Many comparisons cannot really be related interracial since each race's macro mechanics are balanced differently to achieve ultimate balance. However, there are some cost/tech function that kind of bothers me.
Charge and Blink are 200/200/140 ///150/150/110 respectively and requires Twilight Council (TC) and a noticeable time to upgrade. These upgrades are for tier 1 unit but are placed in, for all intents and purposes, tier 2 (cybernetics core --> twilight).
Compare this to:
Stim/Concussive/Shield 100/100/140 /// 50/50/60 /// 100/100/110, each of which are researchable on the same tech lab that you need to build marauders, and face it, nobody gets stim just for their marines. So basically the techlab has two functions.
What does the TC serve? It opens your tech to Templar Archives and Dark Templar Shrine. However, aside from these two upgrades, this mechanic is an often fatal redundancy to Protoss. It just makes no mechanical sense as to why this building exists. This building only exists because it was in Starcraft 1. The only reason it was in Starcraft 1 was to find a place to buffer both types of Templars so that they wouldn't come out so fast. Isn't there a more innovative way to put leg-speed/charge? Also, isn't that twilight council buffer enough punishment for us to build Templars? Need there be two seperate buildlings to build that one Unit? What are Protoss? Zerg? Come on... here (Okay those last two sentences get out of hand). Anyways...
I find many times, Terran will push out with his bio-ball before I have a chance to get a robotics facility for collosus or templar archive for storm. Let alone the time it takes to research these techs to be viable against a 7-rax build. What can Protoss really do vs early-mid game 7-rax. Immortals were fairly useful in early patches, but with the invention of early-expand bunker with 4-gas Terran's pumping out ghosts with their Marauders, Immortals, while good damage dealers, simply do not hold up as the tanking unit they were suppose to be.
It would be more balanced and make more sense if charge and blink were researched on the cybernetics core. Just like the Terran has to build techlab to build Marauders and Reapers, Protoss has to build a Cybernetics Core to build Sentries and Stalkers.
With the advent of mech-builds in TvP, people are underestimating how strong bio is vs Protoss early-mid game, before Collosus range and storm upgrades.
Essentially speaking, it costs 200/200 + 150/100 for a total of 350/300 just to upgrade Zealot legs. This takes 190 game seconds, because thankfully the TC builds really fast.
Compare this to:
50/50/60 for Concussive shells to make Marauders completely negate zealots with proper micro/kiting abilities. Let's not forget that, even though you need to build a tech-lab, we have to build a cybernetics core, which costs more.
When you go 7-rax early game vs a Protoss, what would the proper response really be? If you tech too fast you get rushed at 4-rax stage and its game-over. I don't care how many times you forcefield your ramp because by the time you produce a Collosus (which by the way also costs gas, so mass forcefield cuts into your gas, he will be miles ahead of you economically with his fast expo.
Poll: What should be done to fix this?
There is nothing to be fixed (315)
54%
Reduce cost and upgrade time for Zealot Legs (150/150/80)? (201)
35%
Reduce cost and upgrade time and move to Cybernetics Core (36)
6%
Move to Cybernetics Core (23)
4%
Reduce upgrade time and move to Cybernetics Core (7)
1%
582 total votes
Your vote: What should be done to fix this?
(Vote): Reduce cost and upgrade time for Zealot Legs (150/150/80)? (Vote): Reduce cost and upgrade time and move to Cybernetics Core (Vote): Move to Cybernetics Core (Vote): Reduce upgrade time and move to Cybernetics Core (Vote): There is nothing to be fixed
Nothing to be fixed imo. charge is a very powerful ability that automaticly activates without any down sides, while stim is an ability you have to activate yourself and has a 10 HP loss.
You say concussive shells "negates" zelots, but the reality is Zelots are the most necessary component of early game PvT. If you have just a pair of stalkers if they come to harass, you are dead to 2 mauraders, but if you have a zelot and a stalker you actually have a fighting change since it takes something like 16 maurader shots to beat a zelot, and you can micro the stalker around to poke and damage the mauraders while they are forced to deal with the much higher damage dealing Zelot. The zelot is a tank in those early game situations, and concussive shells simply makes it possible for terran to even fight or pressure the P opponent.
Why do you think that Snowfield? Think about it... Protoss tier 1 units take a long time to become viable. By the time he can get his charge done, you can have +1 upgrades with stim and concussive for the same cost and same time.
What a crude comparison. Let's throw some other facts into the equation:
- T needs a tech lab or core reactor (eventually) on every barracks. - Stim, by itself, comes with a major drawback. to alleviate it, T is required to invest heavily in medivac tech. - Tech lab upgrades are mandatory for barracks units to be viable, TC upgrades are not.
On June 05 2010 00:34 Snowfield wrote: Nothing to be fixed imo. charge is a very powerful ability that automaticly activates without any down sides, while stim is an ability you have to activate yourself and has a 10 HP loss.
20 HP for Marauders :O
And you can't just directly compare upgrades like that, especially passive versus active ones and especially across races. Terran would be brutally powerful if they had a permanent move speed increase like Charge grants, and Protoss would be extremely strong if Stalkers had Concussive Shells. The two races are too different from one another to directly compare unit vs unit or upgrade vs upgrade.
On June 05 2010 00:35 Joseki wrote: You say concussive shells "negates" zelots, but the reality is Zelots are the most necessary component of early game PvT. If you have just a pair of stalkers if they come to harass, you are dead to 2 mauraders, but if you have a zelot and a stalker you actually have a fighting change since it takes something like 16 maurader shots to beat a zelot, and you can micro the stalker around to poke and damage the mauraders while they are forced to deal with the much higher damage dealing Zelot. The zelot is a tank in those early game situations, and concussive shells simply makes it possible for terran to even fight or pressure the P opponent.
I'm not saying that zealots aren't useful tanks. They are and early game I'll admit that they do serve that purpose that you just explained. However, like I said, what if the Terran just sits in his base until he has say, 20 maurauder, with ghosts.. and lots of marines? Then goes to your base? You either have alot of tier 1 stuff, where a noticeable amount will die half way to the battle-line (no charge) or a few high-tech units that would die to large amounts of "stuff" that Terran has.
It's not a complete imbalance, but I think there is a noticeable advantage here.
id say make it 200/200 myself..i cant even get charge alot of times until semi late because of the cost of it, especially when blink makes an otherwise useless unit capable of some sick ahrass(with good micro) and is alot cheaper..
i think lowering it to 150/150 or even 100/100 would be reasonable
On June 05 2010 00:37 Daedie wrote: What a crude comparison. Let's throw some other facts into the equation:
- T needs a tech lab or core reactor (eventually) on every barracks. - Stim, by itself, comes with a major drawback. to alleviate it, T is required to invest heavily in medivac tech. - Tech lab upgrades are mandatory for barracks units to be viable, TC upgrades are not.
The only noticeable draw-back with stim is in Marines... Marauders have similar health to Zealots, more if they get EMPed, even after stim.
T doesn't need medivac tech for 7-9 rax to work. That's late-game when Protoss has the necessary counter to mass squishy Units. However, early game, it doesn't really cut it.
Maybe putting it in Core would be overkill, but at least the upgrade time and cost. It's a zealot upgrade, not some upgrade that makes Protoss archon shoot a huge beam instantly doing 300 damage. Oh sorry, was that for Battlecruisers?
THe danger with comparing races like this is that the 3 races are vastly different, and infact are meant to be vastly different, it is easy to point to a specific thing that one race does better than the other and say "thats imbalanced" but the truth is its not, every race has its advantages and disadvantages, if they didnt, we might as well have just one race.
Don't forget if charge was at the CC it would conflict with warpgate research, an upgrade u don't really wanna delay. the cost is the main problem imo. Protoss upgrades in comparison with terran just seem so damn expensive especially on gas. Charge is the same cost as Colossus range/Psi storm which is ridiculous since I don't think it's nearly as powerful they are. I don't think the speed difference with charge is as noticable as sc1 leg speed either.
On June 05 2010 00:37 Daedie wrote: What a crude comparison. Let's throw some other facts into the equation:
- T needs a tech lab or core reactor (eventually) on every barracks. - Stim, by itself, comes with a major drawback. to alleviate it, T is required to invest heavily in medivac tech. - Tech lab upgrades are mandatory for barracks units to be viable, TC upgrades are not.
The only noticeable draw-back with stim is in Marines... Marauders have similar health to Zealots, more if they get EMPed, even after stim.
T doesn't need medivac tech for 7-9 rax to work. That's late-game when Protoss has the necessary counter to mass squishy Units. However, early game, it doesn't really cut it.
You can turn the argument to your advantage as much as you like. That won't change the fact that Stim tech comes with a drawback while charge or blink do not. Nobody cares if you think it's not a noticable drawback. It's there, and for a direct comparison, medivac tech needs to be factored into the equation or your point becomes invalid. And honestly 20 hp loss is noticable in my book, especially when you have to stim the same units multiple times.
On June 05 2010 00:48 HuHEN wrote: THe danger with comparing races like this is that the 3 races are vastly different, and infact are meant to be vastly different, it is easy to point to a specific thing that one race does better than the other and say "thats imbalanced" but the truth is its not, every race has its advantages and disadvantages, if they didnt, we might as well have just one race.
Id agree but i dont see why you need 2 diff buildings to get each of the templar, archives/dark shrine. Hell even in starcraft1 they had no problem getting along..i dont see why it should be different for starcraft 2
On June 05 2010 00:37 Daedie wrote: What a crude comparison. Let's throw some other facts into the equation:
- T needs a tech lab or core reactor (eventually) on every barracks. - Stim, by itself, comes with a major drawback. to alleviate it, T is required to invest heavily in medivac tech. - Tech lab upgrades are mandatory for barracks units to be viable, TC upgrades are not.
The only noticeable draw-back with stim is in Marines... Marauders have similar health to Zealots, more if they get EMPed, even after stim.
T doesn't need medivac tech for 7-9 rax to work. That's late-game when Protoss has the necessary counter to mass squishy Units. However, early game, it doesn't really cut it.
You can turn the argument to your advantage as much as you like. That won't change the fact that Stim tech comes with a drawback while charge or blink do not. Nobody cares if you think it's not a noticable drawback. It's there, and for a direct comparison, medivac tech needs to be factored into the equation or your point becomes invalid. And honestly 20 hp loss is noticable in my book, especially when you have to stim the same units multiple times.
You aren't looking at the over-all drawback of Charge. Because of Charge I can't build a templar archives. Beacuse of Charge and how long it takes, I can't attack your bio-ball before I have it. Because of Charge, I can't think about getting anything other than more tier 1 just to make that upgrade a viable option. I think that is too much of a burden, compared to your Stim, that in many situations only require 1 to 2 uses since all my shit is dead.
I mistitled this. It should be Charge vs EMP... Charge costs 200/200, EMP is free. My drawback happens before the battle even starts. My army lost half its life and I don't have charge researched yet and my tanks aren't tanks anymore, just high-damage stalkers that move slower (immortals). Thats why I have a problem against this particular build.
On June 05 2010 00:37 Daedie wrote: What a crude comparison. Let's throw some other facts into the equation:
- T needs a tech lab or core reactor (eventually) on every barracks. - Stim, by itself, comes with a major drawback. to alleviate it, T is required to invest heavily in medivac tech. - Tech lab upgrades are mandatory for barracks units to be viable, TC upgrades are not.
The only noticeable draw-back with stim is in Marines... Marauders have similar health to Zealots, more if they get EMPed, even after stim.
T doesn't need medivac tech for 7-9 rax to work. That's late-game when Protoss has the necessary counter to mass squishy Units. However, early game, it doesn't really cut it.
You can turn the argument to your advantage as much as you like. That won't change the fact that Stim tech comes with a drawback while charge or blink do not. Nobody cares if you think it's not a noticable drawback. It's there, and for a direct comparison, medivac tech needs to be factored into the equation or your point becomes invalid. And honestly 20 hp loss is noticable in my book, especially when you have to stim the same units multiple times.
I play Terran, and I totally disagree. Stim is a no brainer to get an use, even before Medivac... if you even ever tech to Medivacs. Every Terran player gets Stim and the vast majority get Concusive Shells. Not every Protoss player gets Charge, even though Charge is a good ability.
The cost of charge should be reduced. Charge is a constant ability you don't trigger, it goes off by it's self... much like Concusive Shells. The cost of Charge should be half of what it is.
On June 05 2010 00:45 Paramore wrote: I think actually, if you made Ghost EMP cost 200/200 and took 140 seconds to research at Academy, then I would say there's no problem.
On June 05 2010 00:37 Daedie wrote: What a crude comparison. Let's throw some other facts into the equation:
- T needs a tech lab or core reactor (eventually) on every barracks. - Stim, by itself, comes with a major drawback. to alleviate it, T is required to invest heavily in medivac tech. - Tech lab upgrades are mandatory for barracks units to be viable, TC upgrades are not.
The only noticeable draw-back with stim is in Marines... Marauders have similar health to Zealots, more if they get EMPed, even after stim.
T doesn't need medivac tech for 7-9 rax to work. That's late-game when Protoss has the necessary counter to mass squishy Units. However, early game, it doesn't really cut it.
You can turn the argument to your advantage as much as you like. That won't change the fact that Stim tech comes with a drawback while charge or blink do not. Nobody cares if you think it's not a noticable drawback. It's there, and for a direct comparison, medivac tech needs to be factored into the equation or your point becomes invalid. And honestly 20 hp loss is noticable in my book, especially when you have to stim the same units multiple times.
I play Terran, and I totally disagree. Stim is a no brainer to get an use, even before Medivac... if you even ever tech to Medivacs. Every Terran player gets Stim and the vast majority get Concusive Shells. Not every Protoss player gets Charge, even though Charge is a good ability.
The cost of charge should be reduced. Charge is a constant ability you don't trigger, it goes off by it's self... much like Concusive Shells. The cost of Charge should be half of what it is.
I'm glad at least one person sees my pain. I play Terran too on ladder and it's pretty easy to fast expand 7 to 9 rax.
Terran is way to cheap its that simple. i dont think the change has to be done on Toss's part but on Terran. their to cheap/strong/ and has way better eco then anyone else early/midd game.
cheap upgrades Mules (like haveing a expo) Superstrong units (cheap)
we have yet to see any scbw supergood lollish of d00m players like Idra/Nony/Whitera ect play Terran, once this happends i dunno wtf ppl can do. ill say like Tester and Artosis says, if Terran isnt drasticlly changed, sc2 will become a one race game in the competative sceene. u might mention TLO ect but how much did u see of him in the competative sceene pre sc2? dont take this wrong, i love him to death and his creative play is just wild to look at
but the game is still in the beta and is going to have alot of changes i belive before the release, but this is my POV on terran atm.
ill prob get warned or whatever for this post but its my opinion and ill stick to it no matter what.
On June 05 2010 00:58 Morgynia wrote: Terran is way to cheap its that simple. i dont think the change has to be done on Toss's part but on Terran. their to cheap/strong/ and has way better eco then anyone else early/midd game.
cheap upgrades Mules (like haveing a expo) Superstrong units (cheap)
we have yet to see any scbw supergood lollish of d00m players like Idra/Nony/Whitera ect play Terran, once this happends i dunno wtf ppl can do. ill say like Tester and Artosis says, if Terran isnt drasticlly changed, sc2 will become a one race game in the competative sceene. u might mention TLO ect but how much did u see of him in the competative sceene pre sc2? dont take this wrong, i love him to death and his creative play is just wild to look at
ill prob get warned or whatever for this post but its my opinion and ill stick to it no matter what.
I wouldn't go so far to say that Terran econ is imba. Even though whenever I play Terran, I'll have like 5000 minerals with 200 gas, but its a small thing I'm missing. It might be EMP?
As for d00m players, bratOK is argueably one of the best Terran's out there, he's pretty damn good. I saw his ladder record, it was pretty sick, something like 40-2 on the US server smurf.
Also, your tech-labs are usable by every other buildling. Need a factory? Okay, let me just move this barracks out of the way and fly it over as a scout or just make marines with my huge amount of minerals...
On June 05 2010 01:03 RoMarX wrote: lol protos are imba and still whine. blink is so overpowered, so much mobility, and charge is so good, wtf move speed and high damage.
If that's all the "constructive" discussion you are going to add please just not-bother posting.
Even as a Terran player, I'd be fine with charge at 150/150, particularly since it preserves parity with SC1. Blizzard seems to mistakenly believe that the charge upgrade is more useful than zealot leg speed was in SC1, and therefore upped the cost. Given how you always got leg speed in SC1, and people never get charge in SC2, I doubt this is the case.
Imo Zealots should get their good old Leg Enhancements back. Charge is quite weak. You can't flank effectively with it (not much better than without it), you can't retreat, you can't come to defend against a speedling backstab or drop/nydus. All you can do is a-move.
On June 05 2010 01:03 RoMarX wrote: lol protos are imba and still whine. blink is so overpowered, so much mobility, and charge is so good, wtf move speed and high damage.
You know I've never played a game and once thought, WOW Blink Stalkers are OP. They are effective. Blinking past rocks or up a cliff with no high ground sight is annoying and probably a bug... but I wouldn't consider it game breaking.
On June 05 2010 00:37 Daedie wrote: What a crude comparison. Let's throw some other facts into the equation:
- T needs a tech lab or core reactor (eventually) on every barracks. - Stim, by itself, comes with a major drawback. to alleviate it, T is required to invest heavily in medivac tech. - Tech lab upgrades are mandatory for barracks units to be viable, TC upgrades are not.
The only noticeable draw-back with stim is in Marines... Marauders have similar health to Zealots, more if they get EMPed, even after stim.
T doesn't need medivac tech for 7-9 rax to work. That's late-game when Protoss has the necessary counter to mass squishy Units. However, early game, it doesn't really cut it.
You can turn the argument to your advantage as much as you like. That won't change the fact that Stim tech comes with a drawback while charge or blink do not. Nobody cares if you think it's not a noticable drawback. It's there, and for a direct comparison, medivac tech needs to be factored into the equation or your point becomes invalid. And honestly 20 hp loss is noticable in my book, especially when you have to stim the same units multiple times.
You aren't looking at the over-all drawback of Charge. Because of Charge I can't build a templar archives. Beacuse of Charge and how long it takes, I can't attack your bio-ball before I have it. Because of Charge, I can't think about getting anything other than more tier 1 just to make that upgrade a viable option. I think that is too much of a burden, compared to your Stim, that in many situations only require 1 to 2 uses since all my shit is dead.
I mistitled this. It should be Charge vs EMP... Charge costs 200/200, EMP is free. My drawback happens before the battle even starts. My army lost half its life and I don't have charge researched yet and my tanks aren't tanks anymore, just high-damage stalkers that move slower (immortals). Thats why I have a problem against this particular build.
I'm talking combat drawbacks here. Investing gas in upgrades will delay some builds for every race, I don't see how that is relevant at all.
Forcefields are free. And that's pretty much where your second argument ends.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing that charge might need a cost reduction. I'm just saying your argumentation as to why is not accurate in the slightest.
On June 05 2010 01:03 RoMarX wrote: lol protos are imba and still whine. blink is so overpowered, so much mobility, and charge is so good, wtf move speed and high damage.
Im so glad that 90% of the pepole with IQ below the room temprature ur sitting in is going to run with a knife and kill themselves.... kkthnxbye
On June 05 2010 00:37 Daedie wrote: What a crude comparison. Let's throw some other facts into the equation:
- T needs a tech lab or core reactor (eventually) on every barracks. - Stim, by itself, comes with a major drawback. to alleviate it, T is required to invest heavily in medivac tech. - Tech lab upgrades are mandatory for barracks units to be viable, TC upgrades are not.
The only noticeable draw-back with stim is in Marines... Marauders have similar health to Zealots, more if they get EMPed, even after stim.
T doesn't need medivac tech for 7-9 rax to work. That's late-game when Protoss has the necessary counter to mass squishy Units. However, early game, it doesn't really cut it.
You can turn the argument to your advantage as much as you like. That won't change the fact that Stim tech comes with a drawback while charge or blink do not. Nobody cares if you think it's not a noticable drawback. It's there, and for a direct comparison, medivac tech needs to be factored into the equation or your point becomes invalid. And honestly 20 hp loss is noticable in my book, especially when you have to stim the same units multiple times.
I play Terran, and I totally disagree. Stim is a no brainer to get an use, even before Medivac... if you even ever tech to Medivacs. Every Terran player gets Stim and the vast majority get Concusive Shells. Not every Protoss player gets Charge, even though Charge is a good ability.
The cost of charge should be reduced. Charge is a constant ability you don't trigger, it goes off by it's self... much like Concusive Shells. The cost of Charge should be half of what it is.
First of all, not every T gets stim, a meching terran won't. If you commit to barracks units you'll get it.
Second of all. I didn't say anywhere that you can't use stim without medivacs, I'm saying that if a comparison is made, every single bit of information needs to be put into it, not just the ones favoring your argument.
On June 05 2010 00:37 Daedie wrote: What a crude comparison. Let's throw some other facts into the equation:
- T needs a tech lab or core reactor (eventually) on every barracks. - Stim, by itself, comes with a major drawback. to alleviate it, T is required to invest heavily in medivac tech. - Tech lab upgrades are mandatory for barracks units to be viable, TC upgrades are not.
The only noticeable draw-back with stim is in Marines... Marauders have similar health to Zealots, more if they get EMPed, even after stim.
T doesn't need medivac tech for 7-9 rax to work. That's late-game when Protoss has the necessary counter to mass squishy Units. However, early game, it doesn't really cut it.
You can turn the argument to your advantage as much as you like. That won't change the fact that Stim tech comes with a drawback while charge or blink do not. Nobody cares if you think it's not a noticable drawback. It's there, and for a direct comparison, medivac tech needs to be factored into the equation or your point becomes invalid. And honestly 20 hp loss is noticable in my book, especially when you have to stim the same units multiple times.
You aren't looking at the over-all drawback of Charge. Because of Charge I can't build a templar archives. Beacuse of Charge and how long it takes, I can't attack your bio-ball before I have it. Because of Charge, I can't think about getting anything other than more tier 1 just to make that upgrade a viable option. I think that is too much of a burden, compared to your Stim, that in many situations only require 1 to 2 uses since all my shit is dead.
I mistitled this. It should be Charge vs EMP... Charge costs 200/200, EMP is free. My drawback happens before the battle even starts. My army lost half its life and I don't have charge researched yet and my tanks aren't tanks anymore, just high-damage stalkers that move slower (immortals). Thats why I have a problem against this particular build.
I'm talking combat drawbacks here. Investing gas in upgrades will delay some builds for every race, I don't see how that is relevant at all.
Forcefields are free. And that's pretty much where your second argument ends.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing that charge might need a cost reduction. I'm just saying your argumentation as to why is not accurate in the slightest.
I'll give you that my arguements in this instance aren't exactly the greatest. Hence my disclaimer in the first sentence where I told everyone that cross-race comparisons are pretty in-effective and hence the existence of your counter-arguement. However, something has to be done. Forcefields might be free, but EMP rapes half your health in combat without research or drawback either. What else are you going to use that mana for? Snipe? LoL please...
we have yet to see any scbw supergood lollish of d00m players like Idra/Nony/Whitera ect play Terran, once this happends i dunno wtf ppl can do. ill say like Tester and Artosis says, if Terran isnt drasticlly changed, sc2 will become a one race game in the competative sceene. u might mention TLO ect but how much did u see of him in the competative sceene pre sc2? dont take this wrong, i love him to death and his creative play is just wild to look at
Ahh yes, the old "the only good players are playing toss and zerg right now, just wait until someone good uses terran" argument used to justify some baseless claims. Haven't seen that before.
we have yet to see any scbw supergood lollish of d00m players like Idra/Nony/Whitera ect play Terran, once this happends i dunno wtf ppl can do. ill say like Tester and Artosis says, if Terran isnt drasticlly changed, sc2 will become a one race game in the competative sceene. u might mention TLO ect but how much did u see of him in the competative sceene pre sc2? dont take this wrong, i love him to death and his creative play is just wild to look at
Ahh yes, the old "the only good players are playing toss and zerg right now, just wait until someone good uses terran" argument used to justify some baseless claims. Haven't seen that before.
On June 05 2010 00:35 Joseki wrote: You say concussive shells "negates" zelots, but the reality is Zelots are the most necessary component of early game PvT. If you have just a pair of stalkers if they come to harass, you are dead to 2 mauraders, but if you have a zelot and a stalker you actually have a fighting change since it takes something like 16 maurader shots to beat a zelot, and you can micro the stalker around to poke and damage the mauraders while they are forced to deal with the much higher damage dealing Zelot. The zelot is a tank in those early game situations, and concussive shells simply makes it possible for terran to even fight or pressure the P opponent.
Alright, zealots are good tank very early game. Is that it? Why does their usefulness have to stop there?
Lets change your scenario to 3 minutes later when you have both stim and concussive. 5 Marauders vs 5 Zealots... no brainer
5 Maruaders vs 3 zealots and 2 stalkers. Micro solution? Stim past the zealots, kill the stalkers with hit-move-hit-move without losing a single Marauder, and then kite the zealots for zero-loss and 2 half health Marauders and 3 once-stimmed Marauders.
Yeah, my zealots take 16 shots to kill. It wouldn't matter if they took 50 shots to kill if they don't get to attack once during a simple micro-fight.
Even zerglings get their movement upgrade right at the spawning pool. Even without movement, at least they get to attack the marauders before they get killed, proving their fodder-use...
Zealots? No, they just walk around really slow and die to stuff that can attack and move away faster than the zealot could reach its target. Even without concussive, you could still semi-kite a zealot... thats pretty sick.
I think the fixes should be made to Infantry upgrades.
Stim Pack should be 100/100, Concussive Shells should be 100/100, and Reaper Speed should be 100/100, and they should all take the same amount of time as Zealot Charge.
I just feel that either the charge is way too expensive and long/hard to get. Or Terran tier 1 upgrades are way too cheap and early/easy to get... and that EMP shouldn't be free... I would even go so far as to trade forcefield upgrade if you had to upgrade EMP... cause.. that's just one of the most broken things ever... Even in broodwar you needed a starport to get EMP...Now? yeah.. no...the mechanic for charge stayed at the same tier, while EMP moved 2 tiers lower and became cheaper and easier to use... not to mention with a very useful unit that isn't a flying disco ball
What does the TC serve? It opens your tech to Templar Archives and Dark Templar Shrine. However, aside from these two upgrades, this mechanic is an often fatal redundancy to Protoss. It just makes no mechanical sense as to why this building exists. This building only exists because it was in Starcraft 1. The only reason it was in Starcraft 1 was to find a place to buffer both types of Templars so that they wouldn't come out so fast. Isn't there a more innovative way to put leg-speed/charge? Also, isn't that twilight council buffer enough punishment for us to build Templars? Need there be two seperate buildlings to build that one Unit? What are Protoss? Zerg? Come on... here (Okay those last two sentences get out of hand). Anyways...
We'll just have to disagree here. Warp zealots and Blinking Stalkers are totally different units from the units without the upgrade and Citadel of Adun unlocked the same potential for zealots.
I see a lot of things wrong with the way this entire argument is being laid out.
First of all, I see a lot of complaining that a T1 unit isn't as good a a higher Tier unit. That simply makes little sense, if the T1 unit was superior why ever advance up the tier?
Yes, Zealots are a T1 unit, their upgrade makes them significantly better against units they were designed to manhandle (marines, zerglings, etc) while becoming marginally more effective against other units due to the passive increase in movespeed (25% IIRC).
However, why should a T1 unit be able to manhandle the T1.5 marauder? Especially after the marauder has been upgraded? Generally speaking you have to move up a tier to beat a unit not down a tier.
And no, you can't compare the ability of a T2 unit to the ability of a T1 unit (EMP vs Charge) and expect them to be equal. Please be reasonable.
But before I get bombarded with things like "So why should the protoss always have to respond to the terran's tech by teching past them" understand that we have to tech past you first (i.e. get T2 units to deal with your T1 and T1.5 units). Also, I am in no way shape or form saying that all units on the same tier are equal as that would be equally pointless.
With all that being said my brother gets Charge in almost every game he plays in almost every matchup and wins the majority of his games at the high plat/low diamond level so I would have to disagree that the tech is overpowered, as the building does so much more then unlock these upgrades. It also opens the way to templar tech, and unlocks your ability for +2 upgrades so the cost of the building is very justified.
I think a lot of the problems with the whole gateway vs mmm come from how the battle unfolds for most people.
Zealots are sent like cannon fodder when they are actually the highest dps unit in the protoss army at that stage in the game. Stalkers auto target medvacs over anything else unless microed correctly. Marauders are usually put in front denying the zealots those juicy low armor/low hp marines Marines are range 5 and won't usually target anything but the zealots basically giving the terran auto focus fire micro
This leads to....
All the zealots die before they get to do any real damage Some medvacs are dead All stalkers die to remaining mm
--------------------
I've been experimenting with this on the unit tester and most of the time the best results for me are obtained by sending my stalkers first and taking the first volley of hits making use of their high hp while my army still has damage dealing capabilities.
Zealots walk in next and can pick off the low hp units at the front. Stalkers get moved forward to make sure none are stuck in the back of the line without firing. They have a pretty big model for a tier 1 unit. The most important thing during the battle seems to be focusing units down with your stalkers. If you let em auto fire they'll target medvacs and marines that will be easily healed and continue to do damage while your army dies.
With that being said I still think in large numbers there's no contest on how's the winner of this fight but I've gone from getting completely decimated to winning some fights and if I do loose the battle he doesn't have enough to pick off every reinforcement I build.
Once you have charge its always a good idea to think of your zealots as zerglings and keep them in a slightly remote location to flank with them.
The really problematic uppgrade is warp gate. Blizzard stated with patch 14 that uppgraded had to be choices. 50/50 for a powerful uppgrade like warp gate is not a choice.
On June 05 2010 00:37 Daedie wrote: - Tech lab upgrades are mandatory for barracks units to be viable, TC upgrades are not.
Have you ever tried trying to fight a good kiting Terran with unupgraded Zealots? It's a joke. Zealots REQUIRE charge to be useful against Terran, yet it costs more than Stim + Concussive shells COMBINED. And once Terran gets Stim + Concussive he can still kite your Zealots somewhat effectively during the 10s Charge cooldown.
Stim and charge are really different and bio isn't really a problem for most people, people know how to deal with it effectively. If charge zealots were the answer to mech I could see reducing the cost but as it stands bio doesn't really need anything changed much.
If you moved it to the cy core you could have some pretty nasty voidray/speedlot pushes. I feel like my PvT pressure is already very strong, I don't know if T would be able to handle that much pressure early on.
T is balanced by his producing structures being expensive, both on time and resources (200/25 vs 150/0 adds up pretty quickly), also P is able to spend his resources more quickly, hence requires even less infrastructure (Zealot build time in nowhere near 2x Marine, similar thing with Immortals vs Marauders). Since P Gateway production is very versatile it would be bit overpowered to give him chargelots for free, especially since Zealots are very potent MINERAL ONLY units.
That being said it probably might end up being rebalanced to 150/150, should not be gamebreaking.
I see alot of people making the statement "EMP is free". I'd just like to point out that within the structure of the arguments presented in this thread EMP inherits the cost of a ghost acadamy (150/50/40?) and the cost of actually getting a ghost (150/150/40) which while fast is still alot of gas and is basically along the same lines as teching to TC or whatever... I don't play alot of toss.
As far as the Marauder vs Zealot argument going down, maruaders do in fact cost gas on top of the 100min base cost of both units for about the same build time. That combined with the extra cost and build time of a tech lab justifies marauders being good against zealots -- even if this is only true with intensive micro. Also warpgates. ya those.
On a relatively minor side note -- the cost of getting a tech lab is more than just the resource and time cost as it also stops unit production for that time. Not a *huge* deal but it makes a difference early game and as stated before, you end up getting alot of them.
On a less rage-terran note, from the P I've played I do agree that charge is expensive and I wouldn't have a problem with it being lowered to 150/150 as I don't think it would change that much.
On June 05 2010 01:48 STS17 wrote: I see a lot of things wrong with the way this entire argument is being laid out.
First of all, I see a lot of complaining that a T1 unit isn't as good a a higher Tier unit. That simply makes little sense, if the T1 unit was superior why ever advance up the tier?
Yes, Zealots are a T1 unit, their upgrade makes them significantly better against units they were designed to manhandle (marines, zerglings, etc) while becoming marginally more effective against other units due to the passive increase in movespeed (25% IIRC).
However, why should a T1 unit be able to manhandle the T1.5 marauder? Especially after the marauder has been upgraded? Generally speaking you have to move up a tier to beat a unit not down a tier.
And no, you can't compare the ability of a T2 unit to the ability of a T1 unit (EMP vs Charge) and expect them to be equal. Please be reasonable.
1st) Barracks units and Gateway units are tier 1. There's no arguement around that. Just like zerglings banelings and roaches are all tier 1. You don't need a Lair.
2nd) Even if Marauder was a tier 1.5 unit, why does it completely destroy everything that Gateway units have to offer once you reach more than 10ish Marauders? In that fight with equal resources, there is always a clear winner. There exists excellent forcefield play and micro, but more often than not, the winner is clear. You get upgrades to enhance your units on the way to getting 10+ Marauders, Protoss don't.
3rd) I was not comparing Protss EMP to charge. There, however, does exist the relationship that, Protoss zealots are tanks and EMP negates half their life. So how about the Immortal? Their harden shield is completely negated with EMP and they are no longer tanks.
Charge does what to a bio-ball? It gets the zealots up close and do damage. Damage that they would have done if they could reach your units to attack anyways. What does EMP do? It kills half your health effectively. An EMP to an Immortal is effectively 60-80% of it's health, simply b/c they aren't that beefy without their shields.
That is why I say nerf EMP/stim/concussive.. or SOMETHING... OR buff charge.... make it more viable.. easier... so I can get my 2nd expansion up without auto-losing to something like 9-rax fast expo where you have both troop levels an economic advantage in the early-mid game. The advantage is so large that Protoss will be behind in some shape or form no matter what happens.
As a huge hayley williams fan, I'm going to agree that the dark shrine seems quite pointless. However, dts seem a bit better in SC2 than SC1, so I don't feel I'm allowed to complain. I've won a lot of games thanks to a solid DT rush.
I think the idea is that if you get a DT too soon, it's quite difficult for other players to have a detector in time
Nerfing T wont encourage Protoss to use Charge more. The cost of Charge just needs to be reduced. 150/150 or 200/100 just try something to encourage more Toss players to use it.
On June 05 2010 02:00 hejakev wrote: As a huge hayley williams fan, I'm going to agree that the dark shrine seems quite pointless. However, dts seem a bit better in SC2 than SC1, so I don't feel I'm allowed to complain. I've won a lot of games thanks to a solid DT rush.
I think the idea is that if you get a DT too soon, it's quite difficult for other players to have a detector in time
Hahaha, I have to laugh at your first sentence <3.
Anyways, they could make the build time to get DTs just as long if they moved both Templars to one building...
I think that as long as teching straight to DT is just as fast or slower than the time it takes for zerg to get Lair, there should be no problem.
Terran's have Scans.. and even though each scan is a 0% investment loan from their mineral patch, its pretty game breaking when you've invested so much resources into a cloaked unit and they no longer have to get MULEs to remain economically ahead. By the virtue that we went dark templar, they are already economically ahead because of the resource sink. Not to mention they are now uselses since T is saving scans on 2x OC.
On June 05 2010 01:59 dogmeatstew wrote: I see alot of people making the statement "EMP is free". I'd just like to point out that within the structure of the arguments presented in this thread EMP inherits the cost of a ghost acadamy (150/50/40?) and the cost of actually getting a ghost (150/150/40) which while fast is still alot of gas and is basically along the same lines as teching to TC or whatever... I don't play alot of toss.
As far as the Marauder vs Zealot argument going down, maruaders do in fact cost gas on top of the 100min base cost of both units for about the same build time. That combined with the extra cost and build time of a tech lab justifies marauders being good against zealots -- even if this is only true with intensive micro. Also warpgates. ya those.
On a relatively minor side note -- the cost of getting a tech lab is more than just the resource and time cost as it also stops unit production for that time. Not a *huge* deal but it makes a difference early game and as stated before, you end up getting alot of them.
On a less rage-terran note, from the P I've played I do agree that charge is expensive and I wouldn't have a problem with it being lowered to 150/150 as I don't think it would change that much.
True.. you spent money to get to EMP. However, what about the time it takes to get to an Immortal? Ghost negates the effectiveness of the Immortal and then some... and its cheaper... That is why I'm talking about EMP being free...
They could probably reduce the upgrade time a bit for charge. Zealots are just so useless in the mid-game between when stim and concussive shells are finished and medivacs comes out, and when charge is finished. If the terran did a simple M&M&M push at that exact timing, the protoss is currently very hard-pressed to hold it.
On June 05 2010 01:59 dogmeatstew wrote: I see alot of people making the statement "EMP is free". I'd just like to point out that within the structure of the arguments presented in this thread EMP inherits the cost of a ghost acadamy (150/50/40?) and the cost of actually getting a ghost (150/150/40) which while fast is still alot of gas and is basically along the same lines as teching to TC or whatever... I don't play alot of toss.
As far as the Marauder vs Zealot argument going down, maruaders do in fact cost gas on top of the 100min base cost of both units for about the same build time. That combined with the extra cost and build time of a tech lab justifies marauders being good against zealots -- even if this is only true with intensive micro. Also warpgates. ya those.
On a relatively minor side note -- the cost of getting a tech lab is more than just the resource and time cost as it also stops unit production for that time. Not a *huge* deal but it makes a difference early game and as stated before, you end up getting alot of them.
On a less rage-terran note, from the P I've played I do agree that charge is expensive and I wouldn't have a problem with it being lowered to 150/150 as I don't think it would change that much.
True.. you spent money to get to EMP. However, what about the time it takes to get to an Immortal? Ghost negates the effectiveness of the Immortal and then some... and its cheaper... That is why I'm talking about EMP being free...
I was more trying to state the EMP costs with regards to marauders and zealots. I personally think immo's should probably have like 125 sheilds or something but that might wreck other things... EMP just seems fine outside of the immo issue.
What does the TC serve? It opens your tech to Templar Archives and Dark Templar Shrine. However, aside from these two upgrades, this mechanic is an often fatal redundancy to Protoss. It just makes no mechanical sense as to why this building exists. This building only exists because it was in Starcraft 1. The only reason it was in Starcraft 1 was to find a place to buffer both types of Templars so that they wouldn't come out so fast. Isn't there a more innovative way to put leg-speed/charge? Also, isn't that twilight council buffer enough punishment for us to build Templars? Need there be two seperate buildlings to build that one Unit? What are Protoss? Zerg? Come on... here (Okay those last two sentences get out of hand). Anyways...
We'll just have to disagree here. Warp zealots and Blinking Stalkers are totally different units from the units without the upgrade and Citadel of Adun unlocked the same potential for zealots.
1) [Robotics]{unlock Prism, Observer, Immortal} which expands into [Robo Bay]{unlock colossus, thermal lance, gravitic drive}
2) [Stargate]{unlock Pheonix, VOid ray} which expands into [Fleet Beacon] {unlocking Carrier, catapault speed}
3) [Council]{unlock Charge, Blink} which expands into [Dark Shrine] & [Templar Archives]
Incorrect, any decent player is still forced to get option 3 in every game whether they choose to go Robo or Stargate due to Council a prerequisite for ground upgrades. This annoys me in every single game I play, I end up making these expensive buildings that derail and delay other aspects of my game.
no fix necessary....yet more balance complaints in the wrong tier units...i think there are more balance issues in the mid game and tier2 units than anything else...this tier 1 with upgrades i think is pretty equal now that even zerg got a minor buff again
Charge is mandatory for Zealots to become viable for anything else besides, err marines and lings. Zealots NEED to be in any army composition for Protoss. They are useless and can be kited and die before the even deal damage against to hydras/marauders which come in the game pretty quickly. Generally speaking Gateway units hinder the protoss in both mid and late game. Lowering charge cost and making in accessible earlier will give Protoss the fresh breath they need to enter mid-game more dynamically.
At high level play Protoss are probably the weakest race due to being one dimensional and heavily relying on late tech units like colossus and storm just to fight T1 and T2 armies.
is it just me or is that OP stuck about 10 years in the past?
errrrrr mate, zealot speed was high tech in broodwar too and it stayed that way.
charge = passive 20% faster zealot movement as well as the charge, and makes them pretty much impossible for any unit to kite except upgraded marauders.
the higher tech is generally higher cost because it comes later in the game... how would you like warpgate to cost 200/200/120 ?
On June 05 2010 02:35 tarsier wrote: is it just me or is that OP stuck about 10 years in the past?
errrrrr mate, zealot speed was high tech in broodwar too and it stayed that way.
charge = passive 20% faster zealot movement as well as the charge, and makes them pretty much impossible for any unit to kite except upgraded marauders.
the higher tech is generally higher cost because it comes later in the game... how would you like warpgate to cost 200/200/120 ?
How would you like stim to cost 200/200 and be stuck in Engineering Bay?
I'm all for balance and races being different, but I don't get people saying charge is even close to as good as stimpacks. If protoss had stimpacks on zealots and it costed 400/400, I'm pretty sure we'd all get it.
Zealots have a very difficult and painful role in the early game vs. ranged units. You must learn this role and get good at applying Zealots to it. Since they can be "negated" via moving shot by high APM or reasonably skilled players, you must support them with ranged units. The Zealot exists to pressure the enemy forces and cause them to retreat or else take heavy damage. In the meantime, your Stalkers, whose attack does a decent chunk of damage despite its terrible granularity, have good range and walk slightly faster than nearly all other ground units. While Zealots pressure enemy forces, and those forces have to attack and flee from the Zealots, the Stalkers should be close enough by to shoot the retreating army. It's a dance, really, and you need about twice as many Zealots as your enemy has Marauders to force the marauders to take some damage. With Stalkers and Zealots, 1:1 vs 1 works, you'll have no huge trouble killing the 1 Marauder at this point. Marauders, being an anti-armored, high-granularity, SNARING ranged unit, however, reach critical and near-critical mass much faster than any Protoss unit.
I've won a few PvTs by attacking Tech Labs or depots with my fast Stalkers while my Zealots pressure the Marauders into remaining indoors. Done early enough, any lost structure can utterly screw Terran's ability to fight back.
On June 05 2010 02:42 milly9 wrote: I'm all for balance and races being different, but I don't get people saying charge is even close to as good as stimpacks. If protoss had stimpacks on zealots and it costed 400/400, I'm pretty sure we'd all get it.
Imagine you could get stim zealots in 2v2 via partner upgrade... LoL @ that... I'd trade 10 health to attack move rape any tier 1 army that doesn't have banelings...
Besides the point, its true.. charge is nowhere near as good as concussive or stim yet it costs more than both combined...
Imagnie we could upgrade charge for 100/100 at our gateway "addon" and then get a 50/50 spell on zealots called "maim" and that would cause any unit the zealot attacks to move 50% slower...
how balanced is that? and that isn't even on a ranged unit.... like the marauder...
marauders are 6-ranged tanks that are a pretty broken unit to begin with. Did they just decide to put marauders in the game because they took out vultures and put firebats in the factory? Seriously? If you think about it.. thats essentially what happened. Firebats were a pretty good anti-zealot thing back in brood-war.. so were vultures... why did they do this? Oh well, what's done is done.. but now that Terran has stimmed vultures with maim attack.. can we please have something to counter it early-mid game instead of staying couped up on top of my ramp spamming forcefields at the un-ending rally point of units as you expand and build more barracks... seriously?
I think taking the darkshrine out would be nice, just increase build time of dark templars, then its up to warpgates for sufficient production speeds. Also on a "charge upgrade" note. I think that Charge should be a manually casted spell. But an all at once thing.
Rather than automatically charging into the enemy. You would actually be able to charge into a battle, or charge away from a fight before encountering the enemy.
You could say charge is fine, but once a group of zealots charges its not safe out there. More control over the spell that takes so much time and money to upgrade. It could be an answer to why it would take so long to get charge.
As much as it bugs me that I sometimes can't get charge against terran without getting severely wtfstomped by marauders if they're pushing, I think it's fine the way it is.
Zealot/Sentry is the most powerful low tier unit combo in my opinion, and I would recommend experimenting with getting hallucination before charge. Hallucinated zealots leading your army is a huge advantage against terran that is never looked at... 100 energy for 4 distractions early game is totally worth it.
Charge is allready manually castable spell. Its just set on autocast by default. U can manually do it too if u wish.
On topic>
I do agree that it should be moved to cyb core and have its price reduced to 100/100. heres why> Stim and shells and really not a choice for a terran player if he wants to go bio. They are so cheap yet so effective upgrades on a allready powerfull, cheap, tanking, ranged, anti-armoured and anti-all gateway units, tier 1.5 unit.
Also ppl do seem to forget the help and tips file inside the game saying that zealots are a HARD COUNTER to marauder. Also a hard counter to hydras. Without a charge they are NOT, its not even close or fair fight. Not everyone can get it and its due to its price(200/200), time to upgrade, and a special tech builduing wich is also expensive just to be EVEN with mentioned units?
Once again, I agree that it should be moved to cyb. core AND its price reduced.
Dark templars are another thing. Dark shrine, a building with no upgrades, is a bit odd, but its probably the best way to preserve balance. If u can get them too fast and other races have no viable detection by that time it would be game breaking.
It used to bother me that all the Terran infantry upgrades PUT TOGETHER are cheaper than Twilight Council + Charge, and cost half what all the Cybernetics Core units' upgrades cost. But I think I get it now - Protoss needs tech/upgrades/gas badly, so Protoss needs a window to power.
In Broodwar, Terran infantry were very threatening to Zerg, such that Zerg couldn't simply mass units of a similar tech level and expect to win an engagement. Zerg needed to fast tech a threatening, aggressive unit, to create a window to power and acquire more gas while Terran defended and teched up to Vessels. Of course, if Terran went mech, the Zerg's window was much earlier, and the early tech may bite them in the ass.
In SC2, Terran infantry are very threatening to Protoss, such that Protoss can't simply mass units of a similar tech level and expect to win an engagement. Protoss needs to fast tech a threatening, aggressive unit (DT/Void Ray/Colossus), to create a window to power and acquire more gas while Terran defends and techs up to Ravens/Vikings. Of course, if Terran went 1/1/1, the Protoss's window is much earlier, and the early tech may bite them in the ass.
On June 05 2010 02:45 Gedrah wrote: Zealots have a very difficult and painful role in the early game vs. ranged units. You must learn this role and get good at applying Zealots to it. Since they can be "negated" via moving shot by high APM or reasonably skilled players, you must support them with ranged units. The Zealot exists to pressure the enemy forces and cause them to retreat or else take heavy damage. In the meantime, your Stalkers, whose attack does a decent chunk of damage despite its terrible granularity, have good range and walk slightly faster than nearly all other ground units. While Zealots pressure enemy forces, and those forces have to attack and flee from the Zealots, the Stalkers should be close enough by to shoot the retreating army. It's a dance, really, and you need about twice as many Zealots as your enemy has Marauders to force the marauders to take some damage. With Stalkers and Zealots, 1:1 vs 1 works, you'll have no huge trouble killing the 1 Marauder at this point. Marauders, being an anti-armored, high-granularity, SNARING ranged unit, however, reach critical and near-critical mass much faster than any Protoss unit.
I've won a few PvTs by attacking Tech Labs or depots with my fast Stalkers while my Zealots pressure the Marauders into remaining indoors. Done early enough, any lost structure can utterly screw Terran's ability to fight back.
in early game id personally say zealots are there to give weakass stalkers/sentrys free hits against marauders(against zerg they block lings from entering base etc) i mean atleast in sc1 dragoons had a decent enough attack to stand on their own to stop early rushes in sc2 you dont have that luxury with stalkers because they die when the wind blows too hard and sentries are just way too weak
The "issue with charge" isn't an issue with charge at all. It's an issue with melee units. Right now all melee units are kind of weak in practice. On paper, zealots are great, high DPS units. In reality, they are little more than meat shields. Other melee units suffer similar issues. Zerglings are theoretically great, but realistically, they are mineral throw-away. Archons are laughing stocks. Ultralisks are still barely worth the tech even after being rebuilt and buffed.
A few things hurt melee units:
1 - Unlimited Unit Select. The fact that you can select all of your marauders as one group means that you can move them all at once, and they fit themselves into a nice ball. With this ball, you can have 15 marauders together, meaning it is simple to kite melee. You can also add other, more fragile units like marines to the mix, and they will stay protected in the mass.
2 - Balling up - The unlimited unit select results in a ball which is easily controlled. Not only can you very simply micro 30 units, the attack surface area is vastly reduced as units in the middle of the ball are inaccessible.
3 - Your melee units ball up too - This is mitigated by your own control, but using a 1-a melee ball means that you're super bunched up. Tank splash, colossus, storm, fungal growth, banelings, emp, are all risks that you run being so bunched up. In Brood War for comparison, you did't frequently have massive tightly packed groups of 20+ melee units partly due to necessity, because you couldn't select that many, but also due to AI, they just didn't force into a ball the same way unless you actually tried to get them to.
4- Your ranged units ball up as well. - Again, this is mitigated by control, but by default your ranged units are going to be in a giant ball, and many ranged units move faster than melee units, or in the case of zerg roaches act as tanks for zerglings, so they frequently attack first. A ball of stalkers or roaches starts out as a ball, and then forms itself into a very tight arc, not allowing any space for your melee units to run through without some micro.
I personally find that the issues I have with melee units come from disadvantageous AI. The new AI is great for ranged units, keeping them more protected and easier to control. It is actually detrimental to melee I believe though, causing traffic issues and leading to susceptibility to splash damage.
Imagine for a moment if you could only control 12 marauders at at time. It would be all of a sudden more difficult to keep a ball of 30 marauders away from zealots. Imagine if the units didn't automatically clump up shoulder to shoulder, it would all of a sudden be possible to isolate and block individual units. Imagine if your zealots/zergligns didn't immediately clump into the tightest balls possible, it may be possible to engage a tank position without skynet-like tank AI using exactly a perfect number of shots to kill your nicely clumped units without wasteage.
The new surround AI is beneficial to the melee as well in a vacuum, but ultimately, the improved ranged AI gives far more benefit, and in fact I find it is even counter-productive to your own melee units when you're ranged form perfect arcs.
Charge, in a vacuum, is fine as 200/200. It's very powerful in very small encounters. 3 zealots vs. 3 marauders, the zealots can charge a marauder, pin him down, and kill him quickly, this despite the fact that marauders are the "counter" to early zealots. 3 zealots vs. 6 marines is pretty much a complete pushover in favor of the zealots. However, 30 zealots vs. 30 marauders, the zealots are screwed, charge or not.
Force field is a great counter to kiting, however and pins your opponents down. A quick charge and FF makes charge zealots quite powerful. Similarly lings can often swing behind a force and prevent retreat while banelings crash in from the front. Broodlings primary benefit isn't the 4 damage they nibble, but instead the fact that they keep ground units from moving easily. The same way that the AI works against melee can be used to work against ranged units kiting. Charge is one of those great ways to prevent movement of ground forces.
So I'm going back and forth about a lot of random shit in this post. What is my point?
My point is you can't just consider charge in a vacuum. Charge Zealots against small numbers of units is great. Charge Zealots vs. large balls of similar units is bad. Charge Zealots with Sentry support vs. large balls of similar units is great. Charge Zealots vs. a small number of Tanks is great. Charge Zealots vs. a large number of Tanks is bad. Charge Zealots vs. a force in an open area is good. Charge Zealots vs. a force where you are constricted is bad.
200/200 is not the problem with charge. The "problem" with charge is that by the time many people get it, there are conditions that make chargelots less than ideal. However, I think that making it come too much earlier (say let it come from cyber core) would make them too strong too early. Making it come cheaper from Twilight Council would not make a huge difference, because either you want to get it, or you don't. Unless they were to drop it to like 50/50, you're still going to have to weigh it's pro's and con's, and I think there would be few situations where you would get Charge with a new cost, where you wouldn't be getting it already with it's old cost. And if you're in a situation where charge is valuable, the cost is entirely worth it.
Comparing it to stim is very pointless because stim is a completely different scenario. Stim is an upgrade, in my opinion, for the same reason that concussive shells is an upgrade. The idea of Stim is that you will have it if you do more than a trivial amount of bio. The cost of it is reasonably low, and it takes 140 seconds to research. The purpose of requiring stim research is in my opinion, to take away strength from marines/marauders in the very early game. In my opinion, charge for Zealots is a different can of worms, Charge is a way to give additional power to Zealots. Zealots being actually reasonably good without charge, Zealots with Charge being sort of Zealots+, while Marines without stim being Marines-.
I'd say stim would be closer to Psionic Storm on High Templar or Extended Thermal Lance on Colossus. Psionic Storm is pretty much a guaranteed upgrade for HT, as is the thermal lance upgrade. You do not get any sort of bio without getting stim. Just like you're not going to get HT without Storm. You can, however, get away without getting Combat Shields. Likewise, you can get away without getting charge, or seeker missile, or hi-sec auto-tracking.
So instead of saying: "Why does charge cost 200/200 when stim costs 100/100 and requires less tech" Ask the question: "Is paying 200/200, 140 seconds, and needing a twilight council for charge reasonable?"
I think the answer is yes. I think 200/200 is a reasonable amount to pay for a strong upgrade considering it adds a lot of utility to your mineral dump, and I have seen strong strategies that incorporate Charge as it is.
If you want to compare to stim, ask if stim is too strong at 100/100. I personally think it is not. Stim is pretty much required for any bio use, and making it more expensive means that terran players are going to be at a higher risk to early aggression, which is something protoss (along with their non-charging zealots) are actually quite good with.
But saying that it's bad because charge is more expensive than stim is a silly argument. Upgrades don't fight against eachother. Races fight against eachother, and the races are different because their units are different. Why do gateways cost 150 when a barracks and tech lab requries 200/25? Why do hatcheries cost 450 and 2 larva to get an expansion and 10 supply when it only costs a protoss 400? Why can probes regen their shields ultra fast but SCVs don't regen anything without help? Why can a warpgate warp in a 2 supply zealot every 15.3 seconds with chronoboost when a barracks can only build a 2 supply marauder every 30 seconds?
Making arbitrary comparisons between two completely different upgrades with no real frame of reference doesn't help anything. The only question that is a reasonable question is: "Is charge a useful ability as it is?" Players better than me think it is. I do too.
On June 05 2010 05:00 HubertFelix wrote: The "because terran have stimpack earlier we should have zealot speed earlier" is just idiot. It's starcraft2, races are differents.
ZERG SHOULD HAVE NYDUS TIER 1 BECAUSE OF WARP GATE LOL ^^ .... you get it?
Just no.
The fact that by the time Charge upgrade is complete you may be too far behind for it to matter, is the problem. Not the fact that you can't come up with proper facts to support an argument. Please don't post garbage in my thread.
On June 05 2010 04:56 zeidrichthorene wrote: Imagine if the units didn't automatically clump up shoulder to shoulder, it would all of a sudden be possible to isolate and block individual units. Imagine if your zealots/zergligns didn't immediately clump into the tightest balls possible, it may be possible to engage a tank position without skynet-like tank AI using exactly a perfect number of shots to kill your nicely clumped units without wasteage
In Age of Empires 2 there were buttons for that, when siege catapults that deal splash damage were in the field, we could spread out the units to somewhat minimize the effect. In this case it's the third button from the left at the bottom. It could definitely help zerglings and zealots, but i don't know if that could be too much too handle for terran and screw up balance.
On June 05 2010 05:00 HubertFelix wrote: The "because terran have stimpack earlier we should have zealot speed earlier" is just idiot. It's starcraft2, races are differents.
ZERG SHOULD HAVE NYDUS TIER 1 BECAUSE OF WARP GATE LOL ^^ .... you get it?
what the hell? nydus worm tech is theoreticaly faster than warpgate tech. nobody wants it that fast but it would be possible to get it about 1min before gates are finished. and if you expand as Z then your only about 1min behind before gate finishes.
actually you showed a very good example of balance. as Z you can choose if you want to go for a very fast network for major harassment or if you want to stick with an expansion and get your macro going.
As P, if you need a Zealot heavy mid game composition then you absolutely need charge. iam fine with this. but until the time you get there, your opponent (whether its Z or T) will have reached critical masses.
charge would be insanely overpowered if available at lower tech. as it is now, you get it right at the time when zealots would become almost useless without it. so it actually should cost far less. now you even have to build a extra building before you can get it. this is not the case with any infantry upgrade T or Z can get. this needs to be counterbalanced.
blizzard actually understands this type of balance. this is why they gave speed as default to the ultra, they reduced infantry upgrades for T and they merged upgrades for the roach.
I propose adding speed enhancement to the charge upgrade. It doesn't have to be as big as in sc1, but this would definitely make zealots more viable lategame, as they could actually retreat, be more mobile, and not always get stuck behind stalkers when you a-move.
On June 05 2010 06:01 Duelist wrote: In Age of Empires 2 there were buttons for that, when siege catapults that deal splash damage were in the field, we could spread out the units to somewhat minimize the effect. In this case it's the third button from the left at the bottom. It could definitely help zerglings and zealots, but i don't know if that could be too much too handle for terran and screw up balance.
There's 2 buttons for this in SC2 as well... left and right mouse buttons... select and move... I appreciate this takes alot more work than hitting a hotkey to spread but its stuff like this that makes starcraft an excellent rts with a very high skill ceiling. I've been spending way to much time watching streams lately and players like NonY do in fact spread their zealots into as much of a line as they can before attacking...
Also I think if you attack farther away they ball less because they all try and go in a straight line towards the a-move point but I havn't really checked that scientifically...
Edit:
I propose adding speed enhancement to the charge upgrade. It doesn't have to be as big as in sc1, but this would definitely make zealots more viable lategame, as they could actually retreat, be more mobile, and not always get stuck behind stalkers when you a-move.
On June 05 2010 06:13 NATO wrote: I propose adding speed enhancement to the charge upgrade. It doesn't have to be as big as in sc1, but this would definitely make zealots more viable lategame, as they could actually retreat, be more mobile, and not always get stuck behind stalkers when you a-move.
There's already passive speed enhancement on charge; it's just less than it should be.
On June 05 2010 06:13 NATO wrote: I propose adding speed enhancement to the charge upgrade. It doesn't have to be as big as in sc1, but this would definitely make zealots more viable lategame, as they could actually retreat, be more mobile, and not always get stuck behind stalkers when you a-move.
I dont support this. your zealots do not get stuck behind stalkers if you put them in a controll group. and they are also not designed to retreat at all. I like the charge mechanic. its very powerfull as a offensive ability but doesnt help much as a defensive one. this forces the zealot user to commit to a attack and do it right from the first second on.
I have done quite some tests with different unit compositions and chargelots are insanely effective in small scale battles. this is why you cant compare it to stim for example. stimpack only gets more effective than charge if you reach a certain supply count. (I made tests with roughly equal supply and ress TvP armies to compare compositions and stim/charge upgrades)
This is why I say: let the tech and reduce the cost drasticaly.
really think its fine. esp when comparing stim and charge costs.
dont forget that T has to spend way way more gas on upgrades and production buildings then P ( a fac/port with addon costs 125-150 gas). so i really dont think the cost is a problem since overall P still spends way way less gas on upgrades and basic production.
and blizz seems to kinda agree on that. cause obv stim is very powerful but they didnt reduce the cost cause it was too expensive for the ability itself but cause of the overall gas heaviness of T early game.
On June 05 2010 06:32 BeMannerDuPenner wrote: really think its fine. esp when comparing stim and charge costs.
dont forget that T has to spend way way more gas on upgrades and production buildings then P (dont forget a fac/port with addon costs 125-150 gas). so i really dont think the cost is a problem since overall P still spends way way less gas on upgrades and basic production.
and blizz seems to kinda agree on that. cause obv stim is very powerful but they didnt reduce the cost cause it was too expensive for the ability itself but cause of the overall gas heaviness of T early game.
You should really do the math on what you just stated. Lets do the math on both protoss and terran getting cloaked units starting from the gateway/barracks...
50/25 tech lab can be constructed on any prior building and lift-off replace 150/100/50 --> 150/100/50 --> 150/150/120 Total: 500/375/220
Yup.. how is this way more?
You spend 50/25 that you would have gotten no matter what game you play in, so that is kind of a sunk-cost. The opportunity cost is much greater for Protoss, because he could have gotten Immortals or Collosus or Voidrays or Phoenixes... instead, we can only build darktemplars in addition to our gateway units.
Terran on the other hand, now has access to tanks, hellions banshees, ravens vikings... just b/c they went cloak banshees, they get MORE options... Protoss deciding to get Dark Templars, has ZERO options...
Terran early game is gas heavy? Um... how are you playing out the early game? Terran's most basic combat units (marine/marauder/hellion) cost almost no gas whereas Protoss's (zealot/stalker/sentry) are much thirstier. Protoss has lots of expensive upgrades, and Robotics + Stargate both cost a fair bit of gas, as do the units they produce.
Obviously if you go 1/1/1 and try to get all your tech at the same time, you'll be strapped for gas on only one base, but every race has that problem.
On June 05 2010 06:32 BeMannerDuPenner wrote: really think its fine. esp when comparing stim and charge costs.
dont forget that T has to spend way way more gas on upgrades and production buildings then P (dont forget a fac/port with addon costs 125-150 gas). so i really dont think the cost is a problem since overall P still spends way way less gas on upgrades and basic production.
and blizz seems to kinda agree on that. cause obv stim is very powerful but they didnt reduce the cost cause it was too expensive for the ability itself but cause of the overall gas heaviness of T early game.
You should really do the math on what you just stated. Lets do the math on both protoss and terran getting cloaked units starting from the gateway/barracks...
50/25 tech lab can be constructed on any prior building and lift-off replace 150/100/50 --> 150/100/50 --> 150/150/120 Total: 500/375/220
Yup.. how is this way more?
You spend 50/25 that you would have gotten no matter what game you play in, so that is kind of a sunk-cost. The opportunity cost is much greater for Protoss, because he could have gotten Immortals or Collosus or Voidrays or Phoenixes... instead, we can only build darktemplars in addition to our gateway units.
Terran on the other hand, now has access to tanks, hellions banshees, ravens vikings... just b/c they went cloak banshees, they get MORE options... Protoss deciding to get Dark Templars, has ZERO options...
Do you see any problem here at all?
why the hell do you compare cloaked units?
On June 05 2010 06:43 Severedevil wrote: Terran early game is gas heavy? Um... how are you playing out the early game? Terran's most basic combat units (marine/marauder/hellion) cost almost no gas whereas Protoss's (zealot/stalker/sentry) are much thirstier. Protoss has lots of expensive upgrades, and Robotics + Stargate both cost a fair bit of gas, as do the units they produce.
Obviously if you go 1/1/1 and try to get all your tech at the same time, you'll be strapped for gas on only one base, but every race has that problem.
evrything but pure MM play requires a fairly fast tech. and you want medivacs rather soon,ghosts or whatever.
and even then youll need atleast 300 gas (2 techlabs,stim,shields,shells). while P needs warpgate tech and a robo or a starport (or pure warpgate...) which is 200 at max.
and P can stay for ages on just warpgates + 1 robo while T needs Fac/port fairly fast + addons + fac/port related upgrades very soon.also once out P HAS the tech and usually only adds more warpgates since one boosted robo/stargate is usually enough. while T has to add more production buildings which ALL cost gas. from 25 for a techlabbed rax to 150 for a reactored fac.
really no matter how you look at it. T needs way more gas for tech/production buildings to have a equally strong overall army.
I'd prefer nerfing the EMP over buffing Charge. It's just a quiete cheap super-psi-storm for T against P. Nerfing EMP would buff Zealot's in the lategame and you could stick to 200/200 Charge.
I find mech play very annoying for protoss. Zealots still get raped by tank support, and yes, you can use phoenixes to disable, but meh ... Also, tanks kill any chance of storm drops at their base, which REALLY sucks.
If charge goes for 200, I would say to make it more fun, make zealots invincible during the period while their charging ...
It might make it too overpowered, but then again, in a sense, not really since most of zealots die after they charge. It's still the same thing, but they just sorta get in your face. It's probably the only way right now against mech terran .... =/ especially when you let them get that insane huge amount of buildings produced and its just almost unstoppable.
On June 05 2010 07:25 CruelZeratul wrote: I'd prefer nerfing the EMP over buffing Charge. It's just a quiete cheap super-psi-storm for T against P. Nerfing EMP would buff Zealot's in the lategame and you could stick to 200/200 Charge.
ive never seen someone EMP on chargelots instead on templars/immortals.
knowing that zealots are the only toss ground unit that could ever counter marauders with stim/concussive cost-effectively if they manage to get a good surround, it should be a no-brainer to lower the charge upgrade costs in some way
charge should be reduced to 150/150 and have a build time of about 90-100. That would make a it a more reasonable upgrade. As it is now, I have trouble justifying that upgrade until I have a really strong econ and am unable to spend all resources so I buy the charge just to keep my money low.
On June 05 2010 07:41 101TFP wrote: knowing that zealots are the only toss ground unit that could ever counter marauders with stim/concussive cost-effectively if they manage to get a good surround, it should be a no-brainer to lower the charge upgrade costs in some way
ya heard colloxen,storm,sentries,immortals are all get countered by rauders and are useless vs em!
On June 05 2010 07:25 CruelZeratul wrote: I'd prefer nerfing the EMP over buffing Charge. It's just a quiete cheap super-psi-storm for T against P. Nerfing EMP would buff Zealot's in the lategame and you could stick to 200/200 Charge.
ive never seen someone EMP on chargelots instead on templars/immortals.
Ok, i should have said it would buff Protoss lategame and make a buff to Charge obsolete. Anyway, due to the one-controle-groupe-syndrom -according to Day9-, it is very likely to hit at least a few Zealots in the balled units when an engagement occurs.
On June 05 2010 00:29 Paramore wrote:When you go 7-rax early game vs a Protoss, what would the proper response really be? If you tech too fast you get rushed at 4-rax stage and its game-over. I don't care how many times you forcefield your ramp because by the time you produce a Collosus (which by the way also costs gas, so mass forcefield cuts into your gas, he will be miles ahead of you economically with his fast expo.
3 gate robo+obs should let you scout him in time. gateway units can stop early rush and colossi+gateway units can stop bigger bio balls. i never used blink+charge vs bio and had no problems at all. now mech was a different story.
On June 05 2010 00:41 arb wrote: id say make it 200/200 myself..i cant even get charge alot of times until semi late because of the cost of it, especially when blink makes an otherwise useless unit capable of some sick ahrass(with good micro) and is alot cheaper..
i think lowering it to 150/150 or even 100/100 would be reasonable
Agreed, 150/150 would be a nice solution while not breaking the balance
They need to remove the Dark shrine, and just move both the templar tech buildings into the templar archives. I think that no one gets the Twilight Council because the tech after it is too split up/expensive/situational compared with the other two options. Not only that, it just makes sense. (You really want us to make a 100/250/100 building that unlock one unit, and has no upgrades? Really?)
If not that, then they should at least make charge 150/150/110. It seems like more of a band-aid fix than my first suggestion, but it would get the job done.
I have always thought that charge was way too expensive. But now that I research it every single game, I admit it has to cost that much because it gives a whole new life to your most basic unit.
Whenever you are falling behind in the army size and feel the game could get out of reach quickly, most of the time researching charge and spamming zealots out of your warpgates can turn the tide of the game. Charge lots are not to be underestimated.
I'm glad someone else made this thread, honestly I kind of hate the whole Protoss tech tree. I hate that you're basically forced to go Robo just so you don't auto-lose against a Terran who goes Banshees. Then Immortals are basically useless if they have EMP (or marines) so you have to wait until Colossus + Range to really get anything useful from your Robotics Facility.
Plus, it's really hard to support Robo tech and another tech path off one base while still maintaining a decent army... and then it's also tough to expand early because if the Terran is going mass infantry it's really difficult to defend your natural since you can't abuse FF as much in open spaces unless you have a ton of Sentries (plus all the gas for sentries also makes it hard to tech).
I know it would be completely imba but I almost wish they just cut out Twilight Council and merged it with Templar Archives, then just made Storm take longer to research or something to compensate. I'd be nice to have HTs out earlier just for feedback purposes anyway, since Terrans can get Ghosts so fast. And it would just make the Protoss tech tree feel less bloated.
Anyway, pontificating aside, I'd love to see the cost for Charge get dropped. 100/100 seems like too much but 150/150 doesn't seem like enough. Maybe lower the cost of Twilight Council and Charge both by 50/50 each. I think the research speed is probably fine since you can Chrono it if you really need.
On June 05 2010 00:34 Snowfield wrote: Nothing to be fixed imo. charge is a very powerful ability that automaticly activates without any down sides, while stim is an ability you have to activate yourself and has a 10 HP loss.
Zealot legs (charge, whatever) is REALLY FUCKING GOOD. I feel that a lot of Protoss players are getting it later than they should. It is really expensive, and it requires a small bit of tech, but i really think it's worth it.
I wouldn't cry a river if they made it 150/150, but at the same time I still think it's HIGHLY worth it at 200/200.
Before people keep comparing charge to stim, I want to point out that protoss can wait untill the TC for charge but terran cannot wait that long for stim. You need stim early or you die in a straight up battle after the first 5 minutes, while charge makes zealots a lot more useful in later game situations and would be rediculous to make it from the CC, but I don't see the harm it the price being 150/150 if it really needs to be.
Charge is a lot stronger than people are giving it credit for, it means that not only can you zoom up to the mmm ball in half a second, but your zealots base speed is also slightly increased meaning they can keep up with stalkers and pretty much everything else.
Since you're already getting a TC for charge, then I'd recommend teching some more and getting some HT, keeping them spread out so they dont get hit by as single emp, also with an observer (eventually) so you can stop cloaked ghosts getting in there. Psi storm hurts a stimmed mmm ball a lot and means that they have to focus and keep moving, else they die. Also, if you have a good trigger finger when it comes to feedback, then you can just blast the ghosts apart before they can do anything.
Charge is disproportionately pricey when zealots become more and more useless as the game passes to begin with. Versus zerg zealots become a waste of time and money after the earlygame and versus terran they exist only to tank damage, and as such while having charge early on can be powerful versus marine heavy compositions, 200/200 is a bit much to dish out so that your meatshields (which you will invevitably start phasing out as the armies start to approach maximum supply) just so they get 1 or 2 hits in before they die. Especially when they end up mostly dying to my own storms anyway.
I don't get it. If we forget the shield upgrade, stim and concussive shells cost 50/50 less than charge, granted. Nonetheless, charge is still better: marines and marauders lose their health and they have to be micro'ed. Charge zealots will pwn until T tech's up. If I'm wrong and charge zealots don't pwn stimmed mm's then prove it - bearing in mind the fact that they require micro and slowly sap their own health the more they use it prior to teching up to medivacs. If not, what's the deal?
^Dropping 350/350 on an ability you will essentially only get any use from in the midgame is a pretty raw deal compared to these abilities that scale in effectiveness throughout the game. You have to have a pretty goddamn strong bias to claim these abilities are even remotely comparable. I like how you conveniently ignored the difference in accessibility and the cost of the tech structures as well.
Zealots without charge eat shots just as well as ones without charge, the only difference is counted in the 1 or 2 hits the zealots will be able to deliver, apart from very early timing pushes where the terran army is in its infancy.
On June 06 2010 21:56 Bash wrote: ^Dropping 350/350 on an ability you will essentially only get any use from in the midgame is a pretty raw deal compared to these abilities that scale in effectiveness throughout the game. You have to have a pretty goddamn strong bias to claim these abilities are even remotely comparable. I like how you conveniently ignored the difference in accessibility and the cost of the tech structures as well.
Zealots without charge eat shots just as well as ones without charge, the only difference is counted in the 1 or 2 hits the zealots will be able to deliver, apart from very early timing pushes where the terran army is in its infancy.
350/350? Where did that come from? I was only talking about charge.
I would dispute that charge only has use midgame. It's very effective on early terran forces that don't have a medivac/other support, and again, it's devastating if T doesn't micro, which is less than you can say for charge.
Admittedly the twilight council is more costly than the tech lab, but it has the advantage of opening up tech to 2 other buildings, the tech lab doesn't have this. I would say that offsets it.
I think this discussion is still premature. I see where everyone is coming from, but I think until we play this game for another year and come to a statement like:
Well Terran has this timing push window that is very hurtful without charge, and charge needs to be a BIT cheaper and then Protoss can hold it off.
Then, this discussion can be progressive. As it stands, we are not at that level where we can detail specific problems with the game. A change like this might not only help Protoss stop Terran midgame, but also create their own timing push that could be unstoppable. As a Protoss player, I just don't feel like I can easily make a distinctive change like that. It might just reverse the advantage to the other player, or maybe won't affect TvP but ZvP. Regardless, I think you should give it a bit more time.
Ghosts on the other hand are the most annoying units ever. I absolutely hate them. However I have to realize that every time I encountered them, my thoughts would be like "WoW I would have easily rolled him if he didn't EMP". Which I mean, obviously I shouldn't. Its just annoying because no amount of micro could potentially save me from EMP aside from sniping his ghosts (which are impossible to see, honestly that is such a huge issue for me... I'm not sure if anyone else has that problem). Delayed EMP via upgrade might not be bad, but it will also ruin ghost's role in TvP. I'd say just a smaller radius of EMP might be a good change if it will be a problem.
On June 06 2010 22:38 mprs wrote: I think this discussion is still premature. I see where everyone is coming from, but I think until we play this game for another year and come to a statement like:
Well Terran has this timing push window that is very hurtful without charge, and charge needs to be a BIT cheaper and then Protoss can hold it off.
It would be the same to change its cost now, wait one year and if it's slightly to strong it can still be changed to 200/200.
i am completely fine with charge's price and time it takes to research it, what i am not fine with is the fact that it makes the zealot's AI absolutely retarded. earlier i was in a PvT, he did a FE on desert oasis, and i attacked his CC with chargelots, stalkers, a void ray, and some high templar. he sent all of his marines and marauders to my units right as i was about to destroy his SCVs and attack his CC, and the guy did something that really infuriated me, as my zealots were in his mineral line he told all of his SCV's to stop mining, so this enabled collision detection, and my 12 or so zealots were scrambling inside his SCV's trying to run into the marauders, but were essentially completely blocked off. all of my other units died, i got no kills with any of the zealots, and i lost the advantage that i could have had razing his expansion and ended up with no units vs a huge army. the fact that it auto-targets specific units can really be abused, and i am considering ignoring the ability altogether because of it. i dont understand why they can't temporarily make the zealots act as speedlings do, instead of completely mucking up their AI as well.
edit: well according to someone else, the planetary fortress was what was screwing up the micro, not the charge, but i do want to restate that i am fine with its price and time, at the same time i dont think reducing it a small bit would be a bad idea though, and i don't think it would affect very much if you reduced it only by 50 gas.
On June 06 2010 21:56 Bash wrote: ^Dropping 350/350 on an ability you will essentially only get any use from in the midgame is a pretty raw deal compared to these abilities that scale in effectiveness throughout the game. You have to have a pretty goddamn strong bias to claim these abilities are even remotely comparable. I like how you conveniently ignored the difference in accessibility and the cost of the tech structures as well.
Zealots without charge eat shots just as well as ones without charge, the only difference is counted in the 1 or 2 hits the zealots will be able to deliver, apart from very early timing pushes where the terran army is in its infancy.
350/350? Where did that come from? I was only talking about charge.
I would dispute that charge only has use midgame. It's very effective on early terran forces that don't have a medivac/other support, and again, it's devastating if T doesn't micro, which is less than you can say for charge.
Admittedly the twilight council is more costly than the tech lab, but it has the advantage of opening up tech to 2 other buildings, the tech lab doesn't have this. I would say that offsets it.
In a way it does cost 350/100 ... twilight council is so useful...
ah i see. well thanks for correcting me. that just makes it hard as hell to avoid this scenario then, in the event that i do want to attack his expansion...
well anyway this really just makes me not want the ability at all. not having it would be less detrimental to my attack, unless i am misunderstanding what went on in this video.
This has nothing to do with charge at all, PF takes priority over all other targets so zealots weren't attacking until they got attacked by other things
On June 06 2010 21:56 Bash wrote: ^Dropping 350/350 on an ability you will essentially only get any use from in the midgame is a pretty raw deal compared to these abilities that scale in effectiveness throughout the game. You have to have a pretty goddamn strong bias to claim these abilities are even remotely comparable. I like how you conveniently ignored the difference in accessibility and the cost of the tech structures as well.
Zealots without charge eat shots just as well as ones without charge, the only difference is counted in the 1 or 2 hits the zealots will be able to deliver, apart from very early timing pushes where the terran army is in its infancy.
350/350? Where did that come from? I was only talking about charge.
Buildings aren't free. And unlike the 1 tech lab you'll need all game if you really don't want to build more, the council severely cuts into any and all timings you might have, especially if you aren't planning on building templar. I'm sure you know all this, why are you forcing me to type it out?
I would dispute that charge only has use midgame. It's very effective on early terran forces that don't have a medivac/other support, and again, it's devastating if T doesn't micro, which is less than you can say for charge.
You're basically repeating yourself here and agreeing with what I already said in an earlier post without addressing the issue that charge becomes not worth the money in late game so moving on.
Admittedly the twilight council is more costly than the tech lab, but it has the advantage of opening up tech to 2 other buildings, the tech lab doesn't have this. I would say that offsets it.
Not much of an advantage if you're not going templars. Or do you build all tech structures in each game? And you do it at a time that you're mostly at 1 base?
cant beleive im making my first post in a whine thread but i honestly have to say what i read in this thread are some of the most stupid counterproductive arguments ive ever seen do you REALLY want to compare race skills and prices in the the sequel to the rts game known for having the most unique races ever?
protoss have 5 dmg/armor upgrades while terran have 6 your production building(gateway vs barracks) dont cost gas zealots dont cost gas, marauders do as a protoss you are making your choice of path (enhanced gateway/robo/air) when you go into the advanced tech while terrans have to tech in a straight line down people are comparing forcefields with emp, hey how about we give siege tanks hardened shield(or remove siege upgrade)?
you cant compare skills between races and call it imbalanced
oh and btw i agree that charge upgrade could cost 150/150 but it should not come earlier than it does right now.
On June 07 2010 08:07 Hemling wrote: cant beleive im making my first post in a whine thread but i honestly have to say what i read in this thread are some of the most stupid counterproductive arguments ive ever seen do you REALLY want to compare race skills and prices in the the sequel to the rts game known for having the most unique races ever?
protoss have 5 dmg/armor upgrades while terran have 6 your production building(gateway vs barracks) dont cost gas zealots dont cost gas, marauders do as a protoss you are making your choice of path (enhanced gateway/robo/air) when you go into the advanced tech while terrans have to tech in a straight line down people are comparing forcefields with emp, hey how about we give siege tanks hardened shield(or remove siege upgrade)?
you cant compare skills between races and call it imbalanced
oh and btw i agree that charge upgrade could cost 150/150 but it should not come earlier than it does right now.
Actually the bolded part is not true. The correct statement would be "You CAN compare skills between races, its just really difficult".
If I were to say that the terran now have an ability that instantly destroys the other player's base instantly, without any gas cost, you would say "thats retarded, and overpowered". I would then retort with "Nope, its a different skill for my race".
Bottomline is terran's stim/conc shell upgrades are obnoxiously good and are built on your production building with an EXTREMELY low cost.
Terran is imba, it is true. MM Timing pushes are almost unstoppable for protoss right now, and its just going to get worse as more terran get it down.
On June 07 2010 08:07 Hemling wrote: cant beleive im making my first post in a whine thread but i honestly have to say what i read in this thread are some of the most stupid counterproductive arguments ive ever seen do you REALLY want to compare race skills and prices in the the sequel to the rts game known for having the most unique races ever?
protoss have 5 dmg/armor upgrades while terran have 6 your production building(gateway vs barracks) dont cost gas zealots dont cost gas, marauders do as a protoss you are making your choice of path (enhanced gateway/robo/air) when you go into the advanced tech while terrans have to tech in a straight line down people are comparing forcefields with emp, hey how about we give siege tanks hardened shield(or remove siege upgrade)?
you cant compare skills between races and call it imbalanced
oh and btw i agree that charge upgrade could cost 150/150 but it should not come earlier than it does right now.
Terran is imba, it is true. MM Timing pushes are almost unstoppable for protoss right now, and its just going to get worse as more terran get it down.
why is it always a sub 100 posts guy that states something is clearly super imba and unbeatable?
show me those unstoppable pushes pls do. cause you apparently know something all T players worldwide need to learn!
I think the biggest concern, in addition to the high cost of Protoss tech and unit cost relative to Terran, is that Protoss is contested in what to do early to mid game and can only have one:
Charge or Blink? Warp Gate or Hallucination or Air Upgrade? Immortal or Colossus (Range needed)? High Templar (Storm needed) or Dark Templar?
Marauders are really tough early game. Protoss have trouble early-game because the stalker is balanced around the idea that it can blink and attack air. Marauder is balanced around the idea that it can't hit air. Problem is, early game the Stalker has no air to attack and can't blink. The Marauder utilizes it's entire arsenal early game, so what we end up with is a gimped out stalker with less DPS and less mobility (concussive shell snare) that costs more.
In addition, as stated before, melee units in SC2 are weaker due to the new AI that greatly enhances ranged units... and Terran units are all ranged. Another reason why the Archon and Ultralisk are bad.
I just want them to unbuff stim and shield and re-nerf concussive shells. no need to change charge upgrade or the TC. changing the charge upgrade/TC will affect PvZ a lot more than you'd imagine, while unbuffing and re-nerfing the bio upgrades won't really hurt TvZ as Terran was already pretty strong against Zerg early game and it'd also take some pressure off PvT early game.
Blizzard was fucking high when they buffed stim and shield. That made absolutely no sense. The un-nerfing of concussive shells was retarded and they might as well just not have made it a researchable ability.
What I don't understand about Blizzard is when they said Protoss is destroying Terran early game about a month ago. In many high level plays back then Marauder rushes were absolutely destroying Protoss early game. The only Protoss response was to turtle and hit a good forcefield, so the Zealots can attack without getting kited much. In another interview, Dustin Browder said some Protoss players were using mass Carriers and beating Terran often with it... but I have yet to see any Protoss using mass carriers, let alone winning with them. I've seen a few attempt but Carriers were easily stopped by a few Vikings. I really don't know how the balance team balances, but one thing for sure is that they don't look at top level play which is kind of disappointing.
But this game is too early to call anything, and this is a great time to try out new things.
After watching one of the Day9 dailies where he uses QXC's build-order testing map, I've recently been getting the Charge upgrade super early while teching to DTs vs Terran.
TC builds super fast, and if you plan your gas accordingly, it really doesn't bust your balls that badly. When you are planning for Charge early in the game, dumping extra minerals into Zealots while being gas-starved makes sense. I've gone into battles thinking I would lose, but Chargelots are amazingly underrated.
You should be able to tell if he's going Banshees by his gas/add-ons/early unit composition and decide if you need that fast Robotics or not.
My only real problem with the Charge upgrade is how fricken long it takes. It feels like I have to Chrono Boost my TC 5 or 6 times to get it done.
I would rather they put Concussive Shells back to it's longer research time. The time it takes between your scout getting killed and a stalker showing up at their base is almost the same as the time it will take to get cshells up, which has led TvP back to a semi-stagnant early game for Protoss where T has map and build order control. I like how charge's long upgrade time and cost feels like a strategic choice with obvious pros and cons (though I would also like it if chargelots would have higher base movement than workers), whereas I don't like how all of T's tech lab upgrades feel like cheap necessities instead of decisions that have some sort of drawback.
Charge either needs to be cheaper, or Stim needs to go back to being 150/150 and Concussive Shells to 100/100. As it stands, early 2 or 3 Barracks pressure more or less forces me to sit at the top of my ramp with Sentries just so I can buy time for Colossi to come out, and by then I'm dealing with Vikings or Tanks, which make it difficult to apply pressure back.
Its not that match up is broken, just extremely taxing on patience, and mostly because of early Bio pressure or having to play a guessing game of "Mech, Drops, or Ghosts in MM." And T may argue we have Obs, but any decent Terran will notice the distortion and either scan it or place a few critical Missle Turrets up. The only PvT game I've had where I was coming out ahead in Unit losses was after I started catching drops and Feedbacking them.
If I could get Charge just a bit quicker (the 50 gas cheaper quicker even) it would make pushing out from my ramp a bit safer, because as it stands, a single control group of MM can wait till the Zealots get close, Stim and Kite and be out of range of the Stalkers and faster. And sure, I could get several Sentries, but those aren't cheap and delay tech quite a bit. And Stim is much more useful in general, as it can be used to escape a bad situation, run back to the Tank line, or do some quick sniping and running. Charge is only useful offensively, and only if I micro the Zealots so they don't get Charge locked behind each other and just run around doing nothing.
EPT
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