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warpgate sure is a blessing in other matchups and a curse in pvp (for example, if you get lucky with a production cycle, you have the get-out-of-drop-free-card)
here is what i have problems with in your nice writeup:
Terrans have their addon swapping and mules, Zergs have larvae injects and creep, Protoss have warpgates where is chrono boost? i consider it sometimes even better than mule drop, since you cannot speed up your weapon/armor upgrades with a mule. Chrono boost can give you so much of an edge in the upgrade war
the units of Terran and Zerg have to naturally trade slightly more efficiently with Protoss units it really is so rare if a zerg manages to ever trade more efficiently with protoss units. And in those instances, i feel like being able to point out half a dozent mistakes the protoss did that led to this
To fix this: Make warpin weaker offensively and buff units slightly i don't think to buff units sligthy would work in the favour of the other matchups. Protoss units benefit from additional abilties. Sure, the sentry will never be on par with 6 zerglings damage-wise. But some good forcefields can screw up the AI in a way that your opponents roaches are trapped and cannot even shoot back (and if you have 3-5 sentries, you can trap 40+ roaches in a spot of the size of a zergling^^). Stalker are deadly if you have blink and can use it, and zealots already have really strong basic stats (and for getting to the target, they get an upgrade, just like zerglings).
Ramps and sentries help mitigate these factors, but open natural maps suck. that is a design problem for every race. Open naturals are as deadly for you in a pvp as they are for a zerg vs everything (since you have to get so many spines against a timing push, your opponent could double expand on that money according to your theory) and a terran always has to fear a runby (except for terrans buildings walls and some clever tanks. But then again, terran is the master of defenders advantage). Think about Xel Naga caverns: i dare claim that there is a defenders disadvantage on this map if you take your natural expansion. Speaking of my zvz's on this map, the player threatening the opponent is usually the one being able to expand. In zvz with baneling wars, you have a reinforcement time of what? 10 seconds? Lings are so fast, even faster on creep. And the defender has always the risk of 1/2 banelings blowing up in the right spot, killing his entire army and/or worker line. But this also means that if you are the defending player and you can sneak up few zerglings to your opponents base, you can win the game in an instant if those hit. This is what i think can be done in a pvp more often - use a few units to get some economy damage and force your opponent to warp in at home.
Last but not least, i think you underestimate the defenders advantage sentries give you. Their strengh does not lie within being able to forcefield your ramp for 2 minutes, it is that they can cut your opponents army in half, so you can fight having the upper hand. This requires you to have Stalker, since Zealots running in get hit by units behind the forcefields, taking full damage and therefore nullifying your forcefields. And relying on too many sentries is a double-edged sword: they can forcefield forever, but they cannot fight at all, therefore not allowing you to cut your opponents army in half (and reducing your stalker count by taking up all the gas)
so i guess bottom line is: dont overbuild sentries, focus on getting stalkers, micro your stalkers, split your opponents army in half (you should be able to do this at least one time on larger openings/ramps)
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On September 08 2011 20:03 Scythe90 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2011 19:44 susySquark wrote:On September 08 2011 19:42 Scythe90 wrote: Why does it matter if protoss timings are balanced on a short rally distance? as long as it is balanced.
Also you have to remember that you are warping in gateway units only, so no colossus or other tech is going to warp into your base. Because Protoss timings are balanced on short rally, Protoss defenses have what is normally an advantage balanced away. So defensive play as Protoss is difficult, cannon tech being shitty notwithstanding Keep in mind if T/Z don't have bunkers/spines they will fall to a lot of gateway attacks, T/Z have to respond to scouting with defence capabilities, which just happen to be buildings, while protoss have other methods.
If T/Z doesnt have bunkers/spines they fall to a lot of barracks/ling/roach pushes too. The point is, if you think Protoss timing pushes are fair, then Protoss defense is automatically bad. Its my opinion that yes, P timings are fair - they break greedy opponents and fail against safe play, just like T and Z timings. So, for the reasons stated in the OP, defense is weakened for the P, with no easy structure like the bunker/shield battery to make up for it.
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you are wrong about warp gate not being good at defending
the strength of warpgates is equally strong offensively and defensibly. Its even more noticeable at defending!
example: terran to do a timing push needs to have minerals at time X to start production. now lets say terran needs 30 seconds to build the army and the distance from his base to the target is 30 seconds.
That means a delay of 1 minutes the moment you collect minerals to the moment your army built from those minerals hit the target. While protoss only has the delay of 5 seconds.
Which also means that a 8minutes timing attack from terran is a 7minutes army against a 8minutes protoss army which if you take the account that your productions only really starts to kick in at about 4/5 minutes in to the game, early timings the protoss can have 1/3 more army than terran and still lose because to balance this gateway units need to be weaker compared to t1 units from other races.
conclusion: WP is the most BROKEN mechanic in the game (2º is forcefield) and still protoss is very vulnerable to all ins because how weaker gateway units need to be. Honestly I dream one day WP be only upgradable on a fleet beacon.
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On September 08 2011 20:05 Cirqueenflex wrote: where is chrono boost? i consider it sometimes even better than mule drop, since you cannot speed up your weapon/armor upgrades with a mule. Chrono boost can give you so much of an edge in the upgrade war Added in chrono, it really doesnt change my argument.
i don't think to buff units sligthy would work in the favour of the other matchups. Protoss units benefit from additional abilties. Sure, the sentry will never be on par with 6 zerglings damage-wise. But some good forcefields can screw up the AI in a way that your opponents roaches are trapped and cannot even shoot back (and if you have 3-5 sentries, you can trap 40+ roaches in a spot of the size of a zergling^^). Stalker are deadly if you have blink and can use it, and zealots already have really strong basic stats (and for getting to the target, they get an upgrade, just like zerglings). My "fixes" were an afterthought, its really not to be taken too seriously.
that is a design problem for every race. Open naturals are as deadly for you in a pvp as they are for a zerg vs everything (since you have to get so many spines against a timing push, your opponent could double expand on that money according to your theory) and a terran always has to fear a runby (except for terrans buildings walls and some clever tanks. But then again, terran is the master of defenders advantage). Think about Xel Naga caverns: i dare claim that there is a defenders disadvantage on this map if you take your natural expansion. Speaking of my zvz's on this map, the player threatening the opponent is usually the one being able to expand. In zvz with baneling wars, you have a reinforcement time of what? 10 seconds? Lings are so fast, even faster on creep. And the defender has always the risk of 1/2 banelings blowing up in the right spot, killing his entire army and/or worker line. But this also means that if you are the defending player and you can sneak up few zerglings to your opponents base, you can win the game in an instant if those hit. This is what i think can be done in a pvp more often - use a few units to get some economy damage and force your opponent to warp in at home. I know its a problem for every race, I addressed that. The problem with toss is, you don't have something to help you with the openness. Bunkers with ranged units in it go a long way towards defending an open natural. All Protoss has is its small army up against a larger pushing army. There is no appropriate defensive structure to help. Spines can be moved, and are at spawning pool tech. Cannons are static and require a forge
Last but not least, i think you underestimate the defenders advantage sentries give you. Their strengh does not lie within being able to forcefield your ramp for 2 minutes, it is that they can cut your opponents army in half, so you can fight having the upper hand. This requires you to have Stalker, since Zealots running in get hit by units behind the forcefields, taking full damage and therefore nullifying your forcefields. And relying on too many sentries is a double-edged sword: they can forcefield forever, but they cannot fight at all, therefore not allowing you to cut your opponents army in half (and reducing your stalker count by taking up all the gas) Again, I addressed this. I said that sentries with good chokes is the best defensive option. Wide open nats like metal make sentries pretty bad though. I'm talking 1, 2 gate expand here. 3 gate expo is significantly slower than any other safe expansion from the other races. You dont have enough sentries to effectively cut an army in half on a big map without 3gates.
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all i read is, that you want to remove protoss already crapy early/mid game offensive possibilities without being some kind of semi/allin. prevent a zerg from droning hard in the early stage comes near wizardry nowadays...i recommend playing some protoss before writing such things in forum
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On September 08 2011 20:09 siri wrote: you are wrong about warp gate not being good at defending
the strength of warpgates is equally strong offensively and defensibly. Its even more noticeable at defending!
example: terran to do a timing push needs to have minerals at time X to start production. now lets say terran needs 30 seconds to build the army and the distance from his base to the target is 30 seconds.
That means a delay of 1 minutes the moment you collect minerals to the moment your army built from those minerals hit the target. While protoss only has the delay of 5 seconds.
Which also means that a 8minutes timing attack from terran is a 7minutes army against a 8minutes protoss army which if you take the account that your productions only really starts to kick in at about 4/5 minutes in to the game, early timings the protoss can have 1/3 more army than terran and still lose because to balance this gateway units need to be weaker compared to t1 units from other races.
conclusion: WP is the most BROKEN mechanic in the game (2º is forcefield) and still protoss is very vulnerable to all ins because how weaker gateway units need to be. Honestly I dream one day WP be only upgradable on a fleet beacon.
I assume you're not factoring in the fact that Warpgates have a cooldown? : /
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another problem with warp gates is that a intense fight or micro situation may take more than a wg cooldown,so you will have overminerals. in this case and most protosses work against that by adding more warpgates everytime they have overmins having 10 gates on 2 base is not economy base. you can queue up or stack larvae as terran/zerg, swap addons(even though i think i've never seen someone do this) or just EXPANDING which protoss hates,except FFE.
little question aside: do you have to be with the camera where you warp in or is it possible via minimap? i feel it would be a disadvantage to focus camera on unit production.
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Honestly I've been discussing this with my buddies and I have been suggesting giving protoss a more defensive buff as well, such as giving protoss units constant 50% regeneration of shield when under allied pylon power, even when attacked.
This would help protosses when defending, especially in PvP.
There were other suggestions too like giving Nexus a shield battery like ability.
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I think a good way to solve the problem would be if Warp Gate warpins have a longer cooldown than Gateway. As it is right now, Gateways are totally redundant as soon as warpgate research is finished. If gateway has a shorter training time than warpgate, this will bring back the defenders advantage. e.g. if gateway has 33s training for a zealot whereas warpin has a 38s cooldown for zealot, the defender would tend to stick with gateways for longer and theoretically be able to have more units. This will also make it into an interesting choice as the protoss player will need to decide between Gateways and Warpgates more strategically, instead of immediately going warpgate every time
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Good analysis. Hopes this turns heads.
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On September 08 2011 20:23 CSN_Kaelaris wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2011 20:09 siri wrote: you are wrong about warp gate not being good at defending
the strength of warpgates is equally strong offensively and defensibly. Its even more noticeable at defending!
example: terran to do a timing push needs to have minerals at time X to start production. now lets say terran needs 30 seconds to build the army and the distance from his base to the target is 30 seconds.
That means a delay of 1 minutes the moment you collect minerals to the moment your army built from those minerals hit the target. While protoss only has the delay of 5 seconds.
Which also means that a 8minutes timing attack from terran is a 7minutes army against a 8minutes protoss army which if you take the account that your productions only really starts to kick in at about 4/5 minutes in to the game, early timings the protoss can have 1/3 more army than terran and still lose because to balance this gateway units need to be weaker compared to t1 units from other races.
conclusion: WP is the most BROKEN mechanic in the game (2º is forcefield) and still protoss is very vulnerable to all ins because how weaker gateway units need to be. Honestly I dream one day WP be only upgradable on a fleet beacon.
I assume you're not factoring in the fact that Warpgates have a cooldown? : /
I assume you dont understand how WG works, or maybe you dont play protoss. its ok I explain.
If you collect minerals at a given time and want to use those minerals to build a army, WP allows you to build a unit in just 5 seconds using those minerals. While a barracks you have a 25 seconds to build a marine.
this means that if you build a a wg and a barracks in 30 seconds you can have 2 stalkers with the wg while only 1 marine with barracks
WG allows you to have always 1 more cycle of production than your opponent wich is huge boom early game (like 4gate) but not so noticeable advantage late game
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On September 08 2011 20:32 fuzzy_panda wrote: I think a good way to solve the problem would be if Warp Gate warpins have a longer cooldown than Gateway. As it is right now, Gateways are totally redundant as soon as warpgate research is finished. If gateway has a shorter training time than warpgate, this will bring back the defenders advantage. e.g. if gateway has 33s training for a zealot whereas warpin has a 38s cooldown for zealot, the defender would tend to stick with gateways for longer and theoretically be able to have more units.
Gateways will never have the defensive advantage over warpgates as the unit from the warpgate is provided up front (before the cooldown) whereas the gateway 'builds' the unit first, then it pops out at the end.
Unless the build time for gateway units is so much shorter than the warp-in cooldown that you can get a second wave in you will always end up with more warp in units for any reasonable 'defenders advantage' timing.
In your example the warpages will provide units at 5 seconds and at 43 seconds, the gateway will provide units at 33 seconds and 66 seconds. I know which I would rather be defending with..
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Doesn't the new ramp change solve this issue?
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On September 08 2011 19:20 XenoX101 wrote: The solution is this, warpgate should be a tier 2-2.5 upgrade and decrease gateway unit build times to match warpgate times. It should not be the first thing you get with a cybernetics core, having such an advantage so quickly in the game is silly and the equivalent of zerg getting ovie speed + ventral sacs off of hatchery tech. If it cost 200/200 and didn't speed up unit build times I think it would be perfectly positioned for the mid-late game as a sensible upgrade rather than a game-breaking one.
Veeery good point, but I think it would require some kinda new tech structure as the templar tech doesnt quite fit imo. They could add something around 100/100 that provides the wg research ( 100/100 if not 50/50 maybe?) and something like a sentry energy upgrade (+25) or maybe enable shield batteries or w/e. Just brainstorming tho but I liked the basic idea of making it an abiity that opens up new possibilities, such as strong timing pushes early - midgame. But it should be still affordable along with other tech routes after the early midgame.
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I agree with this, warpgate is a pretty big design flaw.
Warpgate cool down should be based on the distance from the warpgate. The further you warp a unit from the warpgate the more cool down there is.
This solution will keep defenders advantage while making attacking warp-ins a riskier play.
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On September 08 2011 20:40 siri wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2011 20:23 CSN_Kaelaris wrote:On September 08 2011 20:09 siri wrote: you are wrong about warp gate not being good at defending
the strength of warpgates is equally strong offensively and defensibly. Its even more noticeable at defending!
example: terran to do a timing push needs to have minerals at time X to start production. now lets say terran needs 30 seconds to build the army and the distance from his base to the target is 30 seconds.
That means a delay of 1 minutes the moment you collect minerals to the moment your army built from those minerals hit the target. While protoss only has the delay of 5 seconds.
Which also means that a 8minutes timing attack from terran is a 7minutes army against a 8minutes protoss army which if you take the account that your productions only really starts to kick in at about 4/5 minutes in to the game, early timings the protoss can have 1/3 more army than terran and still lose because to balance this gateway units need to be weaker compared to t1 units from other races.
conclusion: WP is the most BROKEN mechanic in the game (2º is forcefield) and still protoss is very vulnerable to all ins because how weaker gateway units need to be. Honestly I dream one day WP be only upgradable on a fleet beacon.
I assume you're not factoring in the fact that Warpgates have a cooldown? : / I assume you dont understand how WG works, or maybe you dont play protoss. its ok I explain. If you collect minerals at a given time and want to use those minerals to build a army, WP allows you to build a unit in just 5 seconds using those minerals. While a barracks you have a 25 seconds to build a marine. this means that if you build a a wg and a barracks in 30 seconds you can have 2 stalkers with the wg while only 1 marine with barracks WG allows you to have always 1 more cycle of production than your opponent wich is huge boom early game (like 4gate) but not so noticeable advantage late game
I'm Masters Protoss on EU and NA, I know how Warp-in works thank you Generally I'm keeping on top of my macro and my Warp-in is on Cooldown, so yes, it has a Cooldown.
EDIT: Unless of course i'm trying to power, but that covers rather specific circumstances. Also your explanation requires timings to line up perfectly, and it rarely happens like that.
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On September 08 2011 20:32 fuzzy_panda wrote: I think a good way to solve the problem would be if Warp Gate warpins have a longer cooldown than Gateway. As it is right now, Gateways are totally redundant as soon as warpgate research is finished. If gateway has a shorter training time than warpgate, this will bring back the defenders advantage. e.g. if gateway has 33s training for a zealot whereas warpin has a 38s cooldown for zealot, the defender would tend to stick with gateways for longer and theoretically be able to have more units. This will also make it into an interesting choice as the protoss player will need to decide between Gateways and Warpgates more strategically, instead of immediately going warpgate every time
i think such a shorter build time wouldnt even make protoss players (like me) prefer gateway over gateways because u still have to consider the time the zealot/stalker/sentry has to run to the ramp/choke
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I REALLY like your idea of adding the shield battery I think that is the only defensive tool the gives defenders advantage in pvp and doesn't ruin any other match ups
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Increased warp-in time dependent upon distance from nearest nexus = Infamous 6 gate proxy nexus/"ninja" expo?
Shield batteries sound like what's up.
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Very old info. It's been widely known since beta that wg 'removes defender's advantage'. So why hasn't protoss been dominating? Is there some key that all protoss players have been missing in order to abuse this huge advantage?
Your main point of contention is that timing attacks are different, rather stronger for a protoss. This really isn't true. Any race can build a ton of units, get some upgrades, and then move out right at a certain point to hit an opponent. All races just have to move out before an important upgrade is done, and then atttack. The reinforcing units are usually negligible, since you are either all-in or have a reliable follow up that does not involve committing reinforcements. A timing attack is the first hit on the opponent, not the repeated hitting over and over from reinforcements. Warpgate doesn't make a timing push stronger, it just makes reinforcing a little easier.
+ Show Spoiler +On September 08 2011 20:09 siri wrote: you are wrong about warp gate not being good at defending
the strength of warpgates is equally strong offensively and defensibly. Its even more noticeable at defending!
example: terran to do a timing push needs to have minerals at time X to start production. now lets say terran needs 30 seconds to build the army and the distance from his base to the target is 30 seconds.
That means a delay of 1 minutes the moment you collect minerals to the moment your army built from those minerals hit the target. While protoss only has the delay of 5 seconds.
Which also means that a 8minutes timing attack from terran is a 7minutes army against a 8minutes protoss army which if you take the account that your productions only really starts to kick in at about 4/5 minutes in to the game, early timings the protoss can have 1/3 more army than terran and still lose because to balance this gateway units need to be weaker compared to t1 units from other races.
conclusion: WP is the most BROKEN mechanic in the game (2º is forcefield) and still protoss is very vulnerable to all ins because how weaker gateway units need to be. Honestly I dream one day WP be only upgradable on a fleet beacon.
This is the same for every race... If zerg moves out at 7:00 to attack a terran and takes 60 seconds to move about, it's a 7:00 zerg army attacking a 8:00 terran army.
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