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The Balance and Redesign of Protoss in LOTV
There are plenty of threads which discuss games specifics dealing with Protoss in lotv. Why make a dedicated thread to discuss Protoss design?
The perception that protoss is weak or poorly designed is a pressing issue that makes the game less fun. Thus, I created this thread how to address both quantitatively as well as descriptively the perceived protoss weakness and abusive play in LOTV. This may be one of the last time to address major issues if there is no continued game development from microtransaction revenue. (I discussed other rewards and community reasons to play beyond ladder rank in my last thread.) My goal here is to show what exactly changed in Legacy of the Void(LOTV), the effects of these changes, and proposed options to progress protoss multiplayer play in LOTV. One claim is that LOTV has seen increased win rates for terran and Zerg over Protoss.(lotus, Red bull archon tournament) This would seem to imply that in its current state, Protoss weakness is the most relevant item on the agenda in LOTV. What is the reasoning for the difficulty of adjustment of Protoss to lotv and possible ways to enhance lotv moving forward?
Abstract: The skinny is that the key problems for protoss are dealing with drop play, mineral fallout, and delayed tech response from adepts openers. My key solutions are to reduce mineral costs of adepts, decreased build times for gateway units that aren't warp gates, enhance the disruptor as an air unit, increase templar movement speed, decrease storm research time, and starting nexus with 50 energy. Mostly in this thread, I would like to see how players would deal with the three key isses here, or identify other issues which would be key moving forward. I will also review other proposals given up to this point and add them to this thread them throughout this week. More specifically, I'll review Buffing gateway units,Changing the adept shield upgrade,Changing the mothership,Disruptor catapult,Disruptor mobility,Zealot and immortal enhancements,Oracle and sentry ideas,And the state of the collossus.
---------------------------------------- My outlined approach of this topic's discussion- 1. Describe Protoss as a race in general 2. Defining the changes in Legacy of the Void 3. Defining the cause for the decreased Protoss win rates 4. Characterizing the options which increase the number of engagements and multitasking 5. Community feedback on these options As is consistent with my previous threads, I'll continue to add supplemental data that I've been working on accruing over the past few weeks to support all of my claims and thoughts as well as revise the thread based of community feedback from polls in an attempt to most accurately represent the commmunity general concensus. ----------------------------------------
General Race Design of Protoss. The design of the Protoss race led to several descriptors- Bandaids(Nathanias), P R O T O S S E D(twitch), Gimmicky(Myself, tastetosis, Magnet), broken(many pro Zergs), Deathball, 2 base allin all day(kaelaris,rotti), PvP the matchup where the better player maybe wins(Naniwa, Desrow), Proxy syka(Russian pros), oracle OpieOP(supernova), the race of the motherb*tch. These descriptors are about the race and don't necessarily reflect the players themselves, but have led to a negative opinion of the skills of a lot of protoss players. I think the players who play protoss play the race right and wrongfully get hate for what they do.
Morever, the job of pro-gamers is to abuse a race to its fullest potential to win games. The most common things that are abused by Protoss is warpgate, mass AOE, recall, nexus cannon, oracles, stalker mobility) Zerg and terran tend to have more fluid styles that enhance the races ability to be out on the map and take engagments more often in games.
Albeit the specifics, I really prefer to use very general terms to describe Protoss. The basic description I use in most games is you have an aggressor and a defender with weak and strong defensive positions. Most early game defense is around the mothership core or cannons and sentries. The msc is a slow low dps unit that is boring to micro and relies heavily on the nexus cannon. The nexus cannon is a click on a building with no micro. Sentries are also slow units with low damage. This composition fortifies and provides a very strond defensive position.
After the early defensive phase, a lot of games are decided with the first Protoss offensive phase. There are basically 2 styles of offensive play, harass (with an oracle, dts, or blink stalkers), or place a pylon on the map and abuse warp gate. Usually they are meant to do damage mostly by blind siding the opponent from ninja'd tech, super abusive mobile units, or unit warp abuse. After attempting or doing damage, the game usually results in either an allin or very defensive play with stacked mass aoe from collossus and templar.
A claim I make here which I'm working on statistics to demonstrate is that most Protoss games usually have one big engagement then end. They end either with Protoss losing everything and not defending or rolling the opponent. The only comeback scenario for Protoss seems to be dark shrine or blink harass. Thus, the negative abusive words often I believe come from lack of interesting defensive early play, types of harass styles and allins built around overly mobile units and warp gate abuse, and the game typically ending in a single engagement.
Notwithstanding Blizzard promised a change in lotv. One of the key goals emphasized by blizzard towards this end was to increase the number of engagements and increasing the reward from multitasking potential. This promise a lot of players(Nathanias, Naniwa) feel has not been met. Particularly as in the case of Nathanias rant about wanting something different.
Having something different is difficult to develop for Protoss in LOTV due to the traditional builds of the race expanding later and being more timing driven. I will to return then to goals in lotv against the design of the race later. But the truth is that so far from the games I've seen in lotv, I have not seen much deviation from the Protoss non-colossus playstyles in lotv from hots. The reason for this I believe is that the core mechanics about what is the most abusive aspects of Protoss play has not changed, where as it has for the other two races. + Show Spoiler +(Zerg lurkers for sieging, parasitic bomb the air ability to rule them all, late game ultras, caustic spray the fastest building killing ability in the game. Terran-cyclone pressure to push mech lines, liberators anti-air aoe for muta control, tank drops for extreme mech harass) The most notable item which leads to one and done engagements is the abuse and low risk involved from of warp gate.
I'll discuss these changes after discussing the perceived imbalance that is current in lotv. Particularly, i think that tech trees should use less minerals, adepts need to do more damage against armored, race design should have less reliance on warp gate abuse to win games, and options to transition within the same tech tree. Changes I believe that are needed in lotv to really get at the heart of the trends that blizzard has proposed of more engagements, more multitasking, and more reward for expanding. ----------------------------------------
Game breaking changes in Legacy
1. Key Economy changes- Surprisingly after much testing of comparable builds from hots to lotv and the builds that are used on streams like Crank, Vibe, or Nightend. There are a big set of patterns, which result in similar timings as would happen in hots up to a point(see supplementary data of my timings tables)
Disclaimer, I make most of my build orders with time, supply, and worker counts, then i build decision trees on top of the build orders to understand the major styles of gameplay. With that in mind, I've looked at the timings for Zerg, Protoss, and terran. I've found that the timings for Zerg and terran rarely change much, but Protoss changes once the game hits around the 8 minute mark of lotv. There is a fallout, the army value is not as high as it should be. This fallout changes a little bit when it happens so I've been trying to identify exactly why. My conclusion is that the mineral patches start to mine out much faster and much of the Protoss play is based of the mineral patches being consistent. So, a definition I make is called mineral fallout. Its the point when the mineral income begins to decrease from a base. Main base and natural base mineral fallout occurs at ~7:20 and ~11:20 respectively in Legacy of the void.
I use an approximation when i'm doing testing with build orders. Its a linear formula. I take the time in hots, subtract 1 minute and 20 seconds, convert the time to seconds, divide the time by 1.38 then convert back to an in game time. so 11:15 hots ~ ((11:15-1:20)/1.38) ~7:20 lotv. This works fairly well to estimate builds.
In other words, the initial 12 worker start gives about 1:21 seconds boost using hots time or about 60 seconds using LOTV time for builds that use the 3:55 nexus hots, 2:05 nexus lotv. Fallout occurs at about 17 minutes in hots vs (10:05+1:21) ~11:15 in hots, before maxing out and about 22 minutes from the natural. (this is similar in timing to when Protoss take a third in pvp. So in lotv taking a third at 12 minutes comparable build time to hots, is almost optimal for worker transfer.
The end result is that 3 base saturation in pvp, I think will be nearly non-existent because of a loss of income. In terms of PvZ and PvT, if you don't have a third by 7:20 hots time, you are starting to lose mineral income and going to 66 workers doesn't make as much sense as stopping at 60. Zerg and terran on the other hand still have similar optimal worker saturation. ~60 for terran ~74 for Zerg. I provide a sample build for comparable builds between hots and lotv I'm working on as well as in the supplementary the effective timings table I'm working on.
+ Show Spoiler +Sample timing of most common opener in hots- Example build order 1: WCS 06/25/2015 Lilbow vs Marinelord game 1 wcs premier season 2 LilBow wins 6 gate oracle blink allin Chronos 12 prb,14prb,16prb,18prb,21 msc,oracle, 1xprob, 2x blink, rest gates 9 pylon 0:48 13 gate 1:41 15 assim 2:02 16 pylon 2:19 18 cybercore 2:46 18 assim 2:51 (put only 2 on when it finishes, third on @ 26 supply while building pylon (4:30) 21 Msc 3:38 rally worker to take nexus. 23 nexus 3:55 (scout with this worker) 24 stargate 4:18 (cut worker) 25/26 pylon 4:36 26 warp gate 4:40 29 oracle 5:18 (arrives in base at 6:20) 31 hidden pylon 5:20 33 stalker 5:30 38 twilight council 6:02 42 2 gates 6:40 45 4th/5th gate way 7:05. 7:15 45 blink 7:10 (chrono) 47 gate 7:40 make 3 pylons along path starting at 7:40 (47/52) 7:50 push out with single stalker and start making pylons Benchmark 9:05 40 workers, 11 stalkers, oracle, msc, blink finished, warp gates ready 8 pylons 9:20 blink into main 9:40 make 6 more workers/ 3rd and 4th gases Comparable build in LOTV- + Show Spoiler + Chronos 4x probes, 1x msc, 1x oracle, 1xprob, 2x blink, rest gates 4 chronos nexus, 1 oracle, 2 blink Lotv build order 13 pylon 0:13 15 gate 0:32 17 assim 0:48 18 pylon 1:06 20 Cybercore 1:20 20 assim 1:24 23 msc 1:58 25 nexus 2:05 25 stargate 2:12 26 Warpgate 2:27 26 proxy pylon 2:28 28 oracle 2:58 stalker twilight ~3:20 2 gates blink ~3:57 3 gates 4:20 start pylon trail 4:40 push out Benchmark 5:35 40 workers, 11 stalkers, oracle, msc, blink finished, warp gates ready 8 pylons
2. Nerfing of the colossus- The second major effect from the game is there are multiple styles of defending drops or dealing with mass marine/ling play. Mostly they are hard countered by the colossus in hots. Now that the colossus does less damage, players are less inclined to build them.
3. Dependancy on the disruptor- Since the major damage deal for unit heavy low upgrade styles is not featured by the colossus a lot of players are turning to the disruptor. This is good when the disruptor hits. Bad when it misses because the game basically sways very hard off a single action.
4. Punishing certain playstyles using adepts- Adept playstyles have emerged vs light units and help to fill the gap of of dealing with light units. The problem is that they are also very hard countered with roaches and marauders. Terran and Zerg have the means to punish adept usage from low tier units.
5. Adept oracle openers- this is probably the most interesting change in lotv. A bunker in the front with a turret was good at stopping stalker oracle, but the phase ability has made bunkers less useful and made oracle openers have multiple ways to counter marine heavy defense.
6. The death of forge openers vs Zerg- The ravager has enough range to kill cannons. forge openers basically cannot stop pushes with 3-4 ravagers which open the door and lings flood in.
7. adept damage dps vs tankyness- The adept is more tanky than a stalker, but it also is not as good vs armored units. Even a small number of marauders with marines make the adept nearly unusable.
8. Difficulty of pushing into choke points against lurkers- The lurker single-handedly has changed the base trade aspects of the ZvP matchup. It can zone and enhances mutalisk play, which was already very strong. Maybe mutalisks need to be nerfed to counterbalance the lurker play.
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The death of Protoss in Legacy The point here is to look at the most common causes of losses in lotv and compare them to HOTS. Based off the games in Redbull and LOTUS these are the trends that I'm seeing. I'll provide more references over the next few days.
1. Failed allin- Failed allins were common in HOTS and still are common in LOTV. The difference is that often protoss had 2 chances at an immortal allin or blink allin. With the mineral fallout, the possibility of this is nearly gone. A protoss player is more likely to lose if the first allin attempt failed to do damage than in hots.
2. Falling behind from adept openers Adepts use very low gas and give the ability to tech. The problem arises because going adepts reduces the early stalker counts. In PvP, this means the stalker which counters adepts is stronger and blink builds punish it very hard. In ZvP/ZvT high adept counts are easily countered by roaches and marauder counts. Adept Immortal is almost purely the only base composition, but the composition is not strong enough against the transitions which commonly come with lurkers and drop play. Adepts inherently seems to have a weakness which may need to be addressed since blink stalkers seem to be more stable against these transitions.
3. Failed drop defense- The traditional defense to drops in hots comes from the opener. The standard macro openers mostly in PvT are usually blink into colossus, or oracle into phoenix colossus. The reason why colossus are used so often is the ability to move between bases. Due to the colossus nerf, the other less common drop defense strategies must be used such as phoenix storm and blink/disruptor harass. These styles maybe players don't have much practice with or maybe they are weak. I do not have clear data on the matter so I will update this portion once i have the appropriate metric.
4. marauder heavy timings against air play- It seems when players have tried to go adept oracle into phoenix, they mostly die to low medivac count marauder timings. I'll add references on this soon. The question is if the immortal is effective enough with phoenixes to counter high marauder counts.
5. Difficulty getting 4 base gas to open tech transitions in the late game- In contrast to marauder heavy timings when the protoss goes air zerg just seems to drone up three bases then go for very heavy timings. It seems like the macro really kicks in hard and the mineral fallout becomes an issue for protoss. The game is lost since the zerg is free to transition over and over and the protoss struggles to keep up.
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Options to unbreak the Protoss heart There are choices here on what changes to be made to the game to either make the game more like hots, or something different. My suggested fixes are based on the ideas that mineral fallout, tools for dealing with drop play, and delayed tech response from adepts are the key problems from quantitative testing. This is where I focused in on in game adjustments.
Reduced Mineral costs on the Protoss Tech Trees Given that most of my testing concludes that protoss is pretty much identical in terms of macro equality until the mineral count decreases and the secondary tech tree kicks in. It would appear that one way to strengthen protoss to allow for taking more bases would be to reduce mineral costs on the tech trees.
Decreased Non-warpgate gateway unit build time- The decrease in gateway build time from gateways not warped into warp gates I love the idea. It makes its so that the protoss don't have so many strategies about snowballing to win while at the same time making their early game stronger and saving the amount of minerals spent on gateways. The choice of switching to and from gateways becomes a core mechanic in the game. A lot of the perceived gimmicky problems with the race are reduced. The strategic usage of pylons on the map changes.
Increased starting energy on Nexus to 50- Having every nexus start with 50 energy increases the strength of the nexus once they are build. It yields and instant reward for expanding. This is an alternative way to make Protoss more effective by requiring less gateways and getting up towards the mid game more quickly. The possible downside would be that warpgate abuse would become even more effective.
Reduced mineral costs on adepts- Since adepts tend away from blink play and towards tech play, reducing the mineral costs on adepts effectively makes it so that tech play allows more money to be saved towards expanding and reducing the effect of the mineral fallout.
Buff DPS of adepts against armored- Since adepts in larger numbers are strongly countered by mass roach and marauder play a small buff to the adept dps against armored would increase their capacity to take engagements more often and buy more time to tech. This is one of my biggest changes i want in the game.
Increased effectiveness against drops from the air tech- The stasis ward does not allow damage to air. I think its a bit of an oversight. The drop play is so strong when protoss goes air as can be seen from hots with nearly every game with phoenix PvT the protoss lost. (I'll provide more details on this claim.) I think 2 things need to happen. Air units cost less minerals and the oracles need to be more effective against drops. I think the stasis ward could have a smaller cooldown to make this change stronger.
Disruptor as an air units, which drops for purification nova. Increased mobility and decreased risk using the disruptors defensively- As Mentioned above, the nerf to the colossus made it so that the protoss army bouncing between the natural and the third is less effective. The drops between the main and adjacent bases were effectively buffed due to this change. If the robo tech was chosen as the tech of choice, the disruptors have too much of a risk. I think the most obvious change is to have and air units that hits air. The usage of the warp prism to position between the bases creates interesting micro but does not address one of the other issues. One of the consequences of the colossus was in dividing spending on upgrades into vikings. If the disruptor were an air to air unit that drops to attack an army, it strengthens air upgrades and increases survivability against zerg.
Buff the colossus, the aoe unit to rule them all- One possibilty would be to just undo what has been done. I don't really favor this idea. I do favor an upgrade to the colossus which takes 220 seconds to make the colossus back to similar damage and range to what it was. I think having longer upgrade times enhances the use of the disruptor as a harass unit into a colossus transition.
Decrease the research time of storm and give templar a move speed ability- Since storm is another major source of aoe, the limiting factor to its use to hold timings seems to be the research time for storm as well as the ability to land the storm. I think by decreasing the research time and giving templar a mobility buff, the units becomes more viable much earlier.
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Polls,results, and discussion
Poll 1: Worst aspect of Protoss Race design Poll on Protoss Race design
Poll 2: Favorite design change with protoss Poll on LOTV Protoss Changes
Poll 2: Interest in warp gate redesign Poll Warp Gate redesign
Poll 3: Is Protoss weak in LOTV? if so how? Poll LOTV Protoss Strength
Poll 4: Adepts as an alternate to mothership core early game Poll Adepts
Poll 5: Most challenging Protoss aspects of LOTV Poll Protoss Changes against Zerg/terran/changes
Poll 6: Iron Fortress clues to change Poll Iron Fortress race problems
Poll 7:Mineral Fallout Poll Mineral fallout consequences
Poll 8: Does LOTV Protoss feel like a different more fun race? Poll LOTV Protoss is favorable?
Poll 9: Most favorable changes to Protoss Not yet in LOTV? Poll What would you like to see for protoss?
Supplementary timing conversion tables- + Show Spoiler + **Note i've tested a little over half of these and felt confident enough to post them. --------------------------------------------------- Timings Conversion tables. Hots Table from imba builds 3:40 – Unit-less 1gate FE starts Nexus (PvX) 4:00
5:00
5:05 – Earliest Proxy Oracle can hit your base (PvP/PvT) 5:30 – 2 Stalker + Mothership Core pressure hits your base (PvT) 5:30 – Trap’s 3gate All-in hits your base (PvP) 5:35-6:30 – Mothership Core can first scout your base (PvP/PvT) 6:00
6:00 – 4gate can hit your base (PvX) 6:30 – Gate Expand into 5gate pressure hits your base (PvZ) 6:45 – Early Dark Shrine finishes (PvP/PvT) 7:00
7:00 – 2 Base Oracle finishes (PvT/PvZ) 7:22 – Earliest DT Drop (PvT/PvZ) 7:30 – Warpgate will finish after a Forge Fast Expand (PvZ) 7:35 – Early Warp Prism attacks hit your base (PvP/PvT) 7:40 – 1 Base Blink All-in hits your base (PvP/PvT) 8:00
8:30 – 2 Base Blink hits your base (PvT) 9:00
9:30 – 1st Colossus will finish in standard play (PvT) 9:30 – Storm will first finish in standard play (PvT) 3rd base will try to be taken (PvZ) 10:00
10:30 – 1st Colossus will finish after Phoenix opener (PvZ) 11:00
Chargelot/Archon Timings can first hit (PvT) 3rd base will try to be taken (PvP/PvT) 12:00
2 Base Colossus Timings can hit (PvT) 13:00
Storm after Colossus-First can be finished (PvT) 3 Base Colossus Timings can hit (PvZ)
Lotv Version with numbers 1:58 – Unit-less 1gate FE starts Nexus (PvX) 2:45 – Earliest Proxy Oracle can hit your base (PvP/PvT) 3:00 – 2 Stalker + Mothership Core pressure hits your base (PvT) 3:00 – Trap’s 3gate All-in hits your base (PvP) 3:00 - 3:45 – Mothership Core can first scout your base (PvP/PvT) 3:22 – 4gate can hit your base (PvX) 3:45 – Gate Expand into 5gate pressure hits your base (PvZ) 3:55 – Early Dark Shrine finishes (PvP/PvT) 4:05 – 2 Base Oracle finishes (PvT/PvZ) 4:20 – Earliest DT Drop (PvT/PvZ) 4:30 – Warpgate will finish after a Forge Fast Expand (PvZ) 4:30 – Early Warp Prism attacks hit your base (PvP/PvT) 4:35 – 1 Base Blink All-in hits your base (PvP/PvT) 5:10 – 2 Base Blink hits your base (PvT) 6:00 – 1st Colossus/disruptor will finish in standard play (PvT) 6:00 – Storm will first finish in standard play (PvT) 5:10 - 6:15 3rd base will try to be taken (PvZ) 6:40 – 1st Colossus will finish after Phoenix opener (PvZ) 6:40 Chargelot/Archon Timings can first hit (PvT) 6:16-7:40 3rd base will try to be taken (PvP/PvT) 7:50 2 Base Colossus Timings can hit (PvT) 8:50 Storm after Colossus-First can be finished (PvT) 8:50 3 Base Colossus Timings can hit (PvZ)
----------------------------------------------------- Comprehensive List of Terran Timings by In-Game Clock
2:00
2:20 – CC First is initially planted (TvZ/TvP) 2:42 – 12 Barracks finishes (TvX) 3:00
3:05 – Gas First Factory starts (TvT) 3:10 – First Marine finishes after standard Barracks (TvX) 3:15 – First Reaper finishes after 8-8-8 Proxy Reaper (TvZ/TvT) 3:20 – First Bunker goes down with Proxy 2rax starts (TvZ) 3:35 – First Reaper finishes after standard Barracks (TvX) 4:00
4:40 – First Proxy Widow Mine finishes (TvP) 5:00
5:30 – 3rd CC can be started (TvZ) 6:00
6:10 – Gas First Banshee finishes (TvT) 6:20 – 1 Base Widow Mine Drop can hit your base (TvT/TvP) 6:30 – Barracks First Banshee finishes (TvT) 6:45 – First Hellions after CC First will reach your base (TvT/TvZ) 6:45 – First Proxy Thor finishes (TvT) 7:00
7:00 – First Hellions after Reaper opener will reach your base (TvZ) 7:40 – 2 Base Widow Mine Drop can hit your base (TvT/TvP) 7:50 – 2 Base Hellbat Drop can hit your base (TvZ) 8:00
8:00 – 1 Base Marine/Tank All-in can first hit your base (TvT) 9:00
9:30 – 2 Base Marine/Hellion timings can hit your 3rd (TvZ) 10:00
10:00 – 2 Base Bio pushes can first hit your base (TvX) 10:30 – 2 Base Bio pushes after Widow Mine Drop can first hit your base (TvT/TvP) 11:00
12:00
3 Base Marine/Medivac/Widow Mine pushes can first hit your 3rd (TvZ) 13:00
Ghost production can begin after standard Bio opener (TvP) 14:00
Bio+SCV Pull All-in (TvP) ------------------------------ Comprehensive List of Terran Timings by In-Game Clock LOTV (untested)
0:56 – CC First is initially planted (TvZ/TvP) 1:05 – 14 Barracks finishes (TvX) 3:00
1:16 – Gas First Factory starts (TvT) 1:20 – First Marine finishes after standard Barracks (TvX) 1:20 – First Reaper finishes after 8-8-8 Proxy Reaper (TvZ/TvT) 1:25 – First Bunker goes down with Proxy 2rax starts (TvZ) 1:40 – First Reaper finishes after standard Barracks (TvX) 2:25 – First Proxy Widow Mine finishes (TvP) 3:00 – 3rd CC can be started (TvZ) 3:30 – Gas First Banshee finishes (TvT) 3:35 – 1 Base Widow Mine Drop can hit your base (TvT/TvP) 3:45 – Barracks First Banshee finishes (TvT) 3:55 – First Hellions after CC First will reach your base (TvT/TvZ) 3:55 – First Proxy Thor finishes (TvT) 4:00 – First Hellions after Reaper opener will reach your base (TvZ) 4:35 – 2 Base Widow Mine Drop can hit your base (TvT/TvP) 4:35 - Tank drops can hit your base. 4:40 – 2 Base Hellbat Drop can hit your base (TvZ) 4:50 – 1 Base Marine/Tank All-in can first hit your base (TvT) 5:50 – 2 Base Marine/Hellion timings can hit your 3rd (TvZ) 6:10 – 2 Base Bio pushes can first hit your base (TvX) 6:35 – 2 Base Bio pushes after Widow Mine Drop can first hit your base (TvT/TvP) 7:40 3 Base Marine/Medivac/Widow Mine pushes can first hit your 3rd (TvZ) 8:30 Ghost production can begin after standard Bio opener (TvP) 9:00 Bio+SCV Pull All-in (TvP)
---------------------------------- Comprehensive List of Zerg Timings by In-Game Clock
2:00
2:00 – 7pool finishes (ZvX) 2:10 – Hatchery First placed (ZvX) 2:17 – 10pool finishes (ZvX) 2:55 – 14pool finishes (ZvP/ZvZ) 3:00
3:10 – 3rd Hatchery started if going for a 3 Hatch before Pool (ZvT/ZvP) 3:12 – 7pool reaches your base (ZvX) 3:30 – 10pool reaches your base (ZvX) 3:55 – Earliest a 3rd Hatchery can go down when opening 14 Pool (ZvP) 4:00
4:45 – Metabolic Boost finishes in Speedling All-in (ZvP) 4:55 – Metabolic Boost finishes after 14gas/14pool (ZvP/ZvZ) 5:00
5:20 – Standard 3rd Hatchery Timing after gasless 15 Hatchery (ZvT) 6:00
6:30 – 2base Baneling Bust (ZvX) 6:45 – Metabolic Boost finishes after Hatchery First (ZvX) 7:00
8:00
8:00 – 2base Roach/Ling All-in can hit your base (ZvT/ZvZ) 8:45 – 2base Roach/Bane All-in can hit your base (ZvT/ZvZ) 9:00
9:00 – 2base Spire will finish (ZvX) 9:15 – Earliest a 2base Swarm Host/Queen Nydus can hit your base (ZvP) 10:00
10:00 – +1/+1 Roach Timing can hit your base (ZvT/ZvZ) 11:00
3base Speed Roach/Baneling Timing can hit your base (ZvT) 3base Spire will finish (ZvP/ZvT) 12:00+
Depending on the amount of aggression in the game, Zerg can finish Hive research around this time (ZvX)
Comprehensive List of Zerg Timings by In-Game Clock (LOTV)
2:00
1:20 – 12 pool finishes (ZvX) 0:56 – Hatchery First placed (ZvX) 1:14 – 3rd Hatchery started if going for a 3 Hatch before Pool (ZvT/ZvP) 1:54 – 12pool reaches your base (ZvX) 1:55 – Earliest a 3rd Hatchery can go down when opening 16 Pool (ZvP) 2:50 – Metabolic Boost finishes in Speedling All-in (ZvP) 2:55 – Metabolic Boost finishes after 14gas/14pool (ZvP/ZvZ) 3:05 – Standard 3rd Hatchery Timing after gasless 17 Hatchery (ZvT) 3:45 – 2base Baneling Bust (ZvX) 3:55 – Metabolic Boost finishes after Hatchery First (ZvX) 4:10 - 3 ravager timing 4:40 – 2base Roach/Ling All-in can hit your base (ZvT/ZvZ) 5:20 – 2base Roach/Bane All-in can hit your base (ZvT/ZvZ) 9:00 – 2base Spire will finish (ZvX) 5:35 – Earliest a 2base Swarm Host/Queen Nydus can hit your base (ZvP) 6:05 – +1/+1 Roach Timing can hit your base (ZvT/ZvZ) 6:50 3base Speed Roach/Baneling Timing can hit your base (ZvT) 6:50 3base Spire will finish (ZvP/ZvT)
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Adepts are great and have made Core only gateway units viable. Reliance on Guardian Shield, Photon Overcharge, Recall (from a single unit,) is however devastating and could be made more fun. Eco change+focus on harassment and action everywhere on the map are crucial aspects of LotV. Guardian Shield, with Marauder double shot change (having Sentries in your scattered forces everywhere is too gas expensive) + Mothership Core disallow that for Protoss.
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A thread asking for adept buffs, now i've seen everything. The unit is core in most openings, new allins, and mid-game compositions in LoTV. It completely outclasses the zealot and when shooting air is not a concern it outdoes the stalker too.
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Im also quite surprised the community feedback always looks as though they are done with protoss. The disruptor and interceptor changes are certainly not enough to make protoss feel like a complete race. It just looks so half complete.
In my opinion, in addition to what youve said, protoss is the class that punishes expanding yourself the most. Additional nexi cost 400, and produce energy - which can solely be used on chronoboost and is the worst base recource. A mined out nexus, which happens more often in LotV, provides infinitely less value than a mined out orbital or hatchery. While this might not be an issue for 2 base timing attacks, i definitely think its an issue for the longer games blizzard is going for.
In addition to that, probes are the weakest to harass - considering certain units even do bonus damage to shields and they have 40 hp as opposed to 45 of other races. Probes also cost 50 minerals - against terran and mules, a protoss is considered on even footing, only if he has a significant lead in probes. If both players get harrassed stronly, it will end up with the terran ahead - since the loss of workers can usually be absorbed by mules. Also consider that 22 probes also cost 1.100 minerals - which is more than a 50% mineral patch of lotv.
Going even further, the mothership by design, is much more powerful at defending bases on lower base counts. Lotv wants to push you to expand - the mothership as a base defense mechanism is now less powerful.
Add all of these together and you get a race that does poorly when the game comes to more expanding.
Personally i would add another way to spend energy, give an incentive to shift between warpgates and gateways and finally remove the mothership as a base protector.
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Yeah, i'll touch on this later today when i add more statistics, metrics, and supporting information to the post.
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On July 12 2015 22:09 weikor wrote: Im also quite surprised the community feedback always looks as though they are done with protoss. The disruptor and interceptor changes are certainly not enough to make protoss feel like a complete race. It just looks so half complete.
In my opinion, in addition to what youve said, protoss is the class that punishes expanding yourself the most. Additional nexi cost 400, and produce energy - which can solely be used on chronoboost and is the worst base recource. A mined out nexus, which happens more often in LotV, provides infinitely less value than a mined out orbital or hatchery. While this might not be an issue for 2 base timing attacks, i definitely think its an issue for the longer games blizzard is going for.
In addition to that, probes are the weakest to harass - considering certain units even do bonus damage to shields and they have 40 hp as opposed to 45 of other races. Probes also cost 50 minerals - against terran and mules, a protoss is considered on even footing, only if he has a significant lead in probes. If both players get harrassed stronly, it will end up with the terran ahead - since the loss of workers can usually be absorbed by mules. Also consider that 22 probes also cost 1.100 minerals - which is more than a 50% mineral patch of lotv.
Going even further, the mothership by design, is much more powerful at defending bases on lower base counts. Lotv wants to push you to expand - the mothership as a base defense mechanism is now less powerful.
Add all of these together and you get a race that does poorly when the game comes to more expanding.
Personally i would add another way to spend energy, give an incentive to shift between warpgates and gateways and finally remove the mothership as a base protector.
I've said it dozens of times, free macrobooster is weak macrobooster... Standarize Protoss.
There are ton of benefits from standarizing protoss macro.
- Stronger macrobooster - Easier to balance additional nexus spells - Gateways can have short build times without being balanced by Chronoboost (Proxy gates). = Stronger early. - No inmediate dependance on Warpgate. - No need to band-aid with MSC.
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Mothership Core is one of the enabling factors for Protoss deathballing. Along with warpgate, it allows Protoss to defend a number of bases without having to split up their forces as much as Zerg and Terran generally need to. Recall and Nexus Canon promote deathball play especially when taking into account that it is dependant on a unit that you can only create one of at a time. It's a bandaid unit that as you said doesn't also doesn't do as well in LOTV due to the need to expand more quickly.
So happy that Colossus is basically useless now and that Protoss have the Adept. However, I would vote for a buff to vs armored and a nerf to vs light so that it isn't such a hard-counter to light and isn't as strongly countered by armored units. My biggest vote goes to changing warp gate while my second goes to changing Mothership Core and allowing more than one to be created.
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On July 13 2015 01:30 winsonsonho wrote: Mothership Core is one of the enabling factors for Protoss deathballing. Along with warpgate, it allows Protoss to defend a number of bases without having to split up their forces as much as Zerg and Terran generally need to. Recall and Nexus Canon promote deathball play especially when taking into account that it is dependant on a unit that you can only create one of at a time. It's a bandaid unit that as you said doesn't also doesn't do as well in LOTV due to the need to expand more quickly.
So happy that Colossus is basically useless now and that Protoss have the Adept. However, I would vote for a buff to vs armored and a nerf to vs light so that it isn't such a hard-counter to light and isn't as strongly countered by armored units. My biggest vote goes to changing warp gate while my second goes to changing Mothership Core and allowing more than one to be created.
I disagree about your statement on Nexus Cannon and Recall. These mechanics do not encourage Deathball by themselves, but because only 1 "heroic" unit (you cannot have more than 1) can cast them, so you end up with a MSC-Deathball.
- Photon Overcharge is simply a defensive spell to buff the weak base defense from Protoss, specially early game. You could have different spells or just give Nexus the option to activate it with 25 energy, and it's the same thing. It has nothing to do with the Deathball itself. It's like a long-range cannon, but tied to the Nexus, stupidly activated by MSC.
- Recall is in fact a very mobility-friendly mechanic and would encourage multiskirmishing, but only if you could cast it several times. If you only have ONE UNIQUE UNIT with SINGLE recall, that's a SINGLE group of units that can be moved around (=Deathball).
MSC was 100% a band aid. If you think it well, Photon Overcharge and Recall could be just given to the nexus with a revised energy cost, and Timewarp rebalanced or readjusted on the Oracle (like in HotS Beta).
MSC is, IMAO, an unnecesary unit was patched as a band-aid.
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adept damage dps vs tankyness- The adept is more tanky than a stalker, but it also is not as good vs armored units. Even a small number of marauders with marines make the adept nearly unusable.
I disagree, if there are a decent number of marines with some marauder support, adepts would still be great. This is because that marines have a higher DPS vs adepts (per unit cost of course) than marauders do. Marauders will not get their boosted damage because adepts are light. The adepts can just be focusing marines and you just need other units to clean up the maruaders, or you can just run away after all the marines are dead. They are not usable vs compositions based on non-light units however.
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Solution is to remove warp gates. It is such a powerful mechanic that you will have to make any unit produced in this manner weaker to balance stuff out.
Imagine giving all protoss units cloaking. Then, you nerf protoss until it get's a stable 50-50 winrate. Only after that is done you look at how games unfold and what is the quality of those games. What do you see?
This is what happens with warp gates, but to a far smaller extent.
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On July 13 2015 03:45 Alcathous wrote: Solution is to remove warp gates. It is such a powerful mechanic that you will have to make any unit produced in this manner weaker to balance stuff out.
Imagine giving all protoss units cloaking. Then, you nerf protoss until it get's a stable 50-50 winrate. Only after that is done you look at how games unfold and what is the quality of those games. What do you see?
This is what happens with warp gates, but to a far smaller extent. I disagree. Yes, Warp Gates are very very powerful, but not so powerful that they can not be reasonably incorporated into the game in some way. This is what I wrote in another thread, I am just gonna copypasta:
On July 13 2015 02:57 RoomOfMush wrote: Although Warp Gate rushes are a problem my bigger personal gripe with Warp Gate is that its a non-decision. Why would anybody ever not get Warp Gate in this game. There is absolutely no choice and no decision making involved. The rules are clear: Get Warp Gate you idiot!
It is Cyber-Core tech which you need to get anyways. Its cheap and it only brings benefits. There is no reason not to research it with 50/50 costs and no other useful early game upgrades at Cyber-Core. And there is no reason not to use it when you have it.
Instead, I would like to see a role for both Gateways and Warp Gates. Differentiate between these two and give us a chance to actually make a decision. Give us some reason to think instead of follow.
Thats why I suggest making Gateways produce units on mass faster then Warp Gates can. If you want to build a big army or remax after a fight you should have Gateways. If you want to reinforce during a fight or harass your opponent you should have Warp Gates. You can even have a mix of both and use them in parallel.
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I think one of the most important things before getting into specific unit changes is to look at the big picture of what made Protoss design great in the past. I'm not saying "copy BW," but the basic design of Protoss seems to be altered in SC2, which in turn requires a lot of what people call "bandaids" and "gimmicks" (though sometimes those terms are used only abstractly, when they are used in the context of logically explaining bad design, they can be valid) to balance the game.
The basic Protoss design in BW went like this:
-- Gateway = backbone of the Protoss army -- Robo = general utility of the Protoss army -- Stargate = air dominance and positional utility of the Protoss army
You could use Carriers and Reavers as core units if you wanted to, but they were options, not requirements. And even in cases where it was hard not to use them, they didn't depend on so many other units that you had to keep your whole army clumped together as a deathball.
Compare this to the basic Protoss design in SC2:
-- Joint Gateway/Robo = backbone of the Protoss army -- Robo = general utility of the Protoss army -- Stargate = air dominance and positional utility of the Protoss army
Notice the part in bold. While Robo does retain its utility role, it also becomes part of the backbone as a necessity. The powerful, expensive, specific-weakness units of the Robotics Facility require the Gateway units and the Gateway units require them. It is this aspect that is the main cause of the deathball, and consequently is the key factor behind most of the "bandaid" design choices.
Warp Gate is a possible aspect of why this came to be about, but in LotV, I'm not sure if it still needs to be. Some have suggested improving static defense for retaining more of a defender's advantage against it, and the faster paced game allows other forms of production to more quickly match the early game power of Warp Gate.
I'm not against designing the game without it, but I think the best bet is to see what we can do to create a Gateway backbone while retaining it as I don't think Blizzard is going to consider removing it. They might consider giving Gateway production an advantage, while keeping Warp Gate as mostly a positional tool, but even that I'm not sure they would consider.
I think we do have a little flexibility in the form of the Immortal -- while it comes from the Robo, it is only somewhat expensive compared to the other Robo combat units, has consistent damage output, and could be designed around having a higher number of them rather than a few with a specific weakness that require a large army to protect them (like Colossi). This makes it the closest unit to a Gateway unit that doesn't need to be limited by Warp Gate.
Another option could be something along the lines of making one or some Gateway units unable to be produced by Warp Gates. While this design does seem rather clunky, it could allow more room for making a Gateway backbone.
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On July 13 2015 03:28 AkashSky wrote:Show nested quote + adept damage dps vs tankyness- The adept is more tanky than a stalker, but it also is not as good vs armored units. Even a small number of marauders with marines make the adept nearly unusable.
I disagree, if there are a decent number of marines with some marauder support, adepts would still be great. This is because that marines have a higher DPS vs adepts (per unit cost of course) than marauders do. Marauders will not get their boosted damage because adepts are light. The adepts can just be focusing marines and you just need other units to clean up the maruaders, or you can just run away after all the marines are dead. They are not usable vs compositions based on non-light units however.
I do think you are spot on of this criticism. Many of the games though that open with 2 gate adept harass i feel put the player behind and they lose often to counter play. (its made me question whether the opener is even viable) I do feel that that 2 gate opener SHOULD be a core part of play. I personally think its more interesting to play and to watch. To be move viable, I think its necessary to have an increase of dps by a number say maybe 2 vs armored. There is another post which i also favor heavily, which think helps with this but using zealots and immortals. I agree 2 gate openers do NOT have to be viable. Much like the changes i propose to warp gate decreasing build time for non-gates, having a warping building that could be sniped, or separating warp effectiveness between warp prisms and pylons.
They do NOT have to implemented. Notwithstanding, from a design perspective on the player experience, I would like to see it because I think the negative reaction from the community towards protoss primarily stems from the effectiveness of the mothership core/sentry defense and abuse of warp gate resulting in one and done engagements.
Aside- More on upcoming support for this- + Show Spoiler + As far this, I have to say that its in progress, but not complete enough to be included yet. So this is actually, part or a larger criticism i have of my own post. I have claims and patterns I've been working on ever since I allotted time for this on my agenda starting on june 28th. This is what i have done every day since then.
------------------------------------------------ 1. Review every game i can on LOTV, Usually 4-5/day. 2. Play 3 games based on styles i have seen in lotv. I then identify how i lost with the build and compare to how the pros lose. 3. I look at a few gsl/ssl/wcs vods (usually 2 series) to add to my notes about how the games have played out. 4. Compare builds in HOTS to see if there was a hole in my knowledge or a game played out like that to look for a pattern. 5. Make approximate build orders to match any new things to try. 6. Revisit build orders to make into a build (not build order) decision tree. 7. Test and benchmark the style of the build. 8. Look for patterns ------------------------------------------------
So to define a timing, I have to run through the build order and test it 30-40 times before i feel its optimal. My pace at this is, I usually have completed do about 1 build other day, with 3-4 variants on the build order.
Upon doing this until July 10th, I noticed that some issues were arising with protoss that were not coming up with the other races in terms of benchmarking.(hence the timing tables at the bottom of the post) where the timings fall off for the protoss army starting at a time of a little after 10 minutes in lotv. (This is roughly comparable to when the nexus finishes in hots and workers have to be transferred from the main to the third from oversaturation) At around 7:20 mineral income falls off.
What ends up happening is that the army I have benchmarked I can test in a unit tester against the army of the other team, to determine the effectiveness of it. So my deliverable I'm working on is benchmarked army numbers. DPS, and odds of winning the fight.
The second thing i noticed was that the adept army with numbers higher than about 7-8 did not appear to be as effective as armies with higher stalker and zealot numbers. The problem I've had with testing is finding practice partners to test the composition and battles or that many of the zerg roach timings are so lopsided that the protoss player I question how much they can hold before enough of the tech kicks in. Adept counts seem to hit a limit rather quickly. I still have not made the screenshots, consolidated my data, and tested every major option yet.
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On July 13 2015 03:25 JCoto wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2015 01:30 winsonsonho wrote: Mothership Core is one of the enabling factors for Protoss deathballing. Along with warpgate, it allows Protoss to defend a number of bases without having to split up their forces as much as Zerg and Terran generally need to. Recall and Nexus Canon promote deathball play especially when taking into account that it is dependant on a unit that you can only create one of at a time. It's a bandaid unit that as you said doesn't also doesn't do as well in LOTV due to the need to expand more quickly.
So happy that Colossus is basically useless now and that Protoss have the Adept. However, I would vote for a buff to vs armored and a nerf to vs light so that it isn't such a hard-counter to light and isn't as strongly countered by armored units. My biggest vote goes to changing warp gate while my second goes to changing Mothership Core and allowing more than one to be created. I disagree about your statement on Nexus Cannon and Recall. These mechanics do not encourage Deathball by themselves, but because only 1 "heroic" unit (you cannot have more than 1) you end up with a MSC-Deathball- Photon Overcharge is simply a defensive spell to buff the weak base defense from Protoss, specially early game. You could have different spells or just give Nexus the option to activate it with 25 energy, and it's the same thing. It has nothing to do with the Deathball itself. It's like a long-range cannon, but tied to the Nexus, stupidly activated by MSC. - Recall is in fact a very mobility-friendly mechanic and would encourage multiskirmishing, but only if you could cast it several times. If you only have ONE UNIQUE UNIT with SINGLE recall, that's a SINGLE group of units that can be moved around (=Deathball). MSC was 100% a band aid. If you think it well, Photon Overcharge and Recall could be just given to the nexus with a revised energy cost, and Timewarp rebalanced or readjusted on the Oracle (like in HotS Beta). MSC is, IMAO, an unnecesary unit was patched as a band-aid.
I didn't say that Nexus Cannon and Recall encourage deathball by themselves. But I feel they both do play a part, especially Recall. I agree with all the rest of what you said though.
The fact that Photon Overcharge was needed to fix the defensive problem is the biggest problem for me.. Instead of fixing the problem, they created another crutch for Protoss just like forcefield. The race should be strong enough with the a number of compositions of the units it has with a few well placed buildings and photon cannons. It shouldn't REQUIRE a certain unit(MSC) or the mechanics(WarpGate) or abilities(Forcefield,Photon Overcharge) just to survive and/or be aggressive.
They keep trying to fix the gimmicky, crutchy, most deathbally race with more crutches and gimmicks. If Blizzard wanted to make big changes to Protoss that properly solved these problems they would have done it already. I think they believe that adding the gimmicky Adept, Disruptor, Ravager, etc. that will solve a lot of these issues. But by giving us specific solutions to problems, they actually limit the choices we have because then we only have those solutions. If the actual underlying issues with Protoss are fixed then we have more defensive and offensive options that we can choose from.
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On July 13 2015 05:09 tokinho wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2015 03:28 AkashSky wrote: adept damage dps vs tankyness- The adept is more tanky than a stalker, but it also is not as good vs armored units. Even a small number of marauders with marines make the adept nearly unusable.
I disagree, if there are a decent number of marines with some marauder support, adepts would still be great. This is because that marines have a higher DPS vs adepts (per unit cost of course) than marauders do. Marauders will not get their boosted damage because adepts are light. The adepts can just be focusing marines and you just need other units to clean up the maruaders, or you can just run away after all the marines are dead. They are not usable vs compositions based on non-light units however. I do think you are spot on of this criticism. Many of the games though that open with 2 gate adept harass i feel put the player behind and they lose often to counter play. (its made me question whether the opener is even viable) I do feel that that 2 gate opener SHOULD be a core part of play. I personally think its more interesting to play and to watch. To be move viable, I think its necessary to have an increase of dps by a number say maybe 2 vs armored. There is another post which i also favor heavily, which think helps with this but using zealots and immortals. I agree 2 gate openers do NOT have to be viable. Much like the changes i propose to warp gate decreasing build time for non-gates, having a warping building that could be sniped, or separating warp effectiveness between warp prisms and pylons. They do NOT have to implemented. Notwithstanding, from a design perspective on the player experience, I would like to see it because I think the negative reaction from the community towards protoss primarily stems from the effectiveness of the mothership core/sentry defense and abuse of warp gate resulting in one and done engagements. Aside- More on upcoming support for this- + Show Spoiler + As far this, I have to say that its in progress, but not complete enough to be included yet. So this is actually, part or a larger criticism i have of my own post. I have claims and patterns I've been working on ever since I allotted time for this on my agenda starting on june 28th. This is what i have done every day since then.
------------------------------------------------ 1. Review every game i can on LOTV, Usually 4-5/day. 2. Play 3 games based on styles i have seen in lotv. I then identify how i lost with the build and compare to how the pros lose. 3. I look at a few gsl/ssl/wcs vods (usually 2 series) to add to my notes about how the games have played out. 4. Compare builds in HOTS to see if there was a hole in my knowledge or a game played out like that to look for a pattern. 5. Make approximate build orders to match any new things to try. 6. Revisit build orders to make into a build (not build order) decision tree. 7. Test and benchmark the style of the build. 8. Look for patterns ------------------------------------------------
So to define a timing, I have to run through the build order and test it 30-40 times before i feel its optimal. My pace at this is, I usually have completed do about 1 build other day, with 3-4 variants on the build order.
Upon doing this until July 10th, I noticed that some issues were arising with protoss that were not coming up with the other races in terms of benchmarking.(hence the timing tables at the bottom of the post) where the timings fall off for the protoss army starting at a time of a little after 10 minutes in lotv. (This is roughly comparable to when the nexus finishes in hots and workers have to be transferred from the main to the third from oversaturation) At around 7:20 mineral income falls off.
What ends up happening is that the army I have benchmarked I can test in a unit tester against the army of the other team, to determine the effectiveness of it. So my deliverable I'm working on is benchmarked army numbers. DPS, and odds of winning the fight.
The second thing i noticed was that the adept army with numbers higher than about 7-8 did not appear to be as effective as armies with higher stalker and zealot numbers. The problem I've had with testing is finding practice partners to test the composition and battles or that many of the zerg roach timings are so lopsided that the protoss player I question how much they can hold before enough of the tech kicks in. Adept counts seem to hit a limit rather quickly. I still have not made the screenshots, consolidated my data, and tested every major option yet.
Harass, in my opinion should not exist in sc2 without any form of risk. Getting behind while opening for a 2 gate adept harass play is perfectly acceptable if you don't do enough damage; or if its easily shut down by having armored units. The existence of the adept itself greatly helps protoss by giving the race an answer to light unit based compositions, (which are fairly common in early game), without the need of advanced tech.
I mostly agree with your other points; but when I look at legacy of the void, it merely takes away privileges that blizzard has given to protoss from before. Namely, these privileges are: "The failed all in" (If you go all in and you fail, you should lose the game or else its not really an all in) "Ability to turtle on 2 base" (Protoss 2 base play is significantly stronger than the other two races) "Complete terrain control with force field" (This ability is on par with fungle growth in that there use to be no counter play)
Unfortunately, since protoss was balanced around these privileges, removing them in legacy requires a huge rework. The only change that I would prefer instead of your suggestion is to instead of having nexus start with 50 energy, you allow protoss to cronoboost buildings in production (except photon cannons). This would allow protoss to expand quicker.
However, the starting with 50 nexus energy is also a good change because it equalizes the number of cronoboost per unit time protoss has in hots compared to legacy. I believe that protoss has 2-3 less cronoboost if you scale the two game modes together in terms of timings and such.
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On July 13 2015 05:37 AkashSky wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2015 05:09 tokinho wrote:On July 13 2015 03:28 AkashSky wrote: adept damage dps vs tankyness- The adept is more tanky than a stalker, but it also is not as good vs armored units. Even a small number of marauders with marines make the adept nearly unusable.
I disagree, if there are a decent number of marines with some marauder support, adepts would still be great. This is because that marines have a higher DPS vs adepts (per unit cost of course) than marauders do. Marauders will not get their boosted damage because adepts are light. The adepts can just be focusing marines and you just need other units to clean up the maruaders, or you can just run away after all the marines are dead. They are not usable vs compositions based on non-light units however. I do think you are spot on of this criticism. Many of the games though that open with 2 gate adept harass i feel put the player behind and they lose often to counter play. (its made me question whether the opener is even viable) I do feel that that 2 gate opener SHOULD be a core part of play. I personally think its more interesting to play and to watch. To be move viable, I think its necessary to have an increase of dps by a number say maybe 2 vs armored. There is another post which i also favor heavily, which think helps with this but using zealots and immortals. I agree 2 gate openers do NOT have to be viable. Much like the changes i propose to warp gate decreasing build time for non-gates, having a warping building that could be sniped, or separating warp effectiveness between warp prisms and pylons. They do NOT have to implemented. Notwithstanding, from a design perspective on the player experience, I would like to see it because I think the negative reaction from the community towards protoss primarily stems from the effectiveness of the mothership core/sentry defense and abuse of warp gate resulting in one and done engagements. Aside- More on upcoming support for this- + Show Spoiler + As far this, I have to say that its in progress, but not complete enough to be included yet. So this is actually, part or a larger criticism i have of my own post. I have claims and patterns I've been working on ever since I allotted time for this on my agenda starting on june 28th. This is what i have done every day since then.
------------------------------------------------ 1. Review every game i can on LOTV, Usually 4-5/day. 2. Play 3 games based on styles i have seen in lotv. I then identify how i lost with the build and compare to how the pros lose. 3. I look at a few gsl/ssl/wcs vods (usually 2 series) to add to my notes about how the games have played out. 4. Compare builds in HOTS to see if there was a hole in my knowledge or a game played out like that to look for a pattern. 5. Make approximate build orders to match any new things to try. 6. Revisit build orders to make into a build (not build order) decision tree. 7. Test and benchmark the style of the build. 8. Look for patterns ------------------------------------------------
So to define a timing, I have to run through the build order and test it 30-40 times before i feel its optimal. My pace at this is, I usually have completed do about 1 build other day, with 3-4 variants on the build order.
Upon doing this until July 10th, I noticed that some issues were arising with protoss that were not coming up with the other races in terms of benchmarking.(hence the timing tables at the bottom of the post) where the timings fall off for the protoss army starting at a time of a little after 10 minutes in lotv. (This is roughly comparable to when the nexus finishes in hots and workers have to be transferred from the main to the third from oversaturation) At around 7:20 mineral income falls off.
What ends up happening is that the army I have benchmarked I can test in a unit tester against the army of the other team, to determine the effectiveness of it. So my deliverable I'm working on is benchmarked army numbers. DPS, and odds of winning the fight.
The second thing i noticed was that the adept army with numbers higher than about 7-8 did not appear to be as effective as armies with higher stalker and zealot numbers. The problem I've had with testing is finding practice partners to test the composition and battles or that many of the zerg roach timings are so lopsided that the protoss player I question how much they can hold before enough of the tech kicks in. Adept counts seem to hit a limit rather quickly. I still have not made the screenshots, consolidated my data, and tested every major option yet.
Harass, in my opinion should not exist in sc2 without any form of risk. Getting behind while opening for a 2 gate adept harass play is perfectly acceptable if you don't do enough damage; or if its easily shut down by having armored units. The existence of the adept itself greatly helps protoss by giving the race an answer to light unit based compositions, (which are fairly common in early game), without the need of advanced tech. I mostly agree with your other points; but when I look at legacy of the void, it merely takes away privileges that blizzard has given to protoss from before. Namely, these privileges are: "The failed all in" (If you go all in and you fail, you should lose the game or else its not really an all in) "Ability to turtle on 2 base" (Protoss 2 base play is significantly stronger than the other two races) "Complete terrain control with force field" (This ability is on par with fungle growth in that there use to be no counter play) Unfortunately, since protoss was balanced around these privileges, removing them in legacy requires a huge rework. The only change that I would prefer instead of your suggestion is to instead of having nexus start with 50 energy, you allow protoss to cronoboost buildings in production (except photon cannons). This would allow protoss to expand quicker. However, the starting with 50 nexus energy is also a good change because it equalizes the number of cronoboost per unit time protoss has in hots compared to legacy. I believe that protoss has 2-3 less cronoboost if you scale the two game modes together in terms of timings and such.
My concern about the 2 gate harass stems mostly from punishing 3 base zerg openers. It simply does not do enough damage to be viable. There is no real chance the game does not result in being behind. I have yet to see any evidence against this in high level play.
As far as nexus energy, I did in fact spend time testing this exact thing. After doing testing, you don't have the initial chronoboost from 11-12, and you have a decrease from natural the nexus(1:52 vs 2:05)~1 chrono. The timings are within about 10 seconds for the builds i have tested until about the 8 minute mark lotv time mostly due to this single chrono lost.
As far as the statement, it(my redesign) merely takes away privileges that blizzard has given to protoss from before. Yes that is exactly the point of the redesign part of the post. The most abusive aspects of protoss play i believe also are the least fun (and the least like protoss in brood war). If they start with those changed, then i really think the game experience changes most positively in sc2 and the abusive styles would be more interesting. A lot of this means that the earlier gateway army must be buffed, more emphasis in playing vs protoss is not on protoss sitting in chokes but more open field engagements. It leads to viability of larger more open maps like iron fortress.
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Make Protoss like BW Protoss. Seriously.
That would fix every major design issue that makes Protoss gimmicky and bandaid-like right now.
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Remove forcefields, rebalance the early game without it.
I always hated how strong it was and how weak the rest of the stuff became to balance it...
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Core gateway compositions will never be as fast as zerg forces or terran's bio.
If Protoss is going to be balanced around a core of units from the gateway, then those forces have to have an advantage to actually force fights:
- mobility - damage - tanky-ness
In TvZ, mobility goes to zerg on creep or when using mutalisks well -- otherwise, it's terran's game. Damage goes to whomever has the right composition and numbers as well as micro. Tanky-ness goes to neither. The match-up is nuanced because the core units (LBM vs MMMWM) are comparable in strengths and weaknesses.
When comparing those compositions to Protoss' core, you see that the only way to gain at least 2 / 3 of the above advantages is by adding severely slow robotics (colossus for DPS) or stargate (voids / carriers in LotV) units to the Protoss composition (at least in a macro game) ... and then the opponent still always has the advantage of being able to run away.
If you want an exciting PvX set of match-ups, you've got to have reliable, consistent damage available at warp-gate. If you want, you can easily delay some of the power of the unit (HTs are a good example, having to wait upon energy before storm is available after warping-in) ... but I don't think it's really necessary.
Hopefully Blizzard will take some of the power they've removed from the Colossus (in consistency of damage) and apply it to the adept so that the core of Protoss will have some set of strengths to attempt to obtain in the mid-game, instead of just turtle-ing until the late game.
If something major isn't done soon, Protoss will continue to feel exactly the same as in HotS: all-in or turtle forever.
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