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Intro:
From diamond random player to Terran players.The reason why EMP is considered OP and is not comparable to Storm.
1)Considering TvP in SC1, SVs had big KILL ME sign on its back because it is an air unit among all other Terran ground mech army.
2)Ghosts blend in really well with MM ball. Especially when couple Thors are shadowing over Terran Bionic army. They are even better, because they can cloak.
3)Feedback range < Snipe range, EMP range > Feedback range.
4)People might say that HT storm harassment is really good. Well, take that as equivalent to Ravens droppping turrets on mineral line.
Real stuff: Now, in my opinion, as random player, NOTHING is OP in Starcraft 2 at this stage. Everything is well-balanced to certain point, well maybe Archons are too weak.
So here I go.
Considering the diversity of Terran army when fighting Protoss, my opponents did not have diverse unit composition. almost all of his units were Zealots, sentries, and High Templars, but seldom Void Rays, which they never really mass once I get my Vikings out.
It almost seemed that Protoss players were afraid to getlots of Colossi or Void Rays just because I have this massable air unit: Vikings.
My strategy as Protoss fighting Terrans is this:
1)Hyper-agressiveness - as soon as you get your first Immortal out, assuming that you have some Zealots , Stalkers and a couple Sentries, just go for it. I usually skip observers.
2)Forcefield - with some practice with FF, you will be playing early games like a pro. Just block off the ramp whenever your opponent wants to push out. But make sure you let safe amount of his army come down before casting FF. While doing this, you can prepare for an all-in attack, or an expansion(I prefer expansion).
3)Pheonix - Probably the best new unit for Protoss. These fighters are dangerous assassins and a handy anti-air. Believe it or not, they beat vikings in 1 v 1, just slightly.
Did you ever come to notice that these guys can pick up tanks, and most importantly: GHOSTS?? Get about 5-7 Pheonixes and they should snipe off Ghosts in 2 shots.
Ghosts before the battle, Tanks and Pheonixes during the battle. Pheonixes are capable of constant eco-harass, regardless of how many Missile Turrets are in place. Just get a good number of them and run by and snipe off one or two SCVs before one's shield goes off. 10 seconds later, you're ready to go again.
4)Void Rays - If you are getting Void Rays, NEVER forget to get their charge speed upgrade from the Fleet Beacon.About 3 of these and a good composition of Stalkers and Pheonixes can handle Vikings quite nicely.
5)Mother ship - Dicy battle about to go off, where you might loose all your army if that MMM ball can micro away from you? Vortex and send all of your Zealots in with it, then surround with your ranged units. When MMM ball size gets too out of hand, you will be having a difficult time. Of course, this suggestion sounds like BS right? This only works in Wide open space, so, yes it is kind of BS.
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If feedback with its longer range than graviton beam has trouble with targeting ghosts in the middle of the bio ball, what makes you think investing in phoenixes is a good idea? You have to invest in a stargate, thereby slowing down getting charge or blink and HT.
All i got from this post was how you state that EMP is much better than any protoss counters, its basically uncounter-able (points 1-4).
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ya im gonna have to agree with the above, this was more of a "Yea, if the EMP goes off you are pretty much screwed if your units aren't spread out really well"
If you suicide your phoenix in you WILL NOT come out ahead. They cost quite a bit of resources, if they aren't harassing they aren't worth their weight. Its also really hard to snipe ghosts with phoenix.
The mothership is really, really bad. I don't even consider that an option.
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Phoenix beats viking 1v1? Interesting.
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wtf @ point #2? Ok first, no one gets cloak on ghosts until late game, that gas is not worth it at all. 2 ghosts with claok or 3 ghosts? uhhh durppp 3 ghosts.
also WTF who gets thors playing bio against toss?
i'm sorry but from that point alone it is clear you are not playing against any kind of serious opponents
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Point #2 is mainly about the fact that ghosts blend very well into an bio ball. You cannot reliably select them at all for single target feedbacks. It's actually very hard, and near impossible with medivacs on top. Also, the fact that EMP is aoe, means it out range feedback by a fair margin, so in any real sense, if you try to feedback ghosts, your HT is OOM first.
The cloak is an added bonus, not many ppl use it, and that's because you DON'T need it. Protoss never stops a ghost from EMPing when he wants to, so why bother getting cloak? It's handy for probe harass.. but that again, is the added bonus that you can have, if you want to research cloak.
HT are pretty useless without psi storm. Ghosts are useful as-is. At a tier and cost/time that is much better than HT.
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I play terran so
1) Being hyper-aggressive can work if its unscouted; if I see my protoss opponent going for 4gate aggressive push type play I just go up to 4 or 5 rax and can stay very safe.
2) EMP'd sentries can't use FF; best way to use sentries against ghosts is too pop the shield before you get within EMP range.
3)An EMP'd Phoenix can't lift making it a complete waste.
4)Marines eat EMP'd void rays, especially with stim.
5) I don't even know what to say.
Edit: Will add that the one thing that gives me a lot of trouble with ghost/marine openings is an extremely Zealot heavy 4gate timing push. Even with the combat shield the zealots just tear through the marines.
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Maybe I'm biased as a Terran player, but I feel that a good storm is more devastating than an EMP. When I'm playing anything with a significant bio composition, I'm thinking "how to deal with storm", not "how they're going to deal with my EMP". EMPing templars stopped being effective as my opponents got smarter and began to split their high templars.
If the opponent lands a good EMP on you and you land a solid storm on some bio, I really don't think you're in that much trouble.
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Against EMP, you have 2 strategies that are NOT mutually exclusive (aka, you can and should do both). The first strategy is to avoid it. There are several ways to do this. Several that were mentioned already are Feedback, or try to focus fire the ghosts.
The other strategy that many people seem forget is to invalidate the EMPs. EMP is only dangerous if it effectively weakens your units just before/during a battle. Since shields regenerate so ridiculously fast in SC2, all you really have to do after an EMP is delay the battle and it will effectively be rendered useless. If your opponent EMPs you, retreat. If you know he's going Ghosts, maybe keep a Sentry or 2 separate from your army just to throw down FFs and run away.
You could take a page from Zerg's book and split your army up, that way, when he EMPs the hell out of what he thinks is all of your forces, you rush in from the flank with Blink Stalkers and/or Charge Zealots and now your "weakened" units are in the back.
It's been said in pretty much every thread that you can draw out his EMPs and make him waste them either on a small group of units or maybe even some Hallucinations.
There are tons of answers to every problem if people would just THINK about it. This game is so much more than 1a2a3a'ing your army against your opponent's. Think of the SOURCE of your problems, and think of WHY they are a problem. Don't treat the symptoms, treat the disease.
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The only redeeming factor in PvT MU is the majority of terran never make ghosts. I don't know if its because they fail to realize how strong EMP is vs P, or that they feel pity/pride and want an actual challenge.
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I like how to suggest to retreat once EMPed.. yeah, try to run with conc shells on your ass. Even an easier win for the T army. Split your army up? Oh hey, you just FF yourself and fight him with half your army at a time, or you failed to form a good concave and get steamrolled. I mean why not just FF your army in half next time and see how well that turns out. Oh, there's usually more than 1 ghost, so there's plenty of EMP ready to cover any spread of forces you want.
If you can think up all this clever way to try to avoid it.. why haven't you thought of the fact that because it is so imba, instant long range aoe that you HAVE to do all these extra things, and still get EMPed in the face.. why not just admit that EMP is imba. Make it drain shields/energy over time like psi storms damage. Then at least ppl can micro their forces out of the EMP.
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On June 11 2010 16:26 Sylvr wrote:
Against EMP, you have 2 strategies that are NOT mutually exclusive (aka, you can and should do both). The first strategy is to avoid it. There are several ways to do this. Several that were mentioned already are Feedback, or try to focus fire the ghosts.
The other strategy that many people seem forget is to invalidate the EMPs. EMP is only dangerous if it effectively weakens your units just before/during a battle. Since shields regenerate so ridiculously fast in SC2, all you really have to do after an EMP is delay the battle and it will effectively be rendered useless. If your opponent EMPs you, retreat. If you know he's going Ghosts, maybe keep a Sentry or 2 separate from your army just to throw down FFs and run away.
You could take a page from Zerg's book and split your army up, that way, when he EMPs the hell out of what he thinks is all of your forces, you rush in from the flank with Blink Stalkers and/or Charge Zealots and now your "weakened" units are in the back.
It's been said in pretty much every thread that you can draw out his EMPs and make him waste them either on a small group of units or maybe even some Hallucinations.
There are tons of answers to every problem if people would just THINK about it. This game is so much more than 1a2a3a'ing your army against your opponent's. Think of the SOURCE of your problems, and think of WHY they are a problem. Don't treat the symptoms, treat the disease.
It's very hard, almost impossible to simply just retreat. Concussive shells will make that nigh impossible to just bait the EMP and retreat. The long range of tanks also will cause the P to take a few hits even while retreating, and likely get a few kills. Not only that, but good Terrans won't EMP until the battle has actually started to insure maximum effect and will ALWAYS aim for the casters. Additionally, 2-3 ghosts can effectively EMP every caster P has even with a good spread.
It's not impossible to deal with EMP, but I really don't understand why it hasn't been tweaked simply due to how strong it is. Protoss really doesn't have any counter for it as EMP outranges feedback. It also doesn't require being researched, costs the same amount of mana as storm, has no cooldown, and it does an instantaneous 100 damage in its area of effect. Storm requires 200/200/110 research, has 3 second cooldown, does 80 damage at 10 damage per half second, but will only deal the full damage if the Terran is brain dead and sits in the storm for the entire duration.
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On June 11 2010 16:34 SilverforceX wrote:
I like how to suggest to retreat once EMPed.. yeah, try to run with conc shells on your ass. Even an easier win for the T army.
Don't exaggerate. Conc shells will maybe take out a few Zealots (roughly equal to the number of Marauders he has, likely less since they might not all get an attack off if your reaction time is good) while you run away. It's better than staying and losing your entire army.
Split your army up? Oh hey, you just FF yourself and fight him with half your army at a time, or you failed to form a good concave and get steamrolled. I mean why not just FF your army in half next time and see how well that turns out.
Spreading your army helps you get a BETTER concave, not a worse one. I didn't say to put 2 armies on different sides of the map. EMP radius may look big judging form the animation, but in reality, it's only 2.
Oh, there's usually more than 1 ghost, so there's plenty of EMP ready to cover any spread of forces you want.
All the better. Now you just forced him to use probably ALL of his energy and now running away will be even MORE effective because the next time you engage, he won't have nearly as much energy.
If you can think up all this clever way to try to avoid it.. why haven't you thought of the fact that because it is so imba, instant long range aoe that you HAVE to do all these extra things, and still get EMPed in the face.. why not just admit that EMP is imba. Make it drain shields/energy over time like psi storms damage. Then at least ppl can micro their forces out of the EMP.
Circular logic. "EMP is imba because EMP is imba, so just admit that EMP is imba." That's what I read. Don't measure it up to Psi Storm because they are completely different. First of all, Psi Storm is useful against all 3 races while EMP is pretty much TvP only. Second, Psi Storm is the ONLY offensive aoe spell in SC2 or BW that you CAN run out of. Every other offensive AOE spell is unavoidable once it's cast. Psi Storm is the exception, NOT the baseline.
EMP is supposed to give Terrans an edge against Protoss, and that's exactly what it does. It's only instant-win against 1-dimensional players. Ghosts aren't any easier to use than Sentries or HTs or Infestors, so the argument that the tactic is easier to pull off than the counter is blatantly false.
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On June 11 2010 17:37 Ryuu314 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2010 16:26 Sylvr wrote:
Against EMP, you have 2 strategies that are NOT mutually exclusive (aka, you can and should do both). The first strategy is to avoid it. There are several ways to do this. Several that were mentioned already are Feedback, or try to focus fire the ghosts.
The other strategy that many people seem forget is to invalidate the EMPs. EMP is only dangerous if it effectively weakens your units just before/during a battle. Since shields regenerate so ridiculously fast in SC2, all you really have to do after an EMP is delay the battle and it will effectively be rendered useless. If your opponent EMPs you, retreat. If you know he's going Ghosts, maybe keep a Sentry or 2 separate from your army just to throw down FFs and run away.
You could take a page from Zerg's book and split your army up, that way, when he EMPs the hell out of what he thinks is all of your forces, you rush in from the flank with Blink Stalkers and/or Charge Zealots and now your "weakened" units are in the back.
It's been said in pretty much every thread that you can draw out his EMPs and make him waste them either on a small group of units or maybe even some Hallucinations.
There are tons of answers to every problem if people would just THINK about it. This game is so much more than 1a2a3a'ing your army against your opponent's. Think of the SOURCE of your problems, and think of WHY they are a problem. Don't treat the symptoms, treat the disease. It's very hard, almost impossible to simply just retreat. Concussive shells will make that nigh impossible to just bait the EMP and retreat. The long range of tanks also will cause the P to take a few hits even while retreating, and likely get a few kills. Not only that, but good Terrans won't EMP until the battle has actually started to insure maximum effect and will ALWAYS aim for the casters. Additionally, 2-3 ghosts can effectively EMP every caster P has even with a good spread. It's not impossible to deal with EMP, but I really don't understand why it hasn't been tweaked simply due to how strong it is. Protoss really doesn't have any counter for it as EMP outranges feedback. It also doesn't require being researched, costs the same amount of mana as storm, has no cooldown, and it does an instantaneous 100 damage in its area of effect. Storm requires 200/200/110 research, has 3 second cooldown, does 80 damage at 10 damage per half second, but will only deal the full damage if the Terran is brain dead and sits in the storm for the entire duration.
I hope I covered the Concussive Shot debate with my response to the poster above you. If your opponent has enough Marauders to slow down that much of your army, then you're probably using the wrong unit composition anyway. Hopefully you scouted and got some Collosi, which aren't AS effected by EMP simply because EMPing them, and getting into range to Focus them down are two very different things.
I just hope that someone doesn't pop up and say "Oh, but then he'll just go Viking and roflstomp your collosi." and the discussion will degrade into people naming every possible thing the Terran COULD do against you and assuming that they can do an instantaneous tech switch mid-battle with full upgrades.
A Terran EMPing your casters does indeed hurt. Casters bolster a Protoss army so much that it's really hard NOT to make them. If they're going Ghosts, however, you might be justified to simply make LESS casters, or at least to keep them hidden and in back out of EMP range and only really there to ENABLE your retreat. For instance, keep your Sentries back instead of in the front lines and save your FFs for if/when you need to retreat. Once you're confident that he's blown his EMP load, THEN you can use them in the battle. Same with HTs; a Terran isn't likely to pursue a retreating army if you leave a wall of Storms for him to run through. In the world outside of Starcraft, this is called a Feint. You force your opponent to overextend themselves and/or use their resources to ill effect.
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In my opinion (mid to high level diamond random player), EMP is overpowered right now, even though it doesn't show too much as players are not good enough yet.
Unfortunately, Tester in his interview at scforall didn't give a reasoning why he thinks that terran is the strongest race right now and artosis didn't ask him but only stated that this was an intelligent answer ....... (interviewing is more than just asking the prepared questions...), but I assume EMP, PDD and uber range vikings (yes, they are key) are the main reasons.
Almost dividing the opponent's hitpoints by 2 using 2-3 EMP is ridiculously strong and it is really hard to dodge. Unlike SC/BW the EMP works almost immediately which is really bad IMO.
So, I would simply suggest to make an EMP animation like in SC/BW and everything would be fine. In SC/BW you could see some kind of a ripple which allowed you to run away, which is nice and separates the great from the good.
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On June 11 2010 18:09 Drazzzt wrote:
Almost dividing the opponent's hitpoints by 2 using 2-3 EMP is ridiculously strong and it is really hard to dodge.
A common thing I've noticed about most Q_Q'ing toss (notice the lack of pro) is their complete lack of ability to micro.
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Mudd: Micro what? There's nothing to micro dude.
Ghosts EMP your face happens instantly. It can be spammed, hold E and click on all his army (if he micro to spread them out). Instant effect, bye bye shields. See casters? EMP them too, instantly!
Now, Psi Storm, you can argue about micro. If you have good micro, storm does like 20 dmg. No contest. EMP is wacked imba vs protoss.
Think of it this way.. what if, storm had 1) instant 50 dmg (not even 100 shields that emp nullifies), and drained all energy. It's available on sentries without requiring research. Would that be balanced? Didn't think so.
Time to obtain Ghost and Sentry:
Barracks = 60s
Ghost Academy = 70s
You can build tech lab while Ghost Academy is building, it only takes 25s.
Ghost = 40s
Total = 170s
Gateway = 65s
Cybernetics Core = 50s
Sentry = 42s
Total = 157s, Only 13s slower than teching to Ghost.
Another point, HT Amulet cost = 150/150, 110s. Moebius = 100/100, 80s. Same effect. Why the huge cost differential?
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On June 11 2010 18:24 Mudd wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2010 18:09 Drazzzt wrote:
Almost dividing the opponent's hitpoints by 2 using 2-3 EMP is ridiculously strong and it is really hard to dodge. A common thing I've noticed about most Q_Q'ing toss (notice the lack of pro) is their complete lack of ability to micro.
Yeah, this is my point... How could they as EMP comes instantly (as also the previous guy repeated)! That's the reason why I suggested an EMP animation so that it is possible to dodge it (like in SC/BW).
The difference to storm is that even though storm is instant as well it takes a while for all the damage to take effect, so that you can move out during storm. EMP is instant to cast and instant regarding its complete efffect.
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EMP won't get nerfed until blizzard sees stats showing that games with ghosts have a favorable Terran win ratio while games without ghosts have a 50:50 terran win ratio.
Even giving EMP a casting animation would be a large nerf and might upset the matchup balance.
Most of the recent tournament T v P's have barely any ghosts in play. So, I doubt it's a problem as of now.
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A lot of anti-EMP arguments center around this unquestioned assumption that emp will just always land on all your templars. I'm, not trying to be condescending, but really does make me question the level of play these guys are at. Even if it is easier to land an EMP than a feedback (and it is), it doesn't mean you can simply position/micro your templars so that in a given fight, they wont all get emp'ed right away.
What a lot of toss do is simply engage their army, with their temps spread out and in the back. Once the battle starts and some EMPs go off, they then move in for the storms. Even if you get a emp or two off on them, once a few storms are up its devastating to a bio ball.
Trying to get Feedbacks off (on the ghosts or the medvacs) or simply backing up after getting emped (unless their extremely marauder heavy, chances are they get a lot or two at most with concussive), will improve the above strategy significantly.
Look guys, some things are designed to be strong. Like tank fire. If you nerf something to the point where you can walk up to tanklines or say - get all your storms off easily despite him building a 150m/150g counter (that also has to compile energy), you completely screw with the dynamic of the game.
What if I suggested that "there really isn'y micro involved in dodging storm, once they get the storm off my army is screwed, so we need to add a cast time to storm to give me and the rest of the bads time to move out of it."
Oh and Auto-Turrets just as strong as storm drops? lol?
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EPT
