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On May 02 2012 01:33 Acritter wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2012 01:15 Heh_ wrote:On May 01 2012 22:09 Acritter wrote:
I've got an idea that I'd like feedback on. Namely, the problem with TvP isn't the lategame, it's the early game. Protoss players have recently discovered a series of VERY fast Nexus build orders that allow them to take an economic lead with very little risk: Nexus Gate and Nexus Forge, to be precise. Terran is still using the old, perhaps outdated Gasless FE build order. These Nexus first build orders give Gasless FE a ton of trouble, because they beat it economically and have no risk of repercussions. This economic lead quickly makes itself known in the midgame and eventually the lategame, where it is interpreted as "PvT lategame imba", when in fact it's the early economic lead which makes all this happen. Perhaps if we see Terran players start to diversify their build order openings, we could see these fast Nexus builds either fall out of favor or stop being quite so dominating. Not really, terran has a ridiculously economic opening too, it's the 3 OC build. 3 OCs worth of mules is somewhat like having 12 extra scvs, and you can keep up with probe production (3 OCs build workers at the same speed as 2 chronoboosted nexuses). I feel that the lategame problem is partially caused by the refusal of terran players to build a ton of raxes, like how protoss players build upwards of 20 warp gates. If you're floating a ton of extra minerals, why not put down 5-10 extra raxes? I've tried building 16 raxes before.. holy shit your production is insane. You can keep trading armies like how protoss players throw away their zealots. The issue is the way the investments end up panning out. The second Nexus from Protoss gets the economy underway MUCH faster, and even leaves enough time for some brutal 2base 3-4 Gateway timings. And if, on the other hand, neither player interferes with one another, the Protoss is left free to tech up. With Chrono, this ends up happening much faster than Terran can compete with. I'm imagining some kind of 1base pressure resurging, maybe a modified Select 2rax or some kind of tech not-all-in. Have to wait and see, I guess. @above: I'd really, REALLY like the answer to not be cheese. It's depressing when the answer is cheese.
Did you realize that an OC more than recovers its cost by mining with 2 mules? 2 mules = 480 minerals plus 125 from the 10 supply gained = 55 minerals gained from the cost of the OC. Granted, the investment takes a few minutes for it to pay off, but before it does, you can just turtle like a... turtle. Take the xelnaga towers and if he's coming with some kind of pressure, overkill on the bunkers plus prepare repairing scvs. A cool trick that I saw MMA doing is to put his scvs IN FRONT of the bunkers, to reduce effectiveness of forcefields plus block zealots (a bit). 9 times out of 10, scouting is the key to whatever problem you're encountering.
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On May 02 2012 08:00 Heh_ wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2012 01:33 Acritter wrote:On May 02 2012 01:15 Heh_ wrote:On May 01 2012 22:09 Acritter wrote:
I've got an idea that I'd like feedback on. Namely, the problem with TvP isn't the lategame, it's the early game. Protoss players have recently discovered a series of VERY fast Nexus build orders that allow them to take an economic lead with very little risk: Nexus Gate and Nexus Forge, to be precise. Terran is still using the old, perhaps outdated Gasless FE build order. These Nexus first build orders give Gasless FE a ton of trouble, because they beat it economically and have no risk of repercussions. This economic lead quickly makes itself known in the midgame and eventually the lategame, where it is interpreted as "PvT lategame imba", when in fact it's the early economic lead which makes all this happen. Perhaps if we see Terran players start to diversify their build order openings, we could see these fast Nexus builds either fall out of favor or stop being quite so dominating. Not really, terran has a ridiculously economic opening too, it's the 3 OC build. 3 OCs worth of mules is somewhat like having 12 extra scvs, and you can keep up with probe production (3 OCs build workers at the same speed as 2 chronoboosted nexuses). I feel that the lategame problem is partially caused by the refusal of terran players to build a ton of raxes, like how protoss players build upwards of 20 warp gates. If you're floating a ton of extra minerals, why not put down 5-10 extra raxes? I've tried building 16 raxes before.. holy shit your production is insane. You can keep trading armies like how protoss players throw away their zealots. The issue is the way the investments end up panning out. The second Nexus from Protoss gets the economy underway MUCH faster, and even leaves enough time for some brutal 2base 3-4 Gateway timings. And if, on the other hand, neither player interferes with one another, the Protoss is left free to tech up. With Chrono, this ends up happening much faster than Terran can compete with. I'm imagining some kind of 1base pressure resurging, maybe a modified Select 2rax or some kind of tech not-all-in. Have to wait and see, I guess. @above: I'd really, REALLY like the answer to not be cheese. It's depressing when the answer is cheese. Did you realize that an OC more than recovers its cost by mining with 2 mules? 2 mules = 480 minerals plus 125 from the 10 supply gained = 55 minerals gained from the cost of the OC. Granted, the investment takes a few minutes for it to pay off, but before it does, you can just turtle like a... turtle. Take the xelnaga towers and if he's coming with some kind of pressure, overkill on the bunkers plus prepare repairing scvs. A cool trick that I saw MMA doing is to put his scvs IN FRONT of the bunkers, to reduce effectiveness of forcefields plus block zealots (a bit). 9 times out of 10, scouting is the key to whatever problem you're encountering.
First off, you're forgetting that even when those two MULEs finish mining (which is a LONG time from when the CC started construction), the three (almost four) Barracks that could have been built in its stead have not finished construction. There's also the issue with the incredibly delayed gas. Even with all that aside, there's still the issue that Protoss will hit a VERY strong timing regardless of what the Terran's economy is at that point, because the Protoss army's strength will have hit a level that, factoring in Forcefields, is nigh-impossible for the Terran to trade with cost-efficiently. Then, after that, the Protoss will also get some very fast splash damage up, and things start looking very ugly for the Terran. I think the solution lies in getting a solid 2base economy up early, or else putting pressure on the Protoss to prevent them from hitting a 2base economy as early.
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Australia920 Posts
On May 02 2012 08:50 Acritter wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2012 08:00 Heh_ wrote:On May 02 2012 01:33 Acritter wrote:On May 02 2012 01:15 Heh_ wrote:On May 01 2012 22:09 Acritter wrote:
I've got an idea that I'd like feedback on. Namely, the problem with TvP isn't the lategame, it's the early game. Protoss players have recently discovered a series of VERY fast Nexus build orders that allow them to take an economic lead with very little risk: Nexus Gate and Nexus Forge, to be precise. Terran is still using the old, perhaps outdated Gasless FE build order. These Nexus first build orders give Gasless FE a ton of trouble, because they beat it economically and have no risk of repercussions. This economic lead quickly makes itself known in the midgame and eventually the lategame, where it is interpreted as "PvT lategame imba", when in fact it's the early economic lead which makes all this happen. Perhaps if we see Terran players start to diversify their build order openings, we could see these fast Nexus builds either fall out of favor or stop being quite so dominating. Not really, terran has a ridiculously economic opening too, it's the 3 OC build. 3 OCs worth of mules is somewhat like having 12 extra scvs, and you can keep up with probe production (3 OCs build workers at the same speed as 2 chronoboosted nexuses). I feel that the lategame problem is partially caused by the refusal of terran players to build a ton of raxes, like how protoss players build upwards of 20 warp gates. If you're floating a ton of extra minerals, why not put down 5-10 extra raxes? I've tried building 16 raxes before.. holy shit your production is insane. You can keep trading armies like how protoss players throw away their zealots. The issue is the way the investments end up panning out. The second Nexus from Protoss gets the economy underway MUCH faster, and even leaves enough time for some brutal 2base 3-4 Gateway timings. And if, on the other hand, neither player interferes with one another, the Protoss is left free to tech up. With Chrono, this ends up happening much faster than Terran can compete with. I'm imagining some kind of 1base pressure resurging, maybe a modified Select 2rax or some kind of tech not-all-in. Have to wait and see, I guess. @above: I'd really, REALLY like the answer to not be cheese. It's depressing when the answer is cheese. Did you realize that an OC more than recovers its cost by mining with 2 mules? 2 mules = 480 minerals plus 125 from the 10 supply gained = 55 minerals gained from the cost of the OC. Granted, the investment takes a few minutes for it to pay off, but before it does, you can just turtle like a... turtle. Take the xelnaga towers and if he's coming with some kind of pressure, overkill on the bunkers plus prepare repairing scvs. A cool trick that I saw MMA doing is to put his scvs IN FRONT of the bunkers, to reduce effectiveness of forcefields plus block zealots (a bit). 9 times out of 10, scouting is the key to whatever problem you're encountering. First off, you're forgetting that even when those two MULEs finish mining (which is a LONG time from when the CC started construction), the three (almost four) Barracks that could have been built in its stead have not finished construction. There's also the issue with the incredibly delayed gas. Even with all that aside, there's still the issue that Protoss will hit a VERY strong timing regardless of what the Terran's economy is at that point, because the Protoss army's strength will have hit a level that, factoring in Forcefields, is nigh-impossible for the Terran to trade with cost-efficiently. Then, after that, the Protoss will also get some very fast splash damage up, and things start looking very ugly for the Terran. I think the solution lies in getting a solid 2base economy up early, or else putting pressure on the Protoss to prevent them from hitting a 2base economy as early.
You're absoloutly right in that either you should get a strong 2 base economy up as early as possible or do an aggressive opening into 2 base (assuming they have gone 1 gate expand). The same is true regardless of what MU you're talking about. In TvT if 1 player opens 1 rax expand doing a 3 rax expand just puts you behind.
As for the protoss timings, Protoss can't do fast heavy gateway pressure with sentries AND get fast AOE up. It can't be done.
If you want to do a fast expand and you're expecting / scouted a parting style heavy gateway push with sentries, Get siege tanks. I know, you don't like them, no long term future in them etc etc but no gateway push without blink is ever going to break a position with siege tanks on the high ground. Ever. It just can't be done.
From there you can either go into a 111 variant off 2 bases or play a standard MMMGV where protoss have warped in a huge amount of army that did almost nothing.
Siege tanks do ok vs all aggressive protoss openings. Personally I would be inclinded to play super greedy and power off the back of a fast expand covered by siege tanks. Just don't make so many that when they lose their utility you have lost too many resources...
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On May 02 2012 09:19 Kharnage wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2012 08:50 Acritter wrote:On May 02 2012 08:00 Heh_ wrote:On May 02 2012 01:33 Acritter wrote:On May 02 2012 01:15 Heh_ wrote:On May 01 2012 22:09 Acritter wrote:
I've got an idea that I'd like feedback on. Namely, the problem with TvP isn't the lategame, it's the early game. Protoss players have recently discovered a series of VERY fast Nexus build orders that allow them to take an economic lead with very little risk: Nexus Gate and Nexus Forge, to be precise. Terran is still using the old, perhaps outdated Gasless FE build order. These Nexus first build orders give Gasless FE a ton of trouble, because they beat it economically and have no risk of repercussions. This economic lead quickly makes itself known in the midgame and eventually the lategame, where it is interpreted as "PvT lategame imba", when in fact it's the early economic lead which makes all this happen. Perhaps if we see Terran players start to diversify their build order openings, we could see these fast Nexus builds either fall out of favor or stop being quite so dominating. Not really, terran has a ridiculously economic opening too, it's the 3 OC build. 3 OCs worth of mules is somewhat like having 12 extra scvs, and you can keep up with probe production (3 OCs build workers at the same speed as 2 chronoboosted nexuses). I feel that the lategame problem is partially caused by the refusal of terran players to build a ton of raxes, like how protoss players build upwards of 20 warp gates. If you're floating a ton of extra minerals, why not put down 5-10 extra raxes? I've tried building 16 raxes before.. holy shit your production is insane. You can keep trading armies like how protoss players throw away their zealots. The issue is the way the investments end up panning out. The second Nexus from Protoss gets the economy underway MUCH faster, and even leaves enough time for some brutal 2base 3-4 Gateway timings. And if, on the other hand, neither player interferes with one another, the Protoss is left free to tech up. With Chrono, this ends up happening much faster than Terran can compete with. I'm imagining some kind of 1base pressure resurging, maybe a modified Select 2rax or some kind of tech not-all-in. Have to wait and see, I guess. @above: I'd really, REALLY like the answer to not be cheese. It's depressing when the answer is cheese. Did you realize that an OC more than recovers its cost by mining with 2 mules? 2 mules = 480 minerals plus 125 from the 10 supply gained = 55 minerals gained from the cost of the OC. Granted, the investment takes a few minutes for it to pay off, but before it does, you can just turtle like a... turtle. Take the xelnaga towers and if he's coming with some kind of pressure, overkill on the bunkers plus prepare repairing scvs. A cool trick that I saw MMA doing is to put his scvs IN FRONT of the bunkers, to reduce effectiveness of forcefields plus block zealots (a bit). 9 times out of 10, scouting is the key to whatever problem you're encountering. First off, you're forgetting that even when those two MULEs finish mining (which is a LONG time from when the CC started construction), the three (almost four) Barracks that could have been built in its stead have not finished construction. There's also the issue with the incredibly delayed gas. Even with all that aside, there's still the issue that Protoss will hit a VERY strong timing regardless of what the Terran's economy is at that point, because the Protoss army's strength will have hit a level that, factoring in Forcefields, is nigh-impossible for the Terran to trade with cost-efficiently. Then, after that, the Protoss will also get some very fast splash damage up, and things start looking very ugly for the Terran. I think the solution lies in getting a solid 2base economy up early, or else putting pressure on the Protoss to prevent them from hitting a 2base economy as early. You're absoloutly right in that either you should get a strong 2 base economy up as early as possible or do an aggressive opening into 2 base (assuming they have gone 1 gate expand). The same is true regardless of what MU you're talking about. In TvT if 1 player opens 1 rax expand doing a 3 rax expand just puts you behind. As for the protoss timings, Protoss can't do fast heavy gateway pressure with sentries AND get fast AOE up. It can't be done. If you want to do a fast expand and you're expecting / scouted a parting style heavy gateway push with sentries, Get siege tanks. I know, you don't like them, no long term future in them etc etc but no gateway push without blink is ever going to break a position with siege tanks on the high ground. Ever. It just can't be done. From there you can either go into a 111 variant off 2 bases or play a standard MMMGV where protoss have warped in a huge amount of army that did almost nothing. Siege tanks do ok vs all aggressive protoss openings. Personally I would be inclinded to play super greedy and power off the back of a fast expand covered by siege tanks. Just don't make so many that when they lose their utility you have lost too many resources...
If the protoss player went for a nexus first or nexus/forge build, you also need to remember that his tech is delayed. He cannot do a warp gate push until ~8 minutes.Your economy won't have fully kicked in, but you can still hold off the push with mass bunkers + repair. He won't have colossi nor a significant colossus count. By the time higher tech kicks in, your 2 base 3 OC economy wil already have kicked in.
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Just steering away from the current discussion, wanted to add some thoughts into something thats bugging alot of T players.
Problem: Zealot in TvP.
Contrary to popular belief, protoss gateway units aren't that bad. The bad impression of this comes from the lack of the upgrades for these gateway units, where it come later in the game then the other two races (requiring a healthy amount of chrono and twilight council). This results in a period in the game where the units feel so much lacklustre especially against shieled/stimmed MM ball.
However the main crux of the problem that I want to discuss is the Zealot and how the units effectiveness rises at an exponential level as the game goes longer (in TvP). The zealot has 50/100 stat line with 1 armor, it deals alot of damage enough to kill any unit 1v1 in a straight up microless fight, has the ability to charge while hitting the target for free once and cost 100 minerals. Early game where small engagements tend to happen, zealots can be dealt with proper micro and kiting. Zealots tend to act as meat shields in the early game due to their inability to close in with the enemy unit.
Once charge is gained, things get a little different from the roles that the zealot played early game. Now they would not only be the meatshield of the army, but due to the ability to close the gap, they become an effective damage dealing unit.
Now this is where the problem starts. First and foremost, in a typical TvP composition you have MMM to adding VG later. The P starts to become more zealot heavy with colossus/HTs. Zealots become harder and harder to remove fast to get to those expensive damage dealing P units. Yet the zealots themselves if ignored can deal an insane amount of damage to an already fragile army. This normally results in a cat and mouse type of engagement where the it boils down to a forced final engagement or an engagement of the Ts choosing (latter is rare as the game).
Not only that, but zealots are probably the only units in the game where you can warp a few from a proxy pylon as mineral dump and 1A into an enemy expansion late game without having to give 0% attention to it (while doing damage). Compared to the amount of effort required to remove these zealots with a few MM units (unless your entire army is nearby). Because the T is already having to micro harder (because T gains the most from micro-ing their units compared to the other races), more and more pressure is thrown at the T player to micro/multi-task to the very limits.
So summing it all up, zealots are just way too good for what they do/cost especially when the T does not have any sort of ideal tool to deal with them and instead rely on even more micro as the game progresses to lategame.
Solution: Discuss. Some initial food for thought were making charge a spell you activate or tweaking their stat numbers e.g 60/80.
Side Effects: Discuss.
Want to know what others think about this, which also leads me to believe that the zealot is one of the main contributors to the late game mess that is TvP.
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All I want from TvP:
I want to be on equal footing with the protoss player after we are both on 3 bases. I don't want to be at a disadvantage from 3 bases on just because I have nothing to transition out of and have a much much harder time microing vs'ing the insane amount of AoE they have.
I don't want to have to chew through a HUGE wall of high dps/high hp units just to get to the units that do way more damage behind them. I don't want to mistakenly make 2-3 extra ghosts and dieing instantly to a collosus switch.
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On May 02 2012 10:19 YyapSsap wrote:
Just steering away from the current discussion, wanted to add some thoughts into something thats bugging alot of T players.
Problem: Zealot in TvP.
Contrary to popular belief, protoss gateway units aren't that bad. The bad impression of this comes from the lack of the upgrades for these gateway units, where it come later in the game then the other two races (requiring a healthy amount of chrono and twilight council). This results in a period in the game where the units feel so much lacklustre especially against shieled/stimmed MM ball.
However the main crux of the problem that I want to discuss is the Zealot and how the units effectiveness rises at an exponential level as the game goes longer (in TvP). The zealot has 50/100 stat line with 1 armor, it deals alot of damage enough to kill any unit 1v1 in a straight up microless fight, has the ability to charge while hitting the target for free once and cost 100 minerals. Early game where small engagements tend to happen, zealots can be dealt with proper micro and kiting. Zealots tend to act as meat shields in the early game due to their inability to close in with the enemy unit.
Once charge is gained, things get a little different from the roles that the zealot played early game. Now they would not only be the meatshield of the army, but due to the ability to close the gap, they become an effective damage dealing unit.
Now this is where the problem starts. First and foremost, in a typical TvP composition you have MMM to adding VG later. The P starts to become more zealot heavy with colossus/HTs. Zealots become harder and harder to remove fast to get to those expensive damage dealing P units. Yet the zealots themselves if ignored can deal an insane amount of damage to an already fragile army. This normally results in a cat and mouse type of engagement where the it boils down to a forced final engagement or an engagement of the Ts choosing (latter is rare as the game).
Not only that, but zealots are probably the only units in the game where you can warp a few from a proxy pylon as mineral dump and 1A into an enemy expansion late game without having to give 0% attention to it (while doing damage). Compared to the amount of effort required to remove these zealots with a few MM units (unless your entire army is nearby). Because the T is already having to micro harder (because T gains the most from micro-ing their units compared to the other races), more and more pressure is thrown at the T player to micro/multi-task to the very limits.
So summing it all up, zealots are just way too good for what they do/cost especially when the T does not have any sort of ideal tool to deal with them and instead rely on even more micro as the game progresses to lategame.
Solution: Discuss. Some initial food for thought were making charge a spell you activate or tweaking their stat numbers e.g 60/80.
Side Effects: Discuss.
Want to know what others think about this, which also leads me to believe that the zealot is one of the main contributors to the late game mess that is TvP.
Zealots are a confusing unit. They're a melee unit so they need more dps/health for a ranged unit of equivalent cost. Without charge, they're virtually useless. They're only effective when charge is added. Then, the problem arises because these cost-effective units are now right next to you. They've a higher dps density than zerglings and are tankier, making them really deadly.
Now if charge was an activated ability, it will actually make zealots better. They don't go full retard when a lone marine comes to greet the protoss deathball. It will allow better flanks because due to better unit control (flanking, then charging all simultaneously). If charge had an unlimited cast range, it will also lead to hilarious scenarios of zealots charging across the whole map.
Tweaking their stat numbers sound like a good idea. 60/90 or 65/85 might be good. Reducing their total health pool is a serious nerf that has a ton of other side effects. Zealots die faster to everything, resulting in a huge reduction in effectiveness pre-charge. One side-effect of increasing shields is that zealots are more susceptible to EMPs, with all the complaints about the snipe nerf. Granted, almost nobody actually sniped zealots but oh well...
Zealots should be dealt with like zerglings. Hug walls instead of engaging in open ground, reducing the surface area that zealots are able to engage. Some zealots will just dance around the back, unable to actually hit the target. It goes without saying that special attention has to be paid to the AOE units: HTs and colossi. Kill or kite these, and clumping your units isn't that bad of an idea.
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Australia920 Posts
On May 02 2012 10:19 YyapSsap wrote:
Just steering away from the current discussion, wanted to add some thoughts into something thats bugging alot of T players.
Problem: Zealot in TvP.
Contrary to popular belief, protoss gateway units aren't that bad. The bad impression of this comes from the lack of the upgrades for these gateway units, where it come later in the game then the other two races (requiring a healthy amount of chrono and twilight council). This results in a period in the game where the units feel so much lacklustre especially against shieled/stimmed MM ball.
However the main crux of the problem that I want to discuss is the Zealot and how the units effectiveness rises at an exponential level as the game goes longer (in TvP). The zealot has 50/100 stat line with 1 armor, it deals alot of damage enough to kill any unit 1v1 in a straight up microless fight, has the ability to charge while hitting the target for free once and cost 100 minerals. Early game where small engagements tend to happen, zealots can be dealt with proper micro and kiting. Zealots tend to act as meat shields in the early game due to their inability to close in with the enemy unit.
Once charge is gained, things get a little different from the roles that the zealot played early game. Now they would not only be the meatshield of the army, but due to the ability to close the gap, they become an effective damage dealing unit.
Now this is where the problem starts. First and foremost, in a typical TvP composition you have MMM to adding VG later. The P starts to become more zealot heavy with colossus/HTs. Zealots become harder and harder to remove fast to get to those expensive damage dealing P units. Yet the zealots themselves if ignored can deal an insane amount of damage to an already fragile army. This normally results in a cat and mouse type of engagement where the it boils down to a forced final engagement or an engagement of the Ts choosing (latter is rare as the game).
Not only that, but zealots are probably the only units in the game where you can warp a few from a proxy pylon as mineral dump and 1A into an enemy expansion late game without having to give 0% attention to it (while doing damage). Compared to the amount of effort required to remove these zealots with a few MM units (unless your entire army is nearby). Because the T is already having to micro harder (because T gains the most from micro-ing their units compared to the other races), more and more pressure is thrown at the T player to micro/multi-task to the very limits.
So summing it all up, zealots are just way too good for what they do/cost especially when the T does not have any sort of ideal tool to deal with them and instead rely on even more micro as the game progresses to lategame.
Solution: Discuss. Some initial food for thought were making charge a spell you activate or tweaking their stat numbers e.g 60/80.
Side Effects: Discuss.
Want to know what others think about this, which also leads me to believe that the zealot is one of the main contributors to the late game mess that is TvP.
Zealots are the meat shield of the gateway army. If you nerf their HP you MUST also reduce their cost. Probably their supply as well, making them more like a melee marine. Note that they still need to be stronger than a marine to balance out he fact that they have no range and are incredibly slow (for a melee unit).
I like the way terran have been dealing with charge by landing factories lately. That seems to be very effective. Arguably the same could be done with auto turrets. Charge is a 'dumb' ability. And by dumb i don't mean bad, but in that zealots are stupid. Drop an auto turret and half the zealots will rush to attack it giving your mmm a good window to do damage.
As for fire and forget harass in the lategame, this only works if terran expand with orbitals. It takes a LOT of zealots to take down a planetary. PF are no good vs stalker or HT harass, but they shut down zealot harass pretty damn well. Considering the metagame of sending 8 to 12 zealots off to kill the terrans 3rd or 4th I feel that Terrans should be seriously considering making them PF instead of orbitals, even relocating their orbitals and replacing them with PF as the protoss ramps up their aggression. + Show Spoiler +Side note on the topic of relocation, why don't terran relocate their production to their mining bases so they have less area to worry about and faster reinforcements?
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You nerf zealots with the intention of making them less strong...
You don't nerf something and compensate the same unit by making it cheaper or do more damage or anything. Your intention is to make that unit weaker. Zealots need to be made weaker or terran needs to be given a meat shield before HOTS.
Hell it's like "I wanna play some sc2 today! nm...too many protoss online"
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Australia920 Posts
On May 02 2012 11:34 Talack wrote:
You nerf zealots with the intention of making them less strong...
You don't nerf something and compensate the same unit by making it cheaper or do more damage or anything. Your intention is to make that unit weaker. Zealots need to be made weaker or terran needs to be given a meat shield before HOTS.
Hell it's like "I wanna play some sc2 today! nm...too many protoss online"
What are you talking about? Zealots are as expensive as they are because they are so strong. Think about the extra nerfs that are built in here. If zealots cost 50m, 1 supply and are exactly half of what they are now, you need twice as many warp gates to get an equivilent strength warp in. Chokes are even more powerful due to more zealots not being able to get into the fight, splash damage, and 'critical mass' is much more effective, in the same way that they are vs lings. The mass zealot end game simply won't work. the zealots will die too fast to be of any use at all. Hellions with blue flame would wreck them.
The flip side of that coin is you get more zealots, so surrounds on wide open maps will be more powerful. It'll be even easier to spend groups of zealots around the map. You could put 8 zealots in a warp prism, which would be much stronger at wiping min lines. Or 4 zealots and 2 stalkers.
4 lings cost exactly the same as a zealot, and 4 lings will kill a zealot with a ling left over, but no one says mass lings are better than mass zealot. Without the full surround lings are significantly worse. This is the same with zealots, except they have enough hp as long as they have an armour upgrade advantage that they don't need a full surround.
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On May 02 2012 09:19 Kharnage wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2012 08:50 Acritter wrote:On May 02 2012 08:00 Heh_ wrote:On May 02 2012 01:33 Acritter wrote:On May 02 2012 01:15 Heh_ wrote:On May 01 2012 22:09 Acritter wrote:
I've got an idea that I'd like feedback on. Namely, the problem with TvP isn't the lategame, it's the early game. Protoss players have recently discovered a series of VERY fast Nexus build orders that allow them to take an economic lead with very little risk: Nexus Gate and Nexus Forge, to be precise. Terran is still using the old, perhaps outdated Gasless FE build order. These Nexus first build orders give Gasless FE a ton of trouble, because they beat it economically and have no risk of repercussions. This economic lead quickly makes itself known in the midgame and eventually the lategame, where it is interpreted as "PvT lategame imba", when in fact it's the early economic lead which makes all this happen. Perhaps if we see Terran players start to diversify their build order openings, we could see these fast Nexus builds either fall out of favor or stop being quite so dominating. Not really, terran has a ridiculously economic opening too, it's the 3 OC build. 3 OCs worth of mules is somewhat like having 12 extra scvs, and you can keep up with probe production (3 OCs build workers at the same speed as 2 chronoboosted nexuses). I feel that the lategame problem is partially caused by the refusal of terran players to build a ton of raxes, like how protoss players build upwards of 20 warp gates. If you're floating a ton of extra minerals, why not put down 5-10 extra raxes? I've tried building 16 raxes before.. holy shit your production is insane. You can keep trading armies like how protoss players throw away their zealots. The issue is the way the investments end up panning out. The second Nexus from Protoss gets the economy underway MUCH faster, and even leaves enough time for some brutal 2base 3-4 Gateway timings. And if, on the other hand, neither player interferes with one another, the Protoss is left free to tech up. With Chrono, this ends up happening much faster than Terran can compete with. I'm imagining some kind of 1base pressure resurging, maybe a modified Select 2rax or some kind of tech not-all-in. Have to wait and see, I guess. @above: I'd really, REALLY like the answer to not be cheese. It's depressing when the answer is cheese. Did you realize that an OC more than recovers its cost by mining with 2 mules? 2 mules = 480 minerals plus 125 from the 10 supply gained = 55 minerals gained from the cost of the OC. Granted, the investment takes a few minutes for it to pay off, but before it does, you can just turtle like a... turtle. Take the xelnaga towers and if he's coming with some kind of pressure, overkill on the bunkers plus prepare repairing scvs. A cool trick that I saw MMA doing is to put his scvs IN FRONT of the bunkers, to reduce effectiveness of forcefields plus block zealots (a bit). 9 times out of 10, scouting is the key to whatever problem you're encountering. First off, you're forgetting that even when those two MULEs finish mining (which is a LONG time from when the CC started construction), the three (almost four) Barracks that could have been built in its stead have not finished construction. There's also the issue with the incredibly delayed gas. Even with all that aside, there's still the issue that Protoss will hit a VERY strong timing regardless of what the Terran's economy is at that point, because the Protoss army's strength will have hit a level that, factoring in Forcefields, is nigh-impossible for the Terran to trade with cost-efficiently. Then, after that, the Protoss will also get some very fast splash damage up, and things start looking very ugly for the Terran. I think the solution lies in getting a solid 2base economy up early, or else putting pressure on the Protoss to prevent them from hitting a 2base economy as early. You're absoloutly right in that either you should get a strong 2 base economy up as early as possible or do an aggressive opening into 2 base (assuming they have gone 1 gate expand). The same is true regardless of what MU you're talking about. In TvT if 1 player opens 1 rax expand doing a 3 rax expand just puts you behind. As for the protoss timings, Protoss can't do fast heavy gateway pressure with sentries AND get fast AOE up. It can't be done. If you want to do a fast expand and you're expecting / scouted a parting style heavy gateway push with sentries, Get siege tanks. I know, you don't like them, no long term future in them etc etc but no gateway push without blink is ever going to break a position with siege tanks on the high ground. Ever. It just can't be done. From there you can either go into a 111 variant off 2 bases or play a standard MMMGV where protoss have warped in a huge amount of army that did almost nothing. Siege tanks do ok vs all aggressive protoss openings. Personally I would be inclinded to play super greedy and power off the back of a fast expand covered by siege tanks. Just don't make so many that when they lose their utility you have lost too many resources...
I should be more clear. It's that Protoss has the threat of both. Right now, the way Terran builds work out, it's tough for them to prepare for both. Protoss has developed builds that handle pretty much everything T can do fairly well. T hasn't done the same in reverse (although it's worth noting that gasless FE filled that role pretty well for a while). Once we get the next phase of Terran build orders, things ought to even out somewhat.
That's my prediction. We'll have to wait and see.
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I would like to have medivacs with only 6 "food" slots. 8 Marines or 1 Marauder 6 Marines are soo much scarier than 4 Zelots/8 Zerglings and terrans have lots auf Medivacs anyway, just interessed what you think 
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On May 02 2012 11:34 Talack wrote:
You nerf zealots with the intention of making them less strong...
You don't nerf something and compensate the same unit by making it cheaper or do more damage or anything. Your intention is to make that unit weaker. Zealots need to be made weaker or terran needs to be given a meat shield before HOTS.
Hell it's like "I wanna play some sc2 today! nm...too many protoss online"
Pretty much.
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On May 02 2012 10:19 YyapSsap wrote:
Just steering away from the current discussion, wanted to add some thoughts into something thats bugging alot of T players.
Problem: Zealot in TvP.
Contrary to popular belief, protoss gateway units aren't that bad. The bad impression of this comes from the lack of the upgrades for these gateway units, where it come later in the game then the other two races (requiring a healthy amount of chrono and twilight council). This results in a period in the game where the units feel so much lacklustre especially against shieled/stimmed MM ball.
However the main crux of the problem that I want to discuss is the Zealot and how the units effectiveness rises at an exponential level as the game goes longer (in TvP). The zealot has 50/100 stat line with 1 armor, it deals alot of damage enough to kill any unit 1v1 in a straight up microless fight, has the ability to charge while hitting the target for free once and cost 100 minerals. Early game where small engagements tend to happen, zealots can be dealt with proper micro and kiting. Zealots tend to act as meat shields in the early game due to their inability to close in with the enemy unit.
Once charge is gained, things get a little different from the roles that the zealot played early game. Now they would not only be the meatshield of the army, but due to the ability to close the gap, they become an effective damage dealing unit.
Now this is where the problem starts. First and foremost, in a typical TvP composition you have MMM to adding VG later. The P starts to become more zealot heavy with colossus/HTs. Zealots become harder and harder to remove fast to get to those expensive damage dealing P units. Yet the zealots themselves if ignored can deal an insane amount of damage to an already fragile army. This normally results in a cat and mouse type of engagement where the it boils down to a forced final engagement or an engagement of the Ts choosing (latter is rare as the game).
Not only that, but zealots are probably the only units in the game where you can warp a few from a proxy pylon as mineral dump and 1A into an enemy expansion late game without having to give 0% attention to it (while doing damage). Compared to the amount of effort required to remove these zealots with a few MM units (unless your entire army is nearby). Because the T is already having to micro harder (because T gains the most from micro-ing their units compared to the other races), more and more pressure is thrown at the T player to micro/multi-task to the very limits.
So summing it all up, zealots are just way too good for what they do/cost especially when the T does not have any sort of ideal tool to deal with them and instead rely on even more micro as the game progresses to lategame.
Solution: Discuss. Some initial food for thought were making charge a spell you activate or tweaking their stat numbers e.g 60/80.
Side Effects: Discuss.
Want to know what others think about this, which also leads me to believe that the zealot is one of the main contributors to the late game mess that is TvP.
It's a lot simpler than this
Charge makes the Zealot behave like a ranged unit with super buff stats therefore it is overpowered. No need to write essays and treaties destined for peer reviewed journals.
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On May 02 2012 10:19 YyapSsap wrote:
Just steering away from the current discussion, wanted to add some thoughts into something thats bugging alot of T players.
Problem: Zealot in TvP.
Contrary to popular belief, protoss gateway units aren't that bad. The bad impression of this comes from the lack of the upgrades for these gateway units, where it come later in the game then the other two races (requiring a healthy amount of chrono and twilight council). This results in a period in the game where the units feel so much lacklustre especially against shieled/stimmed MM ball.
However the main crux of the problem that I want to discuss is the Zealot and how the units effectiveness rises at an exponential level as the game goes longer (in TvP). The zealot has 50/100 stat line with 1 armor, it deals alot of damage enough to kill any unit 1v1 in a straight up microless fight, has the ability to charge while hitting the target for free once and cost 100 minerals. Early game where small engagements tend to happen, zealots can be dealt with proper micro and kiting. Zealots tend to act as meat shields in the early game due to their inability to close in with the enemy unit.
Once charge is gained, things get a little different from the roles that the zealot played early game. Now they would not only be the meatshield of the army, but due to the ability to close the gap, they become an effective damage dealing unit.
Now this is where the problem starts. First and foremost, in a typical TvP composition you have MMM to adding VG later. The P starts to become more zealot heavy with colossus/HTs. Zealots become harder and harder to remove fast to get to those expensive damage dealing P units. Yet the zealots themselves if ignored can deal an insane amount of damage to an already fragile army. This normally results in a cat and mouse type of engagement where the it boils down to a forced final engagement or an engagement of the Ts choosing (latter is rare as the game).
Not only that, but zealots are probably the only units in the game where you can warp a few from a proxy pylon as mineral dump and 1A into an enemy expansion late game without having to give 0% attention to it (while doing damage). Compared to the amount of effort required to remove these zealots with a few MM units (unless your entire army is nearby). Because the T is already having to micro harder (because T gains the most from micro-ing their units compared to the other races), more and more pressure is thrown at the T player to micro/multi-task to the very limits.
So summing it all up, zealots are just way too good for what they do/cost especially when the T does not have any sort of ideal tool to deal with them and instead rely on even more micro as the game progresses to lategame.
Solution: Discuss. Some initial food for thought were making charge a spell you activate or tweaking their stat numbers e.g 60/80.
Side Effects: Discuss.
Want to know what others think about this, which also leads me to believe that the zealot is one of the main contributors to the late game mess that is TvP.
I'm a Protoss player and I actually had the same thought six months ago when I was just Chargelot/Archoning all the things all the time as far as lategame Zealots go. They're tanky, do a lot of damage and charge is powerful (albeit ridiculously stupid in making all of your Zealots charge off against one marine or zergling).
The problem is that early to mid game Zealots are god-awful. They suck really, really badly. They're slow, melee and expensive which is a terrible combination; to get them to do anything forcefields are basically a necessity and when you lose them they're quite a big loss per unit (double a marine, four times a zergling). Theres a reason why the Protoss scouting poke is traditionally Zealot/Stalker. But when you get Charge and upgrades they become this massive wave of death.
In short, any nerf you do to them will have to be balanced. They're absolutely terrible early on and they get absolutely destroyed. Their payoff is that in lategame they become really strong. If you nerf that then what's the payoff for making Zealots? Not to mention it'd indirectly make Protoss even more gas intensive than it already is (since they'd lose usefulness as a mineral dump). You can't JUST nerf them because they're already balanced by being so terrible early game.
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Chargelots can be dealt with imo. toss in general can be dealt with. BUt it's the max supply, instant warp-ins that cause all the problems.
Solution: Increase the supply cap.
From my observations, toss and terran have similar army counts, and any replay or game that says the terran has the higher supply usually won't take into account that the extra supply is tied up in production or are walking across the map so their standing armies are roughly the same (yeah, terran's units are cheaper so they'll have slightly more, but not by a significant amount). For example, they may both have ~60 army supply, with terran's 15 extra in production or walking across the map. When the reinforcements join, toss gets their warp in cycle, so both are now at ~75 (etc).
But this all changes once the supply cap is reached. Terran will not have their extra supply in production or walking across the map. So once a big battle occurs at max supply, terrans reinforcements are taking 30-60 seconds to finish + walk across the map while protosses are in 5 seconds.
Of course, just making the supply cap to something like 500 isn't going to help, as the toss will be filling his supply with stronger units which will scale better as the armies get larger. But a supply cap of 250 (or 300, which may be stretching it) I think could be tried out.
Side effects: I can't think of anything bad. I even remember reading something awhile back suggesting the same thing, albeit for different reasons. It had to do with the fact that because it takes so many workers to saturate a base, extra bases beyond a certain point don't really help, at least not when it's affecting your army supply. This really hurt zerg a lot as they require the most bases and therefore the most workers, but this cuts into their army supply when the majority of their units are already supply inefficient.
edit: i'd also like feedback on another change I suggested awhile back which only got a few responses
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=255254¤tpage=182#3638
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On May 03 2012 20:32 50bani wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2012 10:19 YyapSsap wrote:
Just steering away from the current discussion, wanted to add some thoughts into something thats bugging alot of T players.
Problem: Zealot in TvP.
Contrary to popular belief, protoss gateway units aren't that bad. The bad impression of this comes from the lack of the upgrades for these gateway units, where it come later in the game then the other two races (requiring a healthy amount of chrono and twilight council). This results in a period in the game where the units feel so much lacklustre especially against shieled/stimmed MM ball.
However the main crux of the problem that I want to discuss is the Zealot and how the units effectiveness rises at an exponential level as the game goes longer (in TvP). The zealot has 50/100 stat line with 1 armor, it deals alot of damage enough to kill any unit 1v1 in a straight up microless fight, has the ability to charge while hitting the target for free once and cost 100 minerals. Early game where small engagements tend to happen, zealots can be dealt with proper micro and kiting. Zealots tend to act as meat shields in the early game due to their inability to close in with the enemy unit.
Once charge is gained, things get a little different from the roles that the zealot played early game. Now they would not only be the meatshield of the army, but due to the ability to close the gap, they become an effective damage dealing unit.
Now this is where the problem starts. First and foremost, in a typical TvP composition you have MMM to adding VG later. The P starts to become more zealot heavy with colossus/HTs. Zealots become harder and harder to remove fast to get to those expensive damage dealing P units. Yet the zealots themselves if ignored can deal an insane amount of damage to an already fragile army. This normally results in a cat and mouse type of engagement where the it boils down to a forced final engagement or an engagement of the Ts choosing (latter is rare as the game).
Not only that, but zealots are probably the only units in the game where you can warp a few from a proxy pylon as mineral dump and 1A into an enemy expansion late game without having to give 0% attention to it (while doing damage). Compared to the amount of effort required to remove these zealots with a few MM units (unless your entire army is nearby). Because the T is already having to micro harder (because T gains the most from micro-ing their units compared to the other races), more and more pressure is thrown at the T player to micro/multi-task to the very limits.
So summing it all up, zealots are just way too good for what they do/cost especially when the T does not have any sort of ideal tool to deal with them and instead rely on even more micro as the game progresses to lategame.
Solution: Discuss. Some initial food for thought were making charge a spell you activate or tweaking their stat numbers e.g 60/80.
Side Effects: Discuss.
Want to know what others think about this, which also leads me to believe that the zealot is one of the main contributors to the late game mess that is TvP.
It's a lot simpler than this Charge makes the Zealot behave like a ranged unit with super buff stats therefore it is overpowered. No need to write essays and treaties destined for peer reviewed journals.
No they don't behave like ranged units.
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Just had a bit of a thought in terms of balancing. Do you guys think it would be a good idea of blizzard made it so that certain changes would be effective say, only against a certain race? For example if talking about the ghost snipe, which was really for the TvZ MU, they could have made it say 25 vs Zerg, but 45 vs everything else. This way you can address a particular aspect of a match up without having to worry about the effects it has in another match up. For example some pros were talking about how people were experimenting with using snipe against zealots and such, and how this is not possible anymore because of the snipe nerf.
This can really apply to anything. For example when the hellion BF nerf came, many terrans were upset because it drastically reduced effectiveness against marines in the TvT MU when the main concern was it's effectiveness against zerglings and workers. So if the nerf only applied to say zerg and workers, this could solve a lot of problems associated with indirect consequences of a nerf or buff.
Though it would really complicate things in the 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 match ups, however 1v1 always takes priority. What do you guys think?
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On May 02 2012 11:06 Kharnage wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2012 10:19 YyapSsap wrote:
Just steering away from the current discussion, wanted to add some thoughts into something thats bugging alot of T players.
Problem: Zealot in TvP.
Contrary to popular belief, protoss gateway units aren't that bad. The bad impression of this comes from the lack of the upgrades for these gateway units, where it come later in the game then the other two races (requiring a healthy amount of chrono and twilight council). This results in a period in the game where the units feel so much lacklustre especially against shieled/stimmed MM ball.
However the main crux of the problem that I want to discuss is the Zealot and how the units effectiveness rises at an exponential level as the game goes longer (in TvP). The zealot has 50/100 stat line with 1 armor, it deals alot of damage enough to kill any unit 1v1 in a straight up microless fight, has the ability to charge while hitting the target for free once and cost 100 minerals. Early game where small engagements tend to happen, zealots can be dealt with proper micro and kiting. Zealots tend to act as meat shields in the early game due to their inability to close in with the enemy unit.
Once charge is gained, things get a little different from the roles that the zealot played early game. Now they would not only be the meatshield of the army, but due to the ability to close the gap, they become an effective damage dealing unit.
Now this is where the problem starts. First and foremost, in a typical TvP composition you have MMM to adding VG later. The P starts to become more zealot heavy with colossus/HTs. Zealots become harder and harder to remove fast to get to those expensive damage dealing P units. Yet the zealots themselves if ignored can deal an insane amount of damage to an already fragile army. This normally results in a cat and mouse type of engagement where the it boils down to a forced final engagement or an engagement of the Ts choosing (latter is rare as the game).
Not only that, but zealots are probably the only units in the game where you can warp a few from a proxy pylon as mineral dump and 1A into an enemy expansion late game without having to give 0% attention to it (while doing damage). Compared to the amount of effort required to remove these zealots with a few MM units (unless your entire army is nearby). Because the T is already having to micro harder (because T gains the most from micro-ing their units compared to the other races), more and more pressure is thrown at the T player to micro/multi-task to the very limits.
So summing it all up, zealots are just way too good for what they do/cost especially when the T does not have any sort of ideal tool to deal with them and instead rely on even more micro as the game progresses to lategame.
Solution: Discuss. Some initial food for thought were making charge a spell you activate or tweaking their stat numbers e.g 60/80.
Side Effects: Discuss.
Want to know what others think about this, which also leads me to believe that the zealot is one of the main contributors to the late game mess that is TvP.
I like the way terran have been dealing with charge by landing factories lately. That seems to be very effective. Arguably the same could be done with auto turrets. Charge is a 'dumb' ability. And by dumb i don't mean bad, but in that zealots are stupid. Drop an auto turret and half the zealots will rush to attack it giving your mmm a good window to do damage.
Disable charge, manually charge on some unit you want to attack and enable charge again (alt + hotkey (in case of grid y)) seems to work to avoid charging stuff like a factory.
I don't play Protoss but I could avoid unintentional charge triggers with the method stated above.
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EPT
