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Bob300
United States505 Posts
As for the OP - yes DTs are usually a crap choice and will fail against anything but a 4gate allin (which is rare on single entrance bases), and yes this is a problem as PVP is probably the most predictable/boring mu. I'm pretty sure ZvZ is most predictable and boring MU. PvP Dts cant be used observers go out so fast, and every toss player makes them. | ||
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0mar
United States567 Posts
PvP is boring because it's balanced on a razor's edge, just like all the other matchups. Why isn't MMM viable in TvT or hydra/ling in ZvZ? It's for the same reason, the most optimal build will beat everything except that same optimal build done better. | ||
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Percutio
United States1672 Posts
Stargate tech in PvP is very powerful in its own right and those players usually don't have detection. Even then, robo players sometimes skip obs or only have 1 even late in the game. This makes DTs a really good midlate-late game harass or containment tool, especially considering their strength and speed. The Dark Shrine by itself isn't very expensive, it is really the time that is substantial. Late game you should also have a twilight council anyways, so it really shouldn't be unnatural to get DTs later on in the game. If you have been getting rolled by a robo timing attack, or simply killed by a Colossi army with 1 observer, then you are probably playing some kind of 1 base DT all-in. The time and resource commitment to DTs is substantial in the early game and leaves you with no flexibility. Use them as if they aren't an all-in strategy and they really aren't bad units. By the late game their tech and time cost is insignificant compared to the map control they can give. | ||
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Alou
United States3748 Posts
On June 13 2010 11:58 Swede wrote: But that's no different than rushing ANY other higher tier unit in the early game. If it doesn't pay for itself then you are massively behind because of the investment you made in that higher tier unit. Like Nony said, the later in the game you go for Dark Templars (or x unit) the less risk there is if they are blocked because your economy has more wiggle room. Of course you are behind if the rush fails, that's not the point. He is saying that when it fails, he has no transition, which is unlike other rush to fast tech builds, in which you have transitions to other units available. | ||
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Percutio
United States1672 Posts
Void Rays, Dark Templar, Thors, and Mutas can all be rushed and used in order to win the game fast or at least get you a big advantage. If that fails then you will be behind. However, these units can also be used without being all-in strategies. The problem is that most players go all in with DTs. | ||
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dignity
Canada908 Posts
If you think about the tech needed to get to the dark shrine, you need the twilight council. Why not get the blink first and get stalkers, or get chargelots, and hide your dark shrine when you do get it? DTs can still give you an advantage, as you can just invest in one or two DTs and switch back to standard play. This would keep your opponents on their toes, and possibly get them to overcommit with cannons. | ||
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Swede
New Zealand853 Posts
Of course you are behind if the rush fails, that's not the point. He is saying that when it fails, he has no transition, which is unlike other rush to fast tech builds, in which you have transitions to other units available. That's not what he's saying. He's saying there is no WORKING transition, which is the same as any other early tech rush (when vsing a capable player). The way to allow for a working transition is either by ensuring that your fast tech will do enough damage to buy you the time to switch (ie, don't try it unless you are 90% sure it will work), or by teching at a later stage when your economy has some wiggle room. The OP has only outlined one aspect of the fundamental design of SC2. It's not something specific to Dark Templars. | ||
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Kyadytim
United States886 Posts
Even somehow combining the Dark Shrine with the Templar Archives doesn't seem like it will make DTs any more viable. In Brood War, Goon/Reaver was good because it gave you observers if needed, the potential harassment with Shuttle/Reaver, and a stable army that could deal with any enemy unit composition well before a player teching straight to Templar could have more than a few Storms available. However, in the late game, Templar tech was superior to Reavers because storm outranged Reavers, Reavers were fairly immobile, and died in two storms. Colossi, by contrast, take a whopping 5 storms to kill, outrange storm by 50%, don't run out of energy, can just amble out of storms, they're so big that one basically soaks a whole storm by itself if there's no units under it, the tech gives you options of immortals to help deal with mass stalker and observers to deal with DT. Like in BW, it's also faster to tech to. Furthermore, Colossi massacre Zealots, which a player teching to templar will have due to the mineral:gas cost ratio of Templar, and cost more minerals than gas themselves, giving the Colossi player a slightly healthier resource mix to spend on the rest of his/her army. In conclusion, I'm not going to say that Templar tech of both sorts is useless in a PvP, but I don't think it will ever create an army that can stand toe to toe with a Colossus army on equal resources until there are a large number of templar on the field (enough to blanket the entire enemy army with storms, probably twice), so the only way to win is to keep the opponent in his/her base and take an economic lead with excellent harass, because until you get that many templar, they can just push out and kill you. | ||
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LaLuSh
Sweden2358 Posts
I don't think it's enough to just shorten the build time or make high templars build from the same building (what are you going to do, storm the colossi to death without actually having any units that can shoot at them?). I don't think storm+canons can hold a 1base robo tech timing in a game like SC2 tbh. You'd need some sort of added functionality to the templar tech tree. Some mind control-ish spell, or some spell to stun and/or incapacitate the immortals/colossi. Even then it'd be really hard to balance. I think tweaking the macro mechanics (weakening them), in conjunction with shortening or cheapening the building process for DTs might make it more viable. Micro battles early game would involve less units and turn out to be more interesting, and playing "safe" would actually mean you'd have to forgo some gateways to afford to build the robo in time. As it is now, DTs are too expensive to tech to. It takes too long a time. You have to sacrifice too many gateways and units. And even if it partially works, trying to transition into a fast expansion is borderline suicidal because the strength of the macro mechanics enable people to sustain a ridiculous amount of gateways in conjunction with a robo really early in the game. I doubt Blizzard is ready to make a fundamental change such as weakening the macro mechanics across all the races, but I think that at some point it will be evident that they need to in order to diversify strategies. Right now the macro mechanics have too great an impact on the metagame. Everyone expects at least 3 gates, if not 4 or 5 before an expansion. I can't really argue with that either, it's evidently the best and most optimal strategy. What bothers me about the macro mechanics are that they literally bottleneck the midgame in almost every matchup. They create this bottleneck in the early midgame where you have to keep massing units at every cost. Where there is no other option than massing units like crazy. Where diverting from the norm more often than not punishes you. I actually think that if they slowed down the early game and early mid game somewhat, SC2 would be a much more fun and fast paced (and more balanced) game in the mid and lategames. I'd especially think a lot more odd and technical strategies such as Warp Prism Colossus drops (and who knows what other strategies) would become viable. As it is now, if you go for a cute tactic like warp prism colossus, more often than not you just get attack moved to death by a huge fucking mass of units. | ||
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dignity
Canada908 Posts
Just because a DT opening does not work does not warrant a change in the unit. | ||
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Percutio
United States1672 Posts
Even if more people opened stargates it would still be a bad choice because it is so all in. Maybe you should instead question whether high templar should be useful in PvP. I personally don't think high templar need to be viable in PvP because in Broodwar PvP stargates went largely unused, but now they are pretty damn viable. That makes the number of options in PvP pretty similar to Broodwar. | ||
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Hikari
1914 Posts
I wonder how viable it is to throw in some phoenixs afterwards to lift enemy immortals... | ||
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Mack
United States25 Posts
On June 13 2010 13:03 dignity wrote: Just because a DT opening does not work does not warrant a change in the unit. I agree with this. The tech to DT is still a little shaky, but the unit still has its place. We're unfortunately not in BW anymore. | ||
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Infiltrator
Montenegro80 Posts
On June 13 2010 12:24 Percutio wrote: That doesn't seem entirely true. Void Rays, Dark Templar, Thors, and Mutas can all be rushed and used in order to win the game fast or at least get you a big advantage. If that fails then you will be behind. However, these units can also be used without being all-in strategies. The problem is that most players go all in with DTs. This is the gist of it. Going DTs is a bigger resource and time investment than any of the other alternatives, and if they don't pay themselves out you are pretty much guaranteed to lose. The other options, even if not successful, do not put you in such a bad position, imo. | ||
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Cheerio
Ukraine3178 Posts
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darmousseh
United States3437 Posts
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jtgizmo
Congo161 Posts
http://www.livestream.com/tozar | ||
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nEAnS
Canada161 Posts
There's a right time to use every unit. DTs are fine even with the tech tree. Aside from having templar and dt's using two different buildings if you think about it, it takes the same amount of buildings to get DTs as it did in Starcraft 1. People need to stop thinking about how they can win games using cheap gimmicky tricks because it won't work on a good player. | ||
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tarsier
United Kingdom223 Posts
there's nothing more satisfying than sneaking a few DT's in and then escaping before the observer arrives. it definately rewards ingenius play and is one of the best harrass units in the game. | ||
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Arco
United States2090 Posts
In BW, I enjoyed DT openings a lot. Not because the slim chance of "rock-paper-scissoring" your opponent, but because it allowed for a different tech path and playstyle. You could grab an expansion and get Storm/Zealot Legs, stop counter DTs with Cannons and get fast upgrades with the Forge you built for them. What doesn't allow for this interesting play or build orders is the expenses of the Templar route in SC2. We all know this. This is why we see most everyone go for mass gates or robo builds. Stargate is even more appealing/useful than the Templar tech. I'd like to propose an upgrade that allows the Templar Archives tech to also allow production of Dark Templar. It would be an upgrade called something like "Dark Commune" that costs 50minerals/50gas, and takes longer to upgrade than just going straight Dark Shrine (but roughly the same if chrono boosts are saced on the upgrade) Perhaps it could be a visual/name upgrade to the Templar Archives itself (with a cool name like Templar Tribunal), The details of the upgrade/idea aren't really important. Hell, maybe just make it so you can convert one between the other. The point is finding a balanced way to allow you to get your DTs out around the same time as building a Dark Shrine, but you will afterwards be able to immediately research Storm and not have to commit a large amount of resources on a tech that should essentially be merged together on one building. But why not merge it? Blizzard probably wants to keep around the cool building art and place to add Dark Archon or other unit upgrades in the next two expansions.  So why not find a fun, cool, balanced and lore following alternative that spices up Protoss a bit more, and allows for more interesting play, particularly in PvP mirror matchups? Edit: Also, maybe make Psi Storm more useful in PvP. I haven't checked it out too much, but it seems probably terrible considering Immortals shield works against it? They should just change that, its not going to hurt Immortals in any other MU anyways. | ||
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