Blizzard's Potential Balance Test Map Changes - Page 47

On March 23 2013 01:24 TheDwf wrote:

Sure you can. Then Protoss comes front with Oracles/Stalkers and kills you because you're lacking 6 Marines.

The strength of Oracles does not only come from their ability to wipe out your mineral line and/or your Marines with the unadulterated firepower of a Banshee on steroids, it also comes from their ambiguity. If you open gasless expand you play completely blind. One Stalker in front of his natural is all he needs to dispose of any scouting SCV, and moving out Marines on the map, which was already dangerous when lacking intel on WoL, is now completely out of question. Scans are a gamble (can see everything, can see something, can see nothing). Even if you scout a proxy Stargate, what is he doing? 1-base 3g Oracles? 1gS expand with the Stargate proxied? How many Oracles will he make? Where will he go? Mineral line? Front? Production? Even if he expanded, is he then going 5g + 4-5 Oracles? You have no way to know, which means your build has to account for all possibilities. But accounting for all possibilities means one Turret per mineral line, one Turret in front and one Turret by your production facilities (otherwise Oracles can just cancel your Stim and/or pick Marines as they move out of the Barracks), plus perhaps a Scan to see if he expanded or not, at which point you're 900+ minerals behind your optimal build order, which means you're massively behind in a macro game, and still dead against an all-in because you will lack troops so badly.

Bomber vs MC, Whirlwind, MLG; TheStC vs Sage, Neo Planet S, Fureur Contest; and Mvp vs MC, Whirlwind, MLG show the glaring holes of gasless expands against Oracle play. In the first game, Bomber loses some Marines to the first Oracle (this simple loss meaning he's already dead against any 1-base all-in), then is caught completely out of position because he cannot know if he has to stay in his base or in front. In the second game, TheStC has 10 Marines by his production facilities to protect them, then MSC comes, casts a Time Warp on the Marine pack and enter 3 Oracles for the slaughter. Needless to say, the frontal bust afterwards prevailed without any trouble. In the third game, MC makes 4 Oracles, decimate Marines/SCVs of an unprepared Mvp (who had no way to know how many Oracles MC would build and when/where he would strike) and opts for a 2-bases Colossi all-in to use his advantage.

Remember the chess motto: the threat is often stronger than the execution. For this reason I think gasless expands will become a relic of the past, a greedy coinflip you hope to get away with. Some threats just define match-ups to such an extent that all builds have to take them into account; even if they're not played, they're always here as a backdrop. In WoL TvP, there was for example 4g. If you didn't bother to confirm an expand after a single gas opening from the Protoss, you had either to get a blind second Bunker or you were coinflipping. In WoL HotS, there is now the threat of an Oracle anytime between 6' (for the closest proxies) and 6'45 in your mineral line. It can even come earlier if Protoss builds his Stargate before Stalker/Warpgate. This is a new "major threat," because as evidenced by the First vs Dream series at IEM or Mvp vs MC, Star Station, MLG you just lose if you have nothing at home to defend when the Oracle(s) show(s) up. And "nothing" includes 5 Marines, or more if 2 Oracles come at once.

As such, gasless expands have already undergone the simple tweak that is building your EB much earlier, and getting 2 blind Turrets. But this is a "for lack of a better solution," because spending nearly 400 minerals each time you scout dual gas from your opponent—which should quickly become the standard as MSC makes Protoss early game gas-intensive—is obviously suboptimal, and potentially game-ending if your opponent doesn't play Oracles but goes for another all-in, e. g. proxy Immortal (you can't defend this if you spend so much minerals on useless stuff). But the threat is there, and if you don't get those EBs you might run into troubles. Dilemma. The build order thus faces an unsolvable contradiction, and it should fade away in favor of the LG-IM build order or Reaper expands (either with a fact port transition—see for instance Polt vs Creator, Akilon Wastes, IPL Fight Club 48—or a quick stim) which are much more flexible for defending the variety of all-ins or pressure builds Protoss has at their disposal. With the LG-IM build order you have less scouting possibilities than with a fast Reaper, but at least you can make 2 Mines, or more if necessary, and quick Vikings to help against Oracles (Mvp vs MC, Newkirk City, MLG).

I see no reason to stick to a painful, hazardous scouting and defending process when HotS allows you to handle the new problems with far better scouting and defensive tools, including a cheap unit which is even cooperative enough not to require extra add-ons and instantly punishes any overly eager move on the mineral line from the Protoss by killing a 150/150 Oracle in one shot.

On a side note, playing gasless also brings back in the equation all the cheap Gateway pushes / all-ins. You could see how HuK, MC and Sage were all too happy to be able to play 5g against respectively Bogus (Akilon Wastes, MLG), Mvp (Cloud Kingdom, MLG) and TheStC (Newkirk City, Fureur Contest). Of course you can defend them without Mines, WoL style with Bunkers, SCVs and whatever fetish you hold dear to pray for Protoss to botch his Forcefields. But now compare with Polt vs Creator, Atlas, IPL Fight Club 48 and YoDa vs MC, Daybreak, IEM and see what happens to 5/6g when Widow Mines are there. The Widow Mine shuts down pure Gateway agression on its own and this alone is such a blessing. Nowadays Gateway attacks have to feature at least an Observer or an Oracle, again because of mere threats (defensive Widow Mines or Widow Mines drop). Of course you can still lose to Gateway attacks if you don't have enough to hold, but being able to instantly kill some of the Zealots, or even better the Sentry casting Guardian Shield, is already pure gold.

On March 29 2013 04:47 TheDwf wrote:
CC first is a bit different because it's a nice way to metagame Protoss skipping Probe scout (which is now more frequent with the extra scouting tools Protoss was given). The 3 rax Medivacs transition has the same issues as gasless 1 rax expand against clever Oracle play, but at least you can use the extra minerals you get—compared with gasless 1 rax expand I mean—to build extra defence against that. Furthermore, if you can get away with it while Protoss went for some kind of dual gas "slow" expand without early Oracles (or if his investment in Oracles didn't pay off), you're in a strong spot (MarineKing vs Seed, Akilon Wastes, MLG Winter Exhibitions; Ryung vs MC, Star Station, GSTL).

On March 29 2013 07:19 TheDwf wrote:
Yes, it's a lot safer [to use a gas opening]. It's not impossible to defend Oracle play with gasless expand, especially if Protoss sticks to hackneyed tactics such as only making 1 Oracle to take cognizance of your 2 Turrets, but if Protoss is smart I see no way to defend certain things without cumbersome defensive measures, which is bound to mean overreaction and thus waste against a Protoss simply messing around with a single bubble plane without any elaborate plan. Too coinflippy either way.

On March 29 2013 07:19 TheDwf wrote:
Check "Q. How to deal with Oracles?" for extra info about Oracles vs unupgraded Marines.