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On April 16 2013 08:01 Sly Faux wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2013 19:31 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 18:02 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 17:35 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 17:00 sUgArMaNiAc wrote:On April 15 2013 07:03 IcedBacon wrote:
Warpgate is my biggest problem with Protoss. It's forgiving for bad macro and also allows for so much of the cheesy shit that P can do. Floating 2k mins? Just throw down 6 more gateways and warp in a big round. Terran can do this to with barracks though... only difference is protoss can choose where to warp in. Well the big thing about warp gates is they need to be balanced in a way that a reinforcement of upto 40 warp gate supply doesn't win the protoss the game outright, that is to say, they force gateway units to suck(or in the case of the HT, not come out truly combat ready). It has just forced Blizzard's hand to nerf the protoss units from being the strong tough warrior to being gimmicky glasscannons that desperately need to hit a timing before x upgrade of the opponent is done. Which patches apart from khaydarian amulet removal + zealot buff are you referring to? The WoL patch. As warp gate was in WoL from the start, gateway units sucked pretty much from the start and the real impact units were their tech units, which is just a sad design which has left protoss so gimmicky. From TvP POV, if you snipe/Emp the templars and kill the colossi the rest of the protoss army doesn't stand a chance. I'll concede that blink stalkers do break that chain in PvZ if you mass them enough, but that requires a critical mass/deathball, which isn't exactly the strength I wish protoss had more of. The protoss army is imo just to weak without their power units, which comes both from the remax capability provided in lategame, but moreso I'd say from being able to be 1 round of production ahead with their very many different allins in the early game. **First Post :D** I'm by no means an expert at this game, but I play Protoss and have honestly been thinking about switching. I find that the Protoss are just not AS flexible. Think of the match ups. Against Zerg OR Terran, Protoss favor teching up to either Colossus, HTs with Storm, Archons, or Void Rays. All high tech units, and very very good in my opinion. Pretty much necessary in all those match ups. What does that leave Protoss? Units that allow you to tech up, Sentries/MSC, units that allow you to hurt the opponents economy, Oracles/Phoenix/DTs, hopefully putting you ahead while you get the death ball rolling or just flat out ending the game O.O, but what is in between? An Immortal All-in? As Protoss, I just feel the philosophy is to turtle up and tech up. Do you ever feel confident enough to pressure your opponent and deny his 3rd without heavy losses? When you DO tech up, the army compositions aren't anything that is TOO crazy. Corruptor/Vikings for Colo, Hydra/Marines for VR, Good splitting vs HT storm OR EMP/(Abduct?) You build up a death ball with chrono'd upgrades and just pain train your way to the opponents base. Rather stale in my opinion. Some more SUSTAINABLE mid game units would be a relief, Blink Stalkers aside... But then again, the design makes sense. Protoss is this advanced alien race, it makes sense from their characteristics that they would have to tech up to in battle so they can hit their peak strength.
While I agree with the idea that Protoss should be stronger with high tech, the difficult part comes in trying to balance this all out.
As you said all the high tech options for Protoss are very good, but this means that they may be able to be abused by rushing/massing them. Therefore both other races need to have quite hard "counters" to these units so that rushing or massing them does not become the only valid strategy. Now if both the other races have strong ways to deal with these high tech units, this means that they will usually only have a small window of relevance where you will need to make good use of them before their effectiveness begins to decrease. Theoretically this is fine from a balance perspective but it means that you really need to get your timings correct, and this can apply to pretty much any unit, but I think because of the high cost and time to tech up to and produce these units, this could be a major cause for the consistency issues that many Protoss players face.
I would definitely like to have a more sustainable mid game unit, I really like the concept of Immortals, but I feel like splash damage is just too necessary to hold off, except in certain limited situations. I'd love to try out an Immortal with less single target damage and a very small aoe (maybe the shot could explode into shrapnel behind the unit hitting units within a 90 degree angle within a short range). I know that this would make Immortals better against marines and zerglings which they are supposed to be bad against, but in all honesty, for their cost Immortals in their current state don't seem to do great against a significant number of any units unless accompanied by mass forcefields or a full deathball.
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On April 16 2013 14:29 Myrddraal wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2013 05:21 Big J wrote:On April 16 2013 02:48 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 22:52 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 22:24 Foxxan wrote:On April 15 2013 21:37 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 19:31 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 18:02 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 17:35 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 17:00 sUgArMaNiAc wrote:
[quote]
Terran can do this to with barracks though... only difference is protoss can choose where to warp in. Well the big thing about warp gates is they need to be balanced in a way that a reinforcement of upto 40 warp gate supply doesn't win the protoss the game outright, that is to say, they force gateway units to suck(or in the case of the HT, not come out truly combat ready). It has just forced Blizzard's hand to nerf the protoss units from being the strong tough warrior to being gimmicky glasscannons that desperately need to hit a timing before x upgrade of the opponent is done. Which patches apart from khaydarian amulet removal + zealot buff are you referring to? The WoL patch. As warp gate was in WoL from the start, gateway units sucked pretty much from the start and the real impact units were their tech units, which is just a sad design which has left protoss so gimmicky. From TvP POV, if you snipe/Emp the templars and kill the colossi the rest of the protoss army doesn't stand a chance. I'll concede that blink stalkers do break that chain in PvZ if you mass them enough, but that requires a critical mass/deathball, which isn't exactly the strength I wish protoss had more of. The protoss army is imo just to weak without their power units, which comes both from the remax capability provided in lategame, but moreso I'd say from being able to be 1 round of production ahead with their very many different allins in the early game. Which connection do those things need to have? Gateway units have been slightly buffed BW-->SC2 (blink, dragoon range upgrade not needed, nearly same stats, added sentries). They follow the exact same design rules all other Starcraft units go: the stronger the unit, the less costefficent. Protoss smallest units are zealots, stalkers which are naturally less costefficient than the weaker marine, zergling, roach/BW hydralisk. The only thing that changed is that the pathing/selection/gameplay changed, and now Protoss doesn't have the advantage of "easy control" anymore where 12 Protoss T1 units would be capable of combating 24 Zerg/Terran T1 units due to better control. (and even that wasn't quite true in BW, as marines&medics just like hydra/ling do counter gateway units and Protoss was just as dependend as in SC2 to go reaver&templar against those) You cant compare bw>sc2, you have to see the whole package. The protoss units are worse in power compared to zerg,terran in sc2 than in broodwar Basic gateway units are worse than bio, because that's the whole point of making bio viable in SC2. (would be quite a fail if zealot/stalker could hold it's own against MMM AND Protoss would get all the high tech tech options on the same upgrade, hell, templar/archon even on the same production path) And Protoss was already superdependend on all forms of tech units in BW against Zerg, nothing has changed on that front. Gateway units are shit with good pathing and unlimited selection. By design. Non of that has anything to do with Warpgate whatsoever. Seriously guys... Not every unit in the game can be as powerful as the marine. All that whining about Z/P bad low tier units... yes, one races T1 units will always be better than anothers, just by how the techpaths work. That doesn't mean that larva, warpgate, sentries, infestors caused "the units to suck". Hell, if you ask me the only thing that makes other units suck in this game is the marine, which has caused actual nerfs on other units. Not just imaginary that people come up with as theory, after year long figuering which units dominate which other. (blizzard surely did not have the time to figure out the SC2 2013 gameplay in their planning stages 2008,2009) The point is that they are too weak compared to most notably bio, and their tech units are to strong compared to most notably all of the tech units of terran. The core units of protoss suck in comparison to the core units of terran. There will always be a best unit, or in the least a best unit in certain situation, but if we are comparing game design of TvP in BW and SC2, neither race had a power unit such as the ht/colossi are in SC2. The ht was strong in BW, but a single one didn't pack as much punch as in SC2(for multiple reasons). My core point is that I think TvP especially would be more rewarding if the say 90/140 supply of units in the protoss army were actually the dangerous part of the army and the tech units were the support units rather than the other way around. It's been the topic of various discussions that the reaver was way more powerful than the Colossus. And HTs weren't shabby either with their 112 damage storms. Even more, bio or biomech wasn't even viable to begin with against those units, even though MarineMedic beats Dragoon and Zealot in Broodwar. The reality has nothing to do with warpgate or sentry based gateway nerfs. Blizzard made bio viable by tuning down Protoss splash and tuning up Terran with Marauder&Medivac instead of usless Firebats and damage/square reducing medics (not to mention the implicit drop play you get from medivacs, "for free" when you just go for combat healing). Of course you may say that they have gone overboard with Terran bio and not far enough with Protoss splash. But in my opinion it will always come down less to how good/bad warpgate units are, but rather that Protoss as a whole concept is basically just "moooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrr beef". Which makes Protoss units trade badly, as they don't have the damage output to achieve anything when outnumbered. (unlike marines, zerglings, banelings, mines, tanks... which will often take a few enemies with them to the grave and therefore allow for "let's try to attack there, it can't be too bad" kind of gameplay). (zealots, oracles and templar being the exceptions) On April 16 2013 04:45 Silencioseu wrote:On April 15 2013 21:37 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 19:31 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 18:02 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 17:35 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 17:00 sUgArMaNiAc wrote:On April 15 2013 07:03 IcedBacon wrote:
Warpgate is my biggest problem with Protoss. It's forgiving for bad macro and also allows for so much of the cheesy shit that P can do. Floating 2k mins? Just throw down 6 more gateways and warp in a big round. Terran can do this to with barracks though... only difference is protoss can choose where to warp in. Well the big thing about warp gates is they need to be balanced in a way that a reinforcement of upto 40 warp gate supply doesn't win the protoss the game outright, that is to say, they force gateway units to suck(or in the case of the HT, not come out truly combat ready). It has just forced Blizzard's hand to nerf the protoss units from being the strong tough warrior to being gimmicky glasscannons that desperately need to hit a timing before x upgrade of the opponent is done. Which patches apart from khaydarian amulet removal + zealot buff are you referring to? The WoL patch. As warp gate was in WoL from the start, gateway units sucked pretty much from the start and the real impact units were their tech units, which is just a sad design which has left protoss so gimmicky. From TvP POV, if you snipe/Emp the templars and kill the colossi the rest of the protoss army doesn't stand a chance. I'll concede that blink stalkers do break that chain in PvZ if you mass them enough, but that requires a critical mass/deathball, which isn't exactly the strength I wish protoss had more of. The protoss army is imo just to weak without their power units, which comes both from the remax capability provided in lategame, but moreso I'd say from being able to be 1 round of production ahead with their very many different allins in the early game. Which connection do those things need to have? Gateway units have been slightly buffed BW-->SC2 (blink, dragoon range upgrade not needed, nearly same stats, added sentries). They follow the exact same design rules all other Starcraft units go: the stronger the unit, the less costefficent. Protoss smallest units are zealots, stalkers which are naturally less costefficient than the weaker marine, zergling, roach/BW hydralisk. The only thing that changed is that the pathing/selection/gameplay changed, and now Protoss doesn't have the advantage of "easy control" anymore where 12 Protoss T1 units would be capable of combating 24 Zerg/Terran T1 units due to better control. (and even that wasn't quite true in BW, as marines&medics just like hydra/ling do counter gateway units and Protoss was just as dependend as in SC2 to go reaver&templar against those) But there was no marauder in bw right? right. That doesn't mean that "gateway units have been nerfed because of warpgate". It means that Terran got the marauder. Not some arbitrary: you see guys, after years of Starcraft 2 we know that bio beats gateway builds. Obviously that stuff was nerfed long before we figured this out due to sentries and warpgates He didn't say that gateway units were nerfed because of warpgate just that they sucked because of it*, I don't really see how you can deny that. The connection they have is that if gateway units were buffed then one base gateway all-ins, which were very popular early on in WoL, would have become too powerful since Warpgate can effectively negate the defenders advantage. *The difference being that gateway units were not nerfed, but the other races early units have become more effective and they could not buff gateway units to match them directly, so they had to indirectly buff them defensively by adding sentries followed by compensating for their offensive weakness with strong splash in Colossi and High Templar. I know you mentioned HT and Reavers being stronger in BW, but the way that units clump in SC2 means that any form of aoe is just much more effective. Edit: The sad thing is that I actually really like Warpgate, Sentries and the concept of the Colossus, but I think a lot more people would be happy if we could find some kind of even ground where gateway units were a little stronger, and Colossi/HT were a little weaker such that Protoss has a more stable early game and Colossi/HT wouldn't require quite as hard counters as they currently do.
well, he actually said in a post before that one that they were nerfed. And I disagree that they suck "because of warpgate". Of course you could buff them, balance PvZ and PvT completly differently (assuming that the game is balanced now, there will most likely be imbalances after balanceunnecessary buffs) and be fine while keeping warpgate.
The question for me however is: PvX right now is 1-3 robo/stargate + 5-10 warpgates. Why do I want this setup to change to 0-1 robo/stargate + 10-15 warpgates? Protoss armies already consist of gateway units for the most part and only need very little help from other techs. So why do I want Protoss being balanced around "gateway only, tech is optional".
With or without warpgate, I dislike the thought of "just blink good enough and you'll counter roach/hydra". Or zealot/archon not being a midgame timing, but just amoving it's way to victory over bio all game long. I want Protoss to be forced to use most of their techs, just like Zerg has to, and like Terran at least has to use one of their separate techpaths (and combines that a lot with vikings, medivacs, hellions, hellbats, tanks, mines).
I know, warpgate is a powerful tool. But that doesn't mean the units coming of it have to be balanced down because of it.
Look at larva. Not every unit coming of larva "just sucks", and larva is a much more potent timing attack tool than investing into cybercore + warpgate + X gateways.
Basically what it comes down to is, that in Starcraft all units (apart from the marine) have some major drawbacks. Protoss just has all the wrong drawbacks. Immobility and/or low damage for most units.
+ Show Spoiler +If you just play any random RTS game, you can quickly identify the fun units. The high damage dealing, highly mobile ones. The ones that Protoss doesn't have enough of.
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On April 16 2013 16:31 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2013 14:29 Myrddraal wrote:On April 16 2013 05:21 Big J wrote:On April 16 2013 02:48 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 22:52 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 22:24 Foxxan wrote:On April 15 2013 21:37 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 19:31 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 18:02 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 17:35 Zarahtra wrote:
[quote]
Well the big thing about warp gates is they need to be balanced in a way that a reinforcement of upto 40 warp gate supply doesn't win the protoss the game outright, that is to say, they force gateway units to suck(or in the case of the HT, not come out truly combat ready). It has just forced Blizzard's hand to nerf the protoss units from being the strong tough warrior to being gimmicky glasscannons that desperately need to hit a timing before x upgrade of the opponent is done. Which patches apart from khaydarian amulet removal + zealot buff are you referring to? The WoL patch. As warp gate was in WoL from the start, gateway units sucked pretty much from the start and the real impact units were their tech units, which is just a sad design which has left protoss so gimmicky. From TvP POV, if you snipe/Emp the templars and kill the colossi the rest of the protoss army doesn't stand a chance. I'll concede that blink stalkers do break that chain in PvZ if you mass them enough, but that requires a critical mass/deathball, which isn't exactly the strength I wish protoss had more of. The protoss army is imo just to weak without their power units, which comes both from the remax capability provided in lategame, but moreso I'd say from being able to be 1 round of production ahead with their very many different allins in the early game. Which connection do those things need to have? Gateway units have been slightly buffed BW-->SC2 (blink, dragoon range upgrade not needed, nearly same stats, added sentries). They follow the exact same design rules all other Starcraft units go: the stronger the unit, the less costefficent. Protoss smallest units are zealots, stalkers which are naturally less costefficient than the weaker marine, zergling, roach/BW hydralisk. The only thing that changed is that the pathing/selection/gameplay changed, and now Protoss doesn't have the advantage of "easy control" anymore where 12 Protoss T1 units would be capable of combating 24 Zerg/Terran T1 units due to better control. (and even that wasn't quite true in BW, as marines&medics just like hydra/ling do counter gateway units and Protoss was just as dependend as in SC2 to go reaver&templar against those) You cant compare bw>sc2, you have to see the whole package. The protoss units are worse in power compared to zerg,terran in sc2 than in broodwar Basic gateway units are worse than bio, because that's the whole point of making bio viable in SC2. (would be quite a fail if zealot/stalker could hold it's own against MMM AND Protoss would get all the high tech tech options on the same upgrade, hell, templar/archon even on the same production path) And Protoss was already superdependend on all forms of tech units in BW against Zerg, nothing has changed on that front. Gateway units are shit with good pathing and unlimited selection. By design. Non of that has anything to do with Warpgate whatsoever. Seriously guys... Not every unit in the game can be as powerful as the marine. All that whining about Z/P bad low tier units... yes, one races T1 units will always be better than anothers, just by how the techpaths work. That doesn't mean that larva, warpgate, sentries, infestors caused "the units to suck". Hell, if you ask me the only thing that makes other units suck in this game is the marine, which has caused actual nerfs on other units. Not just imaginary that people come up with as theory, after year long figuering which units dominate which other. (blizzard surely did not have the time to figure out the SC2 2013 gameplay in their planning stages 2008,2009) The point is that they are too weak compared to most notably bio, and their tech units are to strong compared to most notably all of the tech units of terran. The core units of protoss suck in comparison to the core units of terran. There will always be a best unit, or in the least a best unit in certain situation, but if we are comparing game design of TvP in BW and SC2, neither race had a power unit such as the ht/colossi are in SC2. The ht was strong in BW, but a single one didn't pack as much punch as in SC2(for multiple reasons). My core point is that I think TvP especially would be more rewarding if the say 90/140 supply of units in the protoss army were actually the dangerous part of the army and the tech units were the support units rather than the other way around. It's been the topic of various discussions that the reaver was way more powerful than the Colossus. And HTs weren't shabby either with their 112 damage storms. Even more, bio or biomech wasn't even viable to begin with against those units, even though MarineMedic beats Dragoon and Zealot in Broodwar. The reality has nothing to do with warpgate or sentry based gateway nerfs. Blizzard made bio viable by tuning down Protoss splash and tuning up Terran with Marauder&Medivac instead of usless Firebats and damage/square reducing medics (not to mention the implicit drop play you get from medivacs, "for free" when you just go for combat healing). Of course you may say that they have gone overboard with Terran bio and not far enough with Protoss splash. But in my opinion it will always come down less to how good/bad warpgate units are, but rather that Protoss as a whole concept is basically just "moooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrr beef". Which makes Protoss units trade badly, as they don't have the damage output to achieve anything when outnumbered. (unlike marines, zerglings, banelings, mines, tanks... which will often take a few enemies with them to the grave and therefore allow for "let's try to attack there, it can't be too bad" kind of gameplay). (zealots, oracles and templar being the exceptions) On April 16 2013 04:45 Silencioseu wrote:On April 15 2013 21:37 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 19:31 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 18:02 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 17:35 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 17:00 sUgArMaNiAc wrote:On April 15 2013 07:03 IcedBacon wrote:
Warpgate is my biggest problem with Protoss. It's forgiving for bad macro and also allows for so much of the cheesy shit that P can do. Floating 2k mins? Just throw down 6 more gateways and warp in a big round. Terran can do this to with barracks though... only difference is protoss can choose where to warp in. Well the big thing about warp gates is they need to be balanced in a way that a reinforcement of upto 40 warp gate supply doesn't win the protoss the game outright, that is to say, they force gateway units to suck(or in the case of the HT, not come out truly combat ready). It has just forced Blizzard's hand to nerf the protoss units from being the strong tough warrior to being gimmicky glasscannons that desperately need to hit a timing before x upgrade of the opponent is done. Which patches apart from khaydarian amulet removal + zealot buff are you referring to? The WoL patch. As warp gate was in WoL from the start, gateway units sucked pretty much from the start and the real impact units were their tech units, which is just a sad design which has left protoss so gimmicky. From TvP POV, if you snipe/Emp the templars and kill the colossi the rest of the protoss army doesn't stand a chance. I'll concede that blink stalkers do break that chain in PvZ if you mass them enough, but that requires a critical mass/deathball, which isn't exactly the strength I wish protoss had more of. The protoss army is imo just to weak without their power units, which comes both from the remax capability provided in lategame, but moreso I'd say from being able to be 1 round of production ahead with their very many different allins in the early game. Which connection do those things need to have? Gateway units have been slightly buffed BW-->SC2 (blink, dragoon range upgrade not needed, nearly same stats, added sentries). They follow the exact same design rules all other Starcraft units go: the stronger the unit, the less costefficent. Protoss smallest units are zealots, stalkers which are naturally less costefficient than the weaker marine, zergling, roach/BW hydralisk. The only thing that changed is that the pathing/selection/gameplay changed, and now Protoss doesn't have the advantage of "easy control" anymore where 12 Protoss T1 units would be capable of combating 24 Zerg/Terran T1 units due to better control. (and even that wasn't quite true in BW, as marines&medics just like hydra/ling do counter gateway units and Protoss was just as dependend as in SC2 to go reaver&templar against those) But there was no marauder in bw right? right. That doesn't mean that "gateway units have been nerfed because of warpgate". It means that Terran got the marauder. Not some arbitrary: you see guys, after years of Starcraft 2 we know that bio beats gateway builds. Obviously that stuff was nerfed long before we figured this out due to sentries and warpgates He didn't say that gateway units were nerfed because of warpgate just that they sucked because of it*, I don't really see how you can deny that. The connection they have is that if gateway units were buffed then one base gateway all-ins, which were very popular early on in WoL, would have become too powerful since Warpgate can effectively negate the defenders advantage. *The difference being that gateway units were not nerfed, but the other races early units have become more effective and they could not buff gateway units to match them directly, so they had to indirectly buff them defensively by adding sentries followed by compensating for their offensive weakness with strong splash in Colossi and High Templar. I know you mentioned HT and Reavers being stronger in BW, but the way that units clump in SC2 means that any form of aoe is just much more effective. Edit: The sad thing is that I actually really like Warpgate, Sentries and the concept of the Colossus, but I think a lot more people would be happy if we could find some kind of even ground where gateway units were a little stronger, and Colossi/HT were a little weaker such that Protoss has a more stable early game and Colossi/HT wouldn't require quite as hard counters as they currently do. well, he actually said in a post before that one that they were nerfed. And I disagree that they suck "because of warpgate". Of course you could buff them, balance PvZ and PvT completly differently (assuming that the game is balanced now, there will most likely be imbalances after balanceunnecessary buffs) and be fine while keeping warpgate. The question for me however is: PvX right now is 1-3 robo/stargate + 5-10 warpgates. Why do I want this setup to change to 0-1 robo/stargate + 10-15 warpgates? Protoss armies already consist of gateway units for the most part and only need very little help from other techs. So why do I want Protoss being balanced around "gateway only, tech is optional". With or without warpgate, I dislike the thought of "just blink good enough and you'll counter roach/hydra". Or zealot/archon not being a midgame timing, but just amoving it's way to victory over bio all game long. I want Protoss to be forced to use most of their techs, just like Zerg has to, and like Terran at least has to use one of their separate techpaths (and combines that a lot with vikings, medivacs, hellions, hellbats, tanks, mines). I know, warpgate is a powerful tool. But that doesn't mean the units coming of it have to be balanced down because of it. Look at larva. Not every unit coming of larva "just sucks", and larva is a much more potent timing attack tool than investing into cybercore + warpgate + X gateways. Basically what it comes down to is, that in Starcraft all units (apart from the marine) have some major drawbacks. Protoss just has all the wrong drawbacks. Immobility and/or low damage for most units. + Show Spoiler +If you just play any random RTS game, you can quickly identify the fun units. The high damage dealing, highly mobile ones. The ones that Protoss doesn't have enough of.
Ah, my bad, I must have missed that part.
Okay of course, you *can* buff them, but not to the same cost effectiveness of their similar counterparts in Terran and Zerg (Ie Marine Marauder and Ling Roach) because otherwise Warpgate timings will become too strong, this is just simply how it is.
I never said anything about removing Protoss's reliance on tech completely, so please don't even bother with that sort of talk, I just don't want to have to rely on tech to match units on the same tier. The way I would have it, compositions would be pretty much the same as they are now, but with more freedom in how the compositions were attained. Think about it, you would still want to have Colossus/HT in your army because aoe damage is always great, but you wouldn't be held back by having to invest into either just to feel safe moving out onto the map when your opponent has more than a handful of Marines and Marauders. Higher tech units would still be required, but they wouldn't have to be quite so strong, and their counters wouldn't have to be so hard. I want all the races to have to rely on their tech just like you, but I don't want anything specific to be required or else I start to find it stale.
Of course units that come from larva don't "just suck", but they do have to be balanced to take larva into account (time, cost, supply) or else they would be broken, gateway units are exactly the same, they have to be balanced with Warpgate taken into account and when I stated that they suck I was only referring to their cost effectiveness relative to the other races tier 1 units. Of course gateway units don't suck as a whole, but their relative weakness lends Protoss early game to have only two styles that really work: turtling or all-ining, and I don't find either of these styles particularly fun to play or watch*.
*I haven't watched enough HotS yet to know if this is still the case, this is mostly my opinions from WoL.
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On April 16 2013 16:31 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2013 14:29 Myrddraal wrote:On April 16 2013 05:21 Big J wrote:On April 16 2013 02:48 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 22:52 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 22:24 Foxxan wrote:On April 15 2013 21:37 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 19:31 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 18:02 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 17:35 Zarahtra wrote:
[quote]
Well the big thing about warp gates is they need to be balanced in a way that a reinforcement of upto 40 warp gate supply doesn't win the protoss the game outright, that is to say, they force gateway units to suck(or in the case of the HT, not come out truly combat ready). It has just forced Blizzard's hand to nerf the protoss units from being the strong tough warrior to being gimmicky glasscannons that desperately need to hit a timing before x upgrade of the opponent is done. Which patches apart from khaydarian amulet removal + zealot buff are you referring to? The WoL patch. As warp gate was in WoL from the start, gateway units sucked pretty much from the start and the real impact units were their tech units, which is just a sad design which has left protoss so gimmicky. From TvP POV, if you snipe/Emp the templars and kill the colossi the rest of the protoss army doesn't stand a chance. I'll concede that blink stalkers do break that chain in PvZ if you mass them enough, but that requires a critical mass/deathball, which isn't exactly the strength I wish protoss had more of. The protoss army is imo just to weak without their power units, which comes both from the remax capability provided in lategame, but moreso I'd say from being able to be 1 round of production ahead with their very many different allins in the early game. Which connection do those things need to have? Gateway units have been slightly buffed BW-->SC2 (blink, dragoon range upgrade not needed, nearly same stats, added sentries). They follow the exact same design rules all other Starcraft units go: the stronger the unit, the less costefficent. Protoss smallest units are zealots, stalkers which are naturally less costefficient than the weaker marine, zergling, roach/BW hydralisk. The only thing that changed is that the pathing/selection/gameplay changed, and now Protoss doesn't have the advantage of "easy control" anymore where 12 Protoss T1 units would be capable of combating 24 Zerg/Terran T1 units due to better control. (and even that wasn't quite true in BW, as marines&medics just like hydra/ling do counter gateway units and Protoss was just as dependend as in SC2 to go reaver&templar against those) You cant compare bw>sc2, you have to see the whole package. The protoss units are worse in power compared to zerg,terran in sc2 than in broodwar Basic gateway units are worse than bio, because that's the whole point of making bio viable in SC2. (would be quite a fail if zealot/stalker could hold it's own against MMM AND Protoss would get all the high tech tech options on the same upgrade, hell, templar/archon even on the same production path) And Protoss was already superdependend on all forms of tech units in BW against Zerg, nothing has changed on that front. Gateway units are shit with good pathing and unlimited selection. By design. Non of that has anything to do with Warpgate whatsoever. Seriously guys... Not every unit in the game can be as powerful as the marine. All that whining about Z/P bad low tier units... yes, one races T1 units will always be better than anothers, just by how the techpaths work. That doesn't mean that larva, warpgate, sentries, infestors caused "the units to suck". Hell, if you ask me the only thing that makes other units suck in this game is the marine, which has caused actual nerfs on other units. Not just imaginary that people come up with as theory, after year long figuering which units dominate which other. (blizzard surely did not have the time to figure out the SC2 2013 gameplay in their planning stages 2008,2009) The point is that they are too weak compared to most notably bio, and their tech units are to strong compared to most notably all of the tech units of terran. The core units of protoss suck in comparison to the core units of terran. There will always be a best unit, or in the least a best unit in certain situation, but if we are comparing game design of TvP in BW and SC2, neither race had a power unit such as the ht/colossi are in SC2. The ht was strong in BW, but a single one didn't pack as much punch as in SC2(for multiple reasons). My core point is that I think TvP especially would be more rewarding if the say 90/140 supply of units in the protoss army were actually the dangerous part of the army and the tech units were the support units rather than the other way around. It's been the topic of various discussions that the reaver was way more powerful than the Colossus. And HTs weren't shabby either with their 112 damage storms. Even more, bio or biomech wasn't even viable to begin with against those units, even though MarineMedic beats Dragoon and Zealot in Broodwar. The reality has nothing to do with warpgate or sentry based gateway nerfs. Blizzard made bio viable by tuning down Protoss splash and tuning up Terran with Marauder&Medivac instead of usless Firebats and damage/square reducing medics (not to mention the implicit drop play you get from medivacs, "for free" when you just go for combat healing). Of course you may say that they have gone overboard with Terran bio and not far enough with Protoss splash. But in my opinion it will always come down less to how good/bad warpgate units are, but rather that Protoss as a whole concept is basically just "moooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrr beef". Which makes Protoss units trade badly, as they don't have the damage output to achieve anything when outnumbered. (unlike marines, zerglings, banelings, mines, tanks... which will often take a few enemies with them to the grave and therefore allow for "let's try to attack there, it can't be too bad" kind of gameplay). (zealots, oracles and templar being the exceptions) On April 16 2013 04:45 Silencioseu wrote:On April 15 2013 21:37 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 19:31 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 18:02 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 17:35 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 17:00 sUgArMaNiAc wrote:On April 15 2013 07:03 IcedBacon wrote:
Warpgate is my biggest problem with Protoss. It's forgiving for bad macro and also allows for so much of the cheesy shit that P can do. Floating 2k mins? Just throw down 6 more gateways and warp in a big round. Terran can do this to with barracks though... only difference is protoss can choose where to warp in. Well the big thing about warp gates is they need to be balanced in a way that a reinforcement of upto 40 warp gate supply doesn't win the protoss the game outright, that is to say, they force gateway units to suck(or in the case of the HT, not come out truly combat ready). It has just forced Blizzard's hand to nerf the protoss units from being the strong tough warrior to being gimmicky glasscannons that desperately need to hit a timing before x upgrade of the opponent is done. Which patches apart from khaydarian amulet removal + zealot buff are you referring to? The WoL patch. As warp gate was in WoL from the start, gateway units sucked pretty much from the start and the real impact units were their tech units, which is just a sad design which has left protoss so gimmicky. From TvP POV, if you snipe/Emp the templars and kill the colossi the rest of the protoss army doesn't stand a chance. I'll concede that blink stalkers do break that chain in PvZ if you mass them enough, but that requires a critical mass/deathball, which isn't exactly the strength I wish protoss had more of. The protoss army is imo just to weak without their power units, which comes both from the remax capability provided in lategame, but moreso I'd say from being able to be 1 round of production ahead with their very many different allins in the early game. Which connection do those things need to have? Gateway units have been slightly buffed BW-->SC2 (blink, dragoon range upgrade not needed, nearly same stats, added sentries). They follow the exact same design rules all other Starcraft units go: the stronger the unit, the less costefficent. Protoss smallest units are zealots, stalkers which are naturally less costefficient than the weaker marine, zergling, roach/BW hydralisk. The only thing that changed is that the pathing/selection/gameplay changed, and now Protoss doesn't have the advantage of "easy control" anymore where 12 Protoss T1 units would be capable of combating 24 Zerg/Terran T1 units due to better control. (and even that wasn't quite true in BW, as marines&medics just like hydra/ling do counter gateway units and Protoss was just as dependend as in SC2 to go reaver&templar against those) But there was no marauder in bw right? right. That doesn't mean that "gateway units have been nerfed because of warpgate". It means that Terran got the marauder. Not some arbitrary: you see guys, after years of Starcraft 2 we know that bio beats gateway builds. Obviously that stuff was nerfed long before we figured this out due to sentries and warpgates He didn't say that gateway units were nerfed because of warpgate just that they sucked because of it*, I don't really see how you can deny that. The connection they have is that if gateway units were buffed then one base gateway all-ins, which were very popular early on in WoL, would have become too powerful since Warpgate can effectively negate the defenders advantage. *The difference being that gateway units were not nerfed, but the other races early units have become more effective and they could not buff gateway units to match them directly, so they had to indirectly buff them defensively by adding sentries followed by compensating for their offensive weakness with strong splash in Colossi and High Templar. I know you mentioned HT and Reavers being stronger in BW, but the way that units clump in SC2 means that any form of aoe is just much more effective. Edit: The sad thing is that I actually really like Warpgate, Sentries and the concept of the Colossus, but I think a lot more people would be happy if we could find some kind of even ground where gateway units were a little stronger, and Colossi/HT were a little weaker such that Protoss has a more stable early game and Colossi/HT wouldn't require quite as hard counters as they currently do. well, he actually said in a post before that one that they were nerfed. And I disagree that they suck "because of warpgate". Of course you could buff them, balance PvZ and PvT completly differently (assuming that the game is balanced now, there will most likely be imbalances after balanceunnecessary buffs) and be fine while keeping warpgate. The question for me however is: PvX right now is 1-3 robo/stargate + 5-10 warpgates. Why do I want this setup to change to 0-1 robo/stargate + 10-15 warpgates? Protoss armies already consist of gateway units for the most part and only need very little help from other techs. So why do I want Protoss being balanced around "gateway only, tech is optional". With or without warpgate, I dislike the thought of "just blink good enough and you'll counter roach/hydra". Or zealot/archon not being a midgame timing, but just amoving it's way to victory over bio all game long. I want Protoss to be forced to use most of their techs, just like Zerg has to, and like Terran at least has to use one of their separate techpaths (and combines that a lot with vikings, medivacs, hellions, hellbats, tanks, mines). I know, warpgate is a powerful tool. But that doesn't mean the units coming of it have to be balanced down because of it. Look at larva. Not every unit coming of larva "just sucks", and larva is a much more potent timing attack tool than investing into cybercore + warpgate + X gateways. Basically what it comes down to is, that in Starcraft all units (apart from the marine) have some major drawbacks. Protoss just has all the wrong drawbacks. Immobility and/or low damage for most units. + Show Spoiler +If you just play any random RTS game, you can quickly identify the fun units. The high damage dealing, highly mobile ones. The ones that Protoss doesn't have enough of.
You want protoss to be forced to use most of their techs? I have two replies to this, first of all the reason you don´t see protoss utilizing all their tech is because like mentioned earlier - it's very black and white, hit or miss. If a terran is already churning out vikings you don't want to start pumping out voidrays, also marines are good. Immortals are great at their niche, but again marines, lings etc. And it just goes on, protoss tech units are just so damn specialized or the enemy already has something to combat it before you even get it hence its not worth getting.
Secondly in PvZ protoss use just about everything almost. Most common is to open stargate w phoenix/voidrays, you have to get colossus for the eventual hydra/roach switch which also enables immortals. Then in the endgame you get storms and DT's out most of the time aswell as capitol ships, just about everything is used in PvZ. The problem is if you use anything of this at the wrong time - you die. If you don´t have 2x stargate when mutas arrive, you die. If you don´t have colossus tech/HT's when hydras hit - you die. All of this really boils down to gateway units being crap.
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On April 16 2013 18:23 Myrddraal wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2013 16:31 Big J wrote:On April 16 2013 14:29 Myrddraal wrote:On April 16 2013 05:21 Big J wrote:On April 16 2013 02:48 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 22:52 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 22:24 Foxxan wrote:On April 15 2013 21:37 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 19:31 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 18:02 Big J wrote:
[quote]
Which patches apart from khaydarian amulet removal + zealot buff are you referring to? The WoL patch. As warp gate was in WoL from the start, gateway units sucked pretty much from the start and the real impact units were their tech units, which is just a sad design which has left protoss so gimmicky. From TvP POV, if you snipe/Emp the templars and kill the colossi the rest of the protoss army doesn't stand a chance. I'll concede that blink stalkers do break that chain in PvZ if you mass them enough, but that requires a critical mass/deathball, which isn't exactly the strength I wish protoss had more of. The protoss army is imo just to weak without their power units, which comes both from the remax capability provided in lategame, but moreso I'd say from being able to be 1 round of production ahead with their very many different allins in the early game. Which connection do those things need to have? Gateway units have been slightly buffed BW-->SC2 (blink, dragoon range upgrade not needed, nearly same stats, added sentries). They follow the exact same design rules all other Starcraft units go: the stronger the unit, the less costefficent. Protoss smallest units are zealots, stalkers which are naturally less costefficient than the weaker marine, zergling, roach/BW hydralisk. The only thing that changed is that the pathing/selection/gameplay changed, and now Protoss doesn't have the advantage of "easy control" anymore where 12 Protoss T1 units would be capable of combating 24 Zerg/Terran T1 units due to better control. (and even that wasn't quite true in BW, as marines&medics just like hydra/ling do counter gateway units and Protoss was just as dependend as in SC2 to go reaver&templar against those) You cant compare bw>sc2, you have to see the whole package. The protoss units are worse in power compared to zerg,terran in sc2 than in broodwar Basic gateway units are worse than bio, because that's the whole point of making bio viable in SC2. (would be quite a fail if zealot/stalker could hold it's own against MMM AND Protoss would get all the high tech tech options on the same upgrade, hell, templar/archon even on the same production path) And Protoss was already superdependend on all forms of tech units in BW against Zerg, nothing has changed on that front. Gateway units are shit with good pathing and unlimited selection. By design. Non of that has anything to do with Warpgate whatsoever. Seriously guys... Not every unit in the game can be as powerful as the marine. All that whining about Z/P bad low tier units... yes, one races T1 units will always be better than anothers, just by how the techpaths work. That doesn't mean that larva, warpgate, sentries, infestors caused "the units to suck". Hell, if you ask me the only thing that makes other units suck in this game is the marine, which has caused actual nerfs on other units. Not just imaginary that people come up with as theory, after year long figuering which units dominate which other. (blizzard surely did not have the time to figure out the SC2 2013 gameplay in their planning stages 2008,2009) The point is that they are too weak compared to most notably bio, and their tech units are to strong compared to most notably all of the tech units of terran. The core units of protoss suck in comparison to the core units of terran. There will always be a best unit, or in the least a best unit in certain situation, but if we are comparing game design of TvP in BW and SC2, neither race had a power unit such as the ht/colossi are in SC2. The ht was strong in BW, but a single one didn't pack as much punch as in SC2(for multiple reasons). My core point is that I think TvP especially would be more rewarding if the say 90/140 supply of units in the protoss army were actually the dangerous part of the army and the tech units were the support units rather than the other way around. It's been the topic of various discussions that the reaver was way more powerful than the Colossus. And HTs weren't shabby either with their 112 damage storms. Even more, bio or biomech wasn't even viable to begin with against those units, even though MarineMedic beats Dragoon and Zealot in Broodwar. The reality has nothing to do with warpgate or sentry based gateway nerfs. Blizzard made bio viable by tuning down Protoss splash and tuning up Terran with Marauder&Medivac instead of usless Firebats and damage/square reducing medics (not to mention the implicit drop play you get from medivacs, "for free" when you just go for combat healing). Of course you may say that they have gone overboard with Terran bio and not far enough with Protoss splash. But in my opinion it will always come down less to how good/bad warpgate units are, but rather that Protoss as a whole concept is basically just "moooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrr beef". Which makes Protoss units trade badly, as they don't have the damage output to achieve anything when outnumbered. (unlike marines, zerglings, banelings, mines, tanks... which will often take a few enemies with them to the grave and therefore allow for "let's try to attack there, it can't be too bad" kind of gameplay). (zealots, oracles and templar being the exceptions) On April 16 2013 04:45 Silencioseu wrote:On April 15 2013 21:37 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 19:31 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 18:02 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 17:35 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 17:00 sUgArMaNiAc wrote:
[quote]
Terran can do this to with barracks though... only difference is protoss can choose where to warp in. Well the big thing about warp gates is they need to be balanced in a way that a reinforcement of upto 40 warp gate supply doesn't win the protoss the game outright, that is to say, they force gateway units to suck(or in the case of the HT, not come out truly combat ready). It has just forced Blizzard's hand to nerf the protoss units from being the strong tough warrior to being gimmicky glasscannons that desperately need to hit a timing before x upgrade of the opponent is done. Which patches apart from khaydarian amulet removal + zealot buff are you referring to? The WoL patch. As warp gate was in WoL from the start, gateway units sucked pretty much from the start and the real impact units were their tech units, which is just a sad design which has left protoss so gimmicky. From TvP POV, if you snipe/Emp the templars and kill the colossi the rest of the protoss army doesn't stand a chance. I'll concede that blink stalkers do break that chain in PvZ if you mass them enough, but that requires a critical mass/deathball, which isn't exactly the strength I wish protoss had more of. The protoss army is imo just to weak without their power units, which comes both from the remax capability provided in lategame, but moreso I'd say from being able to be 1 round of production ahead with their very many different allins in the early game. Which connection do those things need to have? Gateway units have been slightly buffed BW-->SC2 (blink, dragoon range upgrade not needed, nearly same stats, added sentries). They follow the exact same design rules all other Starcraft units go: the stronger the unit, the less costefficent. Protoss smallest units are zealots, stalkers which are naturally less costefficient than the weaker marine, zergling, roach/BW hydralisk. The only thing that changed is that the pathing/selection/gameplay changed, and now Protoss doesn't have the advantage of "easy control" anymore where 12 Protoss T1 units would be capable of combating 24 Zerg/Terran T1 units due to better control. (and even that wasn't quite true in BW, as marines&medics just like hydra/ling do counter gateway units and Protoss was just as dependend as in SC2 to go reaver&templar against those) But there was no marauder in bw right? right. That doesn't mean that "gateway units have been nerfed because of warpgate". It means that Terran got the marauder. Not some arbitrary: you see guys, after years of Starcraft 2 we know that bio beats gateway builds. Obviously that stuff was nerfed long before we figured this out due to sentries and warpgates He didn't say that gateway units were nerfed because of warpgate just that they sucked because of it*, I don't really see how you can deny that. The connection they have is that if gateway units were buffed then one base gateway all-ins, which were very popular early on in WoL, would have become too powerful since Warpgate can effectively negate the defenders advantage. *The difference being that gateway units were not nerfed, but the other races early units have become more effective and they could not buff gateway units to match them directly, so they had to indirectly buff them defensively by adding sentries followed by compensating for their offensive weakness with strong splash in Colossi and High Templar. I know you mentioned HT and Reavers being stronger in BW, but the way that units clump in SC2 means that any form of aoe is just much more effective. Edit: The sad thing is that I actually really like Warpgate, Sentries and the concept of the Colossus, but I think a lot more people would be happy if we could find some kind of even ground where gateway units were a little stronger, and Colossi/HT were a little weaker such that Protoss has a more stable early game and Colossi/HT wouldn't require quite as hard counters as they currently do. well, he actually said in a post before that one that they were nerfed. And I disagree that they suck "because of warpgate". Of course you could buff them, balance PvZ and PvT completly differently (assuming that the game is balanced now, there will most likely be imbalances after balanceunnecessary buffs) and be fine while keeping warpgate. The question for me however is: PvX right now is 1-3 robo/stargate + 5-10 warpgates. Why do I want this setup to change to 0-1 robo/stargate + 10-15 warpgates? Protoss armies already consist of gateway units for the most part and only need very little help from other techs. So why do I want Protoss being balanced around "gateway only, tech is optional". With or without warpgate, I dislike the thought of "just blink good enough and you'll counter roach/hydra". Or zealot/archon not being a midgame timing, but just amoving it's way to victory over bio all game long. I want Protoss to be forced to use most of their techs, just like Zerg has to, and like Terran at least has to use one of their separate techpaths (and combines that a lot with vikings, medivacs, hellions, hellbats, tanks, mines). I know, warpgate is a powerful tool. But that doesn't mean the units coming of it have to be balanced down because of it. Look at larva. Not every unit coming of larva "just sucks", and larva is a much more potent timing attack tool than investing into cybercore + warpgate + X gateways. Basically what it comes down to is, that in Starcraft all units (apart from the marine) have some major drawbacks. Protoss just has all the wrong drawbacks. Immobility and/or low damage for most units. + Show Spoiler +If you just play any random RTS game, you can quickly identify the fun units. The high damage dealing, highly mobile ones. The ones that Protoss doesn't have enough of. Ah, my bad, I must have missed that part. Okay of course, you *can* buff them, but not to the same cost effectiveness of their similar counterparts in Terran and Zerg (Ie Marine Marauder and Ling Roach) because otherwise Warpgate timings will become too strong, this is just simply how it is. I never said anything about removing Protoss's reliance on tech completely, so please don't even bother with that sort of talk, I just don't want to have to rely on tech to match units on the same tier. The way I would have it, compositions would be pretty much the same as they are now, but with more freedom in how the compositions were attained. Think about it, you would still want to have Colossus/HT in your army because aoe damage is always great, but you wouldn't be held back by having to invest into either just to feel safe moving out onto the map when your opponent has more than a handful of Marines and Marauders. Higher tech units would still be required, but they wouldn't have to be quite so strong, and their counters wouldn't have to be so hard. I want all the races to have to rely on their tech just like you, but I don't want anything specific to be required or else I start to find it stale. Of course units that come from larva don't "just suck", but they do have to be balanced to take larva into account (time, cost, supply) or else they would be broken, gateway units are exactly the same, they have to be balanced with Warpgate taken into account and when I stated that they suck I was only referring to their cost effectiveness relative to the other races tier 1 units. Of course gateway units don't suck as a whole, but their relative weakness lends Protoss early game to have only two styles that really work: turtling or all-ining, and I don't find either of these styles particularly fun to play or watch*. *I haven't watched enough HotS yet to know if this is still the case, this is mostly my opinions from WoL.
I disagree. If Protoss had more powerful commited allins and agression of warpgate but was balanced to actually be agressive, all that would change is that Z/T would have to play less greedy (and maybe small adjustments would have to be made, but stuff like +50bunker HP, preresearched concussive shells, a cheaper roach warren and -10seconds build time on spines shouldn't break the game, right?).
But if 3gate aggression and 4gate allins would be the norm, Terrans could just open more safely with marauders and siegetanks and zerg builds would be 2base with a spine and roach/ling and Protoss would eventually have to retreat.
Similar for any 6-8gates. Etc.
Don't get me wrong, I believe warpgates are a powerful tool. But we are talking about a 20-30second advantage with a proxy pylon over reinforcing by rallying in a gateway unit rush. Which is not that huge.
Going back to units drawbacks of basic units:
Zerglings drawbacks are melee, no AA and splash vulnerability - basically endgame straight up engagement disadvantages and they don't offer AA. But they are good fighters in the early-mid game.
Roaches drawbacks are low range, no AA, bad supply ratio - basically you don't get enough of them into the combat in the lategame and they don't offer AA. But they are good fighters in the early-mid game.
Stalkers drawbacks are cost and damage output. Basically, they are bad fighters cost for cost.
Zealots drawbacks are melee, missing AA, missing mobility. They are kind of bad fighters in big mid-lategame engagements and don't offer a lot of mapcontrol potential.
Marines... well, they are vulnerable to massive splash and missing mobility prestim/medivac.
Marauders drawbacks are vulnerability to non-armored units and missing antiair and missing mobility prestim/medivac. Basically they are only good for as long as you can properly support them.
Similarily hydras, banelings, medivacs, hellions, mines are all rather good engagement units in the right composition/situation and rather mobile. While Sentries and Immortals are again rather on the immobile side and - though the immortal is a really good *inyourfaceunit* - not really strong damage dealers for their cost.
So what it comes down to is that gateway units (in particular the stalker) by design are made to be very good at everything - but straight up engagements and harassment. On the flipside, zerg early game units suck at everything but straight up engagements early on and harassment.
So basically, if you made stalkers costefficient combat units vs ground in the early-midgame they would not have any drawbacks. It's the design of the stalker (/dragoon, though it wasn't visible in BW PvT, because bio wasn't viable) that makes Protoss gameplay stale in SC2.
You could for sure balance the stalker costefficient with or without warpgate in the game - but it would require other drawbacks like no AA, lower range, worse blink, worse cost/supply ratio, slower. You can't have the whole package in one unit in an RTS, but that's what you are getting if you buff the stalkers costefficiency. Warpgate or not.
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On April 16 2013 21:04 Big J wrote:
You could for sure balance the stalker costefficient with or without warpgate in the game - but it would require other drawbacks like no AA, lower range, worse blink, worse cost/supply ratio, slower. You can't have the whole package in one unit in an RTS, but that's what you are getting if you buff the stalkers costefficiency. Warpgate or not.
What you're describing is an Immortal built from gateway. Which is exactly how things were in SC2 until beta, when it was moved to Robo because of the warpgate mechanic.
I jusy wish they had went for moving warpgate to twilight instead. So you could still have better gateway army, keep warpgate and delay the 4gate which was so popular early on.
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On April 16 2013 21:58 Kakaru2 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2013 21:04 Big J wrote:
You could for sure balance the stalker costefficient with or without warpgate in the game - but it would require other drawbacks like no AA, lower range, worse blink, worse cost/supply ratio, slower. You can't have the whole package in one unit in an RTS, but that's what you are getting if you buff the stalkers costefficiency. Warpgate or not. What you're describing is an Immortal built from gateway. Which is exactly how things were in SC2 until beta, when it was moved to Robo because of the warpgate mechanic. I jusy wish they had went for moving warpgate to twilight instead. So you could still have better gateway army, keep warpgate and delay the 4gate which was so popular early on.
I actually think it would be really cool if Immortals came out of GW/WG, of course they would need some tweaking but giving protoss access to a strong, anti-armored ground unit (to compete with mass roachs & marauders) would really round out the gateway army early while letting the stalker be the more fragile/mobile fighter.
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Protoss in BW their units were strong. You didn't just throw your units at them without caring because with the right movements the protoss army would tear your to shreds losing only minimal supply. The correct use of expensive, high HP and high damage units could cripple your army in seconds. Their spell casters did huge damage and had unique abilities. In this game no matter where you go in the protoss army it seems like another Z or T, but they're called protoss and their marines and zerglings are just more expensive. Their threats as well are not only countered easily (especially by T), but countered by a limited amount of units. This being said protoss can still win in HOTS, but have to play in a style that mimics zerg almost in my opinion especially with the MSC. I don't like where their identity is going with the hit and run tactic or the sit back until maxed air army comes out. The bulldog, reaver drop, DT drop, storm drop, mass gateway, carrier switch, the vsZ deathball, are all replaced by what T and Z did and still do. Create a bunch of core units and use those in different fashions. Sure there are variations, but I liked watching protoss for what they could do with just the smallest bit of tech in BW and I feel like they've been changed to match what the other races do and that is unfortunate. Maybe some original shit will happen and I will have to eat my words, but the new tech units in this game don't give me the feeling that I'm wrong.
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It is very hard for me to understand the relevancy of this post coming from broodwar.
Let me explain.
In broodwar, the meta game has switched a few times creating diferent styles and builds.
The reality, is the builds used nowdays are almost living on the edge, since one small mistake in those builds can cost you the game (like in starcraft 2 when flash CC first opening got killed 1 zealot and 1 stalker).
The real problem in sc2 is hard counters. And i do not mean build orders, i mean units.
In broodwar, since the AI of the units was so poor, skill was a basic requirement in order to play the game efficiently.
So in general, micro had a lot more aplications than in sc2.
If i was to ask in sc2: What is the counter as terran for colossus? THe answer is obvious: Vikings.
If i ask the same question in broodwar: What is the counter to Reavers? There is no instant answer. Normally it would be a very very long answer that would take in consideration lots of scenarios.
WHy do i consider this so important?
Becouse if the counters are light, small adjustments (and i mean really small ones, like pulling your scvs off gas in tvp to get a faster CC), create new variations of builds that are very efficient.
But if the counters are so 1 sided, those differences are less effective.
Blizzard created a very EPIC game with starcraft 2, perhaps 2 epic for its own good.
There are way too many units that in the right situation Destroy the opponent. It also happened in broodwar, but not at this scale.
Its especially clear when koreans play vs foreigners (koreans practice a huge amount of hours so they can identyfy builds a lot easier).
Not in all cases, but vs mid tier foreigners who actually play rather well, can fight vs top foreigners sort of ok, but almost always get rolled over by a mid-tier korean.
Many pros have actually stated their concern that this creates a boring game since once you master the machanics, your wins are not satisfaying since you win due to army composition and not due to skill. And of course same goes for loosing.
The first time i thought about this was when i was playing the game back when it came out and i was playing 3v3 at highest level (top 8 worldwide back then).
I was making a 4 gate push with only stalkers since i could micro them, and while the zerg had no speedlings, was basicly boringly easy, but once he had speed, there was nothing i could do.
Most people would argue that its normal and that its the way the game operates ( that you need to adapt to situations and progress to a different tech tree), and while i agree partially, the switch should not be so drastic that it goes from a 90% win scenario in battles to a 90% loose scenario from 1 upgrade.
Basicly that nerfs the importane of mechanical skill, and improves the imporance of "getting the build right".
As a result to this, i ended up going 9 pool speedlings every 3v3, as the aression was so early, that there was no way to nerf the skill i had due to choosing the right build.
The fun part was that eventually (about 3 months after that), every zerg i met in 3v3 was going 9 pool speed, every terran 2 rax, and only the protoss deviated a bit (not always 2 gates).
I do belive that Protoss require more trickery in sc2, but the main problem i thin resides elsewhere. In the early years of broodwar professional gaming, there also were a lot of tricky plays, but the difference was that the unit control did not yet archive its full potential, so there was room for improvment, but in sc2, that control is almost at its top, and yet the unit imbalances are still far too powerfull.
Thats at least how i see it.
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On April 16 2013 21:58 Kakaru2 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2013 21:04 Big J wrote:
You could for sure balance the stalker costefficient with or without warpgate in the game - but it would require other drawbacks like no AA, lower range, worse blink, worse cost/supply ratio, slower. You can't have the whole package in one unit in an RTS, but that's what you are getting if you buff the stalkers costefficiency. Warpgate or not. What you're describing is an Immortal built from gateway. Which is exactly how things were in SC2 until beta, when it was moved to Robo because of the warpgate mechanic. I jusy wish they had went for moving warpgate to twilight instead. So you could still have better gateway army, keep warpgate and delay the 4gate which was so popular early on.
Was it moved there because of warpgate, or maybe because it was just too powerful on a low tech production structure?
Think about the sentry/immortal allin in PvZ. Then imagine if the same allin could be done without building a robo and by building 2-3immortals at a time from your first gateways, instead of 1 from the two times more expensive robo. Sounds pretty broken to me...
Think about this for a second: every unit coming from a gateway is two supply and costs roughly 100-200resources (BW gateway, SC2 gateway, SC2 warpgate... doesn't matter). Sure Archons and Dark Archons are gateway units - but they need two production slots per unit!
So wouldn't the 350 resource, 4supply immortal just break the investment balance of gateways? I mean, a gateway capable of producing an immortal is 2times as powerful as a gateway producing a stalker, 3.5 times as powerful as a gateway producing a zealot.
You can check out the OneGoal mod, where the Immortal is a gateway unit and gateways are the standard way to mass units as protoss. To achive that, they had to scale the Immortal way down, as far as I know and it's now something like a 2-3supply ~200resource, 200HP unit.
Also, that's not what I was saying. All I was saying is that there needs to be some downside to building a unit in an RTS. The given downsides were just examples that could be easily applied to the stalker. You could as well do something else with them, like a HP nerf or just a weaker airattack.
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On April 16 2013 16:31 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2013 14:29 Myrddraal wrote:On April 16 2013 05:21 Big J wrote:On April 16 2013 02:48 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 22:52 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 22:24 Foxxan wrote:On April 15 2013 21:37 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 19:31 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 18:02 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 17:35 Zarahtra wrote:
[quote]
Well the big thing about warp gates is they need to be balanced in a way that a reinforcement of upto 40 warp gate supply doesn't win the protoss the game outright, that is to say, they force gateway units to suck(or in the case of the HT, not come out truly combat ready). It has just forced Blizzard's hand to nerf the protoss units from being the strong tough warrior to being gimmicky glasscannons that desperately need to hit a timing before x upgrade of the opponent is done. Which patches apart from khaydarian amulet removal + zealot buff are you referring to? The WoL patch. As warp gate was in WoL from the start, gateway units sucked pretty much from the start and the real impact units were their tech units, which is just a sad design which has left protoss so gimmicky. From TvP POV, if you snipe/Emp the templars and kill the colossi the rest of the protoss army doesn't stand a chance. I'll concede that blink stalkers do break that chain in PvZ if you mass them enough, but that requires a critical mass/deathball, which isn't exactly the strength I wish protoss had more of. The protoss army is imo just to weak without their power units, which comes both from the remax capability provided in lategame, but moreso I'd say from being able to be 1 round of production ahead with their very many different allins in the early game. Which connection do those things need to have? Gateway units have been slightly buffed BW-->SC2 (blink, dragoon range upgrade not needed, nearly same stats, added sentries). They follow the exact same design rules all other Starcraft units go: the stronger the unit, the less costefficent. Protoss smallest units are zealots, stalkers which are naturally less costefficient than the weaker marine, zergling, roach/BW hydralisk. The only thing that changed is that the pathing/selection/gameplay changed, and now Protoss doesn't have the advantage of "easy control" anymore where 12 Protoss T1 units would be capable of combating 24 Zerg/Terran T1 units due to better control. (and even that wasn't quite true in BW, as marines&medics just like hydra/ling do counter gateway units and Protoss was just as dependend as in SC2 to go reaver&templar against those) You cant compare bw>sc2, you have to see the whole package. The protoss units are worse in power compared to zerg,terran in sc2 than in broodwar Basic gateway units are worse than bio, because that's the whole point of making bio viable in SC2. (would be quite a fail if zealot/stalker could hold it's own against MMM AND Protoss would get all the high tech tech options on the same upgrade, hell, templar/archon even on the same production path) And Protoss was already superdependend on all forms of tech units in BW against Zerg, nothing has changed on that front. Gateway units are shit with good pathing and unlimited selection. By design. Non of that has anything to do with Warpgate whatsoever. Seriously guys... Not every unit in the game can be as powerful as the marine. All that whining about Z/P bad low tier units... yes, one races T1 units will always be better than anothers, just by how the techpaths work. That doesn't mean that larva, warpgate, sentries, infestors caused "the units to suck". Hell, if you ask me the only thing that makes other units suck in this game is the marine, which has caused actual nerfs on other units. Not just imaginary that people come up with as theory, after year long figuering which units dominate which other. (blizzard surely did not have the time to figure out the SC2 2013 gameplay in their planning stages 2008,2009) The point is that they are too weak compared to most notably bio, and their tech units are to strong compared to most notably all of the tech units of terran. The core units of protoss suck in comparison to the core units of terran. There will always be a best unit, or in the least a best unit in certain situation, but if we are comparing game design of TvP in BW and SC2, neither race had a power unit such as the ht/colossi are in SC2. The ht was strong in BW, but a single one didn't pack as much punch as in SC2(for multiple reasons). My core point is that I think TvP especially would be more rewarding if the say 90/140 supply of units in the protoss army were actually the dangerous part of the army and the tech units were the support units rather than the other way around. It's been the topic of various discussions that the reaver was way more powerful than the Colossus. And HTs weren't shabby either with their 112 damage storms. Even more, bio or biomech wasn't even viable to begin with against those units, even though MarineMedic beats Dragoon and Zealot in Broodwar. The reality has nothing to do with warpgate or sentry based gateway nerfs. Blizzard made bio viable by tuning down Protoss splash and tuning up Terran with Marauder&Medivac instead of usless Firebats and damage/square reducing medics (not to mention the implicit drop play you get from medivacs, "for free" when you just go for combat healing). Of course you may say that they have gone overboard with Terran bio and not far enough with Protoss splash. But in my opinion it will always come down less to how good/bad warpgate units are, but rather that Protoss as a whole concept is basically just "moooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrr beef". Which makes Protoss units trade badly, as they don't have the damage output to achieve anything when outnumbered. (unlike marines, zerglings, banelings, mines, tanks... which will often take a few enemies with them to the grave and therefore allow for "let's try to attack there, it can't be too bad" kind of gameplay). (zealots, oracles and templar being the exceptions) On April 16 2013 04:45 Silencioseu wrote:On April 15 2013 21:37 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 19:31 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 18:02 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 17:35 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 17:00 sUgArMaNiAc wrote:On April 15 2013 07:03 IcedBacon wrote:
Warpgate is my biggest problem with Protoss. It's forgiving for bad macro and also allows for so much of the cheesy shit that P can do. Floating 2k mins? Just throw down 6 more gateways and warp in a big round. Terran can do this to with barracks though... only difference is protoss can choose where to warp in. Well the big thing about warp gates is they need to be balanced in a way that a reinforcement of upto 40 warp gate supply doesn't win the protoss the game outright, that is to say, they force gateway units to suck(or in the case of the HT, not come out truly combat ready). It has just forced Blizzard's hand to nerf the protoss units from being the strong tough warrior to being gimmicky glasscannons that desperately need to hit a timing before x upgrade of the opponent is done. Which patches apart from khaydarian amulet removal + zealot buff are you referring to? The WoL patch. As warp gate was in WoL from the start, gateway units sucked pretty much from the start and the real impact units were their tech units, which is just a sad design which has left protoss so gimmicky. From TvP POV, if you snipe/Emp the templars and kill the colossi the rest of the protoss army doesn't stand a chance. I'll concede that blink stalkers do break that chain in PvZ if you mass them enough, but that requires a critical mass/deathball, which isn't exactly the strength I wish protoss had more of. The protoss army is imo just to weak without their power units, which comes both from the remax capability provided in lategame, but moreso I'd say from being able to be 1 round of production ahead with their very many different allins in the early game. Which connection do those things need to have? Gateway units have been slightly buffed BW-->SC2 (blink, dragoon range upgrade not needed, nearly same stats, added sentries). They follow the exact same design rules all other Starcraft units go: the stronger the unit, the less costefficent. Protoss smallest units are zealots, stalkers which are naturally less costefficient than the weaker marine, zergling, roach/BW hydralisk. The only thing that changed is that the pathing/selection/gameplay changed, and now Protoss doesn't have the advantage of "easy control" anymore where 12 Protoss T1 units would be capable of combating 24 Zerg/Terran T1 units due to better control. (and even that wasn't quite true in BW, as marines&medics just like hydra/ling do counter gateway units and Protoss was just as dependend as in SC2 to go reaver&templar against those) But there was no marauder in bw right? right. That doesn't mean that "gateway units have been nerfed because of warpgate". It means that Terran got the marauder. Not some arbitrary: you see guys, after years of Starcraft 2 we know that bio beats gateway builds. Obviously that stuff was nerfed long before we figured this out due to sentries and warpgates He didn't say that gateway units were nerfed because of warpgate just that they sucked because of it*, I don't really see how you can deny that. The connection they have is that if gateway units were buffed then one base gateway all-ins, which were very popular early on in WoL, would have become too powerful since Warpgate can effectively negate the defenders advantage. *The difference being that gateway units were not nerfed, but the other races early units have become more effective and they could not buff gateway units to match them directly, so they had to indirectly buff them defensively by adding sentries followed by compensating for their offensive weakness with strong splash in Colossi and High Templar. I know you mentioned HT and Reavers being stronger in BW, but the way that units clump in SC2 means that any form of aoe is just much more effective. Edit: The sad thing is that I actually really like Warpgate, Sentries and the concept of the Colossus, but I think a lot more people would be happy if we could find some kind of even ground where gateway units were a little stronger, and Colossi/HT were a little weaker such that Protoss has a more stable early game and Colossi/HT wouldn't require quite as hard counters as they currently do. well, he actually said in a post before that one that they were nerfed. And I disagree that they suck "because of warpgate". Of course you could buff them, balance PvZ and PvT completly differently (assuming that the game is balanced now, there will most likely be imbalances after balanceunnecessary buffs) and be fine while keeping warpgate. The question for me however is: PvX right now is 1-3 robo/stargate + 5-10 warpgates. Why do I want this setup to change to 0-1 robo/stargate + 10-15 warpgates? Protoss armies already consist of gateway units for the most part and only need very little help from other techs. So why do I want Protoss being balanced around "gateway only, tech is optional". With or without warpgate, I dislike the thought of "just blink good enough and you'll counter roach/hydra". Or zealot/archon not being a midgame timing, but just amoving it's way to victory over bio all game long. I want Protoss to be forced to use most of their techs, just like Zerg has to, and like Terran at least has to use one of their separate techpaths (and combines that a lot with vikings, medivacs, hellions, hellbats, tanks, mines). I know, warpgate is a powerful tool. But that doesn't mean the units coming of it have to be balanced down because of it. Look at larva. Not every unit coming of larva "just sucks", and larva is a much more potent timing attack tool than investing into cybercore + warpgate + X gateways. Basically what it comes down to is, that in Starcraft all units (apart from the marine) have some major drawbacks. Protoss just has all the wrong drawbacks. Immobility and/or low damage for most units. + Show Spoiler +If you just play any random RTS game, you can quickly identify the fun units. The high damage dealing, highly mobile ones. The ones that Protoss doesn't have enough of.
I just want to comment on the last bit you had to say. While the every unit has a weakness but marine thing is inflammatory, and I can't necessarily agree with it (they have low HP, that's their weakness), I totally agree with the fact that usually the fast high damage dealing units are the most fun units.
Really it comes down to harassment and small battle tactics. To me, this is why the old reaver and old high templar was more fun. You could shuttle them around (fast) and do some nice damage. Difference between old high temp and new high temp is that the old one did more damage so it was better against more types of units, and you had 250 energy instead of 200 so you could cast it more frequently. And armies are so fast in SC2 the high templar can only storm when they come to you. Colossus vs reaver has been argued plenty, no need to rehash.
Stalkers almost are fun units, but their damage output is so low it ends up being too risky to use them as harassment. Dark Templar are almost fun, but they attack so slowly they are better against buildings than anything else.
Mutas are fun to use. MMM fun. Reapers are fun. Window mines, less fun. High templar less fun (so slow vs the speed of armies in SC2).
Phoenix are a little fun, but damage output is terrible. Oracles are a little fun but so hit or miss.
Still, there are other things that are fun. Swarmhosts are fun, not fast. Sentries are fun, not fast or damage dealers. Some things are just fun because they are cool. But even with those units, you need to be engaged with the units and I really think every race needs fast high damage units for certain situations to make them more fun overall.
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On April 17 2013 01:15 Blacklizard wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2013 16:31 Big J wrote:On April 16 2013 14:29 Myrddraal wrote:On April 16 2013 05:21 Big J wrote:On April 16 2013 02:48 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 22:52 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 22:24 Foxxan wrote:On April 15 2013 21:37 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 19:31 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 18:02 Big J wrote:
[quote]
Which patches apart from khaydarian amulet removal + zealot buff are you referring to? The WoL patch. As warp gate was in WoL from the start, gateway units sucked pretty much from the start and the real impact units were their tech units, which is just a sad design which has left protoss so gimmicky. From TvP POV, if you snipe/Emp the templars and kill the colossi the rest of the protoss army doesn't stand a chance. I'll concede that blink stalkers do break that chain in PvZ if you mass them enough, but that requires a critical mass/deathball, which isn't exactly the strength I wish protoss had more of. The protoss army is imo just to weak without their power units, which comes both from the remax capability provided in lategame, but moreso I'd say from being able to be 1 round of production ahead with their very many different allins in the early game. Which connection do those things need to have? Gateway units have been slightly buffed BW-->SC2 (blink, dragoon range upgrade not needed, nearly same stats, added sentries). They follow the exact same design rules all other Starcraft units go: the stronger the unit, the less costefficent. Protoss smallest units are zealots, stalkers which are naturally less costefficient than the weaker marine, zergling, roach/BW hydralisk. The only thing that changed is that the pathing/selection/gameplay changed, and now Protoss doesn't have the advantage of "easy control" anymore where 12 Protoss T1 units would be capable of combating 24 Zerg/Terran T1 units due to better control. (and even that wasn't quite true in BW, as marines&medics just like hydra/ling do counter gateway units and Protoss was just as dependend as in SC2 to go reaver&templar against those) You cant compare bw>sc2, you have to see the whole package. The protoss units are worse in power compared to zerg,terran in sc2 than in broodwar Basic gateway units are worse than bio, because that's the whole point of making bio viable in SC2. (would be quite a fail if zealot/stalker could hold it's own against MMM AND Protoss would get all the high tech tech options on the same upgrade, hell, templar/archon even on the same production path) And Protoss was already superdependend on all forms of tech units in BW against Zerg, nothing has changed on that front. Gateway units are shit with good pathing and unlimited selection. By design. Non of that has anything to do with Warpgate whatsoever. Seriously guys... Not every unit in the game can be as powerful as the marine. All that whining about Z/P bad low tier units... yes, one races T1 units will always be better than anothers, just by how the techpaths work. That doesn't mean that larva, warpgate, sentries, infestors caused "the units to suck". Hell, if you ask me the only thing that makes other units suck in this game is the marine, which has caused actual nerfs on other units. Not just imaginary that people come up with as theory, after year long figuering which units dominate which other. (blizzard surely did not have the time to figure out the SC2 2013 gameplay in their planning stages 2008,2009) The point is that they are too weak compared to most notably bio, and their tech units are to strong compared to most notably all of the tech units of terran. The core units of protoss suck in comparison to the core units of terran. There will always be a best unit, or in the least a best unit in certain situation, but if we are comparing game design of TvP in BW and SC2, neither race had a power unit such as the ht/colossi are in SC2. The ht was strong in BW, but a single one didn't pack as much punch as in SC2(for multiple reasons). My core point is that I think TvP especially would be more rewarding if the say 90/140 supply of units in the protoss army were actually the dangerous part of the army and the tech units were the support units rather than the other way around. It's been the topic of various discussions that the reaver was way more powerful than the Colossus. And HTs weren't shabby either with their 112 damage storms. Even more, bio or biomech wasn't even viable to begin with against those units, even though MarineMedic beats Dragoon and Zealot in Broodwar. The reality has nothing to do with warpgate or sentry based gateway nerfs. Blizzard made bio viable by tuning down Protoss splash and tuning up Terran with Marauder&Medivac instead of usless Firebats and damage/square reducing medics (not to mention the implicit drop play you get from medivacs, "for free" when you just go for combat healing). Of course you may say that they have gone overboard with Terran bio and not far enough with Protoss splash. But in my opinion it will always come down less to how good/bad warpgate units are, but rather that Protoss as a whole concept is basically just "moooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrr beef". Which makes Protoss units trade badly, as they don't have the damage output to achieve anything when outnumbered. (unlike marines, zerglings, banelings, mines, tanks... which will often take a few enemies with them to the grave and therefore allow for "let's try to attack there, it can't be too bad" kind of gameplay). (zealots, oracles and templar being the exceptions) On April 16 2013 04:45 Silencioseu wrote:On April 15 2013 21:37 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 19:31 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 18:02 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 17:35 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 17:00 sUgArMaNiAc wrote:
[quote]
Terran can do this to with barracks though... only difference is protoss can choose where to warp in. Well the big thing about warp gates is they need to be balanced in a way that a reinforcement of upto 40 warp gate supply doesn't win the protoss the game outright, that is to say, they force gateway units to suck(or in the case of the HT, not come out truly combat ready). It has just forced Blizzard's hand to nerf the protoss units from being the strong tough warrior to being gimmicky glasscannons that desperately need to hit a timing before x upgrade of the opponent is done. Which patches apart from khaydarian amulet removal + zealot buff are you referring to? The WoL patch. As warp gate was in WoL from the start, gateway units sucked pretty much from the start and the real impact units were their tech units, which is just a sad design which has left protoss so gimmicky. From TvP POV, if you snipe/Emp the templars and kill the colossi the rest of the protoss army doesn't stand a chance. I'll concede that blink stalkers do break that chain in PvZ if you mass them enough, but that requires a critical mass/deathball, which isn't exactly the strength I wish protoss had more of. The protoss army is imo just to weak without their power units, which comes both from the remax capability provided in lategame, but moreso I'd say from being able to be 1 round of production ahead with their very many different allins in the early game. Which connection do those things need to have? Gateway units have been slightly buffed BW-->SC2 (blink, dragoon range upgrade not needed, nearly same stats, added sentries). They follow the exact same design rules all other Starcraft units go: the stronger the unit, the less costefficent. Protoss smallest units are zealots, stalkers which are naturally less costefficient than the weaker marine, zergling, roach/BW hydralisk. The only thing that changed is that the pathing/selection/gameplay changed, and now Protoss doesn't have the advantage of "easy control" anymore where 12 Protoss T1 units would be capable of combating 24 Zerg/Terran T1 units due to better control. (and even that wasn't quite true in BW, as marines&medics just like hydra/ling do counter gateway units and Protoss was just as dependend as in SC2 to go reaver&templar against those) But there was no marauder in bw right? right. That doesn't mean that "gateway units have been nerfed because of warpgate". It means that Terran got the marauder. Not some arbitrary: you see guys, after years of Starcraft 2 we know that bio beats gateway builds. Obviously that stuff was nerfed long before we figured this out due to sentries and warpgates He didn't say that gateway units were nerfed because of warpgate just that they sucked because of it*, I don't really see how you can deny that. The connection they have is that if gateway units were buffed then one base gateway all-ins, which were very popular early on in WoL, would have become too powerful since Warpgate can effectively negate the defenders advantage. *The difference being that gateway units were not nerfed, but the other races early units have become more effective and they could not buff gateway units to match them directly, so they had to indirectly buff them defensively by adding sentries followed by compensating for their offensive weakness with strong splash in Colossi and High Templar. I know you mentioned HT and Reavers being stronger in BW, but the way that units clump in SC2 means that any form of aoe is just much more effective. Edit: The sad thing is that I actually really like Warpgate, Sentries and the concept of the Colossus, but I think a lot more people would be happy if we could find some kind of even ground where gateway units were a little stronger, and Colossi/HT were a little weaker such that Protoss has a more stable early game and Colossi/HT wouldn't require quite as hard counters as they currently do. well, he actually said in a post before that one that they were nerfed. And I disagree that they suck "because of warpgate". Of course you could buff them, balance PvZ and PvT completly differently (assuming that the game is balanced now, there will most likely be imbalances after balanceunnecessary buffs) and be fine while keeping warpgate. The question for me however is: PvX right now is 1-3 robo/stargate + 5-10 warpgates. Why do I want this setup to change to 0-1 robo/stargate + 10-15 warpgates? Protoss armies already consist of gateway units for the most part and only need very little help from other techs. So why do I want Protoss being balanced around "gateway only, tech is optional". With or without warpgate, I dislike the thought of "just blink good enough and you'll counter roach/hydra". Or zealot/archon not being a midgame timing, but just amoving it's way to victory over bio all game long. I want Protoss to be forced to use most of their techs, just like Zerg has to, and like Terran at least has to use one of their separate techpaths (and combines that a lot with vikings, medivacs, hellions, hellbats, tanks, mines). I know, warpgate is a powerful tool. But that doesn't mean the units coming of it have to be balanced down because of it. Look at larva. Not every unit coming of larva "just sucks", and larva is a much more potent timing attack tool than investing into cybercore + warpgate + X gateways. Basically what it comes down to is, that in Starcraft all units (apart from the marine) have some major drawbacks. Protoss just has all the wrong drawbacks. Immobility and/or low damage for most units. + Show Spoiler +If you just play any random RTS game, you can quickly identify the fun units. The high damage dealing, highly mobile ones. The ones that Protoss doesn't have enough of. I just want to comment on the last bit you had to say. While the every unit has a weakness but marine thing is inflammatory, and I can't necessarily agree with it (they have low HP, that's their weakness), I totally agree with the fact that usually the fast high damage dealing units are the most fun units. Really it comes down to harassment and small battle tactics. To me, this is why the old reaver and old high templar was more fun. You could shuttle them around (fast) and do some nice damage. Difference between old high temp and new high temp is that the old one did more damage so it was better against more types of units, and you had 250 energy instead of 200 so you could cast it more frequently. And armies are so fast in SC2 the high templar can only storm when they come to you. Colossus vs reaver has been argued plenty, no need to rehash. Stalkers almost are fun units, but their damage output is so low it ends up being too risky to use them as harassment. Dark Templar are almost fun, but they attack so slowly they are better against buildings than anything else. Mutas are fun to use. MMM fun. Reapers are fun. Window mines, less fun. High templar less fun (so slow vs the speed of armies in SC2). Phoenix are a little fun, but damage output is terrible. Oracles are a little fun but so hit or miss. Still, there are other things that are fun. Swarmhosts are fun, not fast. Sentries are fun, not fast or damage dealers. Some things are just fun because they are cool. But even with those units, you need to be engaged with the units and I really think every race needs fast high damage units for certain situations to make them more fun overall.
Oh yeah, there are definatly things that are a lot of fun and not fast+high damage. But they usally fullfill one of those conditions and often have huge range, which is kind of similar to high speed inthe sense that they are able to attack without actually being forced to fight. (siege tanks in TvT, swarmhosts)
About the marine thing. I do believe they have drawbacks. But they are not that severe. Like, you mentioned health. 55HP for 50minerals isn't too bad (there are quite worse units in that category). It is only bad against splash, where the HP/unit matters. The other one would be mobility.
And both of them are provided by medivacs to a certain degree.
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On April 16 2013 16:31 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2013 14:29 Myrddraal wrote:On April 16 2013 05:21 Big J wrote:On April 16 2013 02:48 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 22:52 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 22:24 Foxxan wrote:On April 15 2013 21:37 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 19:31 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 18:02 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 17:35 Zarahtra wrote:
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Well the big thing about warp gates is they need to be balanced in a way that a reinforcement of upto 40 warp gate supply doesn't win the protoss the game outright, that is to say, they force gateway units to suck(or in the case of the HT, not come out truly combat ready). It has just forced Blizzard's hand to nerf the protoss units from being the strong tough warrior to being gimmicky glasscannons that desperately need to hit a timing before x upgrade of the opponent is done. Which patches apart from khaydarian amulet removal + zealot buff are you referring to? The WoL patch. As warp gate was in WoL from the start, gateway units sucked pretty much from the start and the real impact units were their tech units, which is just a sad design which has left protoss so gimmicky. From TvP POV, if you snipe/Emp the templars and kill the colossi the rest of the protoss army doesn't stand a chance. I'll concede that blink stalkers do break that chain in PvZ if you mass them enough, but that requires a critical mass/deathball, which isn't exactly the strength I wish protoss had more of. The protoss army is imo just to weak without their power units, which comes both from the remax capability provided in lategame, but moreso I'd say from being able to be 1 round of production ahead with their very many different allins in the early game. Which connection do those things need to have? Gateway units have been slightly buffed BW-->SC2 (blink, dragoon range upgrade not needed, nearly same stats, added sentries). They follow the exact same design rules all other Starcraft units go: the stronger the unit, the less costefficent. Protoss smallest units are zealots, stalkers which are naturally less costefficient than the weaker marine, zergling, roach/BW hydralisk. The only thing that changed is that the pathing/selection/gameplay changed, and now Protoss doesn't have the advantage of "easy control" anymore where 12 Protoss T1 units would be capable of combating 24 Zerg/Terran T1 units due to better control. (and even that wasn't quite true in BW, as marines&medics just like hydra/ling do counter gateway units and Protoss was just as dependend as in SC2 to go reaver&templar against those) You cant compare bw>sc2, you have to see the whole package. The protoss units are worse in power compared to zerg,terran in sc2 than in broodwar Basic gateway units are worse than bio, because that's the whole point of making bio viable in SC2. (would be quite a fail if zealot/stalker could hold it's own against MMM AND Protoss would get all the high tech tech options on the same upgrade, hell, templar/archon even on the same production path) And Protoss was already superdependend on all forms of tech units in BW against Zerg, nothing has changed on that front. Gateway units are shit with good pathing and unlimited selection. By design. Non of that has anything to do with Warpgate whatsoever. Seriously guys... Not every unit in the game can be as powerful as the marine. All that whining about Z/P bad low tier units... yes, one races T1 units will always be better than anothers, just by how the techpaths work. That doesn't mean that larva, warpgate, sentries, infestors caused "the units to suck". Hell, if you ask me the only thing that makes other units suck in this game is the marine, which has caused actual nerfs on other units. Not just imaginary that people come up with as theory, after year long figuering which units dominate which other. (blizzard surely did not have the time to figure out the SC2 2013 gameplay in their planning stages 2008,2009) The point is that they are too weak compared to most notably bio, and their tech units are to strong compared to most notably all of the tech units of terran. The core units of protoss suck in comparison to the core units of terran. There will always be a best unit, or in the least a best unit in certain situation, but if we are comparing game design of TvP in BW and SC2, neither race had a power unit such as the ht/colossi are in SC2. The ht was strong in BW, but a single one didn't pack as much punch as in SC2(for multiple reasons). My core point is that I think TvP especially would be more rewarding if the say 90/140 supply of units in the protoss army were actually the dangerous part of the army and the tech units were the support units rather than the other way around. It's been the topic of various discussions that the reaver was way more powerful than the Colossus. And HTs weren't shabby either with their 112 damage storms. Even more, bio or biomech wasn't even viable to begin with against those units, even though MarineMedic beats Dragoon and Zealot in Broodwar. The reality has nothing to do with warpgate or sentry based gateway nerfs. Blizzard made bio viable by tuning down Protoss splash and tuning up Terran with Marauder&Medivac instead of usless Firebats and damage/square reducing medics (not to mention the implicit drop play you get from medivacs, "for free" when you just go for combat healing). Of course you may say that they have gone overboard with Terran bio and not far enough with Protoss splash. But in my opinion it will always come down less to how good/bad warpgate units are, but rather that Protoss as a whole concept is basically just "moooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrr beef". Which makes Protoss units trade badly, as they don't have the damage output to achieve anything when outnumbered. (unlike marines, zerglings, banelings, mines, tanks... which will often take a few enemies with them to the grave and therefore allow for "let's try to attack there, it can't be too bad" kind of gameplay). (zealots, oracles and templar being the exceptions) On April 16 2013 04:45 Silencioseu wrote:On April 15 2013 21:37 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 19:31 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 18:02 Big J wrote:On April 15 2013 17:35 Zarahtra wrote:On April 15 2013 17:00 sUgArMaNiAc wrote:On April 15 2013 07:03 IcedBacon wrote:
Warpgate is my biggest problem with Protoss. It's forgiving for bad macro and also allows for so much of the cheesy shit that P can do. Floating 2k mins? Just throw down 6 more gateways and warp in a big round. Terran can do this to with barracks though... only difference is protoss can choose where to warp in. Well the big thing about warp gates is they need to be balanced in a way that a reinforcement of upto 40 warp gate supply doesn't win the protoss the game outright, that is to say, they force gateway units to suck(or in the case of the HT, not come out truly combat ready). It has just forced Blizzard's hand to nerf the protoss units from being the strong tough warrior to being gimmicky glasscannons that desperately need to hit a timing before x upgrade of the opponent is done. Which patches apart from khaydarian amulet removal + zealot buff are you referring to? The WoL patch. As warp gate was in WoL from the start, gateway units sucked pretty much from the start and the real impact units were their tech units, which is just a sad design which has left protoss so gimmicky. From TvP POV, if you snipe/Emp the templars and kill the colossi the rest of the protoss army doesn't stand a chance. I'll concede that blink stalkers do break that chain in PvZ if you mass them enough, but that requires a critical mass/deathball, which isn't exactly the strength I wish protoss had more of. The protoss army is imo just to weak without their power units, which comes both from the remax capability provided in lategame, but moreso I'd say from being able to be 1 round of production ahead with their very many different allins in the early game. Which connection do those things need to have? Gateway units have been slightly buffed BW-->SC2 (blink, dragoon range upgrade not needed, nearly same stats, added sentries). They follow the exact same design rules all other Starcraft units go: the stronger the unit, the less costefficent. Protoss smallest units are zealots, stalkers which are naturally less costefficient than the weaker marine, zergling, roach/BW hydralisk. The only thing that changed is that the pathing/selection/gameplay changed, and now Protoss doesn't have the advantage of "easy control" anymore where 12 Protoss T1 units would be capable of combating 24 Zerg/Terran T1 units due to better control. (and even that wasn't quite true in BW, as marines&medics just like hydra/ling do counter gateway units and Protoss was just as dependend as in SC2 to go reaver&templar against those) But there was no marauder in bw right? right. That doesn't mean that "gateway units have been nerfed because of warpgate". It means that Terran got the marauder. Not some arbitrary: you see guys, after years of Starcraft 2 we know that bio beats gateway builds. Obviously that stuff was nerfed long before we figured this out due to sentries and warpgates He didn't say that gateway units were nerfed because of warpgate just that they sucked because of it*, I don't really see how you can deny that. The connection they have is that if gateway units were buffed then one base gateway all-ins, which were very popular early on in WoL, would have become too powerful since Warpgate can effectively negate the defenders advantage. *The difference being that gateway units were not nerfed, but the other races early units have become more effective and they could not buff gateway units to match them directly, so they had to indirectly buff them defensively by adding sentries followed by compensating for their offensive weakness with strong splash in Colossi and High Templar. I know you mentioned HT and Reavers being stronger in BW, but the way that units clump in SC2 means that any form of aoe is just much more effective. Edit: The sad thing is that I actually really like Warpgate, Sentries and the concept of the Colossus, but I think a lot more people would be happy if we could find some kind of even ground where gateway units were a little stronger, and Colossi/HT were a little weaker such that Protoss has a more stable early game and Colossi/HT wouldn't require quite as hard counters as they currently do. well, he actually said in a post before that one that they were nerfed. And I disagree that they suck "because of warpgate". Of course you could buff them, balance PvZ and PvT completly differently (assuming that the game is balanced now, there will most likely be imbalances after balanceunnecessary buffs) and be fine while keeping warpgate. The question for me however is: PvX right now is 1-3 robo/stargate + 5-10 warpgates. Why do I want this setup to change to 0-1 robo/stargate + 10-15 warpgates? Protoss armies already consist of gateway units for the most part and only need very little help from other techs. So why do I want Protoss being balanced around "gateway only, tech is optional". With or without warpgate, I dislike the thought of "just blink good enough and you'll counter roach/hydra". Or zealot/archon not being a midgame timing, but just amoving it's way to victory over bio all game long. I want Protoss to be forced to use most of their techs, just like Zerg has to, and like Terran at least has to use one of their separate techpaths (and combines that a lot with vikings, medivacs, hellions, hellbats, tanks, mines). I know, warpgate is a powerful tool. But that doesn't mean the units coming of it have to be balanced down because of it. Look at larva. Not every unit coming of larva "just sucks", and larva is a much more potent timing attack tool than investing into cybercore + warpgate + X gateways. Basically what it comes down to is, that in Starcraft all units (apart from the marine) have some major drawbacks. Protoss just has all the wrong drawbacks. Immobility and/or low damage for most units. + Show Spoiler +If you just play any random RTS game, you can quickly identify the fun units. The high damage dealing, highly mobile ones. The ones that Protoss doesn't have enough of.
Well, I think you're misinterpreting the intention of Protoss complaints, though they are disjointed, rehashed, and so on. It's not the desire to stay on T1 until the end days, it's to normalize the tech pressure of the 3 races. I think Zerg is the most tech balanced. Each stage has pros and cons, but there is always pressure to progress in tech and switch in tech, this also might be because tech switch barrier of entry is low. While Terran and Protoss are somewhat two sides of the same spectrum. Terran have limited subsequent tech to progress to (whether or not that is objective or subjective is not germane to this discussion) while Protoss will struggle to get the money comp in whichever way possible, even if that means suboptimal macro -> production realization, and micro isn't really going to change things (think Immortals vs Zerglings). But now, reverse the counter situation, Protoss with the Immortal, and Zerg with Roach. Is the Roach heavy composition doomed? No. They have more leniency and now that Immortal push is their's to lose.
This leads to my next point. But first, because there's some controversy over what are core units, I'll just make up some labels for unit natures. We can try Payload units vs. Meat units. You have units that have critical windows in that particular battle (not timings), and then you have units that are just always as good as they are. So Payloads are like Colossi, Sentries, Ravens, Infestors, Voids. Payloads are tough to balance, mostly because their focus is on the most unstable part of the battle, the onset of it, where the reagents are at their maximum concentration, the surface area is at its max, and the reaction rate will naturally follow suit. They're almost all are antithetical to attrition or back and forth micro battles, because they want things done in 5s.
Because of the nonlinear dynamical system, minor imbalances may precipitate one-sided engagements very quickly. It's problematic from a balance and spectator point of view. I know that was a long primer, but here's the next point: Cue Protoss and their overreliance on this Payload model, except for Stalkers and Zealots (ironically both of their upgrades make them more Payload). Payloads also promote deathball, given how they want the 5s engagement, and the bigger the ball, the faster the battle is decided. Now let's compare Marine/Marauder. They are the Meat and the Payload. Granted, they're only very meaty because of Medivacs, and they would just be Payload were it not for heals, but nonetheless, in an MMM comp, MM is both Meat and Payload. So now it's hard to isolate weakness in this army without out-Payloading it or out-Meating it. Remember, Meat units win the long run because they're always good, but both Protoss Stalker and Zealot are meh in cost efficiency and all the Protoss Payloads take a tremendous amount of time to get energy or to even get there, so they can't Meat their way back into anything unless the battle was already won, and their Payload reinforcements are guaranteed to have no effect until much later. Real comebacks midbattle are solely enjoyed by T and Z because Roach/Ling and MM accomplish those goals very cost efficiently fresh out the box. If you doubt this, which race will most likely lose if they lost 80% of their army in battle? Which two races have a chance to rebound and carry it to lategame?
Could go on and on about it, but that's not the only scenario I see where the back-and-forth chain is broken. Another example is production vulnerability, meaning the enemy's capability of inhibiting your Payload unit production, because they are necessary in this hypercharged SC2 climate. All the Payloads of Toss come from 1-2 Robos or Stargates, or take 100s (55 + 45) warp-in to be combat ready Templar that still need to research their main spell. Imagine if Infestors took 100s and 200m/200g/110s to Fungal. Infestors already got nerfed down to Protoss level stats, Infestors got to taste the imba of Terran in WoL by simulating the Marine, and now nobody uses them, because nobody likes Protoss-level balance unless they absolutely must use them (i.e. Protoss players). The production building are usually stretched, especially Robo, where you need to pump out Collo/Obs I don't see the same production tension laid on Terran or Zerg as it is for Protoss. It reminds me of BW, because that was how Protoss assuredly killed Terran, by camping their Factories and invalidating them. It seems its reversed now. Can't stop 8-10 Barracks, easy to stop 1-2 Robos. And with TvP, they merely need to reach the natural for the same effect.
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I agree Protoss is a totally stupid designed race
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On April 14 2013 04:32 ThaReckoning wrote:
You COULD nerf protoss t3 and add in more valuable units like the reaver, and change up tech paths etc, if you give protoss more evenly distributed strength throughout the game. I don't believe the MSC will be enough to even the odds in the early game, given that you can't really do anything with it except recall. If it's supposed to allow you to go kill the other guy when you spot him doing something questionable, it doesn't work. The potential for losing your sentries means that the first two times you send it out, you can't afford to use time bomb at all.
… Blizzard's thought process on nerfing protoss early game, and buffing zerg early game. Multiple blink nerfs, warpgate nerfs, sentry dps nerfs, zealot build time nerfs, pylon radius nerfs, etc. It all added up to that. Blizzard kept taking from protoss based on terrans and zergs inability to stop warpgate rushes that abused sentries.
I just don't think the MSC and the stargate buffs were as good as a rebalance of units and static D early game, and detection regardless of tech path would be.
On April 15 2013 02:07 Filter wrote:
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Lets wrap this up now. Basically everything about Protoss is complete feast or famine. They have almost nothing that provides stability to their matchups and they lean so heavily on the metagame it's not even funny. The worst part about Protoss though is that your victory depends almost entirely on what your opponent does and not what you yourself do. This needs to change, and soon.
Excellent posts.
Personally I’m considering switching to Terran after over ten years Protoss. Blizzard tries to fix Protoss, but improves for the worse.
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I guess we can discuss this all day but until we find a concrete solution to the problem it will never be fixed. I doubt blizzard is even working on remaking protoss, so if we want change we would have to find a concrete solution with numbers and actually design it ourselves to force a change
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Good read. Im not really sure how to respond but I am going to list some things that must be changed
-Collossus needs to be removed or made into something that requires a shred of thought to use. Think about how terran must position and seige his tanks to get aoe damage. What does protoss have to do? nothing at all. Its just arbitrarily good, theres no tradeoffs anywhere. Think of how the reaver was so slow and required micro to use. Why was that replaced with something so mindless?
-warp gate must be removed. Its no fun at all for something that is required to be in an rts game. Have we seen a protoss game anywhere where warpgate wasnt researched immediatly? It also removes the concept of defenders advantage and rush distances. It makes balancing gateway units so delicate because it opens so many early game aggression options.
-zealot legs and phoenix autofire must be removed. its literally nothing but free micro. Why in the world is this even in the game, I cant understand. buff them some other way, but stop making them so mindless to use.
-get rid of the goddamn immortal. The epitome of a 1a unit, I really cant see how this community went up in arms over the warhound, arguing that it is a 1a unit, when this fucker has been in the game since day 1. someone, please explain to me.
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warp gate must be removed. Its no fun at all for something that is required to be in an rts game. Have we seen a protoss game anywhere where warpgate wasnt researched immediatly? It also removes the concept of defenders advantage and rush distances. It makes balancing gateway units so delicate because it opens so many early game aggression options.
Personally I think Warp Gate is a really cool mechanic and helps differentiate/identify the races, Terran produces units 1 at a time like an assembly line, Zerg spawns armies out of larva while Protoss warps reinforcements to the battle field. there are a few changes I would like to see though.
First, WG is infinietly better that GW in every way, maybe allow WG to produce each unit 15% faster or 5 seconds faster rather than 10, also; when a unit is built at a GW triggers the WG CD so you can`t finish a unit, convert to WG and produce again leading to a spike in army size (hence all the timing oriented attacks).
I would also advocate the removal/adjustment of forcefield to make sentries more supportive adn less crutch
lastly, beef up zeolot and stalker a bit, +10 shields for zeolots, +1(+1 armored) from each upgrade for stalker / faster attack speed and I`d be Happy 
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On April 17 2013 05:27 Aveng3r wrote:
Good read. Im not really sure how to respond but I am going to list some things that must be changed
-Collossus needs to be removed or made into something that requires a shred of thought to use. Think about how terran must position and seige his tanks to get aoe damage. What does protoss have to do? nothing at all. Its just arbitrarily good, theres no tradeoffs anywhere. Think of how the reaver was so slow and required micro to use. Why was that replaced with something so mindless?
-warp gate must be removed. Its no fun at all for something that is required to be in an rts game. Have we seen a protoss game anywhere where warpgate wasnt researched immediatly? It also removes the concept of defenders advantage and rush distances. It makes balancing gateway units so delicate because it opens so many early game aggression options.
-zealot legs and phoenix autofire must be removed. its literally nothing but free micro. Why in the world is this even in the game, I cant understand. buff them some other way, but stop making them so mindless to use.
-get rid of the goddamn immortal. The epitome of a 1a unit, I really cant see how this community went up in arms over the warhound, arguing that it is a 1a unit, when this fucker has been in the game since day 1. someone, please explain to me.
Immortal:
The immortal has gotten a lot of flak. I remember plenty of older threads complaining about the roach/marauder/immortal 1-a dragoon-like triumvirate that robs each race of its identity.
But the immortal provides the key damage dealing support against roach/marauder that stalkers dont have so people kind of just accept it for what it is now.
Warpgate and Forcefield
People suggesting that warpgates be entirely removed are bonkers. Let's take a minute to congratulate blizzard on a fresh and exciting new mechanic. Same with forcefield.
However, as this (and numerous other) threads have attempted to show, the implementation of these abilities is flawed. The warpgate and forcefield mechanics are simply too powerful for their positions in the tech tree.
Obvious arguments have already been made, but if you sit down to make a list of the most apparent drawbacks of warpgate, you wont find any, at least on the surface. There is literally no reason not to get this upgrade. Forcefield comes out of the gate as a core spell too. How is this a tier 1.5 ability? For the rush? Make that a choice not a necessity.
If FF had been designed as a 50/50 or 100/100 tier 2 upgrade on the twilight council and warpgate had been designed as a 150/150 or 200/200 upgrade on the cy core, with buffs to gateway production and a nerf to warpgate production, these problems would not exist in their present form.
Instead, you would create a game in which teching to twilight council would become a powerful option to increase the power of gateway units dramatically (much like stim/combat shield does) in conjunction with the increased production from gateways. That's a true protoss army, with powerful units and lots of high tech support abilities.
Or alternatively, warpgate could be researched to provide strategic positioning of gateway units at the cost of fast production cycles. One might imagine researching warpgate while building twilight-->dark shrine for warp in DTs, but having weaker sentries/gateway units in the midgame as a result (without the upgrades from the council). This would lead to a more zerg-like toss army with the mobility to put on aggression but at a loss of production, meaning the aggression would ultimately be limited.
Protoss Tech Tree and the Colossus
Protoss tech tree has 3 separate paths that are kind of independent but when combined become ridiculously strong, which is only made difficult by the high economic cost. BW design made this very difficult because you couldnt a-move reavers while microing high templar: you had to micro both of your splash units to get good results, making it impossible to maximize their power.
What I see in SC2 is that blizzard has in many ways removed difficulty of control as a way of balancing the game. That goes for spellcasting too which is now smartcasting (good for noobs like me but lets not pretend it doesn't have side effects). You can make it impractical to get both tech trees without making it impossible, by making a units power directly proportional to their control (see: marine vs baneling). Good players will make it work, but not 100% of the time. Look at corsair/DT from broodwar: guys with high APM could do impossible things with that strategy and its so fun to watch.
If you start limiting toss tech options a bit due to how infeasible perfect control becomes, you can start to make each tech tree more well rounded, less dependent on each other (look at the way templar/colossi compliment each other nicely, or voidray/colossi, or voidray(or tempest)/templar) allowing stronger, more defined protoss tech switches and not a general goal of acquiring every tech tree that results in a well-rounded deathball.
At the same time, you can introduce more interesting units, like the reaver (not the reaver, though I love it dearly: lets move on. I actually think oracles and phoenix have potential if they complimented each other better) which are skill dependent, so the player is forced to use their APM to bring the full power of the toss army to the battlefield. If you can, you will be amazing. If you cannot, then your army will be weaker.
Blizzard doesnt want to do this because it will make balancing the game harder to control from their angle. They are slightly neurotic in this regard. I see their design philosophy struggling to limit the effects of player skill in an attempt to make things fair for all skill levels (again, this is admirable and shouldnt be ignored, i just worry about the extent of it). The flip side is a game in which it is harder for the Bisus to show that they are in fact Bisu by doing absurd things with a few shuttles of reavers and a pack of corsair.
If I were designing this game, I'd strive to emulate that, but I wouldn't want to replicate it.
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I see their design philosophy struggling to limit the effects of player skill in an attempt to make things fair for all skill levels (again, this is admirable and shouldnt be ignored, i just worry about the extent of it).
This is the worst thing you can do when designing a competitive game. You always balance things assuming a perfect player would abuse it to it's most devastating potential.
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EPT
