Should Protoss have a "door"?

On September 27 2020 05:03 BabelFish1 wrote:
If Photon cannons, for example, lowered into the ground and allowed units to walk over them while not attacking, I could see that being reasonable.

If you give Protoss a freaking Null Gate from Heroes of the Storm...then yeah, that could be a balance issue lol.

Ideally, map makers just need to do a better job. They practically all follow the same cookie cutter templates with race favoritism features such as pervert pillars at the nat or reaper ledges.

Race favoritism features in maps is just stupid; this isn't Battlefleet Gothica: Armada where you have persistent armies and you're supposed to lose certain modes/maps because you are literally playing X race - followed by dominating another mode/map for the same reason, this is sc2, the maps should all benefit each race equally.

It also makes me wonder, on a side note, if this is part of why Blizzard's balance has been less stellar for the last 2ish years. You don't magically go from "Tankivacs were a mistake, MSC needs to be removed, Zealots need buffs" to "let's leave the BL bug in the game for a few years, bring back super infestors, introduce Thors that beat everything but small, cheap, ground units, etc" without something major happening internally.

To that end, yeah, I really wonder if the map makers are at least partially responsible for the mess that was sc2 balance earlier in 2020 and through pretty much all of 2019.

On September 27 2020 05:47 InfCereal wrote:
It astounds me that protoss players want to be able to hold a ling flood with no units.

On September 27 2020 05:47 deacon.frost wrote:

Photon Cannon is nonsense, you need this most as Protoss in the early game, shield battery, everything earlier is nonsense and every tech later doesn't make much sense. We can talk batteries can do this after the warpgate tech is finished, but that's the latest. Otherwise it would be just anti-zergling measure

Edit> FFS, it was about that drone drilling stuff? How about you, i don't know, scout it?

On September 27 2020 05:57 BabelFish1 wrote:


Photon cannons in BW did kind of act as a wall of sorts via the mechanic I described. It would change absolutely nothing, except for maybe making FFE/FGE/GFE more prevalent.

Wtf are you talking about? Where did I mention Widow Mines?

On September 27 2020 05:58 deacon.frost wrote:

What widow mines? Where in my post you see words "mine" or "widow"? oO

On September 27 2020 06:00 BabelFish1 wrote:


I read drone drilling as drilling claws lol. Oops!

What do you mean drone drilling? That's like...the least problematic thing in sc2...and if drone drilling wins you the game you're either a God or your opponent is new to RTS games lol. Either or, not sure how that matters?

On September 27 2020 05:03 BabelFish1 wrote:
pervert pillars at the nat

On September 27 2020 06:20 Die4Ever wrote:

lol that's a great name for them

but yea I feel like we should try maps that don't have perfectly convenient spots for overlords to see everything for free

On September 27 2020 06:25 BabelFish1 wrote:


That one always got me, like, why does Zerg need that? You can literally fly your 1st Overlord to the nat and into dead space to get partial vision without losing it vs anything but a double marine opener off of 1 rax (that in itself is a bit of a tell that there's an allin coming). Or Zerg can drone scout *le gasp*.

I've no evidence but I really, really think map makers are sc2's greatest current problem - and unfortunately, when you have broken, biased maps - that impacts the stats which the balance team need to draw conclusions regarding the meta.

On September 27 2020 06:03 deacon.frost wrote:

Check the spoiler in the 1st post. It's about PvZ in them GSL

Basically, if it's all about those cheeses, learn how to scout it.

BTW anything with forge is wasted 150 minerals early in the game, especially FFE is tech-wise so behind it's not funny. The new mechanics made it obsolete as hell

On September 27 2020 06:28 deacon.frost wrote:

They can have a safe spot near the nat, i wonder as well why it has to be part of the wall. Although in some recent games somebody killed the ovie and used it for a liberator, died laughing (probably GSL RO16 #A group)

On September 27 2020 06:42 Archerofaiur wrote:


Lets stay focused on the topic at hand.

For those who support map map making solutions, what kind of map making solutions would make Protoss less vulnerable to zergling flood + drone drill.

On September 27 2020 06:42 Archerofaiur wrote:


Lets stay focused on the topic at hand.

For those who support map map making solutions, what kind of map making solutions would make Protoss less vulnerable to zergling flood + drone drill.

On September 27 2020 07:21 deacon.frost wrote:

I mean, how about leaving a probe near your wall and if you see them drones running at ya build a ... something. This worked mostly because it was a surprising new tactic.

On September 27 2020 06:47 BabelFish1 wrote:


Larger maps, 4 spawn maps.

On September 27 2020 08:36 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


That's your plan to nerf zerg? You weren't joking went you said you had no evidence. Also fyi maps of all types do get made--however only those that get picked by the TLMC judges (who are mainly pro players/community figures) are considered by Blizzard for ladder (with a few exceptions like GSL maps). So yeah you're probably not going to get 4p maps.

On September 27 2020 08:08 Hunta15 wrote:
When people see a new strategy win they always assume it's broken.

Before you made this thread did you even consider that one shield battery would completely shut this down.

On September 27 2020 09:06 [Phantom] wrote:
He did scout. But he didn't scout that push. Why? because the map has 3 paths that lead to the natural, zerg used the indirect one. Try to focus at what zest is doing, i'm not sure how much better he could have reacted. It was an insta win.

On September 27 2020 09:06 BabelFish1 wrote:


And that is probably the issue, these judges are nuts. Every map has a pervert pillar; for example. Blizzard even issued a statement about that...

Maybe they need people who have previous experience in game design and do not have a conflict of interest as judges?
That might, you know, make sense? Rest of the world frowns on conflict of interest, why shouldn't Blizzard?

Personally, I'd just remove pervert pillars period. Ban them on Blizzard's end and see what happens. Larger maps or 4p maps are just 2 examples of ways to fix the issue on the map making side but as you've made clear, the issue might not be with the map makers. It could very well be the judges.

On September 27 2020 09:52 Pursuit_ wrote:


Zest didn't scout very well this game tbh. Normally you will try to keep the probe around to see the third and send the first adept across the map to make sure Zerg is still making drones and not lings. He didn't even scout if Solar took a third. On top of that, he opened twilight and not stargate, which is much more vulnerable to these kinds of early pushes. A safety shield battery in this situation (where he is playing to blind) probably would have kept his adept alive long enough to make a full wall and win the game.

edit: Not saying these kinds of builds aren't hard to scout, but this could have just as easily been a roach push the way Zest scouted this game and he would have been just as dead imo.

On September 27 2020 10:45 Pursuit_ wrote:


Zest did not scout the lings. He was caught completely off guard.

On September 27 2020 16:22 Decendos wrote:
2. Zest got stalker instead of 2nd adept

On September 27 2020 16:22 Decendos wrote:
1. Zest didn't scout
2. Zest got stalker instead of 2nd adept
3. Zest could just wall off main, evacuate probes and retake natural and be way ahead in workers
4. As long as P gets free wins with cannon rushes, shield batteries etc why shouldn't the other races? TvZ was the same where solar didn't scout 4 raxes Vs cure its insta free win for T. But scouting helps...

On September 28 2020 01:14 JJH777 wrote:


Those situations are different because there is more counterplay even if you don't see it coming. Zerg is perfectly capable of defending cannon rushes even when they don't find out about them until the last second. It's a lot harder than if you see it right away but it's not impossible. With a lot of these ling floods the Protoss is just instantly dead as soon as they don't wall in time which they usually only have a few seconds to do. There's no micro or decision that can save them after.the ling's are in. Same thing for 4rax I remember Serral stopping a 4 rax from uthermal without scouting it before. I'm sure other Zergs have too.

1. Zest didn't scout

3. Zest could just wall off main, evacuate probes and retake natural and be way ahead in workers

On September 28 2020 10:38 Ben... wrote:

Yeah, exactly. That argument reminds of when there was hatchery tech overlord drops that were pretty obviously too good against protoss but all the TL zergs argued that all protoss needed to do was get oracles and blindly put batteries in every mineral line, which completely ignored that it forced protoss down one tech/build path and put them behind against literally anything else. A lot of the zerg suggested solutions to these ling flood builds these days are similarly flawed. They say to just do this or just do that, but the solutions given almost always will put protoss behind against basically anything else and requires protoss to do things blindly, which pigeonholes protoss into playing a certain way. If the counterplay to a build requires someone to do something blind to the point where they end up behind against anything else, then usually that build/strategy is deemed problematic. That's what happened with early overlord drops. That's what happened with 1-1-1. That's what happened with hellbat drops and oracles in HOTS.


Depending on which early attack build zerg is doing, you either have to scout it or you die, or in some cases if you try to scout it, you die. There are several different early zerg attack builds right now that look basically identical when doing initial probe scouting that all require completely different responses and it's more or less down to luck if protoss will guess which one is being done. The super fast 6 slow ling build that several GSL protosses died to on Everdream (including Stats) requires the first adept to be at home for protoss to survive. The 2-3 base low drone speedling flood build where they smash your wall down right as warpgate finishes requires the protoss to use the first adept to scout the number of drones at the natural/third. If you try to scout the latter build and they do the former, you're probably dead since they either will unpower your wall or will target down the cybernetics. If they do the latter build and you keep your initial units on your half of the map and don't see the ling flood coming (ie: what happened to Zest), the chance of you saving your wall is slim to none. The new addition of the drone drill makes this build even worse to defend because it makes the only protoss counter to it not possible since the drones prevent buildings from being put down. The only counters to it are to either scout both the drone pull and a bunch of lings while having units at home, or having a worker parked at the wall opening and you have to build something to block at the exact right second or it's game over.

This won't work. Zest losing all his wall buildings means that he's suddenly at minimum a cybernetics core worth of build time behind tech wise, especially if his wall was powered down before warp gate finished (it just barely finished in this particular game). The zerg would basically be able to hard-contain the protoss into their base for several minutes while droning non-stop and gaining a substantial econ lead. Solar still had drones at home mining in his main and had his third finished as the attack hit. Even if he were to have a newly building wall in his main, Zest was about to be down to one base and no cybernetics core with a couple dozen zerglings parked at the bottom of his ramp while he himself would have only had his 2 pre-warpgate gateway units and an immortal.

I thought the idea of a door for protoss was ridiculous at first but the last couple GSLs have had a rather silly number of games decided by these early ling attacks or ling floods. If there were obvious issues with how the protoss played it would be one thing, but in a lot of these games, the protoss didn't actually do anything wrong based on how they played and more or less died because of random chance (they didn't scout the right route of multiple choices the zerg has to choose from) with no ability to outplay the opponent and come back. In this context, the door solution makes sense since it puts protoss on even footing with the other races. Honestly, it seems like it's either this door thing or they bring back the mothership core because batteries are never going to solve this issue and zerg's only going to find even more of these early attack variations as time goes on.

On September 28 2020 10:38 Ben... wrote:

Yeah, exactly. That argument reminds of when there was hatchery tech overlord drops that were pretty obviously too good against protoss but all the TL zergs argued that all protoss needed to do was get oracles and blindly put batteries in every mineral line, which completely ignored that it forced protoss down one tech/build path and put them behind against literally anything else. A lot of the zerg suggested solutions to these ling flood builds these days are similarly flawed. They say to just do this or just do that, but the solutions given almost always will put protoss behind against basically anything else and requires protoss to do things blindly, which pigeonholes protoss into playing a certain way. If the counterplay to a build requires someone to do something blind to the point where they end up behind against anything else, then usually that build/strategy is deemed problematic. That's what happened with early overlord drops. That's what happened with 1-1-1. That's what happened with hellbat drops and oracles in HOTS.


Depending on which early attack build zerg is doing, you either have to scout it or you die, or in some cases if you try to scout it, you die. There are several different early zerg attack builds right now that look basically identical when doing initial probe scouting that all require completely different responses and it's more or less down to luck if protoss will guess which one is being done. The super fast 6 slow ling build that several GSL protosses died to on Everdream (including Stats) requires the first adept to be at home for protoss to survive. The 2-3 base low drone speedling flood build where they smash your wall down right as warpgate finishes requires the protoss to use the first adept to scout the number of drones at the natural/third. If you try to scout the latter build and they do the former, you're probably dead since they either will unpower your wall or will target down the cybernetics. If they do the latter build and you keep your initial units on your half of the map and don't see the ling flood coming (ie: what happened to Zest), the chance of you saving your wall is slim to none. The new addition of the drone drill makes this build even worse to defend because it makes the only protoss counter to it not possible since the drones prevent buildings from being put down. The only counters to it are to either scout both the drone pull and a bunch of lings while having units at home, or having a worker parked at the wall opening and you have to build something to block at the exact right second or it's game over.

This won't work. Zest losing all his wall buildings means that he's suddenly at minimum a cybernetics core worth of build time behind tech wise, especially if his wall was powered down before warp gate finished (it just barely finished in this particular game). The zerg would basically be able to hard-contain the protoss into their base for several minutes while droning non-stop and gaining a substantial econ lead. Solar still had drones at home mining in his main and had his third finished as the attack hit. Even if he were to have a newly building wall in his main, Zest was about to be down to one base and no cybernetics core with a couple dozen zerglings parked at the bottom of his ramp while he himself would have only had his 2 pre-warpgate gateway units and an immortal.

I thought the idea of a door for protoss was ridiculous at first but the last couple GSLs have had a rather silly number of games decided by these early ling attacks or ling floods. If there were obvious issues with how the protoss played it would be one thing, but in a lot of these games, the protoss didn't actually do anything wrong based on how they played and more or less died because of random chance (they didn't scout the right route of multiple choices the zerg has to choose from) with no ability to outplay the opponent and come back. In this context, the door solution makes sense since it puts protoss on even footing with the other races. Honestly, it seems like it's either this door thing or they bring back the mothership core because batteries are never going to solve this issue and zerg's only going to find even more of these early attack variations as time goes on.

On September 28 2020 11:56 RPR_Tempest wrote:
The fact that Protoss are genuinely whining about fucking ling-runbys of all things is astounding. Like there are legitimate problems with PvZ and THIS is what you're complaining about? For fucks sake, how many Terrans have lost because they had their depots down? How many ZvZs have been lost against a perfectly scouted zergling all-in because of a 1 pixel hole in their wall? How many ZvTs have been lost from a single hellion runby?

Because reaper grenades can blast queens out of the wall, hellions can get in even if you wall off with a queen. Zergs needed to make an adjustment, so they did. Now after droning 2 bases Zergs make 10 or so lings to try and stop hellion runbys. Not enough lings to not take damage if the Terran is able to get in and go for it, but enough to make it not worth it for the Terran player to try, barring a mistake from the Zerg.

I can't believe Protoss players. "Oh but if I send my adept across the map to scout I can't hold it!"

MAKE A FUCKING ZEALOT. WHEN A STRATEGY STARTS GAINING POPULARITY, YOUR JOB IS TO RESPOND. I know pros don't make an early zealot to try and cut as many corners as possible and get the most minuscule of leads, which is important at that level, but it's fairly clear that an early zealot is important versus the current meta Zerg opener. This is literally strategy game 101. A zealot in the wall takes so long to die to lings the Protoss has plenty of time to wall behind the zealot, start batteries and whatever else needs to happen.

As someone who has ling-flooded his way to GM before, it's embarrassing to see Protoss pros be consistently dying to builds that literal Diamond leaguers are able to hold because they know the power of a zealot in the wall. This is what NoRegreT means when he says Zerg has no early-game all-ins vs Protoss. The slightest safety shuts it down completely. It's not like it's difficult counterplay, it's extremely easy and simple, as basic as locking your door when you leave the house.

On September 28 2020 11:56 RPR_Tempest wrote:
The fact that Protoss are genuinely whining about fucking ling-runbys of all things is astounding. Like there are legitimate problems with PvZ and THIS is what you're complaining about? For fucks sake, how many Terrans have lost because they had their depots down? How many ZvZs have been lost against a perfectly scouted zergling all-in because of a 1 pixel hole in their wall? How many ZvTs have been lost from a single hellion runby?

Because reaper grenades can blast queens out of the wall, hellions can get in even if you wall off with a queen. Zergs needed to make an adjustment, so they did. Now after droning 2 bases Zergs make 10 or so lings to try and stop hellion runbys. Not enough lings to not take damage if the Terran is able to get in and go for it, but enough to make it not worth it for the Terran player to try, barring a mistake from the Zerg.

I can't believe Protoss players. "Oh but if I send my adept across the map to scout I can't hold it!"

MAKE A FUCKING ZEALOT. WHEN A STRATEGY STARTS GAINING POPULARITY, YOUR JOB IS TO RESPOND. I know pros don't make an early zealot to try and cut as many corners as possible and get the most minuscule of leads, which is important at that level, but it's fairly clear that an early zealot is important versus the current meta Zerg opener. This is literally strategy game 101. A zealot in the wall takes so long to die to lings the Protoss has plenty of time to wall behind the zealot, start batteries and whatever else needs to happen.

As someone who has ling-flooded his way to GM before, it's embarrassing to see Protoss pros be consistently dying to builds that literal Diamond leaguers are able to hold because they know the power of a zealot in the wall. This is what NoRegreT means when he says Zerg has no early-game all-ins vs Protoss. The slightest safety shuts it down completely. It's not like it's difficult counterplay, it's extremely easy and simple, as basic as locking your door when you leave the house.

On September 28 2020 11:04 RKC wrote:

Great write-up. The timing of early game scouting has always been an issue for Protoss (and Terran, to a certain extent). Both in SC2 and BW. Scout too early, see nothing. Scout late, you get blocked. Keep scouting 24/7, you lose economy and units. Scouting itself is a trade-off. That's the beauty of SC2/BW2. Unfortunately, one race (i.e. Zerg) has this aspect of the game easiest due to ovies (even if they get shoo-ed away, that's already an indirect tell something's up).

Edit: And when pros still get wrecked by seemingly basic errors (e.g. ling flood, hydra bust in BW), we should assume there's some meta-game going on that we can't catch. Protoss FFE is not being greedy - it's the only way to keep up with Zerg.

On September 28 2020 11:02 Archerofaiur wrote:


This is an extremely well thought out and articulated post but I have to ask, what about building a sentry after the initial adept and using force field? Would that work?

On September 29 2020 00:35 MachineHeadx wrote:
Was thinking about this when catching up with GSL this weekend. Terran have Depo drop and raise button. Zerg could have a spinecrawler burrow/unburrow button and Protoss Pylon could have temporal displacement button where it phases in and out.

On September 28 2020 23:59 Teoita wrote:


100 gas at that time means slowing down your tech massively, and on top of that you don't have a stalker to discourage (I'd like to say deny, but that never works out) overlord scouting. It can be done, but it's sub optimal. This is also why people claming that "protoss just need to build more units" are wrong - if you do that (say, by opening 2gate core before nexus a-la PvP) you cripple your followup and midgame without gaining any offensive power. I think the issue is not just the ling flood or needing a door (although being able to spam click to get lings behind a well positioned adept is dumb as hell). It's a symptom, not a cause.

On September 29 2020 05:56 lorestarcraft wrote:
The real problems are core design issues:

Protoss must cut corners and must do damage in order to have a chance in the mid and late game due to the massive macro and map control advantages Zerg has in the match-up. The inevitable result of the match-up is a Zerg win. If you tell both races to make the ultimate late game army, and they are controlled equally, the zerg wins. I don't think that point is even controversial.

So the whole problem is that Protoss can't do a truly safe opener and still live.

In light of that, you could give the nexus a force field spell instead of overcharge

On September 29 2020 07:05 deacon.frost wrote:

Currently the battery overcharge is super-strong. Wouldn't trade that for force field for anything. The game which is this based upon is a rare thing. There are bigger issues(like you said) thant this. I would suggest we move on and whine about something more important before Blizzard does some stupid shit and will say Protoss is now officially fine.

On September 29 2020 07:19 lorestarcraft wrote:


Yeah I think you make good points.

There are cute things you could explore, but there are other changes that should get looked at first probably.

On September 29 2020 09:22 Doko wrote:
Can someone link a vod of this?

On September 29 2020 09:54 [Phantom] wrote:


It's in the OP in the spoilers.

On September 29 2020 10:23 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:



its not timestamped though. so maybe they god lost in the vod

On September 29 2020 16:56 plainsane wrote:
Not imbalanced, this wont happen again, next time he'll have a probe ready to plant down a battery.