Designated Balance Discussion Thread - Page 882

On January 19 2014 05:34 Qwerty85 wrote:
The biggest problem of TvP when you compare it to WoL (and matchup is basically identical in terms of army compositions) is that terran mid game advantage we had in WoL basically disappeared.

1. The threat of aggressive builds forces terran to commit more to defense which means you will hit the stim+medivac timing later or it will be weaker. Good example is how making an engineering bay at 4 minutes, followed by 1-2 turrets significantly cuts into your barracks timing. This also means later stim, combat shield, factory, medivacs etc. Also it is very risky to open gasless so that as well slows terran down. It is risky to skip the bunker becasue of the MSC, stalker, zealot threat. It is risky to make tech lab your 1st addon and start stim faster becasue of oracle threat. These days you basically take your natural the same time as protoss which was not the case in WoL.

2. Protoss stronger early game defense means less gass spent on sentries and faster teching.

3. Extreme predictability of terran openings compared to protoss openings and scouting requirements for both races. Going for a diverse build like proxy factory is extremley risky because not only puts you way behind if it fails (like Flash vs. Sora) but it is also very risky becasue of blink or oracle threat. So protoss has very little to be concerned about and it is much easier to scout terran on top of that with researched hallucination (even if he goes for something unortodox). At the same time, terran is required to scout protoss main at least 2-3 times (to see gases, then tech choice like blink and then also number of gates) not to mention looking around the map for proxies.

If you don't get all information than #1 gets even worse because you often must overcommit on defense.


So when you compare weaker terran early-mid game (first 10 minutes) to stronger protoss early-mid game, it is obvious that terran mid game timing doesn't really exist anymore.

Terran's first tech will always be medivacs while protoss goes straight to storm or colossus. Having storm finished and ready to cast around 10.30 (when terran will get to your base) is now a common thing. Having both tech paths by 15-16 minutes became common as well.

We often see terrans adding up to 5 barracks to put pressure (it became a very heavy commitment), only to fall behind in upgrades, tech like ghosts, vikings etc. because they can't really delay protoss third long enough. Then when terran loses, the explanation is usually - well he was behind in upgrades or he had no ghosts etc. But again, compared to WoL, terran needs to have economic advantage in the mid game to be able to fight protoss in the late game on equal terms.

We already experienced first hand how strong early game defense can affect whole matchup severely - buffing queens and overlord speed led to infestor-broodlord era. The problem was not that much in units itself (even though infestors were almost an answer to everything) but also how fast would zerg get to hive tech because of safer early game.

My suggestions to TvP would be only early game based. First of all, oracle should come a bit later than now. Secondly, time warp is too cheap and too strong of a spell to cost only 75 energy. We see games where protoss uses up to 3 time warps doing no commitment 3 gate blink while terran needs to commit a lot to bunkers just not to die on same or better production (3 barracks with addons). Also, the huge sight radius makes it impossible to snipe the MSC with early game units which could delay the push (like scanning and killing observer in WoL) and also gives protoss full vision of the edge of terran base so you never risk blinking into a heavily defended area.

So basically - proxy oracle should come later (now I think the fastest is around 5.10)
MSC vision reduced from 14 to 10 and time warp costs 100 energy or lasts shorter than 30 seconds or has a smaller radius.