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Hey like my title says i want to talk about the Protoss deathball in Heart of the Swarm but before i start i talk a little about myself. Im a Protoss player (high master) who started in the early Beta of WoL and played through the complete Beta and release until HotS came out. I also watch a lot of Pro streams like Idra, Sase, Seed and Babyknight.
I think most of you probably remember the ime on maps like Shakuras Plateau where Protoss players just camped out until they had 200supply and then finish you with an nearly invulnerable deathball. Zerg players were complaining about the imbalance of it and how lame it actually is to play. Protoss players complained aswell about the lame style and how passive you have to be.
And now Blizzard patched the Voidray and implemented the Tempest . Since then it seems like Protoss more and more gets back to the times of the deathball. But its just on some Maps like Akilon Wastes where you get an easy third and fourth base.
Still its a boring style but it seems like everyone is doing it because nothing else works against the Viper that counters Colossi the high dmg Ultralisk or even the Idra style with baneling muta ling ultra.
Now Protoss players seem to allin most of the games or they camp out on maps like Akilon Wastes but thats boring as fuck for both races. The Zerg cant do shit against it just trying to harass as long as possible but when the Protoss holds a good position and can defend his bases well it seems like Zerg cant break it and the Protoss cant push out until his army is maxed. I know its effective and so on but i dont really want to play a boring style like this. I always was an aggresive Player, not Allin orientated, but i put on an highly aggresive playstyle that depends on harass.
Now i would ask you about this Topic.
What do you think about the current PvZ in Heart of the Swarm do you think the way i do or do you think a different way ?
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It comes down to the maps.
I was watching a few BW maps and was astonished at how huge the maps were. Also the thirds need to be a little more open and not so easy to take. This will prevent Protoss from getting that 3base production so early and pumping out deathballs.
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I think it would help a lot in HOTS if they made the Tempest attack a skill shot/ability. It does wicked damage against broods, and with its wicked range its just a boring select all army units, hold position and let enemy attack into me kind of unit. If it was more of a skill shot unit i think the game would be a helluva lot more interesting by having this long range siege unit that does awesome damage, but takes skill and in the hands of a great player can do some amazing things. Of course, adjustments would have to be made to what that skill shot does(perhaps AoE), the cost/supply,etc. At least then it wouldn't be an easily mass-able unit and it would add some great tension to games.
Also, fungal changes, to make it more worthwhile for protoss to want to harass. Our primary harass comes from stargate, and allows for some really great styles but when you have that fear of that one fungal,you arent really given cause to do it. I know its been said to death, but if fungal functioned more like plague, the game would probably benefit more overall, and if the projectile speed were adjusted slightly to be a little bit easier to avoid, then we'd probably hit a nice balance of interesting with necessary power(the snare).
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deathballs are the inevitable produce in beta, its the easiest and safest option, doesn't surprise me at all that deathballs will return in HotS, at least til its figured out more.
Also... what's up with the random capitalization everywhere? tbh thats most of what I took away from your post, random capitals at the start of words ;p
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On January 27 2013 03:21 YogyBear wrote:
Also, fungal changes, to make it more worthwhile for protoss to want to harass. Our primary harass comes from stargate, and allows for some really great styles but when you have that fear of that one fungal,you arent really given cause to do it. I know its been said to death, but if fungal functioned more like plague, the game would probably benefit more overall, and if the projectile speed were adjusted slightly to be a little bit easier to avoid, then we'd probably hit a nice balance of interesting with necessary power(the snare).
I totally agree ! Its kinda annoying that one fungal disables all the possibilities to micro or just to safe the unit. I dont get it anyway why blizzard added a unit that disables all movements its just stupid.
Btw im sorry for my english im trying my best with the english i know but its not the language i normally speak 
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That just how protoss works. Even in BW it was similar but their was actually some sort of timing attack and aggression that protoss can do with +1 zealot and corsairs. The problem imo, is that the economy of the game is kinda bad atm. 3 base is the optimal max efficiency economy. Protoss also need an early access to a third base other wise they will die to stephano 200 roach push. Since the game is balance around FF, the third cant be TOO expose otherwise they die to 200 roach push as well.
This lead to turtling since zerg have no reason to get a 4th base other than gas. This mean zerg will just tech up and turtle as well. One of the way to deal with turtling is the expand since you got map control but since the game doesnt encourage any way of grabbing more then 3 bases, it not really the optimal choice.
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On January 27 2013 03:32 emythrel wrote:
deathballs are the inevitable produce in beta, its the easiest and safest option, doesn't surprise me at all that deathballs will return in HotS, at least til its figured out more.
Also... what's up with the random capitalization everywhere? tbh thats most of what I took away from your post, random capitals at the start of words ;p
It's a German quirk.
Also, is there anything added in Hots that would break up death balls? WoL has the same problem.
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You shouldnt be so surpirsed.
Protoss has ruined most of Sc2, and at this point in HoTs its even worse than WoL.
TvZ? Pretty good MU espcially with nerfs to infestor broood
TvT always a good mirror
ZvP? A train wreck of gimmicky turtling play
TvP A terrible MU that is only balanced by the clock on the game. Not only that, the ideal unit combos are so damn stale its very boring.
Protoss has so many design problems its terribad,
FF, Warp ins, collsi, and now Skytoss are all big problems that Blizz decided to ignore, even tho they had a closed beta which would of been a great safety net to do some redesigns on the race. But nope they decided to fuck around with a gimmicky MSC and oracle for the duration of the beta.
So HoTs is going to pan out just like WoL, people are going to love TvZ and TvT, and then cry every ZvP and TvP at how damn boring it still is.
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I'm enjoying my PvZs quite a bit, as a toss. I have a response I can go for vs anything zerg, but I never feel like i'm getting easy or free wins. I haven't messed with tempests much, but i've been playing with void colo recall with plenty of success.
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On January 27 2013 03:32 emythrel wrote:
deathballs are the inevitable produce in beta, its the easiest and safest option, doesn't surprise me at all that deathballs will return in HotS, at least til its figured out more.
Also... what's up with the random capitalization everywhere? tbh thats most of what I took away from your post, random capitals at the start of words ;p
He's from Germany. The German language capitalizes their nouns.
OT, the problem that causes deathballs isn't maps; it's pathing and unit interaction. Blizzard has openly refused to even consider changing this stuff, so you can safely bet on seeing boring deathball play from Protoss through even LotV.
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I actually think all 3 Protoss matchups are way more fun in HotS than WoL. Skytoss is much more fun than Robo builds. PvP and PvZ are both a lot better than WoL--PvT still needs some work, but mostly on the Terran side (i.e. buff mech vs toss).
I think it would help a lot in HOTS if they made the Tempest attack a skill shot/ability. It does wicked damage against broods, and with its wicked range its just a boring select all army units, hold position and let enemy attack into me kind of unit. If it was more of a skill shot unit i think the game would be a helluva lot more interesting by having this long range siege unit that does awesome damage, but takes skill and in the hands of a great player can do some amazing things. Of course, adjustments would have to be made to what that skill shot does(perhaps AoE), the cost/supply,etc. At least then it wouldn't be an easily mass-able unit and it would add some great tension to games.
The Tempest already overkills like crazy if you aren't controlling their fire. They actually come a lot closer to replicating BW-style Tank overkill, than the SC2 Siege Tank does. The Tempest basically has the firing mechanics everyone was asking for the Siege Tank to have.
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On January 27 2013 03:52 SheaR619 wrote:
. The problem imo, is that the economy of the game is kinda bad atm. 3 base is the optimal max efficiency economy. Protoss also need an early access to a third base other wise they will die to stephano 200 roach push. Since the game is balance around FF, the third cant be TOO expose otherwise they die to 200 roach push as well.
This lead to turtleing since zerg have no reason to get a 4th base other than gas. This mean zerg will just tech up and turtle as well. One of the way to deal with turtleing is the expand since you got map control but since the game doesnt encourage any way of grabbing more then 3 bases, it not really the optimal choice.
This is pretty spot on, but another factor that we should consider for taking bases is the high ground mechanics and unlimited unit selection. In brood war, having more units than your opponent coupled with the high ground mechanics made it harder to have more units and just bull doze through, but in SC2 this isn't the case.
How significant would a mining change be to the game? Would increasing the individual mining rates of probes and increased gas rates(not even up to 8 like BW, but just an increase) lead to a more aggressive game where attacking doesn't have to be an all in or if your attack does fail, you have chances to come back with good control and effective counter play?
Presumably, one would think that if probes mine faster, you need fewer, everything ramps up quicker, your decision of gas allocation changes(with more thought put into probe allocation), but because you are mining out faster you have more pressure to expand more often. Subsequently you have more units available because less supplied is tied up in probes. You hit 200/200 faster and the game plays to the engines strengths.You can attack and expand more consistently because your expansion comes online faster and you dont need to probe/drone/scv as long.The game becomes more economic with people wanting to take bases, while attacking at the same time, teching faster with more switches and just generally more excitement. If you hit that death ball faster, and can resupply then we probably end up with a game where people are just constantly trading with these massive armies trying to control as best as possible and less of a pasive snooze fest while we all sit patiently waiting for our bank. The starcraft 2 engine is not the brood war engine; with unlimited unit selection and smart casting we should want big armies and should want to be constantly pushing on our opponents trying to out position them.
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Don't mind the Protoss deathball, it melts pretty fast to mine. I am all for Deathballs aslong as only one side has them and the others try to bite of chunks of it and the Deathball player is on an eco timer, so they can't turtle to long. Anyway we will probably see changes in that regard soon.
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This reminds me of a game where I made a bunch of Voids on 4 bases, and eventually pushed him to his natural. He threw down a couple blinding clouds down on his ramp and moved his almost maxed Hydra army under them because he didn't know what it did and lost all of them to the voidness.
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On January 27 2013 05:28 ailouros wrote:
This reminds me of a game where I made a bunch of Voids on 4 bases, and eventually pushed him to his natural. He threw down a couple blinding clouds down on his ramp and moved his almost maxed Hydra army under them because he didn't know what it did and lost all of them to the voidness.
To be fair, blinding cloud would be so overpowered if it affected air.
You would literally be able to blanket cloud a deathball and a-move with no repercussions.
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On January 27 2013 05:49 InfCereal wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2013 05:28 ailouros wrote:
This reminds me of a game where I made a bunch of Voids on 4 bases, and eventually pushed him to his natural. He threw down a couple blinding clouds down on his ramp and moved his almost maxed Hydra army under them because he didn't know what it did and lost all of them to the voidness. To be fair, blinding cloud would be so overpowered if it affected air. You would literally be able to blanket cloud a deathball and a-move with no repercussions.
That's true but, since air has the mobility advantage over ground units, shouldn't there be more spells that affect air units than there are that affect grounds to compensate? There are lots of 'crowd control' type spells that only affect ground: Force Field, Time Warp, Blinding Cloud.
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United States7483 Posts
On January 27 2013 02:52 sagefreke wrote:
It comes down to the maps.
I was watching a few BW maps and was astonished at how huge the maps were. Also the thirds need to be a little more open and not so easy to take. This will prevent Protoss from getting that 3base production so early and pumping out deathballs.
Hard to take thirds just make protoss players do 2 base all-ins. Terrans and Zerg players have a much easier time securing hard to take bases than Protoss does (zerg has creep and their production makes it easier, terran has planetaries).
That's the problem, protoss race design means the third base has to be easy to take or the map is really bad for protoss. Forcefields are just too important.
If you want to solve the protoss deathball, you need to buff gateway units so that forcefields aren't a requirement anymore.
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Gate units are not weak, Forcefields is not a requirement or you die. It's a stylistic choice popular in the meta game because
Of the Koreans
So tired of this misconception. If you are tired of relying on sentries to keep you alive, stop building them and upgrade your units instead. 2 sentries == 1/1. If you miss those Forcefields you spent the gas for your 1/1 upgrades on you have no reason to complain
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On January 27 2013 06:32 c0sm0naut wrote:
Gate units are not weak, Forcefields is not a requirement or you die. It's a stylistic choice popular in the meta game because
Of the Koreans
So tired of this misconception. If you are tired of relying on sentries to keep you alive, stop building them and upgrade your units instead. 2 sentries == 1/1. If you miss those Forcefields you spent the gas for your 1/1 upgrades on you have no reason to complain
Warping in 2 sentries literally takes 5 seconds.
1/1 Upgrades take a bit longer also 2 forges +1 +1 = 500-200
2 Sentries = 100-200
And in many situations 1/1 would not even be better than the sentries.
Try holding off 120 fighting supply from Zerg with 40ish supply and 2/1 rather than sentries 
All that deathball talk is pissing me off.
In BW would a meching Terran against Protoss attack multiple locations all the time?
They would harass and get up their tank count. Pretty big difference to getting phoenix to harass while getting the Colossus count higher! I see...
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On January 27 2013 05:49 InfCereal wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2013 05:28 ailouros wrote:
This reminds me of a game where I made a bunch of Voids on 4 bases, and eventually pushed him to his natural. He threw down a couple blinding clouds down on his ramp and moved his almost maxed Hydra army under them because he didn't know what it did and lost all of them to the voidness. To be fair, blinding cloud would be so overpowered if it affected air. You would literally be able to blanket cloud a deathball and a-move with no repercussions.
What's the difference to right now?
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EPT
