|
I was recently browsing the forums and read the OP in this thread and was astounded by the figures given regarding the Hellbat's damage against Zerglings and the margin by which Hellbats defeat them in battles large and small. This aroused a thought I have been turning in my head ever since I first laid hands on the beta and acquired what I consider to be a fairly good understanding of the PvT matchup, both independent, and as it relates to the way it plays out in Wings of Liberty (in which it was a very fun and dynamic match-up and led to many amazing and memorably matches).
As I read people lament the futility of building Zerglings against Hellbat-containing mech compositions in the HotS beta, I came to a staggering realization; Zealots don't fare much better, especially in lategame when mech upgrades come into play and become strong. It makes TvP mech much more than viable. It completely flips the matchup on its head and changes, even destroys some very fundamental and delicate interactions and dynamics which were never tampered with in WoL, as there were no complaints. The Hellbat's damage output has a disrupting effect on these fragile elements of the matchup, to the point where a composition of Seige Tank + Hellbat + Viking, a handful of Thors and some widow mines (and armory attack upgrades) has virtually no counter that I have found so far out of the combination of everything the Protoss army can field.
To give some idea of what I mean in the form of an illustrative (if lacking in numbers and statistics) anecdote: I was playing a PvT against a player with 8 or 10 or so Blue Flame Hellbats with +2 attack, I was on 4 bases pushing 5, having just taken my 5th and trying to defend it against the 3 base Terran pushing to take a 4th. I had 22 WarpGates and a +3/+3 maxed army (Colossi, Tempest, Storm, Mothership, Archons, the whole bit). I took an admittedly bad engagement (although I doubt if I could have successfully engaged the army despite being maxed out and on very good upgrades and production) and lost the bulk of my army although not all of it outright, but the scary part was what happened next, when remax/reinforcements normally come into play.
With 5 Nexuses and 22 WarpGates, I was warping in rounds of 22 3/3 chargelots, chronoboosting my WGs and attacking his Tank + Hellbat army with tons of Chargelots + Archons and whatever else I could muster on quick remaxes off of 3 Stargate 22 WG 2 Robo. Even with the tank count whittled away to almost nothing (at the cost of all of my Colossi and Tempests), he stood with Hellbats and a lot of useless non-landed Vikings.
My chargelots absolutely MELTED, to the point where they not only never closed the distance to his army to even land a single hit in melee (these are 3/3 chargelots and I had 22 Warpgates, remember), but the Hellbats literally melted the Zealots so quickly that the combined firepower of his remaining army even had enough time to make sure my Archons and Immortals never even made it into the battle, either.
I had a giant bank at this point, but I simply didn't know what to do. Colossi and Tempests weren't an option because of the air dominance provided by Vikings hard countering both, and the same goes for Mothership. HTs weren't viable because getting a storm off simply couldn't be done; I couldn't walk them up because Seige Tanks obviously have greater range than storm and walking HTs towards mech is insane, and putting them in a Warp Prism would just be food for the Viking army. This leaves me with no ranged splash damage, which isn't as important against mech as it is against bio but still is important given the nature of Hellbats and the stationary way the Terran mech army works.
So, with a lead in upgrades and one base up as well as a production advantage and access to the entire tech tree, I found myself out of options. Perhaps a tech switch into pure Immortal off of something insane like 5 Robo or so is/was the only thing that could have possible worked. Blink Stalkers were absolutely wrecked even when completely massed to the tune of 100+ supply worth and blinked at the mech army; somehow, widow mines + hellbats + tanks + a few thors make them melt up close pretty much as bad as if you try to walk them up and engage a tank line in a straight up firefight. Air units/Colossi are simply not an option (Vikings). High Templar can't close the distance. Zealots will never get to melee, even with 125 supply worth and max upgrades, that much is a fact. Archons fare better, but surprisingly, not much considering the insane cost difference.
A fully realized Terran mech death ball with upgrades consisting mostly of Seige Tanks and Hellbats supported by a handful of Thors and a number of widow mines and backed up by a large force of Vikings (to deny any possibility of Carriers, Colossi, Tempest, or a Mothership Vortex) is incredibly powerful, and handily defeats and Protoss max within reason.
Yes, theoretically, maxing out army supply on pure Archons (roughly 1500/9600), or pure Immortals (roughly 8000/3200) or such things would do the trick, but this simply isn't realistic. It's not realistic to ever expect to have such a lead that your gas income allows you to produce 32 Archons (supply cost based on an assumed 72 probe count for simplicity's sake), which is obviously 64 High Templar. That's basically 10,000 gas! That makes it a prohibitively gas-intensive army with literally no mineral sink save for Photon Cannons. And while Immortals are not terribly cost-prohibitive, the required production infrastructure seems to be, unless Protoss players are just conditioned to expect to be able to deal with any threats with 2 or a maximum of 3 Robotics Facilities, because of the way in which Robo and Stargate units act as supplementary to Warpgates and, correspondingly, these units have much longer production times than Protoss is designed to work with. Maxing out or nearly maxing out on Immortals, while not as unrealistic cost-wise (with a roughly 8 to 3 mineral to gas ratio) as the Archon example, is restricted by the infrastructure that Robo units are based and balanced around. A few Immortals, Chronoboosted out of a Robo, can be effective at helping a Protoss army to attack a position protected by seiged up tanks or other armor; a couple of Colossi out of a Robo, after a period of time and no small amount of Chronoboost, can again help a Gateway unit-based Protoss army against bio, meaning the difference between losing the battle in a very one-sided steamroll affair and actually pushing back, even outright killing a very similar bio army.
The problem lie in the operative word; help. Robo units are extremely powerful, and as such they are balanced to be firepower/toughness-based "support units"; extremely strong units adept at dealing with a specific unit type that a versatile Protoss army simply doesn't have the power to fight, but too strong to allow massing of on such a scale that it becomes the basis for an army in the same way that Terran chooses between bio and mech. Basically, Protoss is sometimes said to be fielding a "Gateway army", but in truth, the game design does not allow for Protoss to truly field a "Robo army". The build times are too high and the structure itself costs slightly too much. These units are simply not designed to exist as the primary building blocks of an army, the game isn't balanced that way.
So what happens when a Robo unit, such as the Immortal, is the only effective counter to a certain unit composition like HotS mech to the extent that it needs to be the primary unit in the Protoss army to combat the enemy composition, and any other units are superfluous if they are not both small in number and dedicated to a very specific role, i.e. giving your army some form of anti-air? What if, to combat this new brand of mech, Protoss requires a "Robo army", an army primarily of Immortals numbering in the dozens instead of merely 3 to 5, to soak up the massive amount of damage coming its way?
Clearly this should not actually be the case, but I'm concerned that A) It might actually be the case, and B) If it is the case, what is the answer to the problem? Either Blizzard needs an answer in the form of redesigning the Protoss army to deal with mech or doing something to allow Immortal production on the scale necessitated by however powerful mech ends up being, or the player needs an answer that does not currently exist, in the form of a way of sustaining such a high level of Robotics Facility production while not being completely naked and defenseless in the face of the most minor of tech switches, not merely to SkyTerran, but to something as simple as bio, in which case a maxed out Protoss on a half-dozen Robos but a comparatively small WG count would be, in such a late stage of the game, totally defenseless.
If the Hellbat-Seige Tank-Viking composition becomes half as powerful a 1-2-3 punch against Protoss as I suspect that it might, I don't think a mobile Protoss army will even be able to deal with it by abusing its immobility the way it is supposed to deal with something like Broodlord/Infestor in the current metagame; Terran has far better defensive and anti-harass properties than Zerg, especially in the latter phases of the game where they can afford Planetary Fortresses, a healthy contingent of missile turrets, and Seige Tanks here and there "just in case".
Taking on such powerful high-damage, high-durability units is the Immortal's role in the Protoss army. Ideally, this is a niche. But what actually happens when this former "niche" actually comes in the form of an entire army with not one but many high-damage, tough units, one to deal with each possibly existing unit type? The rock, the paper, and the scissors could all end up on one hand, giving no realistic and cost-effective counter (taking into account time as a cost, as well we should). Can the Immortal really be expected to be one unit to counter an entire diverse army just because they are "armored" or "mech"? The answer must lie in either adjusting the damage of this army to allow more of the "glass-cannon" type units to get some shots off before they are shattered, or in adjusting thing a bit on the Protoss end to give the bulk portion of their army some options/tools so they can stand up to the DPS of mech long enough to damage it rather than dying before ever closing the distance and dealing a single blow. Ideally, you never want to actually engage a full mech army in a seiged-up position, but in many instances, it just might become necessary, as space controlling tools allow Terran to force that hand on Protoss, whether they like it or not. Maps are only so big, and eventually the armies have to collide in some way lest one or both players be starved out, and if "going around" (initiating a base trade of sorts) is the only viable option, it will be overcompensated for because of that fact and it will cease to be an option; the armies will eventually have to fight. Again, I'm not contending that a Protoss army should be able to repeatedly butt heads with a mech army and kill it, merely that if/when push does come to shove, that they should stand somewhat more of a fighting chance than they currently do so as to make the battles less lopsided and increase the likelihood that a player with superior economy and production will win by attrition rather than spend through five times his opponents' bank remaxing only to melt to the very same army until he is broke and conceded the game.
I think the core problem, at least if there truly is one (and I suspect that there is or will be as the metagame evolves) lies in reinforcement cost & time. A Protoss in a superior position could trade against a very strong Terran army in Wings of Liberty and eventually come out on top by way of attrition on the back of their large bank and strong economy feeding Warp Gates which pumped out Chargelots to deal with ground units, Archons to tank damage, and Stalkers for anti-air, and these Gateway-based remax armies were enough to "mop up the mess" after a massive army trade, and if the game dictates that the trade has to be unfavorable, that was acceptable as long as Protoss had the economy to overpower his opponent through attrition. The Chargelot was the crux of this dynamic, and by handing Terran mech such a clear-cut hard counter to it in the Hellbot (which, make no mistake, is at the extreme end of the hard counter spectrum) the Zealot is rendered obsolete in the lategame, leaving Protoss with no solid cost-effective unit to reinforce with and ensuring that if Protoss has to remake their army against mech, that army will be solidly manhandled by superior units designed to counter them.
I feel that the Hellbat being effective against chargelots is not the problem, but rather that the degree in which they are effective is the real problem. They should help a mech army to better deal with chargelots, but they should not simply win over them by default, rendering them dead on arrival simply because of their presence in a given unit composition. This type of super-hard-counter, which is VERY rare in SC2, undermines almost every strategic aspect of the game, negates a very important part of the way Protoss armies leverage economic advantages over Terran, and all but eliminates the concept of attrition in the later stages of the PvT matchup, further contributing to the much-maligned "deathball" mentality, in which the winner is simply the player who can muster the "ultimate army", with nothing to fear from the player with the ever-so-slightly inferior army but far superior economy, production, and infrastructure. A restructuring of the way the Hellbat operates in PvT and the effects it has on the matchup in general would be a service to everyone who plays this great game and all those who take great joy in spending their time and money watching them do it.
|
Immortal based armies would help you tons, so will a couple high templars. You can't expect things to work like in WOL, where you a move your 3/3 zealot archon and win. Try attacking from multiple corners, hiding sneaky templars, dt's in bases, etc, harrass. Basically, do stuff that terrans had to do for 2 years to beat or be on equal footing to an a moving toss.
Edit: I am unsure of your league, but PvT is currently dominated by toss with the almost unbeatable Tempest high templar deathball. It counters with easy any combination you can throw at it as terran, including mech. I would actually in turn like high templar's cast range to be reduced so vikings can reliably fight off tempest instead of having to dance around taking fire while templar's energy is over. And not to beat a dead horse here, but I find a protoss complaining about the weaker deathball of terran hilarious.
|
It was just a small example which I was attempting to use to illustrate a larger point, which I think you may have missed.
|
You should add tl;dr for the OP, it's pretty long post.
Tbh, I've been playing mech in TvP HotS, as blizzard did say that they want to make something straightly counters to charglots lategame so that hellbat was designed. An armies with heavy tempest templars would wreak the Mech of Terran. Charglots are no longer being hard-countered of mech like WoL.
|
|
Yep, I mentioned in the first paragraph or so that the thread you linked actually put the idea in my head to finally post this.
|
Complaining hellbats beat zealots and lings is like complaining immortals beat thors. Of course, I understand the OP's frustration that a moved Zealot Archon doesn't outright beat mech anymore, but that is a good thing. It will make you explore more strategies. Be mobile with gateway based armies, play mass robo, air, some mixture, you have more strats now
|
On November 27 2012 23:06 DestinationLiquid wrote:Complaining hellbats beat zealots and lings is like complaining immortals beat thors. Of course, I understand the OP's frustration that a moved Zealot Archon doesn't outright beat mech anymore, but that is a good thing. It will make you explore more strategies. Be mobile with gateway based armies, play mass robo, air, some mixture, you have more strats now The question is not whether hellbats defeat/trade well vs Zealots/Lings but if it is right that these units are slaughtered to the point of nonviability.
|
there s a connection between helbats and stalkers
the more hellbats he gets the more stalkers and less zealots you get stalkers are also fine vs tanks, as long as you have some immortals, as said above by someone
|
On November 27 2012 23:13 AbideWithMe wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2012 23:06 DestinationLiquid wrote:Complaining hellbats beat zealots and lings is like complaining immortals beat thors. Of course, I understand the OP's frustration that a moved Zealot Archon doesn't outright beat mech anymore, but that is a good thing. It will make you explore more strategies. Be mobile with gateway based armies, play mass robo, air, some mixture, you have more strats now The question is not whether hellbats defeat/trade well vs Zealots/Lings but if it is right that these units are slaughtered to the point of nonviability.
and he said that insteading of whining about how hellbats do well against zealots / lings. You guys should try another things which well own hellbats ( Tempest Templar ). Terran has marines which also are slaughtered by Colossus since 2010
Ahhh one more thing you guys should know that Blizzard is going to buff hellbats ( Mentioned in some articles of BWC Final ).
|
Umm I brought up Immortals in the OP as an example of something that theoretically counters it but in practice is not viable. The point is not that "it's finally a counter to chargelots". The point is that reinforcements from Gateways being rendered obsolete makes Protoss econ advantages null.
I'm extremely familiar with HT+Tempest. The problem is, you can't rely on 9DPS Tempest to deal damage to mech. You can't stop them from pushing you and denying/controlling space. You can't advance with Ht Tempest vs mech, just seige, which is only an offensive answer. You sit back and shoot with Tempest and storm Vikings. But if your HT moves into tank range (or tanks get close to you) they kill all your HT, leaving your.Tempests as Viking food. If they inch closer to an expo you need, there is currently no answer. The only theoretical way to fight mech space control and area denial is Immortals.in unrealistic numbers, as the game is not designed for things such as 5 Robo builds, as pointed out in OP.
|
"in which it was a very fun and dynamic match-up and led to many amazing and memorably matches" Terran microes his ass off and dies for small mistakes. Protoss is a lot more forgiving, especially late game.
Maybe you don't want to remax on zealots. Or you need to flank with them. Be creative.
|
I can't see in any way how Hellbat is op against zealot. It does what it's supposed to do.
|
On November 27 2012 23:23 JackReacher wrote: Umm I brought up Immortals in the OP as an example of something that theoretically counters it but in practice is not viable. The point is not that "it's finally a counter to chargelots". The point is that reinforcements from Gateways being rendered obsolete makes Protoss econ advantages null. Chronoboost is still in the game to boost robo and stargate speeds+upgrades. There are 6 units from warpgate if you count archons as well and there is at least one of them which would be viable in a PvT situation.
|
On November 27 2012 23:23 JackReacher wrote: Umm I brought up Immortals in the OP as an example of something that theoretically counters it but in practice is not viable. The point is not that "it's finally a counter to chargelots". The point is that reinforcements from Gateways being rendered obsolete makes Protoss econ advantages null. How about Stalkers, templar and Archonr ? You only want to reinforce your armies with zealots ?
|
Please read the OP. I answered everything everyone has posted there already hahaha
|
Stalkers don't scale well enough to be viable lategame PvT, and tanks beat them BADLY. HT gets outranged by tanks, meaning his tank position determines where you can and cannot be, and thus where you can and can't defend. Archons, as explained in OP, are too cost-inefficient by themselves, and Immortals are too buildtime inefficient. Only these 2 units dont melt to new mech.
|
On November 27 2012 23:23 JackReacher wrote: Umm I brought up Immortals in the OP as an example of something that theoretically counters it but in practice is not viable. The point is not that "it's finally a counter to chargelots". The point is that reinforcements from Gateways being rendered obsolete makes Protoss econ advantages null.
I'm extremely familiar with HT+Tempest. The problem is, you can't rely on 9DPS Tempest to deal damage to mech. You can't stop them from pushing you and denying/controlling space. You can't advance with Ht Tempest vs mech, just seige, which is only an offensive answer. You sit back and shoot with Tempest and storm Vikings. But if your HT moves into tank range (or tanks get close to you) they kill all your HT, leaving your.Tempests as Viking food. If they inch closer to an expo you need, there is currently no answer. The only theoretical way to fight mech space control and area denial is Immortals.in unrealistic numbers, as the game is not designed for things such as 5 Robo builds, as pointed out in OP. Mech is not mobile, you can run around with warp prisms and warp in zealots, dts and other funky stuff. You can also make 3 robos, chrono 10 immortals and crush the mech. You can do many things. You can play also normal death ball (collosus, high templar, archon, zealot stalker ) which is not only stronger than terran mech (imo) but easier to control and more mobile. So basically you have only advantages.
|
On November 27 2012 23:23 JackReacher wrote: Umm I brought up Immortals in the OP as an example of something that theoretically counters it but in practice is not viable. The point is not that "it's finally a counter to chargelots". The point is that reinforcements from Gateways being rendered obsolete makes Protoss econ advantages null.
I'm extremely familiar with HT+Tempest. The problem is, you can't rely on 9DPS Tempest to deal damage to mech. You can't stop them from pushing you and denying/controlling space. You can't advance with Ht Tempest vs mech, just seige, which is only an offensive answer. You sit back and shoot with Tempest and storm Vikings. But if your HT moves into tank range (or tanks get close to you) they kill all your HT, leaving your.Tempests as Viking food. If they inch closer to an expo you need, there is currently no answer. The only theoretical way to fight mech space control and area denial is Immortals.in unrealistic numbers, as the game is not designed for things such as 5 Robo builds, as pointed out in OP. Immortals hard counter almost everything mech. Just because you can't spam chargelots after a bad engagement doesnt mean a composition is broken. Blink Stalkers and Immortals can smash through seige lines and take very little damage from hellbats.
|
Stalker/Immortal is very effective against a Mech army. One thing I came up against whilst going Mech was a Protoss that went for fast Stalker/Immortal with 3/3 and went straight for a base race when I tried moving out with my army.
We traded bases but when he used his MSC to bring his army back, it decimated mine despite have +3 upgrades myself with Ghosts and Banshees for support.
Even EMPed, Immortals still deal a huge amount of damage to Mech (65 dmg per shot and they fire quite fast) and still boast 6 range and 200 health. Blink Stalkers can close the distance instantly and start attacking the tanks.
Anyways, to avoid going off-topic too much, I think it's still too early (beta and all) to really make any solid calls on this. So Chargelots now have something they die to, but if Terran goes too heavy on the Hellbats, Stalker/Immortal becomes even deadlier. Also note that Hellbats are horrible at dealing with anything else, they take bonus damage from Archons and medivacs will be few and far in between in a true Mech army to heal them.
|
Zealots basically hard counter tanks an thors. So do immortals and archons. The hellbat is basically hard countered by immortals, archons, colossi, and storm. And you are worried about zealots getting hard countered by hellbats? Seriously? Try to play mech and tell me it's not the stupidest composition in the world vs P. Especially vs P with Tempest now.
|
Do you watch any high-level games? Mech gets consistently destroyed by superior immortal-heavy protoss compositions. Mech is immobile, you can warp-prism harass, you can blink stalker harass, you can flank his army. I'm sorry that you can't blindly A-Move into a mech army and then cover your losses by spamming the one unit that gets hard-countered by hellbats.
|
No you made alot of strange statements there.
You claim your zealots didnt land a single hit because they died before they could attack, against an army that consisted of mainly hellbats and vikings. Vikings dont do much, so hellbats it is. Have you by any chance checked their range? There is no way they would kill zealots before they could attack. If he wanted to do that he would have been better of with hellions in normal mode.
Why you would possibly warp in waves of zealots against an army mainly compromised of the unit specifically designed to counter zealots is also a mystery for me.
Then he cant have alot of vikings and alot of ground. If he has many vikings, focus on immortals and archons, they will devastate a mech army. If he has few vikings, you can also consider tech switching to carriers (with some tempests). They cost effectively kill pretty much everything in a mech army, including vikings.
Blink stalkers also absolutely rape mech. If he has mainly vikings and hellbats you should just kill him with the stalkers. If he has many siege tanks you shouldnt complain your immortals cost gas. But still then blink stalkers rape mech. No not in a straight up fight, but you can just walk past his army and kill all his expansions. Toss always said that terran shouldnt complain about toss deathball a-moving terran bioball, since bio was more mobile. Well guess what, the difference between random toss army and mech army is alot larger. Get something like 15-20 blink stalkers, go harass the terran. What is he going to do about it? A few siege tanks in strategic locations really wont stop that, they just die. So they need to use many siege tanks for base defense.
And the quick reaction force of mech player? It consists of vikings and hellions. They arent exactly the ideal counter to stalkers. Luckily in WOL my experience is that most toss just keep warping in zealots for harrasment, which I approve.
TL;DR, you are stuck in a mindset which requires you to warp in zealots. Consider stalkers, and switch production to immortals/archons in time.
|
On November 27 2012 23:34 JackReacher wrote: Stalkers don't scale well enough to be viable lategame PvT, and tanks beat them BADLY. HT gets outranged by tanks, meaning his tank position determines where you can and cannot be, and thus where you can and can't defend. Archons, as explained in OP, are too cost-inefficient by themselves, and Immortals are too buildtime inefficient. Only these 2 units dont melt to new mech. You are only thinking in one direction, head on fight. How does bio beat mech in TvT? How does Zerg (without BL) beat mech ?
The answer is good play. Attack where he is not, attack when he is unsieged, mass expand and overwhelm him, etc. Your large post can be reduced to this: mech works as intended, at least against you. Now you have to learn how to play in other ways then just relying on a superior army like you do against bio.
Also, didn't DB say Hellbats are about to be buffed? lol
|
On November 27 2012 23:55 Sapphire.lux wrote: Also, didn't DB say Hellbats are about to be buffed? lol I think all he said is that they may look into the unit. There were some suggestions to make it impossible to transform back into hellion. It certainly has a serious issue right now being restricted to one unit counter.
|
the way i see it, zerglings and zealots are the reason mech is so bad in wol, there is no cost effective way of dealing with them and it has been proven time and time again. hellions by themselves cannot hold in lategame engagements, they are only harrasing units. hellbats remove this problem and suddenly you maybe can do mech, in tvp emp still needed but for sure, its possible alot more.
what happens in hots however, zerg and toss got new counters to mech, biggest ones viper for cloud and tempests. if you play exactly like in wol without using new hots units, i could see how mech could totaly own now, but its not the case ofcourse. ive been watching lots of morrow stream for example where he tried to mech and the ultimate counter was mass tempest, they simply killed anything and forced mass vikings, which are very bad vs storm. as zerg, well, if cloud is good against anything its tanks, disable them and its a walkover, but clearly they still must put emphasis on infestors, they are simply the best unit, except vs mech they cant stand alone anymore.
|
On November 27 2012 23:48 Sissors wrote: Why you would possibly warp in waves of zealots against an army mainly compromised of the unit specifically designed to counter zealots is also a mystery for me.
Toss mentality, I assume. If a moved zealots don't do it, do more a moved zealots. I am actually really surprised that such a thread even exists, cause in semi high level (masters/gm) I and many terrans get crushed by the Tempest High Templar deathball, which is very hard to engage both with bio and mech. So instead of focusing our attention on how to fix tempest+ht, we are discussing why zealot is not winning vs hellbat ? (by the way, i still think zealot collos high templar is way stronger than mech)
I think shifting our attention from apparent problems to deal with non existent ones was the reason why Zerg is that overpowered today in WOL: cause the balance designers did not consider the balance problems calmly and instead listened to the most vocal part of the community which were the Zergs. And then you had infestor brood lord. We should not let threads like that exist, because, next thing you know, zealots will start hitting from 2 range, so our friend in the OP can 'land a hit' with them against the hellbats.
|
Stalkers don't scale well enough to be viable lategame PvT, and tanks beat them BADLY. HT gets outranged by tanks, meaning his tank position determines where you can and cannot be, and thus where you can and can't defend. Archons, as explained in OP, are too cost-inefficient by themselves, and Immortals are too buildtime inefficient. Only these 2 units dont melt to new mech.
This statement and i've just realized OP want an AMove armies which can walk into Mech sieged tanks line and crush them . We got hellbats for terran in HotS, so do you Zergs and Protoss. People still see that mech doesn't really work correctly in TvP HotS atm cuz of countered units. So why can't you find it out ? Be creative
edit: No offense but i think maybe u always play with the mindset that A Move Charglot Archons HTs crush mech into piece like they do in WoL, then hellbats appear and you can't do the same thing like before.
|
Any Terran going mech is not going to be able to move till 150 supply on 3 base unless they are going all in. Also withgood scouting you should be able to see he is going mech very early on in the game. From the point you scout just build straight immortal/stalker and unless he has ghosts ready you win.
Unfortunatley the standard protoss one army for everything compostions wont work as well any more,
|
Get an expansion up on him and double upgrades. Never stop producing Immortals (unless you're in a situation where you literally can't - but it's important to resume production ASAP). Archons are important, but don't overproduce them. Save some Templar for Storm. Warp Prisms can be awesome for getting Templar into Storming range unscathed via moving drop. They can also be awesome for keeping him at home. Mech isn't mobile, threatening massive doomwarps of Chargelots is scary. Also, try and force siege ups outside his base, mid map, etc. This will prevent him from walking across the map and getting a favorable position almost immediately. Multiple observers covering each attack path is crucial. Having knowledge on the location of his army is half the battle, so you can make favorable engagements for yourself.
It's true that Zealots get eaten alive by Battle Hellions, but they're only there to soak damage for your Immortals, Archons, and High Templar. Yes, even your Immortals. I know Hardened Shell is a great passive against Siege Tanks, but realistically they're filling more of the role of the Protoss Dragoon from SC1 versus Mech. Their job is to deal the damage. You can't win a fight against a huge mech army fast enough to rely on Hardened Shells. Once those Hardened Shells are down they're just as much cannon fodder versus Siege Fire as Stalkers are. So this is what you do. Once your Zealots have evaporated, it's wise to pull back your Archons and Immortals and wait for another warp in. At this point most of his Hellions are probably dead from soaking damage for the tanks. This is where Chargelots shine. Since you just reproduced a whole bunch, you can go in for a second attack if the fight went as well as I've said. Otherwise, you can use an Observer to float over his army and wait for him to unsiege and go home. Often times you can catch him off guard returning home and get a very favorable engagement.
Mech can be tricky to deal with, but once you learn how to play versus it, it's not so bad. Sometimes it can look completely overpowered if you made some mistakes, and it won't even be close. Other times when you're playing to your best abilities you'll make it look like a joke.
Good luck.
|
in the mid game you want to kill his expansion, and maybe add carrier and tempest to your army
|
Are we seriously asking ourselves how to beat mech and not how to deal with the High Templar Tempest deathball? Tempest has so much health that it takes so much time to kill one with thors or vikings, it's not even funny. Besides, your vikings have to move all the time from storms, so the micro is on the terran to do, as always. But yeah, a move toss compositions just got slightly weaker and now tosses are having problems...
|
United Arab Emirates439 Posts
OP I'm sorry but your complaints aren't reflected at all with the general consensus of the community or in any of the "high level" Mech vs P games in HotS (mostly just Morrow...).
Please upload a replay of the game you use as a large part of your argument. I 100% guarantee I will be able to find what went wrong for you, or what you could have done to win from that position. A Hellbat/Tank/Viking/Thor/Widow Mine army is not impossible to beat or impossible to engage, not even close. HT and Tempest are both viable options as well, at least when used together. If you don't understand how to make that composition work, people have explained it very clearly in this thread.
It's absurd for you to say there was a "delicate balance" in WoL Mech vs P. The match-up was very clearly imbalanced in Protoss' favor.
If there is a Mech army you are struggling against as P when you have a better economy and upgrades, I would be happy to show you in the unit tester how to beat it.
|
On November 28 2012 01:34 DestinationLiquid wrote: Are we seriously asking ourselves how to beat mech and not how to deal with the High Templar Tempest deathball? Tempest has so much health that it takes so much time to kill one with thors or vikings, it's not even funny. Besides, your vikings have to move all the time from storms, so the micro is on the terran to do, as always. But yeah, a move toss compositions just got slightly weaker and now tosses are having problems...
I think you nailed it.
|
This is all hearsay unless OP posts a replay. He could just have lost that game because he Terran outmacro'd him.
|
There is no way to have any meaningful discussion unless the OP uploads the replay he is talking about.
|
On November 28 2012 02:25 Skyro wrote: There is no way to have any meaningful discussion unless the OP uploads the replay he is talking about.
The truth has been spoken. Without a replay, this is all theory.
|
SG play should destroy factory play very easily. Thors are terrible vs P air.
|
On November 27 2012 23:34 JackReacher wrote: Stalkers don't scale well enough to be viable lategame PvT, and tanks beat them BADLY. HT gets outranged by tanks, meaning his tank position determines where you can and cannot be, and thus where you can and can't defend. Archons, as explained in OP, are too cost-inefficient by themselves, and Immortals are too buildtime inefficient. Only these 2 units dont melt to new mech.
Stalkers are awesome vs mech, they are super mobile and as soon as you get blink they are viable lategame in non-pvp matchups, maybe now even in pvp vs tempests if they start to become standard, but that's not important, what matters is that stalkers are awesome.
Between storm, blink, maybe a couple canons for zoning, you can easily defend carriers and tempests from vikings. carriers even defend pretty well themselves due to range, and if he has too many vikings, than 22 warpgates of blink stalkers will let you find some hole in his ground army. That's how the supply limit thing and limited resources work. A fun trick is to use carriers to bust down missile turret defenses and warp in 10+ zealots directly onto their production and just suicide zealots then start trading when he can't produce and you have instant reinforcements you could even throw in a couple of oracles. Their are tons of options against mech as toss, air, gateway and robo armies are all perfectly viable in WoL and you can do funky things that just aren't good against bio, like making carriers because Terran could punish you too hard, some units probably shouldn't be as good as they are now.
Even as a toss player I feel like past the 15 min mark in pvt my armies are far too a-movey, the only things i really have to control are templar who half the time are out of range anyways because A. I'm terrible and B. they are slow as fuck, I might have to control some blink stalkers too. I want to have more ability to influence the fight damnit!
Carriers and blink stalkers should be able to stop tanks from moving forward, stalkers in particular can punish any moving mech armies. But really, you should post a replay.
|
Handful of tempest with good HT/Archon/stalker support and you can't lose to mech. Maybe add a few colossi for good measure.
The fact is, mech should be about space control, but the Tank and Widow Mine are absolute trash against Zerg and Protoss unit compositions, not to mention Broodlords are much better siege units than anything in the Terran arsenal, and winfestors and even (sadly) Swarm Hosts aren't bad options either. Colossus/Tempest/Carrier are all viable Sieging units for Protoss. It's just silly that Terran has the worst space control units in the game lol.
We're forced to run around with paper(or glass) cannons (aka BIO) in matchups and hope that our weak units can match up to the powerhouse units of Protoss and Zerg's lategame.
I'm sorry but Hellbats are bad against anything but zerglings.
|
You're doing something terribly wrong. Chargelot warp-ins are still just as good as they were before. Hellbats help a tiny bit vs mass chargelot, but no where near as good as this thread makes out.
|
United Kingdom14103 Posts
Why does this thread exist? Regular WoL P compositions still destroy a T mech army.
|
Hellbat counters Zealots. Period. Try immortals carriers stalkers, etc.
|
You can definitely use storms. Tank range is 13. Storm range is 9, radius 1.5.
Now remember that his tanks aren't all in one spot, they take space. The hellions will surely (at least some of them) be in front by a couple hexes, so you can definitely get some storms off. If his hellbats are behind... then it's easier for your army/zealots to get there.
if/when push does come to shove, that they should stand somewhat more of a fighting chance So you mean that this mech army, which is supposed to be strong in a straight up fight but forced to defend due to immobility, should actually have a good chance of losing to a Protoss army "when push comes to shove" AKA the terran is winning?
It's hard enough to push with a mech army, due to leap frogging. Yes, mech armies are very strong and get stronger the later the game due to MULEs + adding more supply efficient units (thors, BCs instead of just viking hellion tank ghost), but if you're leapfrogging and 1/4 of your tanks aren't sieged up, and you move in that small window, the difference is quite big.
Also highly disagree with the hellbats stopping chargelots so hard. You must be engaging wrong if the rest of your army is way behind your zealots. Time it so that zealots engage at the same time. Hellbats only have range 2, and zealots do not die to tanks. There's no way they can all be killed (if you have a reasonable amount) before being able to attack. Hellbats themselves are like 1 hex in space, they can only get a shot off before the zealot starts attacking. It's not like a ball of marines vs zerglings.
|
I wish I could expect to win by a-moving into an army. Also, the new protoss econ advantage is more warp prism based these days considering they can fly in and drop basically infinite supply and wreck everything.
|
On November 27 2012 22:50 DestinationLiquid wrote: Immortal based armies would help you tons, so will a couple high templars. You can't expect things to work like in WOL, where you a move your 3/3 zealot archon and win. Try attacking from multiple corners, hiding sneaky templars, dt's in bases, etc, harrass. Basically, do stuff that terrans had to do for 2 years to beat or be on equal footing to an a moving toss.
Edit: I am unsure of your league, but PvT is currently dominated by toss with the almost unbeatable Tempest high templar deathball. It counters with easy any combination you can throw at it as terran, including mech. I would actually in turn like high templar's cast range to be reduced so vikings can reliably fight off tempest instead of having to dance around taking fire while templar's energy is over. And not to beat a dead horse here, but I find a protoss complaining about the weaker deathball of terran hilarious.
This sounds like really bad whining >.< you can use ghosts too you know. I imagine it would be really hard to micro tempests to snipe ghosts, storm spread vikings, AND micro tempests to snipe the tanks that are shooting at high templar (Tempest only have 3 (maybe 2?) range more than a tank... for a high templar not to be in range, that would be some pretty precise army movement.)
Also, "do stuff that terrans had to do for 2 years..." lol. I'm not saying that terran was OP or anything, but look at how well Terrans did for those two years (1) and 2, that just isn't right, unless you would like to give examples. Sure MC was successful for a while, but there was a sad zealot fanclub for a reason
Terran deathball is "weaker" in WoL, not necessarily HOTS. It's a different deathball. Also, I imagine widow mines at "perimeters" of your army could help with HT. Place the widow mine in front of viking - viking can snipe observers, widow mine snipes high templar that move in to storm vikings.
Edit: Not that the game isn't perfect or that HT/tempest or terran mech don't need tweaking, but I don't think that it's as bad as you make it out to be.
|
On November 28 2012 04:15 Alryk wrote: .Also, I imagine widow mines at "perimeters" of your army could help with HT. Place the widow mine in front of viking - viking can snipe observers, widow mine snipes high templar that move in to storm vikings.. I want to say something, but I have no words. I don't know what game or league you are playing, but widow mines with 5 range sniping high templars when obs has 11 range, that is just so confusing to me, I am speechless.
|
On November 28 2012 04:15 Alryk wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2012 22:50 DestinationLiquid wrote: Immortal based armies would help you tons, so will a couple high templars. You can't expect things to work like in WOL, where you a move your 3/3 zealot archon and win. Try attacking from multiple corners, hiding sneaky templars, dt's in bases, etc, harrass. Basically, do stuff that terrans had to do for 2 years to beat or be on equal footing to an a moving toss.
Edit: I am unsure of your league, but PvT is currently dominated by toss with the almost unbeatable Tempest high templar deathball. It counters with easy any combination you can throw at it as terran, including mech. I would actually in turn like high templar's cast range to be reduced so vikings can reliably fight off tempest instead of having to dance around taking fire while templar's energy is over. And not to beat a dead horse here, but I find a protoss complaining about the weaker deathball of terran hilarious. This sounds like really bad whining >.< you can use ghosts too you know. I imagine it would be really hard to micro tempests to snipe ghosts, storm spread vikings, AND micro tempests to snipe the tanks that are shooting at high templar (Tempest only have 3 (maybe 2?) range more than a tank... for a high templar not to be in range, that would be some pretty precise army movement.) Also, "do stuff that terrans had to do for 2 years..." lol. I'm not saying that terran was OP or anything, but look at how well Terrans did for those two years (1) and 2, that just isn't right, unless you would like to give examples. Sure MC was successful for a while, but there was a sad zealot fanclub for a reason Terran deathball is "weaker" in WoL, not necessarily HOTS. It's a different deathball. Also, I imagine widow mines at "perimeters" of your army could help with HT. Place the widow mine in front of viking - viking can snipe observers, widow mine snipes high templar that move in to storm vikings. Edit: Not that the game isn't perfect or that HT/tempest or terran mech don't need tweaking, but I don't think that it's as bad as you make it out to be.
The Tempest simply sit at 15 range and pick apart at your army, if you try and engage with your 11 range vikings, they get stormed before they can even get a volley off. Similar to the Infestor, the Protoss will be happy to trade HT energy for viking kills all game long.
+ Show Spoiler +
|
tldr: hellbat op, qq random wall of text with a sad story about a lost a-move scenario in it. 2/10
|
Mech loses because it sucks vs archon/immortal/collosus combo. Chargelots are mostly usefull to when you quickly want to rebuild your army against some siege tanks.
|
this kind of Protoss players are keeping the illusion of mech beeing viable in wol/hots alive
we should be thankful
|
It's good that masszealot can't a-move mech anymore, no? Protoss already makes them out of nothing.
But A for effort.
|
On November 28 2012 05:40 SamsLiST wrote: this kind of Protoss players are keeping the illusion of mech beeing viable in wol/hots alive
we should be thankful This kind of players are also the 'pros' Blizz sometimes listen to. Like Naniwa for toss or Idra for the Zerg, they are willing to blame their inadequate play to a strategy not being viable, while in fact, if a more skiled player uses the gateway army, he would destroy mech with almost no problem. We should not give such posts or players any credit, because that is how we came up with BroodLord+Infestor, the siegequeen range, the rocket overlord, and the 20 sec observer build time, at a time when terrans were already struggling vs less mechanically skilled zergs and tosses. Now we are at a point when I am happy if there is a terran at a tournament so I am not stuck up with endless PvZs.
TL;DR
The op is a wall of text disguising (badly) the op's frustration that a moved zealot armies don't work (in the hands of the OP) against mech. Such posts are dangerous to the community as they may align a bunch of low skilled level players who think the problem the OP describes is real, while in fact many people will tell you that in higher leagues mech is still very hard to execute at all. And sure, hellbats might be ok against zealots (I don't think so, but ok, let's say it is so). Toss has so much more mobility and raw punching strength that to be whining about hellbats is pure hypocricy.
|
From experience... Archon, immortal, zealot.... Prettttty good vs mech!!! Throw in some Tempests and you should be good to go!
Battlehellions are supposed to be good vs zealots.... That's their sole purpose in the game...
|
Your not suppose to be able to just spam zealot or a unit composition and run a mech army over. Your suppose to engage them cross map and then widdle them down considering how immobile it is. This is how mech should be but in the current state it still not as viable because mech still very vulnerable to alot of other protoss tech. If it wasnt for tempest, I would say that mech is definitely viable in HOTS but because of the tempest, it viablility is less certain due to tempest HT composition.
|
I just don't find hellbats any useful...besides the fact that they can be healed by medivacs. Hellions basically do everything hellbats do except faster and since when did you need something MORE than blue flame hellions to kill zerglings lol
|
The OP is wrong, Hellbats are nowhere as good as he claims. They are fantastic against lings, because of the relative strength (2 shot + way more hp) to the ling.
But they are at best passable against zeals. I've tried out hellion + bio compositions with ghost+viking, and the reality is that they get stomped by gateway+templar+colo. The bio can no longer kite, and the hellions are not efficient enough (even with 20+) to clear zeals faster than the AOE of protoss can clear all of the T army.
The reality is that hellions are just a passable buffer for zeals. Without the rest of mech being viable, and providing the majority of the firepower+AOE, hellions won't be viable against P as a complement to bio.
|
Northern Ireland20676 Posts
The OP is wrong perhaps, I'm not a HoTS aficionado by any means and the majority seems to be against him. However, from reading the responses to his posts I am concerned for how mech is going to change the PvT matchup. This isn't that mech is too powerful, but from what people are saying it seems to be either bypass the army, or build pure counter units, while transitioning to even better counter units, from the Protoss perspective. I may be entirely wrong and the tweaking of mech will give Terrans another core comp that is good. However it seems to be a continuation of the PvT dynamic that already exists, and is a problem for some - That so much of it is predicated on direct counters. Ghosts counter templars, Collosus are countered by vikings, and so much of the matchup is on a knife edge due to this. If Protoss don't get storms off they can die, but if a Ghost misses his cue the same is true.
I don't see much difference in mech TvP in this respect. This is theorycrafting from a HoTS virgin, so excuse me if I get the basic flow wrong, or if timings don't allow what I'm talking about. T goes for some mech comp. Protoss goes super heavy immortal composition with blink to circumvent and flank. The Terran may incorporate ghosts to EMP the immortals, only for Templars/Templars tempest to arrive. The latter stage is apparently reminiscent of Inf/BL in how it's untouchable, albeit that it is harder to reach.
How counter-compositions actually work, now with animated creatures!
I also love people making out that Protoss players want to be able to macro and A-move Zealots as if it's our deepest desire. Or that, beyond some neat charge manual casting and some army splitting that you CAN micro chargelots properly. I'd rather have Zealots be faster, (let's say that it's roughly a compromise between charge and passive speed), so that more possibilities to properly flank would exist.
This isn't a pining to BW units, or anything like that, but a desire to see the match up progress similarly. The main concept that you have to outmanouever mech. and kill before critical mass or at least trade with it effectively is the only real similarity that I can gather from how everyone is describing the matchup, and how I've seen it work out.
The difference is in HOTS is how this overarching aim is accomplished. In BW, yes there are units with anti-mech roles, if not designed specifically for it, they performed it well in practice. You could chip away at mech balls in a variety fo different ways, but importantly, having balanced compositions was also important. In SC2, there are units that are clearly designed from the outset to be anti-tank wrecking balls. The idea that pumping TONS of immortals to bust a tank line, then transition to the Templar/Tempest combo that is apparently fearsome against Terran just seems wrong to me, and I'm talking from the Protoss perspective remember.
This is distinct from say, how the marine and the baneling coexist. The latter 'counters' the former, but the former can be made to trade much, much better with good splitting. The tank has many hardcounters that it cannot really account for in that kind of fashion.
|
Tanks in WoL are terrible vs lings and zealots because of multiple design changes to both the tank and zealot/ling compared to BW implementations of these units. It was a mistake not designing them to destroy tier 1 unit. It interesting that instead of altering the tank they decided to place the foundations for anti tier 1 on another component of the mech composition, especially one which is gas free (once unlocked). I do like this design choice, but I didn't see it coming.
|
Even if they could flip a switch tomorrow and magically make mech ground viable, once the game got to 4-5 bases, you would still not be able to respond to tempest/carrier/templar.
They really have their work cut out for them.
Right now, mine is another gimmick unit, like most of the Terran army, that's only good for like 2-3minutes.
|
On November 28 2012 00:22 DestinationLiquid wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2012 23:48 Sissors wrote: Why you would possibly warp in waves of zealots against an army mainly compromised of the unit specifically designed to counter zealots is also a mystery for me.
Toss mentality, I assume. If a moved zealots don't do it, do more a moved zealots. I am actually really surprised that such a thread even exists, cause in semi high level (masters/gm) I and many terrans get crushed by the Tempest High Templar deathball, which is very hard to engage both with bio and mech. So instead of focusing our attention on how to fix tempest+ht, we are discussing why zealot is not winning vs hellbat ? (by the way, i still think zealot collos high templar is way stronger than mech) I think shifting our attention from apparent problems to deal with non existent ones was the reason why Zerg is that overpowered today in WOL: cause the balance designers did not consider the balance problems calmly and instead listened to the most vocal part of the community which were the Zergs. And then you had infestor brood lord. We should not let threads like that exist, because, next thing you know, zealots will start hitting from 2 range, so our friend in the OP can 'land a hit' with them against the hellbats. Because A) I was out of gas because of Archon warpins and B) Because it was a tank army with roughly 10 Hellbats, possibly less
|
WHAT?! Zealots die from Hellbats?! What madness is this!!!!
|
On November 28 2012 16:35 JackReacher wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2012 00:22 DestinationLiquid wrote:On November 27 2012 23:48 Sissors wrote: Why you would possibly warp in waves of zealots against an army mainly compromised of the unit specifically designed to counter zealots is also a mystery for me.
Toss mentality, I assume. If a moved zealots don't do it, do more a moved zealots. I am actually really surprised that such a thread even exists, cause in semi high level (masters/gm) I and many terrans get crushed by the Tempest High Templar deathball, which is very hard to engage both with bio and mech. So instead of focusing our attention on how to fix tempest+ht, we are discussing why zealot is not winning vs hellbat ? (by the way, i still think zealot collos high templar is way stronger than mech) I think shifting our attention from apparent problems to deal with non existent ones was the reason why Zerg is that overpowered today in WOL: cause the balance designers did not consider the balance problems calmly and instead listened to the most vocal part of the community which were the Zergs. And then you had infestor brood lord. We should not let threads like that exist, because, next thing you know, zealots will start hitting from 2 range, so our friend in the OP can 'land a hit' with them against the hellbats. Because A) I was out of gas because of Archon warpins and B) Because it was a tank army with roughly 10 Hellbats, possibly less No it wasnt. At least you yourself said that the tanks were pretty much gone due to tempest and colossi fire.
But if there were 10 hellbats with a complete tank army behind them, did you ever consider it wasnt the hellbats which killed your zealots, but the entire tank army? Or did you think really no one would take you serious if you complained that zealots werent good enough against tanks?
|
On November 28 2012 16:35 JackReacher wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2012 00:22 DestinationLiquid wrote:On November 27 2012 23:48 Sissors wrote: Why you would possibly warp in waves of zealots against an army mainly compromised of the unit specifically designed to counter zealots is also a mystery for me.
Toss mentality, I assume. If a moved zealots don't do it, do more a moved zealots. I am actually really surprised that such a thread even exists, cause in semi high level (masters/gm) I and many terrans get crushed by the Tempest High Templar deathball, which is very hard to engage both with bio and mech. So instead of focusing our attention on how to fix tempest+ht, we are discussing why zealot is not winning vs hellbat ? (by the way, i still think zealot collos high templar is way stronger than mech) I think shifting our attention from apparent problems to deal with non existent ones was the reason why Zerg is that overpowered today in WOL: cause the balance designers did not consider the balance problems calmly and instead listened to the most vocal part of the community which were the Zergs. And then you had infestor brood lord. We should not let threads like that exist, because, next thing you know, zealots will start hitting from 2 range, so our friend in the OP can 'land a hit' with them against the hellbats. Because A) I was out of gas because of Archon warpins and B) Because it was a tank army with roughly 10 Hellbats, possibly less You never mention your league, but I doubt it is higher than gold. Also, you don't provide a replay. Maybe you had 2 archon, 10 zealots and a high templar and tried to storm 20 tanks, 10 hellbats and got evaporated? How can we know if you don't provide a replay. Cause as the whole community repeatedly told you, zealot archon high templar is still perfectly viable against mech and still a lot stronger.
|
On November 28 2012 00:22 DestinationLiquid wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2012 23:48 Sissors wrote: Why you would possibly warp in waves of zealots against an army mainly compromised of the unit specifically designed to counter zealots is also a mystery for me.
We should not let threads like that exist, because, next thing you know, zealots will start hitting from 2 range, so our friend in the OP can 'land a hit' with them against the hellbats.
Well spoken. Since hellbats were specifically introduced to combat zealots warping only zealots is against the reason. I suppose that to make game fair zealots should have a chance against battlecruisers as well. What about an late game upgrade to let zealots hit from 2 range but hit also air targets?
|
Well, it's not like Protoss needs Zealots anymore at least vs Bio. Just get Oracles, they are much better at what Zealots are supposed to do. Once your Bio army is slowed, you can't get into the deathball range, you can't run away, you can't dodge AoE, your vikings can't get into colossus range. Oracle slow has made bio basically unplayable vs protoss.
|
now you know how zerg felt when they built hydras vs collosus.... we've been there buddy, it doesn't get fixed so hold back on the QQ
|
Wether you agree with the OP or not: most of the responses here are just QQ on their own - let me paraphrase it a bit:
"ohh I struggle so much vs toss coz I did 1 year nothing but 1/1/1 and suddenly Iose to toss players who just need to 1A vs my perfect 200apm stutter step AND now YOU OP dare to utter so much as an opinion on possible imbalance in HotS" (you may or may not see what I just did there...)
You want to criticize the OP do it, but if u lack any argument apart from: "Ur race OP u bad, l2p..." then PLZ go play LOL with Destiny.
We are in a beta, things are imbalanced, things change. If threads about the playing experience suddenly become a "danger" for the future of sc2 in particular and e sports in general then where's the point of a beta/beta-forum.
ps: just got me thinking: if u feel threatened (i.e. being scared of range 2 zealots which hit air) by a wall of text without as much as a single replay attached, the OP might actually be on to something
|
Northern Ireland20676 Posts
On November 29 2012 22:50 tar wrote:Wether you agree with the OP or not: most of the responses here are just QQ on their own - let me paraphrase it a bit: "ohh I struggle so much vs toss coz I did 1 year nothing but 1/1/1 and suddenly Iose to toss players who just need to 1A vs my perfect 200apm stutter step AND now YOU OP dare to utter so much as an opinion on possible imbalance in HotS" (you may or may not see what I just did there...) You want to criticize the OP do it, but if u lack any argument apart from: "Ur race OP u bad, l2p..." then PLZ go play LOL with Destiny. We are in a beta, things are imbalanced, things change. If threads about the playing experience suddenly become a "danger" for the future of sc2 in particular and e sports in general then where's the point of a beta/beta-forum. ps: just got me thinking: if u feel threatened (i.e. being scared of range 2 zealots which hit air) by a wall of text without as much as a single replay attached, the OP might actually be on to something This, this a thousand times. This continuous stream of ad-hominem attacks on people, but also comments like 'TLDR' are fucking killing good discussion on this forum. If you want to debate a topic, or an issue do so based on two things.
1. What the OP actually wrote. If it's actually 100% retarded, tear it apart if you wish, but in a non-aggressive manner. The exception to the 'non-aggressive' part is if the OP himself is aggressive/balance whiny or whatever. 2. Subsequent posts from either the OP and other posters, and what they say.
There is nothing worse in terms of killing threads than people coming in, reading the title, sometimes not even the entire OP, and posting before they've done that. I was having good discussions about the UI changes, thread got closed in the end. It got closed not because the topic was bad, but because it had been MADE bad by people coming in and making absurd claims like.
'You guys want BW, turn off automine' - A point we had raised, and already talked about as NOT being what we were advocating. 'These UI changes don't make you good' - We didn't say they did, at any point in the thread. Etc etc etc
The OP was actually well written, and contained some cool concepts, while being a springboard for other discussion, it did degenerate rather quickly.
|
I never liked the "hellbat" concept. It's a massabale, a-click, spray aoe, low tier unit. Siege tank is a good aoe unit, HT is a good AOE unit, mines are good aoe units, banelings are good aoe units. Units like hellbats should just gtfo of the game regardless if balance is achieved or not. Making the same people fix what they did is a bad idea, this design team is killing the game, they are making more errors they are not fixing anything.
|
On November 30 2012 03:10 i)awn wrote: I never liked the "hellbat" concept. It's a massabale, a-click, spray aoe, low tier unit. Siege tank is a good aoe unit, HT is a good AOE unit, mines are good aoe units, banelings are good aoe units. Units like hellbats should just gtfo of the game regardless if balance is achieved or not. Making the same people fix what they did is a bad idea, this design team is killing the game, they are making more errors they are not fixing anything. By your logic pretty much any low tier massable a move unit should be removed. Hellbat does what it does, it counters low tier light units. i dont know by what standards you define good and bad units? please elaborate.
|
eh, I'd love to see the replay of the game, OP. By the sounds of it you had like half the supply a moving through chokes. If you have "Zealots will never get to melee, even with 125 supply worth and max upgrades, that much is a fact." then it doesnt sound like range 2 hellions are the problem considering charge has a range 4.
So what happens when a Robo unit, such as the Immortal, is the only effective counter to a certain unit composition like HotS mech to the extent that it needs to be the primary unit in the Protoss army to combat the enemy composition, and any other units are superfluous if they are not both small in number and dedicated to a very specific role, i.e. giving your army some form of anti-air?
You could so easily replace 'Immortal' with 'Colossus'.
|
On November 28 2012 08:51 DeCoup wrote: Tanks in WoL are terrible vs lings and zealots because of multiple design changes to both the tank and zealot/ling compared to BW implementations of these units. It was a mistake not designing them to destroy tier 1 unit. It interesting that instead of altering the tank they decided to place the foundations for anti tier 1 on another component of the mech composition, especially one which is gas free (once unlocked). I do like this design choice, but I didn't see it coming.
But in BW the counter to zealots was vultures, not so much tanks. BW tanks could do a better job at mowing down zeals due to better damage, but once zeals entered the tank lines the tanks also did more damage to themselves due to overkill.
|
I'd like to summarise what the op states with an interminable message: "Oh, fuck! I can't a-move the terran anymore on Hots! Let's open a whine-topic on TL. I am protoss, I require no micro!"
|
Well, no protoss really a-moves so i don't understand that line. Obviously it's the same for T.
On topic I think this is pretty fair in the sense that you can get around it with other units and zealot harrass is still very viable. Oracle+Storm can be awesome to get rid of the already slow hellbats and obviously usual bio.
|
no, they fake real micro to actually amove.
|
On November 30 2012 03:10 i)awn wrote: I never liked the "hellbat" concept. It's a massabale, a-click, spray aoe, low tier unit. Siege tank is a good aoe unit, HT is a good AOE unit, mines are good aoe units, banelings are good aoe units. Units like hellbats should just gtfo of the game regardless if balance is achieved or not. Making the same people fix what they did is a bad idea, this design team is killing the game, they are making more errors they are not fixing anything.
It isn't low tier. You need a Rax --- Factory --- Armory
It's like saying thors are low tier units,
|
Northern Ireland20676 Posts
On December 02 2012 21:50 Stilgorn wrote: no, they fake real micro to actually amove. /Protoss don't actually receive as much benefit if they CAN actually micro well.
|
There are some serious problems with the hellbat, I just played a game where I lost 40 3-3-0 zealots to 6, yes 6 2-2 hellbats with a couple medivacs, 4 or 5 marines and a ghost. I killed his army and went for the formality kill, then I lolled how my full supply of zealots and sentries lost to 6 hellbats. Still won the game, but this shows serious problems in the hellbats design.
fight @ 21:30
http://drop.sc/282560
|
OP is actually a high master league Protoss (in WoL), he's not a complete idiot . And there WERE a significant amount of tanks during the engagement I mentioned, despite a good number being killed. It was a long game with every base on the map taken, the engagements did not all happen one after another.
Before you tear my idea to shreds, please read my entire post; I'm not an idiot and I don't suck at the game, nor am I "Gold league". I may not be a professional, but I have been before at other games of the same genre and I have beaten players on ladder who some of you root for at tournaments all the time, albeit not as often as I lose to them, and I don't just spew balance whine because I lose. I don't mind losing, I prefer a loss (not in a tournament but in ladder) to an easy win, because it makes me better.
My OP was just an articulation of what I noticed, and perceive as an excessively drastic counter to chargelots, which happen to be Protoss' only true mineral sink in the entire game (save for immobile photon cannons). In a long game, where cost-effectiveness matters and it's about attrition, this has the potential to break the game.
To all the smartasses saying "oh no, the Hellbat beats Zealots, how terrible!", I sincerely hope you either know what I meant and are just a dick or you only read 10% of my post. Of course I have NO problem with Hellbats being a counter to Zealots, that's the point. The point is that they are too hard a counter, such that I can't even think of a comparison that currently exists in Wings of Liberty other than saying that upgraded Hellbats counter Zealots in the same way that Hellions counter Drones. They annihilate them, utterly, in an outstanding display of cost-efficiency. Furthermore, the units that Protoss has available to counter Hellbats are hard countered by the units that support the Hellbats. Generally, a softer counter system is preferable.
The basic counter dynamic, known to some as "rock paper scissors" is disrupted by the fact that Protoss units' intended cost effectiveness is actually reversed by the superior range advantage held by every one of their respective Terran counter units; Seige Tanks should counter Stalkers and Immortals and Hellbats should counter Zealots. Obviously, Seige Tank outrange Stalkers, and Hellbats outrange Zealots by default because Zealots are melee units. This means that Terran armies deal the first blow. This is extremely important the larger battles are and the more powerful the armies involved are; if two people are fighting, a first punch isn't nearly as critical as a first shot is in the case of two people dueling armed with shotguns, to put it in a rather strange way.
The high damage (of both armies involved) means the army with the range disadvantage, Protoss, takes damage before it is able to deal it. Units are killed before they deal damage. The army may be at 75% or even 50% health before it lands a shot. This essentially amounts to a massive health nerf, if you will. Protoss' credo is said to be "strong but expensive units". This implies that while they cost more, they are strong enough that they are equal in cost effectiveness. The issue is that now, the Protoss army is actually WEAKER and MORE expensive, so the longer the game goes, the more desperate the situation becomes. The map mining out is gg if you can never engage the enemy army.
|
"OP is actually a high master league Protoss (in WoL)"
everyone can get to master with protoss.
|
Normally this would be where I would just state that it isn't much of a problem with race x either, but don't derail the topic. People were calling me gold league and claiming I know nothing about the game just because they were feeling lazy and failed to read the entire OP, I felt I should correct them. I just want this to be a decent discussion, whether you agree with me or disagree. While I don't personally feel that my league or MMR makes me any more or less credible than anyone else, that is precisely how a lot of folks on here judge these types of matters, so I felt it necessary to set the record straight. More than my ladder ranking and all that, I value my understanding of the way the game plays out (in matchups I am personally concerned with) at all stages of the game and in all different situations. Yes, I play Protoss. But I don't call "imba" just because I lose, and I don't pretend something isn't broken if it benefits me. I play the game to understand the game, and to understand the game being at a certain level of "ability" or whatever people think makes one "good" is necessary for understanding these things.
And saying things like "everyone can get to master with Protoss" is pointless and ignorant. Anyone could claim the exact same thing about any of the other races and be no less (or more) incorrect/correct, depending on your personal bias. That's not the point. The point I want to make is I realize this is a beta and I'm not mindlessly ramming into the metaphorical brick wall that is repeatedly using WoL tactics and strategies in an entirely different game with a drastically different metagame.
I did what I judged was best for any given situation based on what was actually possible, and what it boils down to is that in lategame, even with a LOT of bases and a healthy economy, Protoss army is extremely gas-intensive and constant battles leading to necessary quick reinforcements will eventually leave you with a surplus of minerals and little to no gas, and Zealots are Protoss' mineral sink unit. Imagine if both armies traded evenly over and over until they depleted both of their gas supplies. What can they make a good number of without any gas? Protoss has Zealots, Terran has Marines. And now they have Hellbats. Also, the given hypothetical situation isn't even remotely realistic as the Protoss would run out of gas ages before the Terran did, and so without constantly winning decisive engagements, would EVENTUALLY have to make do with a composition comprised not entirely but in a fairly large part of Zealots. When you give Terran something that eats through them at insane "double-digits-to-one" ratios, you have a problem.
|
|
|
|