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.
This is just incredibly in error. 1. Toss units take up more supply and have large surface, and have relativelty low DPS for cost. That is why they are bad for harass. If toss could warp in marines from warp-prisms toss would never lose. 2. MSC dies quickly and recall leaves units vulnerable to damage for a relatively long period of time. 3. Warp prisms take up robo production time which, even with 2 robos, means less units and obs coming out. Obs are way more critical now in HotS with mines being an ever-present threat. 4. 2 or 3 warp prisms? And how much money + warp-gates do you need to make that work??? 5. Straw man. No one thinks flanking is bad. 6. The issue is, if you make enough units to due damage, you have to do damage. Protoss falls behind when they make units because everything is so expensive unless they deal damage. Also, recall did little to change this. 7. Pros don't use warp-prisms more because they are easy to shut down and are not cost effective. 8.Colossi can't outrun anything. Blink Stalkers are the ONLY thing that can. 9.You are saying that good FFs are good and bad ones aren't? Great point, man.
Protoss has been a terrible design from the start. I feel like SC2 is general is a lot less skill based and rather relies on gimmicks to try and make up.
I mean there is no question that the reaver a lot more interesting and skill based than the Colossus, scourge are a lot more interesting and skill based than corruptors, lurkers are a lot more interesting and skill based than roaches, etc,,,,
So the whole game has been created on a gimmick, then ported as a competitive game, when its not. This also damages the playbility of it as it leads to more boring styles and gimmicky play, rather than real interesting plays based on skill.
On June 03 2013 04:26 BillGates wrote: Protoss has been a terrible design from the start. I feel like SC2 is general is a lot less skill based and rather relies on gimmicks to try and make up.
I mean there is no question that the reaver a lot more interesting and skill based than the Colossus, scourge are a lot more interesting and skill based than corruptors, lurkers are a lot more interesting and skill based than roaches, etc,,,,
So the whole game has been created on a gimmick, then ported as a competitive game, when its not. This also damages the playbility of it as it leads to more boring styles and gimmicky play, rather than real interesting plays based on skill.
You really mean to downplay skill in this game?
Go watch the very best and there is still massive amounts of skill gap between one another. Not to say there aren't some terribly designed units but this game still has a massive skill ceiling.
I think the protoss balance situation kind of mirrors, if anyone has played WoW pvp, the mage situation. The mage in WoW was designed in such a way that-- it doesn't function mechanically like a more standard class. It relies heavily on its spells and burst. There are often QQ threads on mages being underpowered or overpowered, and each patch it seems like the devs respond to the community detailing how hard it is to balance mages because if they have burst and can kill you, they seem overpowered, but if you nerf their damage too much, they just don't appear in the top tier of teams that pvp season.
I think the protoss design runs along a similar vein. They seem to do well at times due to balance patches or meta, then don't. Or it will at least appear that way.
Well, I had a huge post written out, but then my browser crashed. Sigh...
Essentially, I feel that Protoss doesn't have as many ways to out-play an opponent as Terran and Zerg do. Protoss can gain advantages through greed and smart build choices, but they can't just execute better to the same degree that a Terran or a Zerg could.
I would actually argue that Protoss has the best ability to gain an advantage through build choice, since there are a lot of allins that can just straight-up kill an unprepared opponent, and if Protoss gets away with certain greedy choices early on, they can hit incredibly powerful timings later than are nearly unstoppable (for example, 3/3 colossus timings in PvT if you get away with really early double forge). However, if you don't win the build order battle, it's way harder to win from behind through execution. Units like colossi, immortals, and void rays just don't have much use outside of just sitting in an army and being strong, which doesn't cut it when the other guy has a stronger army.
If you compare what Protoss can do with early units to what Terran or Zerg can, the differences should be fairly obvious. Look at what STLife can do with his zerglings. There is no Protoss unit that can accomplish half as much, no matter how well controlled. Look at Innovation's hellions. If a Protoss player could accomplish half that much with his stalkers and zealots early on, it would make a world of difference.
Looking back on the OP and several posts a few months later, I realize how deluded and confused people are. Let's be straight with each other: If one can argue Protoss is weak, it's because of 1) warp gate mechanics and 2) the slow move speed of protoss units.
Warpgate Mechanics: Warpgate is the most unique mechanic in the entire game as it costs minerals only and allows for a sudden burst of units. In comparison to terran, who has to build production buildings that 2/3 times cost gas and build units 1-2 at a time, you can see the problem is really the unit burst mechanic. In many people's eyes, this is unfair because it allows protoss to suddenly get a ton of production up very quickly and all-in very suddenly with a lot of units, which is why 2-base all-ins are commonplace. However, it has to be understood that because of the general cost inefficiency of protoss units (Yes, with equal or inferior upgrades, protoss has the least cost efficient units in the game, and I'll explain this more in the next section), protoss cannot simply commit to a little bit of pressure while expanding behind it. Protoss can put down 3-4 gateways and push or build a nexus + pylon + cannons. Because of how warpgate mechanics work, protoss can only either 1) attack or 2) expand while staying passive. I know, as a non-protoss player, you'll want to theorycraft and explain how I'm wrong, but you should know: In a passive environment, Protoss can EITHER add gateways and attack OR expand and stay passive.
Slow Movement Speed and Retreating: People keep trying to compare stalkers/zealots to marines/marauders and zerglings/roaches, but this is just wrong. First thing. Because of the big units, relatively slow rate of fire (low DPS), and most important, slow movement speed, protoss units in small numbers require a lot of micromanagement and attention. With the exception of chargelots and DTs, you cannot place units in an area and just "deal damage"; You have to spend the same amount of attention microing stalkers and immortals and sentries as you would doing a hellbat drop (except it's a lot more expensive). Overall, this means that you can't attack on several fronts before chargelots and the excess minerals. Multi-pronged harass is not viable until lategame on 4+ bases with tons of excess minerals.
Second thing. Survivability for protoss is abysmal. While zerg and terran have escape plans and can save units when an engagement goes bad, protoss only has MsC to rely on. FF are too temporary to fully retreat behind as protoss units move just far too slow to get away. This means that when protoss commits to pressure, they HAVE to do major damage and trade very cost efficiently or they will lose an entire [expensive] army. Zerg units can just run away, terran units can stim and run or pick up in speedvacs and boost away. Protoss doesn't have that luxury. This is fixed in part by the addition of the MsC, but the MsC is still a huge target in lategame situations and very vulnerable to corruptors/vikings, which are standard parts of zerg and terran lategame armies. In almost all high-level games, you'll see players run in to snipe the MsC then run away, even taking some losses in return for COMPLETELY shutting down any retreat options for protoss.
Final note: Liquid`HerO is really brilliant about keeping a small army very far forward and retreating with his large units while trading zealots for time, but this is the ONLY way for protoss to retreat aside from Recall. Having a smaller main army allows him the ability to do clever things like immortal/colossus drops or drops in the main while also buying him time to set up defenses at home in case of an incoming attack. But again, because of the slow movement speed of protoss units and the general fragility of being caught out of position, playing a style like this requires A TON of concentration and minimap awareness. That being said, I don't think that protoss is flawed and reliant on gimmicks, but just relatively unexplored. There's a lot more we can do as protoss, but we really need to clear up the misconceptions that forcefields deny micro and are terrible, that warpgate is a gimmick only, that protoss players do 2-base all-ins because they can't play macro, that retreating for protoss is easy, that harassing on multiple fronts is not as difficult for protoss as for zerg or terran, that protoss can just take a non-committal expansion, etc., etc.
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.
Yep. You have no clue what you are talking about. I have not seen a worthwhile storm drop since BW.
Also the idea of have 6 supply in dropships that dont add anything to your force while taking robo production time. There's so much wrong going on here it's painful. People seem to prefer timewarps to recalling out. It is the right idea to run into the recall rather than lea with your core out. Dunno how well this works with vikings later on though.
It's a shame really, HerO's style should be the optimal way to play Protoss, instead of a stylistic exception to the way many Protoss play.
We do have tools, but they don't really mesh with the current timings and build progressions that exist in the game. For example. storm drops arepotent, but by the time you have the infrastructure to execute them, especially in PvZ, killing a bunch of drones isn't really all that helpful against a Zerg who is maxed with a whole lot of larvae ready to go.
We do have tools, but they don't really mesh with the current timings and build progressions that exist in the game. For example. storm drops arepotent, but by the time you have the infrastructure to execute them, especially in PvZ, killing a bunch of drones isn't really all that helpful against a Zerg who is maxed with a whole lot of larvae ready to go.
Genuine question. What do you think ends up being more effective ( assuming the min line gets cleared). Storm drop or hellbats?
We do have tools, but they don't really mesh with the current timings and build progressions that exist in the game. For example. storm drops arepotent, but by the time you have the infrastructure to execute them, especially in PvZ, killing a bunch of drones isn't really all that helpful against a Zerg who is maxed with a whole lot of larvae ready to go.
Genuine question. What do you think ends up being more effective ( assuming the min line gets cleared). Storm drop or hellbats?
Hellbats every time. The risk of loosing hellbats and a single medivac is only that, it costs a bunch of minerals and a little bit of gas and can hit pre 13 minutes in a standard game. Also you likely would already have a medivac.
Templars cost a lot more in tech, cost tons of gas, you have to charge their energy before the drop and the drop ship itself you would never have in your primary composition to start with as it is just cheaper and requires less micro to put down proxy pylons. The time it costs in the robo equates to about a half of a colossus and it is pretty supply heavy too. If loose a templar drop you loose so much more than a hellbat drop.
We do have tools, but they don't really mesh with the current timings and build progressions that exist in the game. For example. storm drops arepotent, but by the time you have the infrastructure to execute them, especially in PvZ, killing a bunch of drones isn't really all that helpful against a Zerg who is maxed with a whole lot of larvae ready to go.
Genuine question. What do you think ends up being more effective ( assuming the min line gets cleared). Storm drop or hellbats?
Super lategame a 2 templar drop I find can actually roast more drones, but like I said you can get huge amounts of drone kills at that time and all you are doing sometimes is freeing up army supply.
Hellbats potency comes from how early they come out, plus especially Zerg's bad anti-air at those timings.
We do have tools, but they don't really mesh with the current timings and build progressions that exist in the game. For example. storm drops arepotent, but by the time you have the infrastructure to execute them, especially in PvZ, killing a bunch of drones isn't really all that helpful against a Zerg who is maxed with a whole lot of larvae ready to go.
Genuine question. What do you think ends up being more effective ( assuming the min line gets cleared). Storm drop or hellbats?
Super lategame a 2 templar drop I find can actually roast more drones, but like I said you can get huge amounts of drone kills at that time and all you are doing sometimes is freeing up army supply.
Hellbats potency comes from how early they come out, plus especially Zerg's bad anti-air at those timings.
I think Hellbats just are flat out more effective than storm with the size of storm and the ticks. Or atleast on par. I don't think it's a timing issue. Still I'll give it a shot then and check it out. It's been awhile since I tried storm dropping.
I still think toss' ability to put pressure back when being pinned is pretty gimped in the curent SoTG. I wish we had something we could drop, tweak with pickup and just micro an edge into the game /while/ we get our tech going or while we're being poked at the front.
We do have tools, but they don't really mesh with the current timings and build progressions that exist in the game. For example. storm drops arepotent, but by the time you have the infrastructure to execute them, especially in PvZ, killing a bunch of drones isn't really all that helpful against a Zerg who is maxed with a whole lot of larvae ready to go.
Genuine question. What do you think ends up being more effective ( assuming the min line gets cleared). Storm drop or hellbats?
Super lategame a 2 templar drop I find can actually roast more drones, but like I said you can get huge amounts of drone kills at that time and all you are doing sometimes is freeing up army supply.
Hellbats potency comes from how early they come out, plus especially Zerg's bad anti-air at those timings.
I think Hellbats just are flat out more effective than storm with the size of storm and the ticks. Or atleast on par. I don't think it's a timing issue. Still I'll give it a shot then and check it out. It's been awhile since I tried storm dropping.
I still think toss' ability to put pressure back when being pinned is pretty gimped in the curent SoTG. I wish we had something we could drop, tweak with pickup and just micro an edge into the game /while/ we get our tech going or while we're being poked at the front.
I think you are referencing widow mine drops. I'd argue the Protoss equivalent are oracles to help get tech going since with decent micro they do the same general thing early game. However, oracles are easier to defend than widow mines (and cost more), but they also do more damage.
you can have amazing micro as protoss. you load 4 stalkers in a warp prism and do drop and reload, blink back and forth micro( like 2 tanks in a medivac but then harder). is it effective? no. you can load collosus in a warp prism and do drops/load unload harras. is it effective? no.
try comparing both to marine drops or hellbat drops or storm drops /zealot drops, ling runby's or mutas. which are all 10 times easier to execute, AND cheaper.
try comparing phoenix harras to muta harras. do you ever see mass phoenix win games in other then PvP? on other hand, PvZ. mass muta DO win games. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- what bothers me aswell, is that all of protoss harrassment (warp prism to some extent) tools are mainly shut down by 1 thing: turrets or spore crawlers. wanted to do a mix of oracles and phoenixes and dts?
protoss unit are slow. what is the most mobile ground unit to date in the protoss arsenal? blink stalker. yet it still risky to be out on the map with them since speedlings/marauder can still catch up with them. speedling runby? oh entrance is blocked, guess ill head back home.
zealot/stalker do not have this option without the mothership core. so you can harras every 75 energy without 'commiting'. and not even multipronged attack, because you risk to lose those units when you do. mothership core can only save 1 army. so that makes every protoss harrasment a RISK. yes, oracles, phoenix, warp prism. pretty fast. but as i said before, shut down by 1 thing. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- in the end, it doesnt matter as much if u you have insane skill and multitasking. if you dont do hit your forcefields and timing pushes, or do some !@#$ty gimmick as cannon rush, dt's or hiding your tech, hiding a proxy pylon, or catching your opponent off-guard etc. you will be playing protoss at a disadvantage vs zerg.
protoss does not reward skill in the right ways,instead, it rewards deathball'ish 1a timing pushes with precise forcefields. it's nothing more then point and click accuracy. sure, same thing you can argue for EMP, feedback and such. but at least you have to split and a back and forth dance of storm/emp/feedback/snipe going on.
This is mainly for PvT(recently every time I watch a pro PvT the protoss always loses, I know it could be subjective but I just have to spit this out)
I would argue that the biggest problem with protoss is that a protoss player's ability to do anything at all hangs around that key set of few units. If you want to defend a certain attack you need your one single msc as well as a certain number of forcefields available otherwise you die If you want to attack a terran in the mid game you need either storm or colossi, and if they are somehow neutralised your attack just fails If you want to execute this mid game push vs a zerg you need to have a certain amount of force fields available, otherwise you just cant do anything Whatever you do, your game depends on whether these units(sentries, colossi, high templars) can do the things they have to do, if they can, then its a win, if they fail, then no matter how many chargelot archon you have, no matter how sick your blink stalker control is, even if you are economically even, you lose. This dependence on a few 'power units' is, in my very humble opinion, why protoss performances have been inconsistent. It is very easy to kill an entire terran army with crazy splash damage, yet it is equally easy to slip up and lose all your splash damage then proceed to get rolled over. This is I believe what makes protoss performance so volatile: these units are control dependent and, to an extent, luck based that a protoss player only has to over extend just that one tiny bit to lose the key piece of his army and lose the game, while a terran and a zerg, I would argue, has a greater margin of error in that their army lacks the crucial part, that achilles heel, and every part of the army is equally expandable. Where as in protoss, the gateway units only serve as a buffer, and while losing the gateway units doesnt matter that much, losing the splash/forcefield part of the army means that a protoss army's engage directly is ridiculously reduced, even if these parts are very small ones in terms of resources the dependence on these 'power units' is also possibly why protosses rely on gimmicks and tricks in order to maximize the potential of these few units. Because again, these units are very control dependent and perhaps luck based, thus to maximize their effect, protosses use gimmicks to catch opponents off guard. Another side effect of this 'power unit dependence' is the limitations placed upon a protoss's tech tree. In a normal macro game there is only one single ideal composition that you can go for because you need that crucial power unit part in your army, otherwise you die. This severely limits what a protoss player can do in terms of tech choices, in particular skytoss. In fact, now that I think about it, this is exactly why we almost never saw skytoss in WoL, because there is only one way to win. I would not say that protoss is imbalanced, but its obviously a design flaw, one that I hope the blizzard fixes in LotV. The way to fix this power unit dependence is to make the original, buffer units more important and play a bigger part in an army and minimize the parts played by the power units, in essence redistribute the army strength within the protoss ranks. By weakening the colossi, sentries and high templars and buffing zealots and stalkers, or maybe even carriers, a protoss army can rely less on the splash part, and with this control based and rather luck dependent part of the army being less crucial, more options will be available for a protoss as gas spent on these power units can be spent elsewhere. The key is to make the entire protoss army equally expandable instead of emphasizing on those few power units. Now obviously the warp in mechanic will pose problems but that can be dealt with later by buffing other races/nerfing warpgate. the point is to solve the protoss gimmick/deathball problem and I think buffing zealot stalker and nerfing colossi, forcefields and storms is one step in the right direction.
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.
You are completely wrong. Protoss players don't do harass because it's rarely useful. Zealots barely kill 1-2 workers before they are pulled, and every other unit costs way too much gas to be worth sacrificing for the amount of damage it would do. HT's can't even storm until they've collected enough energy.
We do have tools, but they don't really mesh with the current timings and build progressions that exist in the game. For example. storm drops arepotent, but by the time you have the infrastructure to execute them, especially in PvZ, killing a bunch of drones isn't really all that helpful against a Zerg who is maxed with a whole lot of larvae ready to go.
Genuine question. What do you think ends up being more effective ( assuming the min line gets cleared). Storm drop or hellbats?
Hellbats every time. The risk of loosing hellbats and a single medivac is only that, it costs a bunch of minerals and a little bit of gas and can hit pre 13 minutes in a standard game. Also you likely would already have a medivac.
Templars cost a lot more in tech, cost tons of gas, you have to charge their energy before the drop and the drop ship itself you would never have in your primary composition to start with as it is just cheaper and requires less micro to put down proxy pylons. The time it costs in the robo equates to about a half of a colossus and it is pretty supply heavy too. If loose a templar drop you loose so much more than a hellbat drop.
EPT
