EPTWas Protoss given the same design focus? - Page 4
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mayrain319
10 Posts
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xPrimuSx
92 Posts
Terrain Control Zerg has creep, I don't think a lot more needs to be said. You do more than step on creep to clear a little out and you need to be prepared to fight or quickly run away. Creep also prevents your opponent from building anything on that territory until it has receded Terran has tanks, mines, turrets, depot walls, PFs, bunkers (mix and match as appropriate) to lock down territory they control. Protoss had cannons, batteries, and recall. Batteries just gotten nerfed, and both overcharge and recall are one time use on a global cooldown so can always be baited or waited out. Toss units are not sufficient strong or long ranged to be used in small units to support fixed positions like Terran or mobile enough to be reactive like Zerg. It's a big issue of more often than not needing your main army to push away aggression and not really being able to harass back in the same way. Then there is of course that Toss has no door. Passive scouting/map awareness Zerg has creep. Provides tons of map awareness without risking literally anything Terran has sensor towers, which just got nerfed, and scan. Early game scan is costly in terms of not having a MULE but in late game it's negligible. Building a tower is a cost of minerals and gas, but there's no supply cost so it doesn't affect your army strength for a player in position to start building sensor towers versus the benefit the information provides. Protoss has literally nothing. Revelation is a great spell but you need to be active with the oracle. If you're a little off, it can be picked off or outright yoinked and killed. Observers also are great, but they're slow (despite recent buff to speed still slower than they were when they got nerfed for being "frustrating" when they got away), cost gas, and take up supply. There's also Sentry technically but it's worse than the Oracle or Observer and still has the same negatives. Marco abilities - More is More Zerg has Queens and Hatcheries. The more of either one you have the better it gets. Queens are useful for macro, on defense, and in your army as support Terran has OC. While it took awhile to develop the play style, mass OC is basically always beneficial. MULES when energy for scan isn't needed to massively boost your economy or scan to collect information on your opponent they cannot counter in anyway Protoss has chrono, which is a wonderfully flexible tool, but as a result was nerfed by the developers so it wasn't too good. No one is building a macro Nexus for more chrono energy like you would extra queens (or hatches) or OCs. Armies of higher value than workers would allow Zerg has mobile spores and spines which they can use late game to support their main army as well as "instant remax" larvae to be able to function as though they are fielding an army of higher supply than should be possible. Terran has MULES (late game allows you to free up supply for army while maintaining eco) and spells that negate key enemy units and make their own units hit harder. One could argue similarly for Vipers and Zerg but their skills are more single target and require an army of support in order to actually be useful Protoss has no means of sidestepping worker requirements to support their army and their units all have high supply costs. To make matters worse warpgate actually encourages you to operate below 200 supply so you have some room to warp in additional units on defense or wherever else you might need them. Instead of spells functioning to make your army have greater value than your opponent, Toss needs spells to reach parity with your opponent. Some if not all of these key strategic areas would need to be addressed for Protoss to be playing on the same field as their opponents at the highest level. I think these are probably more important than any single unit buff/nerf to make Toss relevant at the highest level | ||
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Slydie
1923 Posts
Warpgate is also a "macro ability", but one which can very easily be abused, and Toss units need to be weaker because of it. Protoss was always intended as a "trickery" race in SC2. Sentries, DTs, easy proxying, blink, warp prisms etc. etc encourage that playstyle. | ||
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xPrimuSx
92 Posts
As to pylons, yes, sight range 9 compares to sight range 12 + 15 additional range for sensor. A sensor tower gives 1.8 times the visual range and factoring in the sensor range, gives 9 times the range for passive information gathering. By cost, a sensor tower is 325 resources (gas double that of mineral in value) so yeah, 3 pylons are not pulling in more info than a single sensor tower. Creep is even worse since after the initial investment it costs nothing, not supply or resources as it self-propagates. You could send your Queens to their doom the get the supply back if you really wanted, though I want to stress I think that's stupid and it's mostly to prove the point, and it's not like the creep suddenly vanishes As to Protoss being the "tricky" race. That doesn't really matter when every time they find a trick that works it gets nerfed out of existence, then you end up with a race that can't do anything. I also need to point out the "easy proxying" you bring up. Really? Easier than Terran with their buildings that can fly home? Maru became famous for his proxy barracks | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10347 Posts
I guess mass Warpgate is a soft equivalent to mass OC or mass Queen. You could have 30 Gateways lategame and instantly be warping in 30 Stalkers while your army is still fighting. I had a crazy idea, what if instead of making a Battery overcharge ability, it was built into chronoboost? You could chronoboost multiple batteries or even canons to speed up their shield regen or attack speed. It would be weaker than a overcharge though ofc. It could open up new ways to balance things, you could even come up with a 3rd ability for the Nexus. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25648 Posts
On August 17 2023 02:01 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: I agree it does suck that Protoss doesn't have something equivalent to mass OC or mass Queen, and they don't have a way to make their armies have higher value in the endgame, they at least can build forward batteries with a Nexus for Overcharge but that's it. I guess mass Warpgate is a soft equivalent to mass OC or mass Queen. You could have 30 Gateways lategame and instantly be warping in 30 Stalkers while your army is still fighting. I had a crazy idea, what if instead of making a Battery overcharge ability, it was built into chronoboost? You could chronoboost multiple batteries or even canons to speed up their shield regen or attack speed. It would be weaker than an overcharge though ofc. It could open up new ways to balance things, you could even come up with a 3rd ability for the Nexus. It’s just so crazy it might work! I quite like the idea, tbh I’ve always felt chrono was a bit weak anyway as a macro mechanic outside of optimising early BOs. Giving it some more utility would be nice. It just doesn’t keep up in scale with mules or inject/larva in lategame. Hell why not make it castable on certain units? It could act as a handy mana booster or something for when you desperately need dat storm. | ||
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dysenterymd
1238 Posts
On August 17 2023 02:43 WombaT wrote: It’s just so crazy it might work! I quite like the idea, tbh I’ve always felt chrono was a bit weak anyway as a macro mechanic outside of optimising early BOs. Giving it some more utility would be nice. It just doesn’t keep up in scale with mules or inject/larva in lategame. Hell why not make it castable on certain units? It could act as a handy mana booster or something for when you desperately need dat storm. Chrono could even increase attack speed on big daddy immortals or collosi, or reduce cool down on disruptor shots. Would need some fine tuning, but it could be fun. There's a risk it would just make tricky all ins even stronger, so it could be locked behind some tech structure/research (requires a robo bay or a robo bay upgrade or something.) | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10347 Posts
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States44598 Posts
On August 07 2023 18:26 Slydie wrote: The bias is strong there, hallucinated Phoenixes is a great scouting tool, as is planting pylons and letting them finish by themselves. Warpgate is also a "macro ability", but one which can very easily be abused, and Toss units need to be weaker because of it. Protoss was always intended as a "trickery" race in SC2. Sentries, DTs, easy proxying, blink, warp prisms etc. etc encourage that playstyle. Warpgate is great for having reinforcements quickly on the frontlines, but the fact that you can't queue warpgate units (the same way that you could queue barracks units) means that it's a lot more likely you'll mess up macro if you're preoccupied with fighting or doing something else. It's an interesting trade-off, but Protoss macro via warpgate units requires hitting timings more consistently than Terran barracks units, which makes Protoss macro harder to execute in general. | ||
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xPrimuSx
92 Posts
Current CB is a flat 50% boost for 20 seconds at 50 energy. My idea would be something like Stage1: 20% boost -> Stage 2: 40% boost -> Stage 3: 80% boost, with chrono now lasting 15 seconds and costing 25 energy. Time averaged current CB gets you 50% boost for 60s with minimal effort for 150 energy, while my change would get you 55% over the same time at 100 energy and a lot more effort. However, every boost after that would be dramatically better, provided you have the energy to keep chrono going and don't miss a chrono and get reset to Stage 1. I think this could also help Toss pros with comeback potential since if you can stall for say 2 minutes you could chrono up multiple structures to rebuild whatever you might have lost. It would also be something that mostly rewards pros (the people with the APM to pull it off routinely) while reducing Protoss power in lower leagues | ||
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Creager
Germany1900 Posts
On August 17 2023 12:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Warpgate is great for having reinforcements quickly on the frontlines, but the fact that you can't queue warpgate units (the same way that you could queue barracks units) means that it's a lot more likely you'll mess up macro if you're preoccupied with fighting or doing something else. It's an interesting trade-off, but Protoss macro via warpgate units requires hitting timings more consistently than Terran barracks units, which makes Protoss macro harder to execute in general. While it's certainly interesting, you could also look at it like this: Since SC2's initial release Protoss players have always been opting for Warpgate over Gateway as apparently its advantages massively outweigh its shortcomings, it's of course also subject to the skill bracket we are talking here, as queueing units means no resources available when they might be needed elsewhere. I'd also like to add that Protoss has easier macro aspects when it comes to base building, which probably also contributes to the race being perceived as more gimmicky. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10347 Posts
On August 18 2023 16:11 xPrimuSx wrote: I've actually thought a lot about chrono and think a neat way to make it better and actually be reflective of "more is more" would be to make it stack in stages, kinda like the old Void Ray attack where if you don't keep chronoing the target you lose the benefits, maybe have something like, must chrono within 5-8 seconds, something that gives a decent window but isn't overly easy to maintain Current CB is a flat 50% boost for 20 seconds at 50 energy. My idea would be something like Stage1: 20% boost -> Stage 2: 40% boost -> Stage 3: 80% boost, with chrono now lasting 15 seconds and costing 25 energy. Time averaged current CB gets you 50% boost for 60s with minimal effort for 150 energy, while my change would get you 55% over the same time at 100 energy and a lot more effort. However, every boost after that would be dramatically better, provided you have the energy to keep chrono going and don't miss a chrono and get reset to Stage 1. I think this could also help Toss pros with comeback potential since if you can stall for say 2 minutes you could chrono up multiple structures to rebuild whatever you might have lost. It would also be something that mostly rewards pros (the people with the APM to pull it off routinely) while reducing Protoss power in lower leagues Definitely like the ideas behind this! Could give Protoss more potential to be threatening early on if the opponent fails to harass them and make them burn Chrono on remaking probes, if the Protoss wants to go for some specific creative timing. Would further flesh out Protoss's emphasis on tech (increasing trickery and focus on build order planning). Terran can do insane things by having a huge army (like having 190 supply army and mass MULEs lategame, or splitting the map and slowly winning the war of attrition with their strong defenses). Zerg can do insane things by having a huge economy (endlessly crashing banelings into your 4th/5th while taking the whole map, or massing mobile static defense lategame and instant remaxing). What insane things can Protoss do with tech? Protoss does have some cool things, with a lot of variety in build orders and strategies/timings in the early and midgame (in PvT at least, not sure anymore about the other MUs). They can do things like taking far away gold bases too thanks to Recall. But the potential for doing insane things with their tech doesn't seem as high. It really feels like Protoss's weaknesses are far more punishing than Terran and Zerg, while the strengths have a lower ceiling too. Another reason why I don't think it would at all be broken or unfair to buff the Mothership more, or at least buff Time Warp to actually be a bit stronger... even microbrial shroud can be very potent and it's on a much cheaper unit. A random idea: Might be fun if chronoboost can be used on units in addition to canons/batteries. For example, chronoboosting a HT to increase its energy regeneration, or a Disruptor to decrease its cooldown. It wouldn't be broken at all and would be more of a niche thing, but it could help comeback potential or be used in an endgame scenario when you have tons of Nexus energy massed up. Heck maybe you can chronoboost a unit to increase its attack speed (by 50% for 20 seconds). If you have tons of energy banked up you might be able to chronoboost 10 Carriers for a fight, that's not actually that insane considering what Terran can do with mass BC/OCs in the endgame, or what Zerg can do with mass spores/Queens/infestor/viper with mass bases. | ||
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Kyadytim
United States886 Posts
On August 18 2023 21:57 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Let's be realistic. One Protoss player would figure out a strong all-in or two involving this mechanic, get second place in GSL, and everything they did would immediately be nerfed into the ground.Definitely like the ideas behind this! Could give Protoss more potential to be threatening early on if the opponent fails to harass them and make them burn Chrono on remaking probes, if the Protoss wants to go for some specific creative timing. Would further flesh out Protoss's emphasis on tech (increasing trickery and focus on build order planning). | ||
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Slydie
1923 Posts
On August 17 2023 12:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Warpgate is great for having reinforcements quickly on the frontlines, but the fact that you can't queue warpgate units (the same way that you could queue barracks units) means that it's a lot more likely you'll mess up macro if you're preoccupied with fighting or doing something else. It's an interesting trade-off, but Protoss macro via warpgate units requires hitting timings more consistently than Terran barracks units, which makes Protoss macro harder to execute in general. Imagine a Terran running out of bio at the frontline, but retaining some midivacs. BOOM: 10 marauders are warped simultaneously directly into the frontline. They stim and wipe 2 colosseus and 5 stalkers before the Toss can do anything... It would be broken AF, but I think this illustrates why Gateway armies need to have major weaknesses. | ||
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Sabu113
United States11057 Posts
And just to underline the point, people like mvp are hilariously overrated for a massive racial buff. | ||
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xPrimuSx
92 Posts
On August 19 2023 23:44 Kyadytim wrote: Let's be realistic. One Protoss player would figure out a strong all-in or two involving this mechanic, get second place in GSL, and everything they did would immediately be nerfed into the ground. Consider that anything with chronoboost becomes super easily scoutable. If such an all-in was figured out you'd see it coming by scouting where chrono is used and that alone gives a lot of counter-play. Snipe the structure being chrono'd, force chrono elsewhere by attacking or killing probes, or just build a counter since you know what they're going for. Considering the time lag before you get a legitimate benefit it's not like the opponent can fake you out since it takes time to get to stage 3 and then continue getting the benefit from it. On August 20 2023 10:10 Sabu113 wrote: Lot of talk to get back to what was obvious when the warhound came out in wol beta. The design team was bad. Sc2 is a badly designed game. They failed to understand the value of constraints. And just to underline the point, people like mvp are hilariously overrated for a massive racial buff. The point wasn't to say Blizzard did a bad design, just to Protoss didn't get the same focus that the other races did. I do agree that the Warhound is a good example because it showed that Terran was super strong and a lot of potential things that you could put in for them ended up redundant or overpowered, look at how many units that were proposed for the expansions and then cancelled for Terran or how "new" units for Zerg were picked up pretty quick, while for Protoss they had to nerf the Colossus for the Disruptor to really see a lot more play. I think it goes to show, Terran was designed well from the start as the first race, Zerg was designed pretty fully with a good amount of focus on how to account for their weaknesses and flesh them out, and Protoss was "we have a random idea that looks cool so we'll put it here with some duct tape so it stays on." I mean the Replicant was a thing for Protoss because they initially could not even think of a unique unit to add. | ||
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Slydie
1923 Posts
On August 20 2023 10:10 Sabu113 wrote: Lot of talk to get back to what was obvious when the warhound came out in wol beta. The design team was bad. Sc2 is a badly designed game. They failed to understand the value of constraints. And just to underline the point, people like mvp are hilariously overrated for a massive racial buff. Look up the basics before posting, please. The Warhound was a part of the "Heart of the Swarm" beta, and the difference is very important. That the unit was scratched is sign that the design team is at least not terrible, removing it after release would have been a real disastre. Remember how the Tempest was intended as a Muta counter with massive splash? Or the High Templar energy upgrade alongside Warp Gate? Or Motherships casting "planet cracker and "black hole"? Whichever idea gets tried in testing should not be held against the developers imo. | ||
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Kyadytim
United States886 Posts
On August 21 2023 03:07 Slydie wrote: Look up the basics before posting, please. The Warhound was a part of the "Heart of the Swarm" beta, and the difference is very important. That the unit was scratched is sign that the design team is at least not terrible, removing it after release would have been a real disastre. Remember how the Tempest was intended as a Muta counter with massive splash? Or the High Templar energy upgrade alongside Warp Gate? Or Motherships casting "planet cracker and "black hole"? Whichever idea gets tried in testing should not be held against the developers imo. The expansion was wrong, but I think the point still stands. The Warhound made it into the closed beta with a stat block and cost that made mono-Warhound compositions perform better than bio. But if you really want evidence that the devs had no ability to forecast what balance changes or new units would do, look at the original warp gate research time in the WoL beta. Because the devs just... didn't think about Protoss players building pylons in the other player's base. | ||
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Sofiachloe
United States1 Post
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