EPTSemi-standard Protoss Crying Post - Page 2
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Maksim2010
35 Posts
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12163 Posts
On December 20 2023 23:07 darklycid wrote: PvZ at dh was 46% and tvz was at 43% or smth overall i dont think zerg is anywhere near the weakest race. We'll see | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16056 Posts
On December 20 2023 21:44 Charoisaur wrote: Classic: 5 time premier tournament champion herO: 8 time premier tournament champion Why are you so certain that these players are just worse than Cure, Maru, Dark etc? The only argument for that would be their performance in the last few years but those has been affected by balance (actually herO even showed last year that he has the skill to win tournaments LOL). Historical precedent definitely indicates they should be competing for championships Oh and what happened about 5 years ago that changed everything? Oh yea, SERRAL happened. Ever since Serral came to prominence and changed the way that pros played Zerg, Protoss stopped winning. You think balance shifted? What I saw was the skill cap of the pros kept going up and up thanks in large part to the rise of Serral and the reaction of the Koreans to counter what he was doing and when that happened Protoss got largely left behind. Protoss got largely left behind because Protoss is FUNDAMENTALLY flawed in its design to keep it from competing at THAT high of a skill ceiling. You can't fix that with a balance patch. You can't. You need much larger redesigns to the core of how the race works, and that isn't going to happen at this stage in the game's development. You guys might want to call this a balance problem. I don't. I call it the pros skill level just finally got high enough that the fundamental problems in Protoss design that have been there from the start are impossible to ignore any longer. But we're also at the point where it's both too late to do anything about them because Blizzard abandoned SC2 proper, and there's still a large contingent of Protoss players in the community that are in denial about what needs to happen. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12163 Posts
On December 21 2023 01:52 Vindicare605 wrote: Oh and what happened about 5 years ago that changed everything? Oh yea, SERRAL happened. Ever since Serral came to prominence and changed the way that pros played Zerg, Protoss stopped winning. You think balance shifted? What I saw was the skill cap of the pros kept going up and up thanks in large part to the rise of Serral and the reaction of the Koreans to counter what he was doing and when that happened Protoss got largely left behind. Protoss got largely left behind because Protoss is FUNDAMENTALLY flawed in its design to keep it from competing at THAT high of a skill ceiling. You can't fix that with a balance patch. You can't. You need much larger redesigns to the core of how the race works, and that isn't going to happen at this stage in the game's development. You guys might want to call this a balance problem. I don't. I call it the pros skill level just finally got high enough that the fundamental problems in Protoss design that have been there from the start are impossible to ignore any longer. But we're also at the point where it's both too late to do anything about them because Blizzard abandoned SC2 proper, and there's still a large contingent of Protoss players in the community that are in denial about what needs to happen. This is obviously not the case. The main thing that sets protoss back in terms of high level of play is that mistakes are almost always game changing. You will lose the game if you miss one widow mine, the terran will not lose the game if they mess up their mine drop. You will lose the game if your colossus is misplaced, the terran will not lose the game if they lose a medivac full of units. You'll notice that as well by how long players stay in games where they are at a disadvantage. Terrans and zergs, vs protoss, know that it's very likely that they come back, because they're just one mistake away from coming back. The fact that your mistakes cost you more is not a "ceiling". You could always not lose to the drop, you could always not misplace the colossus, you could always not let the other guy back into the game. And it's definitely something that balance can have an impact on, as we have seen other periods of the game where interactions between races were different. If we had AIs playing the game perfectly I think zerg would be the best race, as it's the most reactive, then protoss and then terran. But the gap between protoss and zerg would be much smaller than the gap between protoss and terran. The race with the worst design is terran, by quite some distance. | ||
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darklycid
3460 Posts
On December 21 2023 01:52 Vindicare605 wrote: Oh and what happened about 5 years ago that changed everything? Oh yea, SERRAL happened. Ever since Serral came to prominence and changed the way that pros played Zerg, Protoss stopped winning. You think balance shifted? What I saw was the skill cap of the pros kept going up and up thanks in large part to the rise of Serral and the reaction of the Koreans to counter what he was doing and when that happened Protoss got largely left behind. Protoss got largely left behind because Protoss is FUNDAMENTALLY flawed in its design to keep it from competing at THAT high of a skill ceiling. You can't fix that with a balance patch. You can't. You need much larger redesigns to the core of how the race works, and that isn't going to happen at this stage in the game's development. You guys might want to call this a balance problem. I don't. I call it the pros skill level just finally got high enough that the fundamental problems in Protoss design that have been there from the start are impossible to ignore any longer. But we're also at the point where it's both too late to do anything about them because Blizzard abandoned SC2 proper, and there's still a large contingent of Protoss players in the community that are in denial about what needs to happen. I dont think you can put that onto serral, balance for sure shifted. | ||
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TossHeroes
281 Posts
We lost the adept Phoenix timing build vs terran because they refuse to adapt/change their build. Terran knew this timing attack was coming every game and yet they still insist to do a double medivac drop which gets shuts down every single time even though they knew the Protoss was opening up with Phoenix We also lost the immortal sentry build because Zergs while they couldn’t hold it on a consistent basis, meanwhile Protoss still instant lose to a simple Zergling runby if their wall instant perfect Then we lost our double star gate voidtau build as well Now we are stuck with this very predictable build cause everything else has been nerf to the ground Good times | ||
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BjoernK
194 Posts
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Poopi
France12794 Posts
On December 21 2023 04:19 BjoernK wrote: It does not help the the currently best Protoss player in the world does not want to show his face. At this point it has become clear MaxPax isn't the best protoss in the world. His performance in DH:EU is pretty telling, the stakes were higher than his usual cups and he couldn't deliver. Plus, the most likely scenario for him not showing up offline is some form of anxiety, so it's very doubtful he would be able to play his best sc offline. Even for "normal" players like Clem who rose in skill, it took time for him to have an international offline performance as good as his EPT:EU runs. Balance / design preventing protoss to reach higher skill ceiling aside, Trap / Zest / PartinG / Neeb not playing anymore doesn't help protoss results wise. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10329 Posts
Regarding redesigning Warpgate so that Gateway units can be stronger: Interestingly, Warp-in did get nerfed in LotV, so that warping in at far pylons is much slower. This made it so that early gateway pushes/all-ins weren't as scary and powerful like they were in WoL/HotS. This allowed them, in theory, to buff Protoss in other ways. However, instead of making Gateway units or Gateway comps stronger, what did they do? 1) They offset the weaker warp-ins at non-powered Pylons by making Warp Prism have an even stronger and faster warp-in speed. So now, you have timings that can have even stronger warp-ins, but they at least come a bit less early and require Robo tech. However I'm not sure if this is the direction people wanted things to really go haha. We could have buffed Zealots by 10 Shield potentially for example (remember, the original reason they were nerfed from BW values is because proxy gates were too strong in WoL beta!!), or buffed Gateway units slightly more in some way. (Hallucinations doing 10% damage?). 2) They made it so that you can boost pylons with Nexus/Warpgate near them, so that warp-ing in defensively was stronger than it was before, which addressed the vulnerability/fragility of Protoss vs multi-prong harass. This was good and in the right direction ofc. Just mentioning this because it's clear to me that the community and balance team often forget the reason certain changes are made, and then try other things that don't really fix things and make things even messier. I hope people can re-consider if Warp Prism having a super strong/fast warp-in is the direction we really wanted, or if that should be nerfed so that Gateway comps can be slightly stronger somehow. @MJG I totally agree, it's such a natural thing in games when you see "Massive" units, they are affected less by certain abilities. We already have this precedent in the game, like Massive units stomping FFs. I don't think Vipers should counter Colossus so hard (and the Mothership, but at least we buffed it). Is it so hard to make it so that Abduct for example only pulls Massive units half or 2/3 the distance? Another thing people seem to have forgotten is why Abduct was introduced in the game in the first place. It was added to HotS as a way to discourage WoL deathballs, where the colossus deathballs were a staple. However, we aren't really having this deathball issue anymore. Instead, it's discouraging protoss players from being active with their armies because it's easy to get Abducted and heavily punished and potentially surrounded. Remember that we already also reworked Colossus damage to be more as an anti-light spell in LotV. There's many ways to play around Colossus besides needing as hard a counter as Abduct. I know that if you're godlike you can use a WP to pick the Colossus back up and drop it to safety, but that's very hard to do and not super reliable with how fragile a WP is. The other issue with Abduct is that it's unfortunately really good at picking apart small fortifications or small armies, which is directly going against LotV's goals in making the game have more spread out gameplay with smaller skirmishes (like BW). Because what is the answer to Abduct? One answer is Feedback ofc, but the other answer is just have an even bigger deathball so that even if they Abduct, you still have enough big power units to win a fight. Abduct is unfortunately very good at small armies trying to hold bases or zone out areas of the map because there will be few siege/power units and you can easily abduct them all. So then protoss rather ball their army up so they have their HTs ready to feedback the Vipers, thus... just promoting deathballs anyways? Abduct really really needs to be looked at. Of course, we can compensate by buffing Zerg in some other way. And same with Neural Parasite - we could balance this ability much better and less volatile by making it less effective vs Massive units, but compensate by making it more effective vs other units. Basically, it could have a shorter duration for Massive units, but a bit longer for normal units. Or have a shorter duration for Massive units (like half or 2/3) and decrease the spell cost from 100 to 75. | ||
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Herringbone
29 Posts
With the game at this stage I wouldn't count on new players at this level so unfortunately it is what it is. The whole race being redesigned isn't going to happen. If the solution is buff Protoss to the point Astrea can take a series of Serral -> No thanks. | ||
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darklycid
3460 Posts
On December 21 2023 08:51 Herringbone wrote: I don't know what to tell you. The best Protoss player in an offline tournament is Reynor. Draw your own conclusions on what that means and how we got here. With the game at this stage I wouldn't count on new players at this level so unfortunately it is what it is. The whole race being redesigned isn't going to happen. If the solution is buff Protoss to the point Astrea can take a series of Serral -> No thanks. These Takes get clownier by the days. | ||
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THERIDDLER
Canada116 Posts
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Maksim2010
35 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25099 Posts
On December 20 2023 12:48 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: I think there are a lot of things that have changed with the game and the race that make it see less success (And i don't buy that Protoss isn't doing well simply cus they lost their best players, Zest and sOs had many more tournament wins and success in HotS than LotV, even though they were playing 2x as many years in LotV than HotS) For example a couple years ago, Protoss used to open up with a good amount of varied builds, such as proxy Oracle openers, but now that's not standard and from what i've heard from pros, it seems that the only way to play Protoss at the pro level is to mainly play straight up macro. That's limiting especially at a top level. Protoss used to have strong openers and really strong timings/all-ins throughout SC2 since WoL, but they always get nerfed. So Protoss has weaker peaks, but they still have the punishing and steep lows of the race. Now Protoss usually has to sit back and isn't very scary in the early or mid game, rather they are fragile until they get more tech units. How many times do you see a early Zerg Ravager push kill a Protoss and make it look nearly impossible to defend, and how many times do you see a Protoss try a supposedly "strong" push with gateways/immortals/WP, and it looks closee to breaking the Zerg but they just keep having enough Roach/ling reinforcements to hold it off from doing any real drone damage? I think Protoss is definitely in a much more doable place thanks to the latest patch (though the problem was introduced in the first place by nerfing Overcharge without giving nearly enough to compensate, thus making PvT extremely hard as the winrate seem to have been around 40% only, which for the history of SC2 is relatively VERY imbalanced judging from the stats the blizzard team would share about the state of balance). But Protoss is still very fragile and punishing. I think honestly Protoss is the hardest race to play at the top top level. It makes sense because Protoss has so many different units and abilities with such great potential, but with most players who aren't super fast or incredible with micro, you don't usually see Protoss show off what it can do. But when played by someone as fast and good at multi-tasking and control as someone like say Reynor, you start seeing what Protoss really could be if it had a Serral/Maru/Reynor/Clem type player. So, perhaps it really is just that Protoss never had a player on that level of crazy skill. Protoss as a race has so many different things you can be good at, and we see this through how each Protoss player's skillset varies much more than say Terran players do from other Terrans. We just haven't really seen a Protoss player have it all. On a side note, maps are always a factor. For a long time people have wondered how do you make a Protoss favored map, without simply making the map have more closed spaces which also favors Terran? Well the answer is have huge maps where warpin, recall, etc. become more powerful, such as Radhuset. Ok what do we do about Terran's immobility on such huge maps? Re-introduce Terran-favored map features such as cliffs spread out around the middle of the map or near some far away late-game expansions so that it's easier for Terran to hold positions, harass, etc. so that Protoss/Zerg don't just get free bases too easily. Re-introduce chokes/ramps/highground for far away bases. Stop making every expansion so open, which promotes deathball gameplay and favors Zerg (especially hard to defend vs cracklings for example). I know that a few years ago, the reason expansions are open is so that it's easier to threaten a Zerg base, since Zerg was so strong at the time. However, having expansion options with chokes/ramps for example would help Terran and Protoss more than Zerg. There's a lot of map features and ideas that are very common in BW maps and even earlier SC2 maps that promote spread out gameplay, that just got phased out and to me it feels like mapmakers just forget those are options or forget that maybe the reason they got phased out was for a valid reason at the time, but no longer holds anymore with the current state of the game/design/balance. Some nice, well thought-out ideas there sir Alternatively, and something I’ve advocated for forever, cut the cord tethering map makers and the map pool to adhering to certain standards, but most notably the idea every map has to, as close as possible be good for every matchup. This gives us a map pool where experimentation to say, help Protoss in PvZ is really hamstrung by likely creating problems in TvP, to take one example. I’d propose having a larger map pool, for a bit of variety. The majority would be XvX standard maps which we have now, then a sprinkling of tailored racial matchup maps, then maybe a few XvX non-standard maps to round it out, something a bit different like a Golden Wall. A map built for PvZ/ZvP would only be rolled for that matchup of course, so players don’t have to learn a million maps that are wonkily balanced for them. I think more map variety would improve the game from an entertainment PoV anyway, but also open the balancing by map toolkit in a way SC2 has thus far never been able to do. Protoss is not going to get the root and branch redesign that many (most?) think is what it would need to bring more parity at the top level, but perhaps a little masking of its struggles by clever map makers could bear some fruit. Unfortunately that pathway is also strangled by the current philosophy of how maps are built around all matchups, and how they are rolled. Curious as to what folks think of this approach | ||
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Deandre Pelletier
1 Post
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Harris1st
Germany6914 Posts
On December 20 2023 21:04 MJG wrote: @Vindicare: If I absolutely had to suggest a minor change then I'd modify the Viper so that Abduct can't be used on Massive units. I personally believe that the Viper is too good at single-handedly dismantling late-game Protoss armies and that some of that power needs to be taken away. But like I said earlier, the fact that Protoss is so dependent on power-units is the real problem, and that would require a major overhaul of the race to fix, which we both know isn't going to happen. Que sera sera. I'll just continue turning off major tournaments once all the Protoss players are eliminated. And then Protoss still lose to Terran and whine about it. Balance on a greater scale through all matchups and all game phases seems pretty decent right now. Protoss needs some new blood (probably not happening) since pretty much all Protoss players are returnees (Koreans) or old school veterans (Europe) | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25099 Posts
On December 21 2023 17:22 Harris1st wrote: And then Protoss still lose to Terran and whine about it. Balance on a greater scale through all matchups and all game phases seems pretty decent right now. Protoss needs some new blood (probably not happening) since pretty much all Protoss players are returnees (Koreans) or old school veterans (Europe) If someone could crunch the numbers I’d be very interested My instinct is that Protoss is potent but fragile, and this fragility is exposed the longer a series is due to them being heavily reliant on gambits and trickery. You can’t turn up and do a Serral or a Maru and yeah have a few pocket builds but largely just do your thing and outplay people with raw mechanics. Thus Protoss can be hugely overrepresented at GM level (Bo1), put up decent matchup stats in many a tournament (often on the back of Bo3s in a group phase) and generally not win tournaments as often because we’re into Bo5 or Bo7 territory. I think the lack of new blood is also a factor but I mean, it’s not like much of the cream of the Terran or Zerg crop are new faces either. | ||
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Harris1st
Germany6914 Posts
On December 21 2023 18:04 WombaT wrote: If someone could crunch the numbers I’d be very interested My instinct is that Protoss is potent but fragile, and this fragility is exposed the longer a series is due to them being heavily reliant on gambits and trickery. You can’t turn up and do a Serral or a Maru and yeah have a few pocket builds but largely just do your thing and outplay people with raw mechanics. Thus Protoss can be hugely overrepresented at GM level (Bo1), put up decent matchup stats in many a tournament (often on the back of Bo3s in a group phase) and generally not win tournaments as often because we’re into Bo5 or Bo7 territory. I think the lack of new blood is also a factor but I mean, it’s not like much of the cream of the Terran or Zerg crop are new faces either. Well, Reynors Protoss recently won vs Serral in a 35 min macro match so that gotta mean something right? | ||
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Poopi
France12794 Posts
On December 21 2023 10:27 THERIDDLER wrote: Please allow hacks to be used in live events. I want to see be able to see maxpax compete. What makes you think MaxPax is hacking? I mean, it's an interesting take on why he isn't competing offline, but he plays so many online tournaments his opponents would notice it if he was hacking | ||
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MJG
United Kingdom957 Posts
On December 21 2023 17:22 Harris1st wrote: And then Protoss still lose to Terran and whine about it. I couldn't think of any minor changes to Terran that would have the desired impact. I can tell you the problem though: Protoss is too reliant on Disruptors for late-game AoE. | ||
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