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Templar Voidray Tempest - Page 2

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 HotS
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ma5ta
Profile Joined June 2011
United States46 Posts
January 04 2013 00:30 GMT
#21
This is like asking, how do you beat 3-3-3 mass carrier?

The Answer: DON'T LET THEM GET MASS CARRIER
"YEAH IM WINNING! BETTER GG!"
rEalGuapo
Profile Joined January 2011
Germany832 Posts
January 04 2013 00:54 GMT
#22
On January 04 2013 06:17 weikor wrote:
I have not had a chance to play the HOTS Beta, yet this combination just sounds extremely broken.

Even if you might not see it at the moment, you did not see broodlord / infestor at the beginning of WOL either, - simply because noone knew how to get there.

Why is this different from WOL

Try to think of an army consisting of 3 Photon cannons, slightly behind that are 5 Tempests, and a ball of voidrays. A few tempar wait spread out nearby.
Now think of how you could engage that.

Vs terran,
Airplay was not seen from protoss, simply because of the dominance of marines.
Everyone played bio and even if you managed to commit to Carriers / Voidrays, in the ultra lategame they would simply get shut down by Vikings alone.

Vikings in WOL dart in, snipe a carrier and leave danger again, usually you would trade 1 Carrier for 1 Viking. However 3/3 Carriers Beat 3/3 Marines, even in WOL.

HOTS, this is now totally different. Voidrays with the initial charge completely wreck Vikings. The kiting is negated by the insane range of tempest. To fire a volley upon a tempest would put you in Voidray range, while the voidrays can use tempests to retreat.
3-5 templar thrown into the mix would also negate any marine or heavy viking play even more.

Thors, Ghosts, Ravens, Widowmines, all pretty much useless in that scenario

Vs Zerg

We have seen the strength of air even more in this matchup, especially White-Ra popularised the Carrier. Airplay can already be hard to deal with.

There are, right now exactly 2 Respones to actually killing Airplay.

1) Infestor Hydra - Might still work, however the tempest will Snipe any Infestor trying to do ninja fungals. And once you have templar i doubt that will work at all anymore.

2) Heavy corruptors - These like the vikings are considerd armored. Voidrays will destroy them MUCH more onesided than before. Infestors can be shut down by tempests
and templar.

-----

Other strengths of this build.

Phoenix, Oracle easily acsessable.
Photon Cannons / Zealots / Prism as mineral dumps.
Fleet beacon.
Mothership Core now here for early defense.

-----------

You might be wondering how you can tech to that, and that if that worked you would see some form of it in WOL too.

HOWEVER the big problem is, in WOL, having this army would still let you lose against someone with superior economy. Now fights should be much more one sided towards protoss.

-----

Suggestions


Change the tempest to a ground unit. Giving it more weaknesses.

TL:DR

The tempests huge range fills holes in an unstoppable protoss army. While difficult to get to a combination of Voidray / Tempest / Templar can turn out to be a huge problem later on in the game.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
on a final note, I really hope that this is not imbalanced, I enjoy the tempest in its current state. I also play protoss, I just dont want the shift from the "unstoppable lowskill endgame army" to go from zerg to protoss.


I don't think this will ever be a problem in PvT.
To survive the midgame Protoss needs either really good upgrades as well as charge and blink/storm or a reasonable number of Colossi with range upgrades as well as armor.

I mean, sure it might be possible to transition into that composition after minute 50 but even then I doubt there is any way to do so since the way fights work is that if one side has a disadvantage, the fight will snowball and end extremely one-sided.

The big difference as to why Protoss will not get there (at least against Bio) is the macro mechanic of getting an incredible high number of Drones and later Spines, which combined with Infestors are extremely strong.
Protoss cannot afford to rely on 8 Templars and 20 Cannons as only defense the way Zerg can. A single Storm will only delay an attack by 4 seconds and do minimal damage. A single Fungal hit means everything dies.

In PvZ however I feel like Protoss can turtle their way into this composition.
BUT, using any form of harass like Oracles or Phoenixes unsuccessfully will result in a loss if you try to get that unstoppable army.
Already there are a lot of Zerg players out there that realise the potential of getting huge numbers of Roaches and Hydras quickly against Stargate turtle play.

Again, a Storm does not mean everything dies, it means everything is damaged and/or delayed. Roaches can easily bait out 3 or 4 Storms and then burrow, wasting probably the majority of Storms available to delay the attack by 20 seconds.

Also in all cases Protoss does not have the quick response that are Zerglings.
True, sometimes Protoss is lucky and just got a round of warpins as the Medivacs/Mutas/Overlords approach but even then, the drops will often do considerable damage or open up vulnerabilities on other parts of the map.



I think that this composition can be as broken as BL/Infestor, I don't know.
However, without the Infestor and infinite supply of Spinecrawlers I think getting there will be incredibly hard.
Getting the Gas for a couple of Storms Tempests and Void Rays as well as the upgrades requires AT LEAST 3 bases. In my experience Void Rays and Storm as well as +1 +1 Air upgrades are pretty hard to get off of 3 bases.
LloydPGM
Profile Joined January 2012
85 Posts
January 04 2013 00:55 GMT
#23
On January 04 2013 09:30 ma5ta wrote:
This is like asking, how do you beat 3-3-3 mass carrier?

The Answer: DON'T LET THEM GET MASS CARRIER


Amazing, let's do this...

HOTS gives protoss a really strong and safe early game with mothership core that almost allows you to blindly fast expand, knowing you can also be agressive at the same time.

This leads you to a strong eco and midgame army where you have superiority on your opponent. You can both choose to attack and end the game OR turtle more to go late game and increase your chance to win the game to 100% with invincible air/templar composition.

Skyprotoss is a good idea and ultra strong at the moment, I would be curious to see some VODS where a decent protoss goes full air and uses oracle's timewarp ability.
http://video.gamecreds.com/1mggimrsyxc0n/channel/Lloyd
Akamu
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States309 Posts
January 04 2013 00:59 GMT
#24
It's definitely strong. But it's not BL infestor.

BL infestor has two huge things in it's favor. Free units and snare. If mis controlled for 1 second... you die when they land the fungal.

This new toss ball doesn't have those. It has range but so did broodlords. It has storm but that doesn't snare. You can avoid that.

If they are putting big numbers into voids then they will have less tempest. Also voids don't turn into tempest. Corrupters turn into broods.

So don't start the BL-infestor comparisons please. It's two completely different beasts. The infestor enabled someone to get to the broodlord very easily because it could shut down any and all attacks. There was no weakness, just if you had enough energy.

Protoss doesn't have that unit. This comp requires gas out the wazooo. People are correct in saying end game it may be too strong. HOWEVER I think people are playing vs this style entirely wrong. Zergs are still using a WoL mindset in which they feel safe to sit back and take free bases and make it rain drones. That doesn't work anymore. The zerg needs to be aggressive. You need to deny the third as long as possible while building up your own econ.

Please don't say the mothership core makes a fast third safe. Vs a mass of roach hydra or ling hyrda or a flock of muta the damage is not going to swing a battle. But if you force the super cannon and don't feel safe just go hit the nat instead. Or wait 1 min.

If zergs scout well there is an answer to every composition that the protoss has on it's way to this super combo. Let's say the protoss opens stargate. If the zerg identifies this early enough they have a few options depending on what the toss does.

oracle- just secure the 3 bases with queen+spore and drone -> muta
void- prepare for some timing attack - hydra do well vs this since it will be void + gateway and open a HUGE window for roach hydra wins.
phoenix- more or less the same as vs oracles except you again have the option for a lethal hydra+ling/roach timing.

Stargate if properly prepared for just doesn't allow for a safe third. There is no splash to deal with the large numbers of hydra roach zerg can pump out midgame.

I think robo expands into Colossi then stargate give the safest third but that leaves a huge opening for the zerg to hit with an ultra 3-3 timing while the toss still has a lot of resources tied up in ground army. I don't think the toss can stop that.

I think the biggest thing about this new super comp is that it makes the midgame much more important. The larger advantage the toss gets midgame, the easier it is to reach this super comp safely. This is a dramatic change from WoL and I believe zergs will learn and adapt and probably enjoy being on the offensive. They just need to drop the feeling that they are head if they play passively.

TL;DR
Toss ball while strong isn't easy to get to, zergs need to adapt from WoL passive styles and punish toss before all tech paths open.
I hear your heart beat to the beat of the drums, what a shame that you came here with someone.
gCgCrypto
Profile Joined December 2010
Germany297 Posts
January 04 2013 01:13 GMT
#25
On January 04 2013 09:26 CthulhuWarlord wrote:
Show nested quote +
The only way i´ve seen ppl beat it was when machine contained the Protoss in a incredibly long turtle game, threw 5 maxed armies at Protoss untill he ran out of gas and then killed him over the course of 20 minutes with max queen with some corrupters.

Do you know where I may see the VOD for this? What day was he streaming? PLZ tell me anything that will let me see this game or get the replay.

Machine said that day that he will release a replay pack so i assume it will be on it aswell.
He didnt do it yet.
I will search the VoD and if i find anything i´ll edit it in here
L E E J A E D O N G ! <3
MilesTeg
Profile Joined September 2010
France1271 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-01-04 01:32:44
January 04 2013 01:29 GMT
#26
I'm Zerg and I don't think its broken.

First of all I think viper/corruptor can beat it. You can abduct and pick off void rays, then kill off the rest when there's nothing to kill corruptors. Later when there are Templars you can abduct and snipe capital ships instead.

Phoenix don't do anything to vipers. They just take ages to kill them, because of their natural armor and the way phoenix deal damage. Templars' recall sounds good against that but it isn't really practical. Templars won't be exactly where the void rays are, so there will always be an angle where you can abduct without risk.

This composition is really immobile and you can abuse that. You can fly around it and kill stuff with abduct. You can counterattack. Zerg is not about being passive and teching to the late game anymore, and it's awesome. Aggression is much more permissive and less cheesy in hots because teching is much easier and stronger.

Xequecal
Profile Joined October 2010
United States473 Posts
January 04 2013 01:30 GMT
#27
Right now it's actually viable on several maps for Protoss to simply take a fast third base off nothing but void rays and 3-4 Zealots against Zerg if they see Zerg get a fast third. Like Nexus Forge Gateway Core Stargate Gateway, boost void rays, take third when second void ray is out. I think Zerg has to stay on 2 bases and be aggressive against Protoss, fast third is suicidal for Zerg right now.

In WoL, this kind of opening is weak to hydralisk timings as well as just roach/ling max, as the void rays can't actually kill the ground units before they roll over you. Now, roach/ling is suicide against the 32 DPS void rays, and hydralisk timings also don't work against photon overcharge and the new 0.5 attack period void rays. Remember that Protoss can get +1 air attack very, very quickly, before your timing hits. 0 armor hydralisks are just not effective against +1 void rays. Trying to attack later in the game with a large ground army is just going to run into a wall of blocking buildings in front of cannons in front of tempests. Mutalisks are also ineffective, again because of Protoss' ability to get extremely fast air attack upgrades. If you try to go for Mutas off 3 bases as Zerg, Protoss can easily have +2 air weapons done by the time your mutalisks get there, and you'll still have 0 air armor because your air upgrades are on the spire. His void rays will chase off your mutalisks easily with that kind of upgrade disparity.
Xequecal
Profile Joined October 2010
United States473 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-01-04 01:32:49
January 04 2013 01:30 GMT
#28
On January 04 2013 10:29 MilesTeg wrote:
I'm Zerg and I don't think its broken.

First of all I think viper/corruptor can beat it. You can abduct and pick off void rays, then kill off the rest when there's nothing to kill corruptors.

Phoenix don't do anything to vipers. They just take ages to kill them, because of their natural armor and the way phoenix deal damage. Templars' recall sounds good against that but it isn't really practical. Templars won't be exactly where the void rays are, so there will always be an angle where you can abduct without risk.

This composition is really immobile and you can abuse that. You can fly around it and kill stuff with abduct. You can counterattack. Zerg is not about being passive and teching to the late game anymore, and it's awesome. Aggression is much more permissive and less cheesy in hots because teching is much easier and stronger.


How exactly do you abduct units against 15-range Tempests shooting your Vipers down?

Also remember that Mothership Core has 14 sight. Trying to sneak up on or around a Protoss army is pretty damn hard.
MilesTeg
Profile Joined September 2010
France1271 Posts
January 04 2013 01:42 GMT
#29
On January 04 2013 10:30 Xequecal wrote:
Show nested quote +
On January 04 2013 10:29 MilesTeg wrote:
I'm Zerg and I don't think its broken.

First of all I think viper/corruptor can beat it. You can abduct and pick off void rays, then kill off the rest when there's nothing to kill corruptors.

Phoenix don't do anything to vipers. They just take ages to kill them, because of their natural armor and the way phoenix deal damage. Templars' recall sounds good against that but it isn't really practical. Templars won't be exactly where the void rays are, so there will always be an angle where you can abduct without risk.

This composition is really immobile and you can abuse that. You can fly around it and kill stuff with abduct. You can counterattack. Zerg is not about being passive and teching to the late game anymore, and it's awesome. Aggression is much more permissive and less cheesy in hots because teching is much easier and stronger.


How exactly do you abduct units against 15-range Tempests shooting your Vipers down?

Also remember that Mothership Core has 14 sight. Trying to sneak up on or around a Protoss army is pretty damn hard.


When I tried it there was no MsC. But still, things don't actually die that fast, and you'll have the time to do a ton of damage before your vipers die.
shammythefox
Profile Joined May 2010
United Kingdom286 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-01-04 01:46:23
January 04 2013 01:46 GMT
#30
On January 04 2013 06:17 weikor wrote:
I have not had a chance to play the HOTS Beta


Why am i not surprised.

On January 04 2013 06:17 weikor wrote:
Vs terran,
Airplay was not seen from protoss, simply because of the dominance of marines.
Everyone played bio and even if you managed to commit to Carriers / Voidrays, in the ultra lategame they would simply get shut down by Vikings alone.

Vikings in WOL dart in, snipe a carrier and leave danger again, usually you would trade 1 Carrier for 1 Viking. However 3/3 Carriers Beat 3/3 Marines, even in WOL.

HOTS, this is now totally different. Voidrays with the initial charge completely wreck Vikings. The kiting is negated by the insane range of tempest. To fire a volley upon a tempest would put you in Voidray range, while the voidrays can use tempests to retreat.
3-5 templar thrown into the mix would also negate any marine or heavy viking play even more.

Thors, Ghosts, Ravens, Widowmines, all pretty much useless in that scenario

Ghosts can of course, utilize nukes, and attempting to create opportunities for ghosts to attack unhampered by detection ghosts can win the game single handedly if you force a mistake out of protoss.
Thors are really useful here, with their new attack style and void rays lacking +massive damage they trade super efficiently with everything on the list and are very resilient to storm, they should be kept protected from tempests until it is time to engage obviously.

As far as i'm aware PDD blocks tempest shots, somebody correct me if this is wrong? But anyway if so their usefulness is distinct. A small number of widowmines can be useful again if you are able to force scenario's with detection holes but I agree they probably won't be a staple here.

These are all options but from my point of view the best way to engage this for terran is to play bio. Storm is really the only thing here that bio trades poorly against and with the new medivac terrans effectiveness against this is increased phenomenally. proper ghost control can help with this miles, but the real solution is to utilize the following which applies to both match ups.

Treat it as what it is, hugely immobile. You wouldn't expect to beat straight up 200/200 mech in a ground fight and perhaps you shouldn't expect to beat this. Utilize your map presence and mobility advantage, trade inefficiently but with an economy advantage and wear this down.


On January 04 2013 06:17 weikor wrote:
Vs Zerg

We have seen the strength of air even more in this matchup, especially White-Ra popularised the Carrier. Airplay can already be hard to deal with.

There are, right now exactly 2 Respones to actually killing Airplay.

1) Infestor Hydra - Might still work, however the tempest will Snipe any Infestor trying to do ninja fungals. And once you have templar i doubt that will work at all anymore.

2) Heavy corruptors - These like the vikings are considerd armored. Voidrays will destroy them MUCH more onesided than before. Infestors can be shut down by tempests
and templar.

-----



Protoss has to really add in collosus with any pure air play here as theres really no way to hold any number of 3/4 base hydra, hydra/viper, hydra/infestor, hydra/corruptor, hydra/corruptor/viper plays without. THis is the central weakness in the play, by dealing with collosi (imo via vipers) you can limit the protoss' economy or even just kill them as you take a lategame advantage to deal with skytoss. Now for the super lategame, supposing you couldn't stop protoss getting either a fourth or a fifth and he managed to continually trade up to this army comp.

For the late game you need to be pushing with creep spread and static defences. pulling any units with viper is huge here as everything is super high cost for protoss and you can trade at a slight disadvantage and utilize your economy advantage. Static defence, corruptors, infested terrans and most importantly swarm hosts locust can all help draw tempest fire and do damage without needing to engage the protoss army, most notably here with correct swarm host usage you can seige the seige as it were.

Obviously a lot is left out and a lot is unknown but its not difficult to see from here that feasibly zerg can deal with this composition.

TelecoM
Profile Blog Joined January 2010
United States10680 Posts
January 04 2013 03:01 GMT
#31
that is the most gas heavy composition ever lol, and Zerg has so many options to wear down Protoss in order to make it extremely difficult to get up such a army...I was playing a game just the other day where protoss was trying to do this and I was just very active with corrupters, and roach hydra, keeping corrupters over stargates similar to scourges over stargates in BW, and then sniping tempests and voidrays or carriers as they came out, if he sent army to attack my corrupters I would roll his expansions with roach hydra.

If Zerg just sits and lets Protoss get this type of army, it is his own fault. It is a little more complex than " Don't let Protoss do it " but , that is what it comes down to, you just have to be skillful in the sense of attacking multiple places strategically and drawing his army out of defensive position in order to snipe expansions then gain small little leads one by one.
AKA: TelecoM[WHITE] Protoss fighting
awesomoecalypse
Profile Joined August 2010
United States2235 Posts
January 04 2013 03:22 GMT
#32
"I haven't actually played with this even once, but here's some theorcraft about why its totally imba."

Seriously? Lets at least have people play around with WoL before freaking out over this.
He drone drone drone. Me win. - ogsMC
ClanRH.TV
Profile Joined July 2010
United States462 Posts
January 04 2013 03:24 GMT
#33
On January 04 2013 07:11 TheSambassador wrote:
This is 100% theorycraft, would likely require a huge amount of good control from the Protoss player, and is one of the most gas-consuming compositions that anybody has ever thought of.

You're worrying about something that hasn't even been attempted yet. You have no replays, and just think that this is potentially broken. This is a silly thread.

Zerg can get into Infestor Broodlord because of their production mechanic. They can build 10 corruptors as they start their Greater Spire, and then can morph them all to broodlords when it's done. They can make 6+ infestors at a time to assist their Brood Lords.

If you're "transitioning" into this composition as Protoss, you're going to need at LEAST 3 Stargates (450 gas), and a TON of time. There is no way to create this army quickly enough, EVEN if you have the resources of a 4-base protoss.

Out of all the things to worry about, this composition seems like a really silly one.


It has been used before by whitera to great extent!
"Don't take life too seriously because you'll never get out alive."
Belha
Profile Joined December 2010
Italy2850 Posts
January 04 2013 03:53 GMT
#34
I want to correct 2 things about the OP. High master P here.

1) In most maps Carriers are better than Tempest.

2) While I agree that the composition is very very strong, getting it is really, REALLY hard. Much harder than what the OP shows. Is as hard as trying to get mass Bc's with terran (I guess, i'm not a T player). Harder to the point that if the P reach this army, then prolly he indeed was a better player than his opponent.
Chicken gank op
blade55555
Profile Blog Joined March 2009
United States17423 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-01-04 03:56:28
January 04 2013 03:56 GMT
#35
On January 04 2013 12:53 Belha wrote:
I want to correct 2 things about the OP. High master P here.

1) In most maps Carriers are better than Tempest.

2) While I agree that the composition is very very strong, getting it is really, REALLY hard. Much harder than what the OP shows. Is as hard as trying to get mass Bc's with terran (I guess, i'm not a T player). Harder to the point that if the P reach this army, then prolly he indeed was a better player than his opponent.


It's not that hard to get it, not anywhere near as hard as for terran to get his composition. Especially if you open up 2 stargate voidray to begin with (which is very, very powerful).
When I think of something else, something will go here
convention
Profile Joined October 2011
United States622 Posts
January 04 2013 04:06 GMT
#36
On January 04 2013 09:54 rEalGuapo wrote:
Show nested quote +
On January 04 2013 06:17 weikor wrote:
I have not had a chance to play the HOTS Beta, yet this combination just sounds extremely broken.

Even if you might not see it at the moment, you did not see broodlord / infestor at the beginning of WOL either, - simply because noone knew how to get there.

Why is this different from WOL

Try to think of an army consisting of 3 Photon cannons, slightly behind that are 5 Tempests, and a ball of voidrays. A few tempar wait spread out nearby.
Now think of how you could engage that.

Vs terran,
Airplay was not seen from protoss, simply because of the dominance of marines.
Everyone played bio and even if you managed to commit to Carriers / Voidrays, in the ultra lategame they would simply get shut down by Vikings alone.

Vikings in WOL dart in, snipe a carrier and leave danger again, usually you would trade 1 Carrier for 1 Viking. However 3/3 Carriers Beat 3/3 Marines, even in WOL.

HOTS, this is now totally different. Voidrays with the initial charge completely wreck Vikings. The kiting is negated by the insane range of tempest. To fire a volley upon a tempest would put you in Voidray range, while the voidrays can use tempests to retreat.
3-5 templar thrown into the mix would also negate any marine or heavy viking play even more.

Thors, Ghosts, Ravens, Widowmines, all pretty much useless in that scenario

Vs Zerg

We have seen the strength of air even more in this matchup, especially White-Ra popularised the Carrier. Airplay can already be hard to deal with.

There are, right now exactly 2 Respones to actually killing Airplay.

1) Infestor Hydra - Might still work, however the tempest will Snipe any Infestor trying to do ninja fungals. And once you have templar i doubt that will work at all anymore.

2) Heavy corruptors - These like the vikings are considerd armored. Voidrays will destroy them MUCH more onesided than before. Infestors can be shut down by tempests
and templar.

-----

Other strengths of this build.

Phoenix, Oracle easily acsessable.
Photon Cannons / Zealots / Prism as mineral dumps.
Fleet beacon.
Mothership Core now here for early defense.

-----------

You might be wondering how you can tech to that, and that if that worked you would see some form of it in WOL too.

HOWEVER the big problem is, in WOL, having this army would still let you lose against someone with superior economy. Now fights should be much more one sided towards protoss.

-----

Suggestions


Change the tempest to a ground unit. Giving it more weaknesses.

TL:DR

The tempests huge range fills holes in an unstoppable protoss army. While difficult to get to a combination of Voidray / Tempest / Templar can turn out to be a huge problem later on in the game.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
on a final note, I really hope that this is not imbalanced, I enjoy the tempest in its current state. I also play protoss, I just dont want the shift from the "unstoppable lowskill endgame army" to go from zerg to protoss.


I don't think this will ever be a problem in PvT.
To survive the midgame Protoss needs either really good upgrades as well as charge and blink/storm or a reasonable number of Colossi with range upgrades as well as armor.

I mean, sure it might be possible to transition into that composition after minute 50 but even then I doubt there is any way to do so since the way fights work is that if one side has a disadvantage, the fight will snowball and end extremely one-sided.

The big difference as to why Protoss will not get there (at least against Bio) is the macro mechanic of getting an incredible high number of Drones and later Spines, which combined with Infestors are extremely strong.
Protoss cannot afford to rely on 8 Templars and 20 Cannons as only defense the way Zerg can. A single Storm will only delay an attack by 4 seconds and do minimal damage. A single Fungal hit means everything dies.

In PvZ however I feel like Protoss can turtle their way into this composition.
BUT, using any form of harass like Oracles or Phoenixes unsuccessfully will result in a loss if you try to get that unstoppable army.
Already there are a lot of Zerg players out there that realise the potential of getting huge numbers of Roaches and Hydras quickly against Stargate turtle play.

Again, a Storm does not mean everything dies, it means everything is damaged and/or delayed. Roaches can easily bait out 3 or 4 Storms and then burrow, wasting probably the majority of Storms available to delay the attack by 20 seconds.

Also in all cases Protoss does not have the quick response that are Zerglings.
True, sometimes Protoss is lucky and just got a round of warpins as the Medivacs/Mutas/Overlords approach but even then, the drops will often do considerable damage or open up vulnerabilities on other parts of the map.



I think that this composition can be as broken as BL/Infestor, I don't know.
However, without the Infestor and infinite supply of Spinecrawlers I think getting there will be incredibly hard.
Getting the Gas for a couple of Storms Tempests and Void Rays as well as the upgrades requires AT LEAST 3 bases. In my experience Void Rays and Storm as well as +1 +1 Air upgrades are pretty hard to get off of 3 bases.

I think you hit a few really good points here. Protoss has to invest gas to survive early game. The reason why infestor/BL wasn't that big of an issue before the queen patch was because zerg had to invest gas into something other than infestors. Take TvZ as an example. Zerg were forced to spend gas into banelings to stop the early pressure attacks. Because of the constant fighting, it was better to also invest into mutas to snipe tanks for the banelings, and to harass terran as well. Now all of that gas is spent, zerg were getting >18 minute hives with only 5-7 infestors.

With the queen buff, zerg doesn't have to invest in gas anymore. So then they can build 10 infestors as soon as the pit finishes, which now means infestors will have enough fungals that you don't even need to spend any gas on anything but more infestors, and then we see 13 minute hives.

Protoss HAS to spend gas to surive. Protoss can not tech up to storm and rely on a 10 HT warpin to hold anything. Storm can only delay attacks, it can't end them like infestors. So to stop early pressure, protoss will probably have to invest into collosi against zerg, and sentries. Now there is so much gas invested into not HT/tempest/VR, the transition happens way later, allowing ample time to attack.
Piousflea
Profile Joined February 2010
United States259 Posts
January 04 2013 04:07 GMT
#37
I agree with that having an Unbeatable Deathball is a bad thing. BL/festor is bad for WoL balance, and any similar "unkillable" HoTS comp is equally bad for balance, no matter how gas-heavy or slow-moving it is. However, I haven't seen enough replay evidence to show that a Tempest/VR/Templar deathball is horribly broken.

Pre-nerf BL/Festor was horribly broken mainly because of the Festor. Pre-nerf Infestors could beat every unit in the game except for Tank/Colossus, and BLs took care of those. Mass festors (+ some spines) could defend against any midgame push. Post infested terran nerf they are considerably less strong, although BL/Festor is still an OP combo.

On the other hand, there is no "WoL infestor" in the HotS Skytossball. Tempests can snipe casters but are horribly weak to zerg air, and have laughable DPS against regular ground units. VRs destroy anything armored but lose to anything light. Phoenixes destroy mutas but lose to everything else. Templars destroy hydralisks but can be sniped by mutas or straight up A-moved by Ultras.

More importantly, Skytoss is NOT a powerful midgame defense. All protoss air units lose against straight-up mass Hydra, and going air first deprives you of the gas for Storm or Colossi. Going Templar first gives you a window of vulnerability to Ultras, and going Colossus first doesn't help you build a skytoss ball.
Seek, behold, and reveal the truth
Cloudshade
Profile Joined October 2010
91 Posts
January 04 2013 04:34 GMT
#38
you're very biased and you don't realize that it costs A INSANE AMOUNT of resources to get that composition you're naming....also the fact you mention that tempests snipe all infestors from afar? how the toss supposed to get vision if you have hydras? do you not realize you can get a overseer? what you're saying is all theorycrafting and little to no thought is put into how you can actually counter...you even realize how much toss had to deal with zerg's broodlord infestor in WoL? (WE had to deal with that composition as well, some people figured out how to bypass it maybe you should put some thought into it) In addition this game is STILL in beta, so how do you know this isn't going to change (when obviously the game isn't even near balance yet). And the last and very important point "I have not had a chance to play the HOTS Beta"....are you freaking kidding man? try out this so called "BROKEN" combo that you suggested before you say it at the very least...This is a bad OP and honestly should be closed
CthulhuWarlord
Profile Joined June 2012
United States26 Posts
January 04 2013 04:40 GMT
#39
cloudshade u rage too hard. This is a documented occurance in games. Watch streams for a bit this is how toss plays. Maybe not this exact unit composition but toss turtles on 3 bases held with the mothercore and builds air armies.
Gone Wishing
thepuppyassassin
Profile Joined April 2011
900 Posts
January 04 2013 05:02 GMT
#40
My god... the deathball's grown wings!
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