has a readable, predictable attack, that has a unique aoe geometry to it. It has some unique mobility options and a strong racial theme behind it. It is only missing a mechanic to build anticipation and excitement in battle -- excitement that can only be made if opponents have a chance to change the outcome with smart play.
Just like storm. You will never see that with the colossus. Yet.
Counterplay and Lessons Learned
There is a universally loved unit from BW that “hardcountered” many of the units that the Colossus does, but its design gave it opponents the ability to fight and kill the unit with good micro, positioning, and map awareness: the Lurker. It had a vertical linear aoe attack that devastated low hp units. This unit was amazing because you could micro your marines to DODGE the attacks. The anticipation of a column of marines approaching a den of lurkers thrilled, the drama that unfolded when a scan was dropped and the marines moved forward. Imagine if this mechanic were reintroduced into SC2, where units are so much more mobile. Imagine it with the Colossus. This could produce a dynamic with Robo based play that we currently only see in TvZ with Banelings vs Marines.
More Damage, less DPS
The Protoss are not about DPS so much as they are about hitting hard. A zealot has high dps, but it what makes it protoss it how it does 16 damage per attack. Compare that to the 6 damage of the marine, or the 5 damage of the Zergling. The Reaver was the same. It had the worst attack delay of any unit in the game, yet did a whopping 100 (+25) damage a shot. Since the Colossus is the thematic successor to the Reaver, supposed to be even more terrifying, it should act like one. And it just so happens that being the thematic successor gives us a great way to introduce counterplay.
Suggested Changes These changes are intended to make the Colossus provide more counterplay and anticipation when used without damaging its identity as a towering dread machine.
Change Set
-A More Exciting Colossus -Change damage from 15x2 to 20x2 (+5x2 vs Light) -Reduce attack speed to 3 from 1.65 -The Colossus now shows a targeting line where it will fire, charges its attack for 1/3rd of a second, then fires its twin lances. These lances are slower than their current counterparts and, most importantly, able to be dodged.
This also means that Colossus are more likely to overkill, providing a soft cap to the effectiveness of colossus heavy compositions, and in turn reducing the snowballing effect of “whoever has more colossus wins”. It also rewards split attack micro commands to herd units from one lance into another.
Projected Changes: Now the Colossus is still a reasonably mobile and devastating unit, however, its damage can be mitigated by good positioning and micro. Bio armies may be able to engage Colossus based armies directly if they have a good angle or if they can bait out an attack. The more Colossus you have in your army, the less effective your AoE will be given that they will often target the same set of units. This will hopefully reduce the snowball effect large Colossi based armies have in PvP and PvZ. This also allows for a more harras oriented role to the Colossus in the form of Warp Prism drops. A more powerful colossi that can 1 shot workers is pretty scary, however, good splitting can mitigate that damage, or even allow marines to hunt down and kill a lone Colossus. Such gameplay is the stuff of highlight reels. Finally, the firing delay builds a sense of anticipation and dread between the players and audience: the Protoss have set upon their foe with all of their fury and anger. It is a David vs Goliath fight, a literal war of the worlds.
A call to arms: currently we have a map in production that implements these key changes for testing: the OneVoice PTR. This Colossus is a bit tricky getting it to get working properly; any mapsters out there who want to help out, please message me.
@Zergrusher: Lowering the shield punishes poor micro, but having a readable firing delay gives a reaver-like feeling of anticipation and rewards splitting up your target-fires. Nerfing shields by 50 is worth testing though.
@ Fencar You can comment on Reddit if you want to really wade in on the frucus. >.>
#To op, (the one that wrote this post), i dont know what op means. I like this change, what i would like alot more is if the delayshot is not linear but a circle instead, NOT BIG circle , but not a dot either.
I would love that change, i dont really know why excactly. What do u think of that? U must have thought about it
That is an interesting question, I think they both serve similar roles. The difference is one front loads its damage at the cost of being slow and fragile. While the other focuses strictly on ground damage, is more expensive (supply wise).
On October 19 2012 06:57 Foxxan wrote: #zergrusher What? I dont understand why.
#To op, (the one that wrote this post), i dont know what op means. I like this change, what i would like alot more is if the delayshot is not linear but a circle instead, NOT BIG circle , but not a dot either.
I would love that change, i dont really know why excactly. What do u think of that? U must have thought about it
A crescent firing sweep would be interesting! Will put that on the test list!
That is all nice and sweet to be able to dodge colossus attacks but the best counter to colossus are still vikings and corruptors and that hurts the variety of the protoss army
I like your ideas alot.They also would be easy to implement for blizzard and would have an huge impact on gamplay and on the spectator.Your post is also very well written, was a pleasure to read.
I've always thought the colossus is way too mobile for its role, especially since it can ignore terrain with cliffwalk. I do like the idea of tweaking the firing rate cooldown. 1/3 of a second is not a very readable delay though, it's still just an anticipation game at that length. It'll take that long just to see that it's firing and then there is no time to react. Crescent aoe sounds cool, but might be a little too powerful of a shape since that's how an enemy concave will attack.
On October 19 2012 07:27 Fyrewolf wrote: I've always thought the colossus is way too mobile for its role, especially since it can ignore terrain with cliffwalk. I do like the idea of tweaking the firing rate cooldown. 1/3 of a second is not a very readable delay though, it's still just an anticipation game at that length. It'll take that long just to see that it's about to firing and then there is no time to react. Crescent aoe sounds cool, but might be a little too powerful of a shape since that's how an enemy concave will attack.
Charge up time is a very malleable thing, half a second may be too long, ect. It will come down to testing.
The one weakness that the colossi has is that it is vulnerable to air-to-air units...but this is too simplistic. If you don't have vikings/corrupters, then colossi are OP. If you have enough than colossi are too weak.
This rewards boring build order wins and deathballs. The colossi needs to lose it's ridiculous air weakness, while getting nerfed on the ground to make the game more dynamic. In most RTS games siege units are NOT mobile...and for good reason. Mobile siege units = unstoppable deathballs that need equally ridiculous counters. The colossi is too fast. Not only in its base movement speed, but also in its ability to step on units and over cliffs. Nerfing it's mobility should be priority #1. Then, thermal lance needs to be reduced....this way the colossi can still be a great unit again say mass zergling/marine, but not an untouchable unit that requires specialty counter units (vikings/corrupter).
The reaver is an example of what robo units should be. In that it has a huge weakness in it's mobility encourages strategic variation and discourages deathballs.
On October 19 2012 06:57 Foxxan wrote: #zergrusher What? I dont understand why.
#To op, (the one that wrote this post), i dont know what op means. I like this change, what i would like alot more is if the delayshot is not linear but a circle instead, NOT BIG circle , but not a dot either.
I would love that change, i dont really know why excactly. What do u think of that? U must have thought about it
Lower the collosi's Shields from 150 down to 100
Siege units are slower and/or have low HP
does it make sense now?
With lower HP, it does 2 things.
1) it makes protoss pay attention to there collosi now, because they are more fragile.
2) the opponent doesn't have to over commit on collosi killers as much, because the collosi will take less damage to kill.
It opens up many strategic options for both sides.
Surprisingly good OP, but it's pretty hard to find the projected change in the wall of text. Maybe bold it or tl;dr it or something.
People have been suggesting something like this for a while. I'm completely in favour of a high-damage long-(re)charge attack for the colossus, because it would cause the unit to both telegraph its attacks and become more microable.
The biggest problem with it right now is the way that its fast-recycle attack punishes micro; if you so much as touch it in combat, you lose dps, and this fixes that so long as it can dance.
The details need to be worked out, though. I'm not a big fan of a shiny "I'm about to attack here!" laser. It would be possible to roughly predict where it's going to fire anyway, based on its facing. There's also other stuff. What happens if its targeted unit dies before the beam fires? What if everything units moves out of the way of the beam?
It's worth pointing out that higher damage-per-shot - particularly on a delayed attack - is going to greatly increase the unit's propensity to overkill and waste fire, especially if the opponent is actively microing to avoid it. Now, that's not a bad thing at all, in fact I think it's great... but I do think you're underestimating how big a nerf a delayed firing pattern is. Especially in a world where siege tanks smart-fire, I think its damage boost needs to be much, much larger to compensate.
On October 19 2012 07:43 Belisarius wrote: Surprisingly good OP, but it's pretty hard to find the projected change in the wall of text. Maybe bold it or tl;dr it or something.
People have been suggesting something like this for a while. I'm completely in favour of a high-damage long-(re)charge attack for the colossus, because it would cause the unit to both telegraph its attacks and become more microable. The biggest problem with it right now is the way that its fast-recycle attack punishes micro; if you so much as touch it in combat, you lose dps.
The details need to be worked out, though.
I'm not a big fan of a great big "I'm about to attack here!" laser. It would be possible to roughly predict where it's going to fire anyway, based on its facing.
There's also other details. What happens if its targeted unit dies before the beam fires? What if everything units moves out of the way of the beam? It's also worth pointing out that higher damage-per-shot - particularly on a delayed attack - is going to greatly increase the unit's propensity to overkill and waste fire.
It becomes very dodgeable and requires a lot of direction to use well. Now, that's not a bad thing at all. In fact it's a great change, but I do think you're underestimating how much a delayed firing pattern would nerf the unit. Especially in a world where siege tanks smart-fire, I think its damage boost needs to be much, much larger to compensate.
You should read my articles on Protoss Identity, Zerg, and Terran Identity. I talk about all the stuff you are bringing up. This stuff is malleable. Numbers are easy to change. Design is hard. The focus of this article is to promote changes that bring the Colossus in line for a more healthy game.
It should be more fragile... it takes so long to kill them that they are almost guaranteed to pay for themselves in damage dealt. Decreasing the shield seems like the best idea.
On October 19 2012 07:30 Fungal Growth wrote: The one weakness that the colossi has is that it is vulnerable to air-to-air units...but this is too simplistic. If you don't have vikings/corrupters, then colossi are OP. If you have enough than colossi are too weak.
This rewards boring build order wins and deathballs. The colossi needs to lose it's ridiculous air weakness, while getting nerfed on the ground to make the game more dynamic. In most RTS games ranged units are NOT mobile...and for good reason. Mobile ranged units = unstoppable deathballs that need equally ridiculous counters. The colossi is too fast. Not only in its base movement speed, but also in its ability to step on units and over cliffs. Nerfing it's mobility should be priority #1. Then, thermal lance needs to be reduced....this way the colossi can still be a great unit again say mass zergling/marine, but not an untouchable unit that requires specialty counter units (vikings/corrupter).
The reaver is an example of what robo units should be. In that it has a huge weakness in it's mobility encourages strategic variation and discourages deathballs.
They are never really that weak unless you have like 30 vikings, in which case your ground army is going to get raped.
EPT
