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One balance issue I've always kinda resented about protoss is their shields... and I suppose my real question is: are shields a good thing?
Let's compare.
Zerg - have fast-healing in a couple of units, and all units self-heal after an amount of time. A zerg unit with 1 hp can heal back to full if left alone long enough, which is easy enough when paired with burrow. Roaches with claws are an extreme deviation that capitalizes on this. Two different armor upgrades to cover their whole race: air and ground.
Terran - do not self-heal, and in fact go the other direction when stimming. Have 3 different armor upgrades (air, bio, mech), so are restricted in that sense when compared with zerg. They can be healed easily though. Medivacs can heal and always accompany bioballs, and SCVs can repair any air/mech unit damage very fast (remember thor rushes?). So, terran make up for lack of regeneration with two fairly inexpensive healing units that they'll always have on hand.
Protoss - Have two "layers" of health (shields and normal hitpoints). Only shields regenerate, normal hitpoints cannot be healed by anything. Shields cannot regenerate any faster than they do naturally, and no units regen shields faster than others. Three upgrades for armor: ground armor which only affects ground units who have lost their shields, air armor with the same stipulation, and shield armor which only affects units who still have shields. IMO, this upgrade system is a big disadvantage, as any particular upgrade only affects HALF of the unit's full health (either before or after shield depletion). With the advent of EMP play, and the lack of a "shield battery" type of building/unit for protoss, shields IMO have a disadvantage.
So back to the question: how are shields a good thing exactly?
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On August 30 2011 01:15 Rob28 wrote:
One balance issue I've always kinda resented about protoss is their shields... and I suppose my real question is: are shields a good thing?
Let's compare.
Zerg - have fast-healing in a couple of units, and all units self-heal after an amount of time. A zerg unit with 1 hp can heal back to full if left alone long enough, which is easy enough when paired with burrow. Roaches with claws are an extreme deviation that capitalizes on this. Two different armor upgrades to cover their whole race: air and ground.
Terran - do not self-heal, and in fact go the other direction when stimming. Have 3 different armor upgrades (air, bio, mech), so are restricted in that sense when compared with zerg. They can be healed easily though. Medivacs can heal and always accompany bioballs, and SCVs can repair any air/mech unit damage very fast (remember thor rushes?). So, terran make up for lack of regeneration with two fairly inexpensive healing units that they'll always have on hand.
Protoss - Have two "layers" of health (shields and normal hitpoints). Only shields regenerate, normal hitpoints cannot be healed by anything. Shields cannot regenerate any faster than they do naturally, and no units regen shields faster than others. Three upgrades for armor: ground armor which only affects ground units who have lost their shields, air armor with the same stipulation, and shield armor which only affects units who still have shields. IMO, this upgrade system is a big disadvantage, as any particular upgrade only affects HALF of the unit's full health (either before or after shield depletion). With the advent of EMP play, and the lack of a "shield battery" type of building/unit for protoss, shields IMO have a disadvantage.
So back to the question: how are shields a good thing exactly?
I'm a protoss player, and here is my take on this:
At this moment, shields are not exactly a good thing. However, protoss are "unfinished" as a race. Dont look at EMP, it is an ability, which IMO, is too strong at the moment. There is no doubt in my mind, that Blizz will have to address its (or feedback's) range in the near future, to make the feedback/EMP micro battles equally challenging for both sides.
But, what I mean with unfinished, is that protoss are lacking in many aspects. If you look at the macro mechanics (among other things), Z and T have 3 respectively, while protoss only have one. And since the strength of the protoss army is concentrated in few powerful units (Colossi, Archons, etc) I could imagine something besides chrono, that can be cast on units, to make them harder to kill. This would mitigate some of the volatility we see in P MUs. "Ohh, he just sniped my 2 colossi...guess it's GG."
After HotS or LotV it could very well be "ohhh, he just depleted the shields of my 2 colossi, I guess I'll cast 'void link' from my nexus to restore them right back up..."
This kind of mechanic (doesnt have to be the exact one I described) could also cure the protoss of their deathball syndrome, by making small groups of protoss units capable of harrasing and stoping harassment more effectively.
Of course an ability like that would have to be tested to death, to ensure that it's not imbalanced. Anyway, I would welcome something like this. Would give me the opportunity to use that chrono energy in late game, after all upgrades are done, for something else than warp gate boosting.
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On August 30 2011 01:15 Rob28 wrote:
One balance issue I've always kinda resented about protoss is their shields... and I suppose my real question is: are shields a good thing?
Let's compare.
Zerg - have fast-healing in a couple of units, and all units self-heal after an amount of time. A zerg unit with 1 hp can heal back to full if left alone long enough, which is easy enough when paired with burrow. Roaches with claws are an extreme deviation that capitalizes on this. Two different armor upgrades to cover their whole race: air and ground.
Terran - do not self-heal, and in fact go the other direction when stimming. Have 3 different armor upgrades (air, bio, mech), so are restricted in that sense when compared with zerg. They can be healed easily though. Medivacs can heal and always accompany bioballs, and SCVs can repair any air/mech unit damage very fast (remember thor rushes?). So, terran make up for lack of regeneration with two fairly inexpensive healing units that they'll always have on hand.
Protoss - Have two "layers" of health (shields and normal hitpoints). Only shields regenerate, normal hitpoints cannot be healed by anything. Shields cannot regenerate any faster than they do naturally, and no units regen shields faster than others. Three upgrades for armor: ground armor which only affects ground units who have lost their shields, air armor with the same stipulation, and shield armor which only affects units who still have shields. IMO, this upgrade system is a big disadvantage, as any particular upgrade only affects HALF of the unit's full health (either before or after shield depletion). With the advent of EMP play, and the lack of a "shield battery" type of building/unit for protoss, shields IMO have a disadvantage.
So back to the question: how are shields a good thing exactly?
then you can also say that protoss befits from only 2 attack upgrades (ground + air), while zerg and terran have 3 attack upgrades.
if you look at it this way terran seems to get the worst out of upgrades because the have 3 sets of upgrades for both atk and armor.
i think it's just race diversity, which is a good thing
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On August 30 2011 01:15 Rob28 wrote:
One balance issue I've always kinda resented about protoss is their shields... and I suppose my real question is: are shields a good thing?
Let's compare.
Zerg - have fast-healing in a couple of units, and all units self-heal after an amount of time. A zerg unit with 1 hp can heal back to full if left alone long enough, which is easy enough when paired with burrow. Roaches with claws are an extreme deviation that capitalizes on this. Two different armor upgrades to cover their whole race: air and ground.
Terran - do not self-heal, and in fact go the other direction when stimming. Have 3 different armor upgrades (air, bio, mech), so are restricted in that sense when compared with zerg. They can be healed easily though. Medivacs can heal and always accompany bioballs, and SCVs can repair any air/mech unit damage very fast (remember thor rushes?). So, terran make up for lack of regeneration with two fairly inexpensive healing units that they'll always have on hand.
Protoss - Have two "layers" of health (shields and normal hitpoints). Only shields regenerate, normal hitpoints cannot be healed by anything. Shields cannot regenerate any faster than they do naturally, and no units regen shields faster than others. Three upgrades for armor: ground armor which only affects ground units who have lost their shields, air armor with the same stipulation, and shield armor which only affects units who still have shields. IMO, this upgrade system is a big disadvantage, as any particular upgrade only affects HALF of the unit's full health (either before or after shield depletion). With the advent of EMP play, and the lack of a "shield battery" type of building/unit for protoss, shields IMO have a disadvantage.
So back to the question: how are shields a good thing exactly?
Protoss as a race already has the best unit retention in the game. I dont know what the hell your talking about are shields a good thing? Of course they're fucking good.
edit; spelling
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On August 30 2011 02:10 Soliduok wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2011 01:15 Rob28 wrote:
One balance issue I've always kinda resented about protoss is their shields... and I suppose my real question is: are shields a good thing?
Let's compare.
Zerg - have fast-healing in a couple of units, and all units self-heal after an amount of time. A zerg unit with 1 hp can heal back to full if left alone long enough, which is easy enough when paired with burrow. Roaches with claws are an extreme deviation that capitalizes on this. Two different armor upgrades to cover their whole race: air and ground.
Terran - do not self-heal, and in fact go the other direction when stimming. Have 3 different armor upgrades (air, bio, mech), so are restricted in that sense when compared with zerg. They can be healed easily though. Medivacs can heal and always accompany bioballs, and SCVs can repair any air/mech unit damage very fast (remember thor rushes?). So, terran make up for lack of regeneration with two fairly inexpensive healing units that they'll always have on hand.
Protoss - Have two "layers" of health (shields and normal hitpoints). Only shields regenerate, normal hitpoints cannot be healed by anything. Shields cannot regenerate any faster than they do naturally, and no units regen shields faster than others. Three upgrades for armor: ground armor which only affects ground units who have lost their shields, air armor with the same stipulation, and shield armor which only affects units who still have shields. IMO, this upgrade system is a big disadvantage, as any particular upgrade only affects HALF of the unit's full health (either before or after shield depletion). With the advent of EMP play, and the lack of a "shield battery" type of building/unit for protoss, shields IMO have a disadvantage.
So back to the question: how are shields a good thing exactly? Protoss as a race already has the best unit retention in the game. I dont know what the hell your talking about are shields a good thing? Of course they're fucking good. edit; spelling
I'm not so sure about that, most Protoss units have a pretty high turn-over rate, "my life for Aiur" isn't just a fun thing to say. Zealots are built to die, if Zealots ever survive a big fight it is like a super bonus. Sentries have a good retention rate but more and more Ts and Zs are learning to focus down Sentries early game, which makes it very difficult to ever build up a good number of them. Immortals should theoretically have a good retention rate but they're too slow and always get focused down first, it's rare to see an Immortal survive a battle. High Templars will pretty much never get off more than 1 storm or 2 feedbacks before dying, they have the worst retention rate of all spellcasters. Dark Templar almost always die before they can get out, they are just too fragile once detected to live. Colossus are hit-and-miss, if your opponent has the counters out in time you'll never build up more than 2-3, if he doesn't than they will indeed snowball out of control and accumulate inlarge numbers.
The only Protoss units that I would say are actually likely to survive over long periods of time are blink Stalkers and Archons.
I really wish there was a way to play a "skirmish style" Protoss that relied on the shield mechanic to get an advantage over time, the problem is that between Zerg units all being faster than Protoss and stim + Concussive shells, you can never really retreat without heavy losses.
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That's actually a good point.
Even broodwar had the underused sheild battery that gave shields that little bit of... reason for existing.
I think it would be cool if we had a medic type unit like the one in desert strike?
As it is shields get upgraded rarely but I'm grateful for recharge.
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Personally I think a novel solution to the problem would be to either include a supporting spell on an exisiting unit (ie. give warp prism a "shield transfer" spell or something, thus making it more viable as a transport), or as mentioned before, make it an ability of the nexus (I mean, how many terran abilities does an orbital have, really). That'd be cool. I could jive with that.
I originally thought "why not give toss some shield regenerating unit/building", but I imagine there'd be a whole lot of crying over yet another protoss supporting unit being in play.
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On August 30 2011 00:37 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2011 13:06 Bippzy wrote:On August 29 2011 10:58 aZealot wrote:
Nice post, Anarion 55. I didn't think about that before, but yeah, it does make sense. As Protoss you really have to pick your battles, there can't be any hesitation because retreating effectively, without losing your slow sentries for example, is often out of the question - although it can be done with effective FF and depending on the terrain (as well as the opposing player not realising that he has an advantage and coming after you).
There are a few issues with Protoss, but the main one, really, is the Stalker. It's just a piece of crap that only becomes marginally effective once you have blink, but should not really be part of core Protoss army compositions. Protoss armies, IMO, are way more effective with minimal Stalkers for AA and base defense with the core taken up by Zealots, Immortals, and Sentries. The only issue here, of course, is that Zealots are melee units and ranged support is necessary. Immortals should be able to do it, but being built out of the Robo bay (and being so damn expensive) means that they are rarely out in sufficient numbers to be anything more than a supplement to a Protoss army rather than a core element. It would be nice if the Immortal is reworked in some way in HOTS so that it can return to being a gateway unit, as it is supposed to be. That would also free up the Robo for multiple obs, for map vision, and prisms for harass and multiple attacks (imagine warping in DTs cutting across a Zergs remaxing support lines during a big battle) before going for Colossus Tech. Did you really just critisize the stalker? The stalker, at the beginning of the game, allows for early aggression without any losses in pvt and pvz. As a tier one unit, it provides essential anti air so that collosus can be used viably. These are all great, but honestly the main point is: Stalkers have blink, which, in tandem with protoss having shields, makes them wonderful. Blink makes fast stalkers even more mobile, allowing them to escape battle at ease and blink into bases, do damage, and then leave. They also raise the skill ceiling for playing protoss incredibly high. Consider the following situations: 8 marauders vs 8 stalkers. Stalkers can blink and cause concussive shells to do nothing, allowing stalkers to win this engagement. Stalkers vs tanks on high ground. By seperating stalkers and blinking back damaged stalkers, it is possible to kill tanks with minimal losses. A terran pushing out of his base: with good stalker micro with blink you can get a few kills as they push towards their base. TL;DR stalkers are great units when used to their potential which makes them a great part of the protoss army go into the unit tester and build an equal number of marauders and stalkers. give both of them their corresponding upgrades. i guarantee you the marauders will win by a long shot.
Yeah I've also seen a lot of people say things like "Blink Stalkers beat Roaches @ equal cost" which is impossible no matter how good your blink micro is.
That said I think Blink Stalkers are fine. They are used very heavily at top level play, and you don't really have to mass Immortals to make them effective (nor do I believe they were meant to be massed). Just adding 1 or 2 Immortals into your army for instance has a dramatic effect vs Roaches for example. Mass Immortals run into huge issues due to their slow movement speed and fairly limited uses.
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I think a simple way to fix most of the Protoss issues would be to buff Zealot base speed. This would be like a .05 speed upgrade. Right now zealots marines and roaches have the same base speed so that marines and roaches can kite zealots. This is in smaller numbers ie 10 marines roaches zealots. With that Protoss have to get stalkers as soon as possible or just die to these two units. note charge speed would stay the the same at 2.75
A small buff so that zealots would be able to get a few hits off. Delaying the need to go straight to stalkers opening more of the Protoss tech tree sooner. Since stalkers are slightly gas heavy compared to other units in the same tier.
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Reasons why EMP must get nerfed.
(http://www.playxp.com/sc2/ss/view.php?article_id=3320567&search=1&search_pos=&q=)
Playxp is out for maintenance at the moment. It contains 2 screenshots, one showing EMP out ranges FB by a distance equivalent to 5 HT standing in a line, the other one showing one EMP crippling over 30 HTs.
1. EMP has range of 12(extra AOE range of 2 is utilized by most decent T players). FB has range of 9.
2. One EMP can disable over 30 HTs if they are clustered. It wouldn't happen practically, but that's still scary as shxx.
3. Ghosts are faster. They can cloak. Terran has more intel with scan and WT.
4. Ghosts have no counter. They counter every protoss unit but colossus.
5. Protoss is being devastated in Korea. (38% win rate, 42% vs T, 28% vs Z) They are nowhere to be seen in team leagues.
6. Before u insist Korean Terrans are cheese oriented, those Koreans can own any of your favorite foreign players in late macro games. Protoss is bad in late macro games too.
7. Nerf EMP's range from 12 to 11. Not a big deal. Not asking EMP's range to be 9 or 10. It's 11, still 2 ahead of Feedback. It means if you utilize even the slightest advantage from AOE, your EMP will still kill protoss deathball. If you are so bad that you cannot use AOE range at all, it's still 50:50 even. (If HT and Ghost use their abil at the same time, both Feedback and EMP hits each other. test it with tester maps with pause function to see it for yourself)
Now please post counterarguments to this. I bet there is none legit.
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I agree with you highsis. Terran players are rushing to ghosts against Protoss for a reason. The fact that you can rush to them and have EMP without needing to research it is devastating to Protoss players. Ghosts coming with the EMP ability is not even close to HT's coming with feedback, because feedback doesn't devastate an entire Terran army.
If HT's spawned with the ability to storm, think of all the Terran players that would complain, yet they think it's perfectly fair to have the ability to EMP without researching it. Not to mention the fact that with any micro ability at all, you can avoid most of storms damage, whereas the result of an EMP landing on your army is instant.
Some of the best Protoss players in the world are getting run over by Terran and Zerg opponents, and people using the excuse that Terran and Zerg have "figured out the metagame" (which is such an overused term these days) is BS, and saying that Protoss haven't figured out any new strats or timings to defeat Terran and Zerg is BS too. There is only so much you can do, and it entirely revolves around early game economy. If there were strats to beat what has been happening to Protoss players lately, we would have seen them from the Korean players by now.
HT speed is another issue. Good luck getting an HT close enough to a Terran army to storm it.
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Am I the only one here annoyed with the fact that zergs have no map presence in early game ZvT? The fact that Terran can build whatever they want and be completely safe from counter attacks makes me a bit angry, sometimes.
If the game's designed to have "counters," then why is it that Terrans seem so uncounterable.
They have wall-offs that heal due to repair
They have buildings that can attack you
Early Anti Air
Early Cloak detection.
It just seems a bit inconsistent in design that only Terrans have all the tools to prevent early cheese/counter attacks.
Sorry for the rant.
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On August 29 2011 13:06 Bippzy wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2011 10:58 aZealot wrote:
Nice post, Anarion 55. I didn't think about that before, but yeah, it does make sense. As Protoss you really have to pick your battles, there can't be any hesitation because retreating effectively, without losing your slow sentries for example, is often out of the question - although it can be done with effective FF and depending on the terrain (as well as the opposing player not realising that he has an advantage and coming after you).
There are a few issues with Protoss, but the main one, really, is the Stalker. It's just a piece of crap that only becomes marginally effective once you have blink, but should not really be part of core Protoss army compositions. Protoss armies, IMO, are way more effective with minimal Stalkers for AA and base defense with the core taken up by Zealots, Immortals, and Sentries. The only issue here, of course, is that Zealots are melee units and ranged support is necessary. Immortals should be able to do it, but being built out of the Robo bay (and being so damn expensive) means that they are rarely out in sufficient numbers to be anything more than a supplement to a Protoss army rather than a core element. It would be nice if the Immortal is reworked in some way in HOTS so that it can return to being a gateway unit, as it is supposed to be. That would also free up the Robo for multiple obs, for map vision, and prisms for harass and multiple attacks (imagine warping in DTs cutting across a Zergs remaxing support lines during a big battle) before going for Colossus Tech. Did you really just critisize the stalker? The stalker, at the beginning of the game, allows for early aggression without any losses in pvt and pvz. As a tier one unit, it provides essential anti air so that collosus can be used viably. These are all great, but honestly the main point is: Stalkers have blink, which, in tandem with protoss having shields, makes them wonderful. Blink makes fast stalkers even more mobile, allowing them to escape battle at ease and blink into bases, do damage, and then leave. They also raise the skill ceiling for playing protoss incredibly high. Consider the following situations: 8 marauders vs 8 stalkers. Stalkers can blink and cause concussive shells to do nothing, allowing stalkers to win this engagement. Stalkers vs tanks on high ground. By seperating stalkers and blinking back damaged stalkers, it is possible to kill tanks with minimal losses. A terran pushing out of his base: with good stalker micro with blink you can get a few kills as they push towards their base. TL;DR stalkers are great units when used to their potential which makes them a great part of the protoss army
Yeah maybe if the 8 stalkers were huk's stalkers and the 8 marauders were controlled by a bronze leaguer lmao. you know that 1 volley for 8 marauders will 1 shot stalkers?
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On August 29 2011 09:21 Scarecrow wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2011 09:10 Qikz wrote:On August 29 2011 09:07 seoulsun wrote:
terran are winning every tournament Maybe it's because right now, there's A) more terran players at higher levels B) all of them are very good players.As much as I love Coca, he didn't play his best in those games. The terran's are just better players argument is so bullshit. They don't get punished near as hard for mistakes, lose/pull half their scv's and can still pull out wins off mules, have tons of potentially game ending harrass options and the best/most micro rewarding T1 in the game. Being the best race both defensively and offensively is why there are so many T's, it's not because they're better players. Getting sick of watching games decided by 1 medivac drop or dirt cheap bunkers/blue flame runbys. There isn't much mention of Toss bombing out this MLG simply because it's to be expected these days.
Browder admits that Terran is the best race, not because of the strength of individual units, but because the race is complete, and offers a variety of options and strategies. I've always felt like Terran has more potential than the other races, and rewards players the most for their skill. This is not to say that Terran players are less skilled, but that they have the option to demonstrate more skill, and are rewarded appropriately; unfortunately, it seems that this is not the case for the other races. I think we can all admit that planetary fortresses, repair, and mules are incredibly flexible features, and that the race as a whole has a very nice synergy.
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So, time to contribute to this thread myself.
I did some tests in unit test map and found out some very interesting stuff which i already had predicted but now I have evidence to backup my thoughs.
So what I found out, was that ghost is far superior compared to high templar. Here is proof:
We have 1v1 high templar vs ghost while both have full mana. This experiments goal was to find out whether can high templar feed back or storm ghost before ghost gets emp off.
Ghost gets ALWAYS an emp off and does have enough time to shoot TWO emps before high templar has chance to cast feedback or storm.
What this means? this means ghost is far superior compared to high templar like I said. High templar NEVER gets storm or feedback because single ghost can emp high templars mana to zero.
I suggest that feedback and storm should get equal range and radius to EMP, in order to balance this game.
Thank you.
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On August 30 2011 14:16 Lordwar wrote:I suggest that feedback and storm should get equal range and radius to EMP, in order to balance this game.
Thank you.
I disagree.
First of all, when there's a feedback versus EMP war, Protoss is somewhat at an advantage already. I say this because every EMP that is cast on a HT, is not cast on the Protoss army. Feedback also requires less energy than EMP. Also, if P successfully gets a feedback off on a ghost, chances are the ghost will die, whereas any EMP'd units will regenerate their shields relatively fast. P can also use the (very cheap) warp prism to transport their templar, making EMP pretty much useless. T can obviously use medivacs for this purpose, but has to be careful so that feedback doesn't one-shot his/her medivacs.
Feedback and storm getting equal range and radius to EMP is a very bad idea, in my opinion. Not only would you be able to storm collossi (!) from outside their attacking range, the Ghost will now always die in a Ghost versus HT war, while the biggest risk for the P is losing some energy and shields. T's situation is further worsened by the fact that P can just morph in Archons with energyless HT's, while T's dead ghosts are dead.
If this change was implemented, bio would become completely unviable in TvP.
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Well, the thing is that currently high templar is useless unit since ideally protos never get to cast storm and without storm protos army is already weakened to the point where good terrans should win because protos has invested in storms and now those storms mitigated.
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Wow this thread O.o
I hope it is serving it's purpose and reducing the "whining" in the LR threads.
On another note, the lack of warnings and bans in this thread is nice.
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Isn't that, what blink micro is all about, abusing shield mechanic?
Also Forcefields are designed in a way that as long as you spend energy, the more efficient the battle goes, because you can always get away. Healing your protoss units.
Not to mention air harrass.
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Feedback kills ghosts, EMP take their energy and they can still make archons. They are never changing the range because it would make protoss too easy to play as if they weren't the least micro intense already. Storms are way better than EMP which is why EMP has the upper hand. Use 0 micro, EMP an entire protoss army, then storm an entire terran army, explain to me which is better. But but the micro, if a terran can move out of your abilities and you can't hit the perfect storm before his ghosts get in range or you can't spread your HT, tough shit.
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EPT
