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Dayvie(Kim) recently was questioned by Apollo why are KR Terrans so much better than foreigner.The answers were soo strange and ununderstandable:
"There are various reazons..Many KR Terrans share their builds."
I was "WTF" its easy to see stream or play tournaments and check replays ans even steal GSL BO.Are you really thinking DK,Foreigner players dont watch GSL or copy BOs??? I saw Demuslim play 4 TvTs in row vs Polt and won the last one.He was checking the BOs and concluded there are not so different.Every game began pretty differente(the opening) but ended with the usual boring WoL stuff: Marine+Tank+Vikings+Scans siege battles everywhere and the decision making let Polt win 3 games in row.
The next thing DK said was: "The Terran units(BIO) need more micro to be effective and take more time to dominate,but the micro really pay". I knew this.Just saw Taeja win TvP pulling SCVs and still needed hell of micro to kill P on AW with only 2 Collossi and 3 HTs.The micro was the thing that allow Taeja to win.The P was warping wave after wave of Chargelots and I personally would lose this game,but Taeja won.Another thing I dislike is the SCV train.So,now,after 3 years of SC2 in TvP BIO, Terrans need to pull SCVs to be able to barelly win the game vs "amoving" Protoss?WTF!!!
Last thing DK said was: "The way KR practice is another reason.They are so metodic with their practice and they practice this micro a lot and focus on it a lot".Its the same as point number 2,said before.If you want to win with T in high level where macro is supposed to be the same,you need lot of micro.
Me as Platinum Random Player,find the P race the easiest to play and Zerg the easiest to win.Terran is queing units all the time,upgrades and lot of micro in battles.In TvZ you also need to spread your units as well and try not be caught off sieged/mines unactivated and still stimrun and try trade coseffiecently while maybe droping.As Zerg I just a amove with everything,use the 2 hotkey for all banelings and chase marines with them.3 hotkey for Mutas to snipe tanks or medivacs while lings do the job.Nothing more in battle.After the battle finish,just spawn larva and make more units and go again to snipe drops or attack some expansion or defend a push.As terran you need to continue making units in battle and macro,which is not easy.The PvT is even easier.Amove with everything.Throw storms and warp units if needed.GG.
TvT still the most different MU in opening but even now in HotS at high level(taeja,demuslim,polt) is engind in Marine/tank 40 min battles...
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On April 23 2013 02:55 Patate wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2013 20:30 askmc70 wrote:On April 22 2013 17:34 Patate wrote:On April 22 2013 03:51 ThaReckoning wrote:On April 22 2013 03:25 highsis wrote:
Agreed, and I'm a Terran top master player occasionally matched with GMs.
For a side note, when I play obs I rarely see good protosses. It's usually Terran > Zerg > Protoss at the top.
I've played over 100 matches in obs and I've never dropped a game vs toss, let alone not seeing them often. I have my days where I hate it, and I have my days where I love it. Lately I've been thinking of going to t or z, though. Oh now I'm pretty much done with Starcraft, however i did switch from P to T and lemme tell you, get ready to : 1. Love it but 2. Realize your skill is lower than you thought. I'm not kidding when I say a mid master Protoss has the mechanics of a high diamond Terran player. In the higher leagues however, I do believe Protoss (at least in WoL) have less choices and less ways of truly experimenting with their race, therefore they are not "OP". In Diamond-Master though, as a Terran you'll see how frustrating it is to lose to MUCH less skilled protoss players. The game is yours to win or lose though.. the game is a challenge for you, not for the opponent who could simply be a bot and it wouldn't change much. the game is not all dependant on mechanics, if you're gonna whine about that and not take into consideration on why you really lost, then go lose more. No, I've played it from both sides, and Terrans do require a lot more apm and proaction. It's not about whining about the balance of the races (I consider T stronger on the higher leagues), but it's about acknowledging the imbalance of skill required.
I hate this concept of "imbalanced on a skill level"
Second Breakfast is much more complicated to run than Deadguy Red--but how hard it is to execute stack orders does not make Second Breakfast more IMBA than Deadguy Red.
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On April 23 2013 02:55 Patate wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2013 20:30 askmc70 wrote:On April 22 2013 17:34 Patate wrote:On April 22 2013 03:51 ThaReckoning wrote:On April 22 2013 03:25 highsis wrote:
Agreed, and I'm a Terran top master player occasionally matched with GMs.
For a side note, when I play obs I rarely see good protosses. It's usually Terran > Zerg > Protoss at the top.
I've played over 100 matches in obs and I've never dropped a game vs toss, let alone not seeing them often. I have my days where I hate it, and I have my days where I love it. Lately I've been thinking of going to t or z, though. Oh now I'm pretty much done with Starcraft, however i did switch from P to T and lemme tell you, get ready to : 1. Love it but 2. Realize your skill is lower than you thought. I'm not kidding when I say a mid master Protoss has the mechanics of a high diamond Terran player. In the higher leagues however, I do believe Protoss (at least in WoL) have less choices and less ways of truly experimenting with their race, therefore they are not "OP". In Diamond-Master though, as a Terran you'll see how frustrating it is to lose to MUCH less skilled protoss players. The game is yours to win or lose though.. the game is a challenge for you, not for the opponent who could simply be a bot and it wouldn't change much. the game is not all dependant on mechanics, if you're gonna whine about that and not take into consideration on why you really lost, then go lose more. No, I've played it from both sides, and Terrans do require a lot more apm and proaction. It's not about whining about the balance of the races (I consider T stronger on the higher leagues), but it's about acknowledging the imbalance of skill required.
I play all of the races, my Terran APM is higher than any other race. Does that mean I'm more mechanically gifted when I play terran than protoss or zerg? Or is it is because I produce two marines/lings to one zealot and I produce one immortal to three marauders/roaches and one colossi to 3/4 vikings? Or that in a fight I spam move and attack, but that doesn't mean I'm better than when I'm blinking my stalkers to pick off medivac/vikings, popping guardian shield, making sure the targeted colossi is puling the vikings back, looking for openings to move in to storm without my high templar getting emp'd, and setting up forward pylons to warp in zealots for a flank. Just because protoss APM is lower than terran APM, does not mean that the terran is better. In fact, I bet if the protoss played terran, his APM would be just as high as the terrans.
A good example is stopping drops with the new turbo-vacs is far harder than executing them. Executing the drop uses more APM, but to have the sense of where the terran army is as well as an understanding of the percentage of army in the drops is significantly more skill requiring than to do the turbo-vac drop.
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So far, no new options have been discovered as a result of the MSC. It's just allowing worse players to survive attacks and make mistakes,
This is somewhat true, but lets face it. Protoss needs this (even good players).with all those all ins, scv pulls, mutalisks abuse that even when you saw it coming ,you just can't do anything. Protoss had no answers for that since WoL unless you micro so hard (while the all-inning opponent just a move his army).
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On April 23 2013 03:47 convention wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2013 02:55 Patate wrote:On April 22 2013 20:30 askmc70 wrote:On April 22 2013 17:34 Patate wrote:On April 22 2013 03:51 ThaReckoning wrote:On April 22 2013 03:25 highsis wrote:
Agreed, and I'm a Terran top master player occasionally matched with GMs.
For a side note, when I play obs I rarely see good protosses. It's usually Terran > Zerg > Protoss at the top.
I've played over 100 matches in obs and I've never dropped a game vs toss, let alone not seeing them often. I have my days where I hate it, and I have my days where I love it. Lately I've been thinking of going to t or z, though. Oh now I'm pretty much done with Starcraft, however i did switch from P to T and lemme tell you, get ready to : 1. Love it but 2. Realize your skill is lower than you thought. I'm not kidding when I say a mid master Protoss has the mechanics of a high diamond Terran player. In the higher leagues however, I do believe Protoss (at least in WoL) have less choices and less ways of truly experimenting with their race, therefore they are not "OP". In Diamond-Master though, as a Terran you'll see how frustrating it is to lose to MUCH less skilled protoss players. The game is yours to win or lose though.. the game is a challenge for you, not for the opponent who could simply be a bot and it wouldn't change much. the game is not all dependant on mechanics, if you're gonna whine about that and not take into consideration on why you really lost, then go lose more. No, I've played it from both sides, and Terrans do require a lot more apm and proaction. It's not about whining about the balance of the races (I consider T stronger on the higher leagues), but it's about acknowledging the imbalance of skill required. I play all of the races, my Terran APM is higher than any other race. Does that mean I'm more mechanically gifted when I play terran than protoss or zerg? Or is it is because I produce two marines/lings to one zealot and I produce one immortal to three marauders/roaches and one colossi to 3/4 vikings? Or that in a fight I spam move and attack, but that doesn't mean I'm better than when I'm blinking my stalkers to pick off medivac/vikings, popping guardian shield, making sure the targeted colossi is puling the vikings back, looking for openings to move in to storm without my high templar getting emp'd, and setting up forward pylons to warp in zealots for a flank. Just because protoss APM is lower than terran APM, does not mean that the terran is better. In fact, I bet if the protoss played terran, his APM would be just as high as the terrans. A good example is stopping drops with the new turbo-vacs is far harder than executing them. Executing the drop uses more APM, but to have the sense of where the terran army is as well as an understanding of the percentage of army in the drops is significantly more skill requiring than to do the turbo-vac drop.
Wow, it makes me happy that a random player (or at least someone who plays every race) says that. I am a mid masters protoss but i also play 2v2 with terran, and I am almost always (like the 95% of the games) the guy with the higher APM count, doesn't matter if its with P or T and still when i win against a Terran, a big majority of them rage about me beeing an a+move player.
Well maybe i don't need to multitask that much, but loosing a single unit with protoss can make me loose a game, not dealing with a drop properly can also make me loose a game even if I played perfectly until then (not to say that it is quite harder to deal with drops than to do drops even if i needs less apms...)
The logic behing P is retarded, we are suposed to have the better and more valuable units, but instead of that, the gave us warp gate and expensive/bad gateway units that needs 213123 upgrades to be effective. I'm not even talking about balance, nerfs or buffs, i'm just saying that the desing of the race is very bad.
Also, i feel that with HOTS blizzard has ignored all this problems, well they gave us the mothership, that's actually very good, but the rest of the units? Only fucking planes, they are cool, but it doesn't deal with all the problems this race has...
PD: I want my reaver back ( i can dream)
PD2: Some proplayer will figure out soon a good all-in that works, and even if protoss will continue to be fucking bad, blizzard and most people will pretend it's ok, also they won't care about win rates because z and t are harder and they deserve more. Herpaderpa
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This thread is awesome and OP: I salute you for writing it so well.
Sadly there have been a few threads before this one which brought up most of these points and still people argue against it...
But by now it's pretty obvious just by looking at the big tournament results that protoss gameplay is very limited.
I love protoss for their philosophy from sc1 and bw but sc2 forced me into playing random, because protoss was simply so depressing to play.
I HATE sentries, they are SOOO stupid, how can you make a tier 1 unit that can create indesteructble walls? How can this be balanced without making all the other early units crap or making early game counters available.
Nobody likes zvps where the toss loses because of one missed FF and speedlings wreak havoc on the economy or those games where the zerg loses because he is out of position once and get forcefielded into obilivion.
It's just stupid and boring.
Warpgate is a great idea - but again much too early available in the tech path and it does not have a drawback when compared to the gateway. MY idea would be to make warpgate a research available later in the game, maybe at the twilight council AND increase the cooldown when compared to gateway AND make warp ins only available through a warpprism. That would make it a cool late game strat but not a required research that in turn forces gateway units to be even more crappy.
Concerning the colossus - I would think that it is not that hard to balance, it might be enough to trade damage for greater spread or restrict the damage to non-light units. The thor air aoe is a good example, it's super powerful vs big low hp armies but will still lose vs fewer, spread out units with more hp.
And the MSC is crap, as I always said. It's a hero unit, hero units are by definition all or nothing units, they can only be in one place, can convey big advantages but when they are out of position or are lost you are in big trouble.
If you go for some risky aggression and your MSC gets sniped before your recall and your army gets obliterated you can just leave the game...
Oh and playing random I have never understood how any terran ever loses to protoss - with very little practice and pure reliance on mmm pushes with some micro and an occasional ghost I was able to kill most protoss I encountered.
If two players of great skill meet in pvt, in my opinion the t is ALWAYS favored, because as many people have said t is not only very forgiving for small mistakes but it scales extremely well with good micro and tactical skill, whereas protoss will always be all-in pushes or defend until deathball and pray because there is simply no other effective option.
Edit: Together with some other players I was already posting about FF and warpgate changes during the beta of hots, but Blizzard simply was to scared to make such big changes... With protoss slumping so visibly maybe something will be done finally.
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I'm a fan of warp gates; it's something new and makes all three races so unique. Placing it later in the tech tree might be interesting.
Using gates like Terran (and every other RTS race in video game history) might make PvZ a challenge in SC2 and with the clumping mechanics, make Protoss more deathball than ever as you wouldn't want your slow zealots and sentries walking across the map to join your main army.
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Once the speed buff goes live Protoss will have early aggression out the wazoo..
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On April 23 2013 03:17 Dvriel wrote:
Dayvie(Kim) recently was questioned by Apollo why are KR Terrans so much better than foreigner.The answers were soo strange and ununderstandable:
"There are various reazons..Many KR Terrans share their builds."
I was "WTF" its easy to see stream or play tournaments and check replays ans even steal GSL BO.Are you really thinking DK,Foreigner players dont watch GSL or copy BOs??? I saw Demuslim play 4 TvTs in row vs Polt and won the last one.He was checking the BOs and concluded there are not so different.Every game began pretty differente(the opening) but ended with the usual boring WoL stuff: Marine+Tank+Vikings+Scans siege battles everywhere and the decision making let Polt win 3 games in row.
The next thing DK said was: "The Terran units(BIO) need more micro to be effective and take more time to dominate,but the micro really pay". I knew this.Just saw Taeja win TvP pulling SCVs and still needed hell of micro to kill P on AW with only 2 Collossi and 3 HTs.The micro was the thing that allow Taeja to win.The P was warping wave after wave of Chargelots and I personally would lose this game,but Taeja won.Another thing I dislike is the SCV train.So,now,after 3 years of SC2 in TvP BIO, Terrans need to pull SCVs to be able to barelly win the game vs "amoving" Protoss?WTF!!!
Last thing DK said was: "The way KR practice is another reason.They are so metodic with their practice and they practice this micro a lot and focus on it a lot".Its the same as point number 2,said before.If you want to win with T in high level where macro is supposed to be the same,you need lot of micro.
Me as Platinum Random Player,find the P race the easiest to play and Zerg the easiest to win.Terran is queing units all the time,upgrades and lot of micro in battles.In TvZ you also need to spread your units as well and try not be caught off sieged/mines unactivated and still stimrun and try trade coseffiecently while maybe droping.As Zerg I just a amove with everything,use the 2 hotkey for all banelings and chase marines with them.3 hotkey for Mutas to snipe tanks or medivacs while lings do the job.Nothing more in battle.After the battle finish,just spawn larva and make more units and go again to snipe drops or attack some expansion or defend a push.As terran you need to continue making units in battle and macro,which is not easy.The PvT is even easier.Amove with everything.Throw storms and warp units if needed.GG.
TvT still the most different MU in opening but even now in HotS at high level(taeja,demuslim,polt) is engind in Marine/tank 40 min battles... I'm sorry but id rather hear how masters/GM players feel as oppose to plat players, no disrespect and i agree with a select few things us said but it seems like a rather long QQ
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On June 01 2013 10:53 sjperera wrote:
make Protoss more deathball than ever as you wouldn't want your slow zealots and sentries walking across the map to join your main army.
I don't think so. If you're considering a nerf to warpgate and force field you're going to see major buffs to gateway unit health and damage.
I would LOVE to see FF be removed and warpgate be pushed to lategame tech, but the amount of balancing rework required is something you'd only see in an expansion, not in a content patch.
Idra had a good rant about the problems with Protoss on the last episode of Meta. Basically, it comes down to force field.
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On April 23 2013 02:57 Patate wrote:
TvT is an amazing matchup. The big question: Bio or Mech (marines tanks too) really make it a versatile and diverse matchup. When you mechbro your TvTs vs a bioshitter, you don't feel like it's a mirror matchup.
Edit: To be honest, any matchups not including terrans (ZvZ, PvZ, PvP) are pretty bad because of the way the races are meant to be played. Only terran is well designed in this game.. that race is focused on efficient small engagements, skirmishes and drops, and they do not want a maxed out battle. Zerg wants to get to the point that they can instant remax, and Protoss wants their 200 food deathball (which they can obtain on 3 bases.. even 2).
So yeah the game will continue to be unwatchable half of the time if they don't revamp the races (although Zergs are better now)
This is also why the warp prism buff Blizzard is toying with is a good idea, it allows protoss to get units on on the map easier for constant drops and counter attacks. If you don't think it's a big change, remember the speed prism immortal drops in PvP, you are constantly dropping in front of their production to snipe a collo as it pops out, or dropping to the side of their army and getting a stalker. The only problem with this buff is that it increases the power of robo all ins, immo sentry, immo zealot, immo collo all become stronger which may encourage more all ins , instead of use for macro.
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On June 01 2013 10:18 Freeborn wrote:If two players of great skill meet in pvt, in my opinion the t is ALWAYS favored, because as many people have said t is not only very forgiving for small mistakes but it scales extremely well with good micro and tactical skill, whereas protoss will always be all-in pushes or defend until deathball and pray because there is simply no other effective option.
Um, Terran is the least forgiving of small mistakes. Mismicro your marines vs. storms: GG.
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I can count the number of "non-committal engagements" I've seen from toss players on one hand. I've rarely if ever seen a toss do multipronged aggression despite having the strongest units per supply. Warp prisms are used more for massively committal doom drops than they are for more limited aggression despite being far faster than any unit capable of catching them. There is little to no use of Recall despite the fact that a toss who loses 15 zealots and two stalkers but retains his colossus/void ray/templar count is massively head of a terran who takes similar losses to his own units. Instead we see protoss after protoss commit to engagements they think they can win by dropping a largely useless slowing field to stop their zealots (the expendable bit of their army) being kited.
Save the damn energy for recalls.
Use two or three warp prisms to drop multiple expansions.
Don't automatically deploy a warp prism every single time you think you've got an edge. Move it to support your push and throw in flanks.
There is no fundamental disadvantage to protoss which means they have to all in or they don't win straight up engagements. This is a myth which people back up by veiled references to "mechanics". A protoss coming at you from three flanks will probably win no matter what you do.
Not even pros use the full potential of warp prisms. The reason they don't is because they mostly don't have to.
Terrans and Zerg know how to disengage fluidly and how to save units. Protoss only seem to do this for blink stalkers and I have no idea why. How often does a protoss disengage their colossi from an obviously lost engagement? Plenty of terrans/zerg pull back their medivacs or their infestors to safer ground if they are losing yet for some reason Protoss don't do the same despite having far stronger abilities to do so. I've never understood it.
Oh and then there's the forcefield use. 80% of your FF energy used to stop a group of units retreating that want to frontally engage you. Makes sense against a numerically superior force where you have a number of strong units that you want to counter their units with (immortals/colossi). Makes absolutely no sense to bisect an enemy force that is literally backed into their own production structures and have a shorter supply line than you. Use the damn things to retreat, regroup and pressure on multiple fronts. Don't just spam chargelots and assume you HAVE to kill him right now. You don't.
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On June 02 2013 16:17 Evangelist wrote:
Terrans and Zerg know how to disengage fluidly and how to save units. Protoss only seem to do this for blink stalkers and I have no idea why. How often does a protoss disengage their colossi from an obviously lost engagement? Plenty of terrans/zerg pull back their medivacs or their infestors to safer ground if they are losing yet for some reason Protoss don't do the same despite having far stronger abilities to do so. I've never understood it.
guess you have never tried to retreat vs. T and Z. You lose half of your army due to it beeing so slow.
It is done in PvP because there you can.
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Good points. I think it is because the Protoss are an alien race, compared to the other two human and animal race, that it is difficult to actually design an identity around them. It's failure as a race compared to the other two can be attributed to out lack of understanding what an alien race should be like.
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On June 02 2013 15:44 Level10Peon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2013 10:18 Freeborn wrote:If two players of great skill meet in pvt, in my opinion the t is ALWAYS favored, because as many people have said t is not only very forgiving for small mistakes but it scales extremely well with good micro and tactical skill, whereas protoss will always be all-in pushes or defend until deathball and pray because there is simply no other effective option. Um, Terran is the least forgiving of small mistakes. Mismicro your marines vs. storms: GG.
You're joking right. How many games have you seen Protoss outright win with just one good storm? Compared to Terran winning outright through missed forcefields, mishandled drop defense of any kind, whether it's hellbats, widow mines, or just M&M. Unlike storms, you can't move out of EMP to minimize damage. Notice storm late...just move out of it. Templars emped, observer died, forcefield too late, mothership died or forced to use recall in early game; just type gg.
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On June 02 2013 16:17 Evangelist wrote:
I can count the number of "non-committal engagements" I've seen from toss players on one hand. I've rarely if ever seen a toss do multipronged aggression despite having the strongest units per supply. Warp prisms are used more for massively committal doom drops than they are for more limited aggression despite being far faster than any unit capable of catching them. There is little to no use of Recall despite the fact that a toss who loses 15 zealots and two stalkers but retains his colossus/void ray/templar count is massively head of a terran who takes similar losses to his own units. Instead we see protoss after protoss commit to engagements they think they can win by dropping a largely useless slowing field to stop their zealots (the expendable bit of their army) being kited.
Save the damn energy for recalls.
Use two or three warp prisms to drop multiple expansions.
Don't automatically deploy a warp prism every single time you think you've got an edge. Move it to support your push and throw in flanks.
There is no fundamental disadvantage to protoss which means they have to all in or they don't win straight up engagements. This is a myth which people back up by veiled references to "mechanics". A protoss coming at you from three flanks will probably win no matter what you do.
Not even pros use the full potential of warp prisms. The reason they don't is because they mostly don't have to.
Terrans and Zerg know how to disengage fluidly and how to save units. Protoss only seem to do this for blink stalkers and I have no idea why. How often does a protoss disengage their colossi from an obviously lost engagement? Plenty of terrans/zerg pull back their medivacs or their infestors to safer ground if they are losing yet for some reason Protoss don't do the same despite having far stronger abilities to do so. I've never understood it.
Oh and then there's the forcefield use. 80% of your FF energy used to stop a group of units retreating that want to frontally engage you. Makes sense against a numerically superior force where you have a number of strong units that you want to counter their units with (immortals/colossi). Makes absolutely no sense to bisect an enemy force that is literally backed into their own production structures and have a shorter supply line than you. Use the damn things to retreat, regroup and pressure on multiple fronts. Don't just spam chargelots and assume you HAVE to kill him right now. You don't.
LOL...recall takes time..in big engagements that you mentioned the core won't survive. Also the radius isn't big enough. The reason you don't see more warp prisms is that they're supply taken away from the main army and they're not useful in the main fight. You can't mass them like you can with medivacs or mutas. It's not like medivacs, hellbats, mines or mutas who are excellent at harass but is also useful with the main army. The only reason why you see warp prism harass at all is because Protoss is hungry for gas and so they can dump their minerals in gasless units like the prism and zealot run-bys. Zealot runbys are also rarely cost effective. It's just done to buy time for Protoss to readjust their composition.
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Very good post.
However, I do believe that many specific protosst traits such as warp gates, ff or msc require a good amount of skill if you want to keep up at the higher levels of play. While they do restrict gateway units from receiving a buff, don't forget about two things here:
1. Zealots and stalkers wouldn't be buffed a lot without warp gates. The reason is that in the midgame with blink or charge they are quite decent, they are still less effective than bio without aoe but especially vs zerg, you couldn't buff them a lot. It's before these upgrades that they seem kinda weak and because getting charge/blink takes up more time and resources than metabolic boost/glial reconstituation or stim/combat shield/conc shells.
2. All 3 races employ mechanics, that make each race unique and put a lot of restrictions on their race. Larva mechanics and having only to build a single tech building in order to be able to produce 20-30 mutas/hydras etc at the same time puts a lot of restrictions on the zerg race as well. Why do you think mutas compared to banshees/phoenix/oracles etc have actually much worse combat stats? It's because a zerg can get a hydra den + spire at the same time, 6 gases of 3 base and it's up to you guessing correctly if on top of the lings he has out on the map there will be 20 mutas or 20 hydras hatching, both requiring different reactions (phoenix/blink/ht vs colossi). So those midgame tech switches, the ability to produce mass drones or units make for a really interesting dynamic compared to other races and also other games, but it puts a lot of restrictions on it.
The only race which is more similar to races in other RTS games is terran. But even terran has restrictions such as not being able to get amazing mobile aoe ever, because they feature already the highest dps with low tech units and it is ranged. They have no ff to prevent surrounds and have (now with firebats they have) usually no good tanking units, which balances this out. There is a reason terrans have no colossi but rather tanks which need to be siege up in order to deal aoe dmg.
I'd love to have a way more aggressive (non-allin) and way less gimmicky protoss race. I'd love to be able to play more similar to terrans, like grabbing the first few marines + mines and attacking while being safe etc. It always feels like you have to defend and just hit timings. You can't have lonely units out on the map (except for the occosional chargelots harass warpins or dts ofc). Since unit effectiveness varies to greatly between having only gateway units or power units added to the mix it's not an aggressive way to play with a lot of back and forth, it's more getting them out and hitting good timings which is way less fun.
HOTS did a way better job than WOL though, pvp is a really good and fun matchup now, with a lot of diverse unit compositions, harassment and macro games. Out of all 3 protoss matchups pvp is the most dynamic one. In no other matchup you are allowed to be out on the map a ton and play aggressive while macroing up, while teching etc. The msc is a great addition for pvz, because now you can choose between ffe and gate expands with aggression. The core allows you to retreat while before if you once ran out of ff you lost all your sentries and any followup push is doomed to fail (or taking a 3rd on most maps). It's still more on the timing based side, you push out every 2-3min with certain key upgrades finishing but it's quite fun to play.
In pvt I feel you just sit in your base and try to defend all stuff until you can hit midgame timings where you can leave your base (with hts + canons or similar) because you have now better upgrades until he catches up, or colossi vs no vikings or a low viking count or hts vs no ghosts. I tried to be aggressive vs terrans so many times but it's a different race and hardly works out without being fully allin. You simply can't just get 3 gates and pressure a bit after fe, while you even push out mines will drop your mineral lines. You can't force your oponent to delay his tech and stuff, you can only force out bunkers. It's either break his bunkers and really do dmg or you don't break them and all you forced is lost mining time and some extra expanses. Unlike terran who can force you to delay tech by getting enough tsalkers to deal with those first mines, marines, hellbat drops, banshees, hellions etc.
The oracle is super gimmicky as well. You either proxy it or rush it out super fast and do a ton of dmg (especially if he was greedy/unprepared/made him think you went for something else) but otherwise one single turret in the middle of the mineral line is enough to prevent further harassment. You can only try to snipe a single scv adding another rax or so but basically the harassment time is over. You also can't use it for direct engagements once +1/stim/combat shield/medivacs are out and it has no support spells (apart from granting vision). I seriously hope they redesign it a bit, like decreasing its dps so it doesn't slaughter opponents super early if they have a too low marine count/no turret finished but increase its speed, acceleration, turning rate, maybe also decrase its hp but buff its shields and increase the cost to deal dps but decrease or remove the cost for activating the pulsar beam. Right now you have to wait for a while for it to regen energy, you can't dart in and out like you would with other units like phoenix. It's a gimmicky unit that is not that worthwile constant harassment unit it should be.
I think it's far too late to change the basic dynamics of a race but a lot of improvements can be done. I hope they will take routes like buffing prism speed, oracle speed, etc stuff like this and not improving aoe like colossi etc. If they find a way to add more protoss harassment that leads to nice macro games it would make the game so much better.
Personally I always hated those super abusive protoss builds. For every shitty allin (be it a super early boss canon rush up to immortal-sentry allins) every protoss player that indeed wants to play regular macro games it gets harder because winrates need to be balanced out. So the more harassment they add and less viable those gimmicky wins are going to be, the more success a protoss can have with playing standard.
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I agree with OP. It seems like the way protoss is played (being a protoss myself) in a way that you must do some type of gimmicky play. Just how the entire race is played is just not how it should. Your suggestions were great but who knows what will eventually happen. Sentries gone? Would be interesting to say the least.
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On June 02 2013 20:37 kheldorin wrote:Show nested quote +On June 02 2013 16:17 Evangelist wrote:
I can count the number of "non-committal engagements" I've seen from toss players on one hand. I've rarely if ever seen a toss do multipronged aggression despite having the strongest units per supply. Warp prisms are used more for massively committal doom drops than they are for more limited aggression despite being far faster than any unit capable of catching them. There is little to no use of Recall despite the fact that a toss who loses 15 zealots and two stalkers but retains his colossus/void ray/templar count is massively head of a terran who takes similar losses to his own units. Instead we see protoss after protoss commit to engagements they think they can win by dropping a largely useless slowing field to stop their zealots (the expendable bit of their army) being kited.
Save the damn energy for recalls.
Use two or three warp prisms to drop multiple expansions.
Don't automatically deploy a warp prism every single time you think you've got an edge. Move it to support your push and throw in flanks.
There is no fundamental disadvantage to protoss which means they have to all in or they don't win straight up engagements. This is a myth which people back up by veiled references to "mechanics". A protoss coming at you from three flanks will probably win no matter what you do.
Not even pros use the full potential of warp prisms. The reason they don't is because they mostly don't have to.
Terrans and Zerg know how to disengage fluidly and how to save units. Protoss only seem to do this for blink stalkers and I have no idea why. How often does a protoss disengage their colossi from an obviously lost engagement? Plenty of terrans/zerg pull back their medivacs or their infestors to safer ground if they are losing yet for some reason Protoss don't do the same despite having far stronger abilities to do so. I've never understood it.
Oh and then there's the forcefield use. 80% of your FF energy used to stop a group of units retreating that want to frontally engage you. Makes sense against a numerically superior force where you have a number of strong units that you want to counter their units with (immortals/colossi). Makes absolutely no sense to bisect an enemy force that is literally backed into their own production structures and have a shorter supply line than you. Use the damn things to retreat, regroup and pressure on multiple fronts. Don't just spam chargelots and assume you HAVE to kill him right now. You don't. LOL...recall takes time..in big engagements that you mentioned the core won't survive. Also the radius isn't big enough. The reason you don't see more warp prisms is that they're supply taken away from the main army and they're not useful in the main fight. You can't mass them like you can with medivacs or mutas. It's not like medivacs, hellbats, mines or mutas who are excellent at harass but is also useful with the main army. The only reason why you see warp prism harass at all is because Protoss is hungry for gas and so they can dump their minerals in gasless units like the prism and zealot run-bys. Zealot runbys are also rarely cost effective. It's just done to buy time for Protoss to readjust their composition.
It is logic like this which results in people thinking protoss harass is broken.
1. Keep the damn mothership core behind your army and retreat to it.
2. Marines/zerglings serve the same purpose for terran and zerg. They are a mineral dump that can do damage.
3. The reason they don't harass is they never really needed to. This is despite having arguably the strongest harassment mechanic in the game (storm drops).
You don't need to mass them. You make 2 or 3 like a terran does when doing hellbat drops or mech. It's 4 to 6 supply with another 8 invested in every drop. This is vastly superior to investing 8 supply then warping in 18 sacrificial supply on top of an opponent's production buildings or worse, a planetary fortress. Drop in 3 different locations, warp in at a 4th.
Protoss has plenty of completely unused harassment mechanics. Maybe they need to be more accessible but they have plenty of them.
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EPT
