Why Protoss Drops Are Rare (Warp Prism Analysis)

On May 03 2011 06:50 phantaxx wrote:
Another reason drops as protoss aren't as effective is because their army gets stronger as it grows, aka the deathball. Terran and zerg drop the protoss to avoid fighting the deathball head on, but protoss does not really want to have small engagements to trade low amounts of units, they just want the one big battle (in most cases).

On May 03 2011 06:52 Fuego wrote:
I think they key here is it not having armour and being slow as hell. Yes there is a speed upgrade, but that will always come after Thermal Lance anyways, so it's always going to be a fairly late game option. If they had the armour/HP buff to make their slow speed viable in the mid game then we would see a lot more use from them.

On May 03 2011 06:59 rolfe wrote:
i'm not sure i'd say its too fragile or too expensive or anything. i think the main problem is that the efficiency of protoss units is generally increased by them being together and in sufficient number. i think the warp prisms fine but there are other reasons its not used so much like colossus production needing to be almost constant in most match up and this likely meaning that there is sufficient air to air on the map.

also toss units are generally not that good once dropped, zealots are ok and DTs are excellent (though obviously thats quite tech intensive to have both a robo and dark shrine) but workers can be ran away from zealots quite easily and zealots alone die quite quickly to most standard units in any army composition.

i think they do ok though and can work very well in some situations. i definitely don't think they need to be changed in any way

On May 03 2011 09:30 The Final Boss wrote:


Here's a couple of problems with this point:

• Warp Prisms are the only of those dropping units that you do not need to invest gas in.
  
• Overlord drops without speed upgrade? Are you kidding me? Let's be realistic Z has to invest 300/300 into two very costly upgrades. Assuming that Z is on two base when they get those upgrades, that's also a lot of time that they cannot be researching Burrow or making Queens.
  
• I don't know if you have ever played TvP before, but when you're going up against a P who is making a lot of Colossi, it is imperative that you have at least 1 reactor Starport making lots of Vikings. This seriously cuts into Terran Medivac production and makes using one to go harass with exceedingly hard to do unless they create a second reactor Starport. That costs 200 minerals 150 gas and at the very least 100 seconds. That's a lot of resources and time for a Terran to be investing just into medivacs.
  
• So sure, P's need to cut Colossi or Immortal production to make their Warp Prisms, but so does every other race.
  

• The most effective drops for T or Z usually use 2 supply units anyways. The best drops are either Hellion Drops for T (4 hellions max) or Baneling Drops for Z (4 Banes max). Each of those can deal massive damage in a matter of seconds to an unsuspecting opponent by killing entire lines of drones/scvs/probes. Of course, P has a unit that is also ridiculously good for these sorts of mineral line harass that kills off many workers very quickly.
  
• Once again, taking time out of Colossi production is just like how a Terran takes time out of Medivac production to create Vikings. I do not believe that that is really a valid point whatsoever.
  
• Why does your drop need to consist of Gateway units? Why not be more interesting and drop a few DTs. That could take a T or a Z forever to finally clear them out of their base. Or how about dropping two Immortals and trying to snipe Supply Depots or Add-ons?
  
• As I was saying earlier, P can load a Templar or two into a Warp Prism and go around storming mineral lines. Sure your Templar cannot be used in a rush manner like blue hellions, but later on they could be very useful. Maybe get speed on your Prism and quickly fly in a Templar, storm, and fly away before your opponent even has time to pull their workers.
  
• Sure those suggestions above (DTs, Immortals, Templar, maybe even Colossi) are all high tech units. But who's to say that a couple of Zealots dropped in a Terran's base right as their army moves out couldn't force them to completely come back, possibly kill some SCVs, and definitely delay some mining time?
  

One final point I would like to bring up as to why I think Protoss drops could be very effective were there any reason for a Protoss to harass (let's face it sitting back and macroing up that A-move death ball is so strong right now there's no reason not to just focus on that) is that Warp Prisms are the fastest of all dropping units. While I do not believe they are as good for mass drops like Overlords or Medivacs (because they do cost a lot of resources and do not have much of a secondary use), but hey having one Warp Prism could allow you to quickly transport your High Templars, keep them safe from any sort of EMP, and also allow you to quickly move in and completely destroy a mineral line. I don't know if any of you have seen a speed upgraded Warp Prism (I had played quite a while before I ever saw how fast it went) and I can say that it is ridiculous and quite surprising. For instance, when you do Baneling/Zergling in ZvP, the P has a very small window to react to your baneling drops on their mineral line or else they will possibly lose the entire game and certainly lose their probes. Now imagine that time is even less (and storms can be equally as effective and more cost efficient then baneling drops as you don't lose any units, just energy).

Like I mentioned in the above paragraph, I think it would be really interesting as a T player to see a P try to do some drop ship micro and just keep their Templar in their Warp Prisms to make EMPs almost impossible to land. Sure it would require exceedingly good micro, but when you want to storm you drop a Templar, storm, and pick the Prism back up. Until the fight, of course, you'd keep your prism well behind the Stalkers. Perhaps this would require some crazy good micro, but I think that if it were done effectively it could prove to create the Templar as being near impossible to beat with a Terran bio army as they could not be EMPed.

Protoss players just need to be more inventive with their builds (I mean let's face it even at the highest level you still have players doing 4 gates in all match-ups and they hardly ever deviate from those early game, warp gate all-ins). Granted there are some great top tier P's (White-Ra <3) who are exceedingly creative. Then you have players like Choya or CrunCher with very repetitive play and no idea what harassment is.

On May 03 2011 13:06 Datum wrote:
One problem I've had is simply that the cheap units (the ones I feel the most comfortable loading up into the fragile Warp Prism to fly away) aren't very good for drops. Terrans can drop Marines and Marauders, which are both ranged units. Zergs can drop highly mobile zerglings, or hydras and roaches, which are ranged units. Protoss can drop mostly stalkers and zealots, however. I find that 4 zealots spend too long trying to squeeze through a mineral line to reach harvesters to do any significant damage. 4 stalkers aren't really effective without a zealot to tank damage, and 1 zealot and 3 stalkers won't really be able to do too much damage to a mineral line. That being said, there are other uses for drops, but I feel that overall, low-tier protoss units are not condusive to drops.

TLDR: Low-tier protoss units suck for drops (?)

On May 03 2011 13:47 oZii wrote:
Im gonna with the fact that Protoss Tier 1 units are just bad for the kind of harassment you want to do that the pay-off is minimal. You have to catch them completely off guard. You can say the same about the other units harass also. When that warning sounds saying we are under attack zerglings, and stimmed marines are way more effective on the mineral line. Also you can scoop up speedlings and marines quick to retreat dropping zealots is more is just a suicide mission for those zealots.

The warp prism its self is fine and a pretty good unit.

TL&DR:

Its the units your dropping thats the problem unless your looking at mid to late game then yea you have really good ones.

On May 04 2011 10:53 ZasZ. wrote:
Good analysis and good discussion.

I think you hit all the main points in the OP, except for this one:

The great thing about well-executed drops is that they can do even a moderate amount of damage to your opponent's economy/infrastructure, and then retreat with minimal losses. You see this most often with Terran, but good Zergs will do it too with their Roach/Hydra drops.

The problem then is that if a Protoss version of a drop means dropping 4 Zealots/Stalkers and then warping in units to the power field, that Warp Prism can only retreat with 4 Zealots/Stalkers, effectively stranding all of the units you warped in. This makes Protoss drops a lot riskier than their Terran/Zerg alternatives and you almost have to guarantee damage for it to be worth it, which is never solid play.

In the future I think we might see Protoss players cruising around with 2-3 empty warp prisms, finding a place to hit, warping in, and then using those warp prisms to get the units out as their opponent responds accordingly. Takes a bit more micro than a regular drop, but with the benefit that the units do not need to be produced before the Warp Prisms set out from your base, your WG's just have to be off cooldown.

Why do a round of warp-ins at your natural when you can do it behind your opponent's third? Especially when you can escape with most of said units while dealing economic/structural damage.

On May 10 2011 05:30 bardolph wrote:
I think there are a number of contributing factors that make Warp Prism use rare:

1) Warp Prisms do not have a secondary function which is unrelated to dropping. Overlords provide supply and Medivacs provide healing, so players are going to be building these units even if they aren't planning to drop. A Protoss player who builds Warp Prisms is basically committing to the drop ahead of time.

2) The secondary function of the Warp Prism makes it ideal for launching a strong push, by dropping then warping in reinforcements. However, the Protoss player's ability to retreat after a drop is much lower. The Protoss player is essentially sacrificing those units in the hope that they cause enough damage to justify their cost. Terran and Zerg players can much more easily abort and retreat if a drop goes badly.

3) Protoss are generally much stronger when their units are in a big ball, rather than dispersed into small squads across the map. Harassment is a much bigger key to Terran victory than it is for Protoss. Less so for Zerg, which is why Overlord drops are much less frequent than Medivac drops. However, Zerg can benefit greatly from unit trading, so sacrificing units to a drop with the intention of macroing up a new army is a viable strategy for Zerg.

Protoss just doesn't have much to gain from performing drops.