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On September 11 2011 06:02 Gheed wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2011 05:48 iblink wrote:On September 11 2011 01:16 HolyHenk wrote: Warp gate is the big problem of protoss and it is probably extremely hard to balance for blizzard. The problem is that warp gates give a huge offensive advantage. Imagine terran or zerg having warp gates and instantly teleporting units to your base. This would be completely insane and thats why protoss units are made weaker. This way protoss might still have a small offensive advantage but the weaker units give a defensive disadvantage. Combine this with weak static defences and a lack of detection and you can see why protoss early game is so vulnerable. Protoss does have sentries to defend but the other races are figuring out ways to nullify them and they aren't that effecient on every map. The reason that the 1 - 1 -1 build is so strong is because it exploits the weaknesses of protoss. Forcefields are quite useless, you need observers and you need the power to defeat the opponents army. Give this man a medal. But seriously the problem when playing against 1-1-1 and the problem with protoss early game in general is exactly that: PROTOSS NEEDS DETECTION WITHOUT NECESSARILY GOING ROBO. Protoss needs more options for detection. Making your point bold and underlined doesn't make it correct. Cloaked banshees are tier 3 + upgrade, and not every 111 all-in uses them. It's perfectly reasonable to expect a player to have to build a tier 2 unit to detect a tier 3 cloaked unit. What would be the point of cloaked units if the effect of their cloaking was so easy nullified? That's not what the thread is about, anyway.
man.. seriously what are you talking about? first of all what does tier 3+ mean? do you know at which time in the game you have cloaked banshees? that's right, very early. the same thing with colossus, it is considered to be 'tier 3' but it comes really early if you rush for it. the only true tier 3 units i can think about off the top of my head are ultralisk and broodlord - these two do come REALLY late.
The most important thing you forget though is that protoss doesn't know if terran goes cloak or not on his banshees. that's why he has to get robo and detection even though terran maybe won't eventually go for cloak. and protoss just cannot afford to go robo AND have enough (weak) gateway units to deal with powerful unit compositions like marine tank banshee. it seems to me like you forget how flexible the terran race is with their swapping add-ons and stuff. if you don't play protoss, please do not post nonsense. no offence whatsoever but calling banshees tier 3 is just wrong and untrue.
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Very good read. I've often contemplated the warp in mechanics myself, and how it affected pushes. Hope you do more articles like these brah.
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On September 11 2011 01:34 Lucky Strike wrote: I'm quite late to the discussion but something that may help restore a defender's advantage is some kind of warp-in jamming device. A bit like Terrans have sensor towers to detect enemy movement, Protoss could construct a jamming tower to prevent warp-ins in a particular area. I don't think the area of effect should obviously be nearly as big as the sensor tower's range, but something appropriate can be worked out.
And for it to help defend against a 4gate, it should be available fairly early, maybe after Gateway or after the Cybernetics Core. Again, something which brings balance can be figured out.
Comments? Criticisms (constructive)? What do you think?
This would only help in PvP, which, by nature, is 100% balanced. The problem, which explained in the OP, is in PvT and PvZ. It would not help a protoss to defend against a terran attack if he could jam his own warpgate technology..
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Let me try this again.
People are saying Protoss units need to be balanced to be equal in offense as Terran is in defense, or else Protoss units would be OP.
But if you do this, suddenly Terran units are OP in offense against Protoss, as is clearly stated in the first post.
Following the same logic that attacking units in offense need to be equal to the opposing race in defense, we should now weaken Terran units so they don't always win when attacking Protoss. This process will never end, therefore we CAN'T make the attacker in offense equal to the defender in defense and have a balanced game.
A balanced game does result if we make attacking or defending strength independent of your race. In other words, Protoss's warp gate advantage should be partially balanced back by weakening their units, but not so much that terran will steamroll them in attacks.
The first post is framing the WG as having an inherent balance flaw, but it does not.
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On September 11 2011 10:10 saus wrote: Let me try this again.
People are saying Protoss units need to be balanced to be equal in offense as Terran is in defense, or else Protoss units would be OP.
But if you do this, suddenly Terran units are OP in offense against Protoss, as is clearly stated in the first post.
Following the same logic that attacking units in offense need to be equal to the opposing race in defense, we should now weaken Terran units so they don't always win when attacking Protoss. This process will never end, therefore we CAN'T make the attacker in offense equal to the defender in defense and have a balanced game.
A balanced game does result if we make attacking or defending strength independent of your race. In other words, Protoss's warp gate advantage should be partially balanced back by weakening their units, but not so much that terran will steamroll them in attacks.
The first post is framing the WG as having an inherent balance flaw, but it does not.
your argument kinda seemed to agree with his =/
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"The first post is framing the WG as having an inherent balance flaw, but it does not."
This is where it's different. The main point of the original post.
In the first few paragraphs I go through the logic of this thread and show that it is inconsistent. Then I present a new philosophy of balance that is consistent.
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On September 11 2011 10:13 saus wrote: "The first post is framing the WG as having an inherent balance flaw, but it does not."
This is where it's different. The main point of the original post.
In the first few paragraphs I go through the logic of this thread and show that it is inconsistent. Then I present a new philosophy of balance that is consistent.
No, you basically spent the entire post explaining to yourself why the wg is flawed (by explaining that protoss can't be balanced both for offense and defense), follow it up with "protoss units needs to be balanced so they're not too strong offensively or defensively, finishing it with "the warpgate is not a problem"
edit: I'll elaborate a bit on the middle part:
On September 11 2011 10:13 saus wrote: A balanced game does result if we make attacking or defending strength independent of your race. In other words, Protoss's warp gate advantage should be partially balanced back by weakening their units, but not so much that terran will steamroll them in attacks."
But herein lies the core of the problem! Because of the wg, its incredibly hard to balance protoss so it doesn't steamroll or get steamrolled. Thats why we have seen protoss dominating everything for a few months, get nerfed a bit, and then get dominated by everything for few a months.
I could keep on explaining this, about how weak gateway units means that protoss gets insane non-gateway units, about how this makes them very vulnerable when the only defensive capability they have is made void (by either map or, for instance, the siege tank in a 1-1-1 push), or about how this makes the whole race a tad gimmicky, but I think I should rather just redirect you back to the thread OP
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Oh there is so many things wrong with this post it actually hurts my brain.
An offensive and a defensive Protoss have the same rally distance. Yeah so if terran wants to stop any early game aggression by Protoss they need 3 to 4 bunkers. After Warpgate is finished, because of the influx of units you will never seen a Protoss get attacked as Warpgate finishes (TvP anyways)
The abbility to WARP IN to where you want to defend IS A DEFENDERS advantage. Instead of T and Z having to rally (which can lead to bad positioning ie. Forcefield or ramp chokes) you get them @ your natural...
Saying the Marine Maraduer force is good because of Bunkers defensivly is like saying... Well Zerglings do better if there is a Spinecrawler, Zealots do better if there is a Cannon.
Can't believe this was not closed...
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On September 08 2011 18:59 susySquark wrote:Disclaimer: This is not complaining about warpgates - this is examining how warpgates by design have lead to a smaller defenders advantage for Protoss, which makes safe, economic openers difficult to pull off.Each race in SC2 has its own mechanical quirks quite separate from individual unit balance. Terrans have their addon swapping and mules, Zergs have larvae injects and creep, Protoss have warpgates and chrono. The most profound effect of the warpgate mechanic is not defensive in nature, but offensive. To find out why, we must examine the concept of the defenders advantage. A primer of defenders advantageWhen playing as a Terran or Zerg, you naturally have several advantages as a defender before you even build a unit. First, your ramp - the narrow choke allows your units to have a concave against a bunched up pack trying to push its way up the ramp. Second, your production - your rally distances are much, much shorter than if you were out in the middle of the map, so you can produce less units and still defend, because your second wave comes quickly. Also, both Terrans and Zergs have access to a defensive structure after building their first basic unit production structure. The spine crawler only requires a spawning pool, and the bunker only requires a barracks. These structures can be produced as a reaction to a scouted push in order to provide you with an additional advantage as a defender, which can help mitigating the loss of the ramp advantage when you expand. Defending against a pushConsider what happens when defending - assuming perfect balance, the only way to survive a push with an inferior army is to abuse your defenders advantages: your quick reinforcements, your ramp, and any defensive structures. This is why as a fast expanding Terran (no ramp advantage) you construct bunkers against a Protoss gateway timing. Same goes for spines as a Zerg. But what about Protoss? Leveling offense and defenseThe warp mechanic, by its very nature, crosses "short rally" off of the defender's advantage list for Protoss. An attacking Protoss army and a defending Protoss army will be reinforced just as quickly. And here comes problem number one: in a PvP, the defender has essentially NO advantage besides the ramp (and on Tal Darim Altar, there is no ramp!). The only way to survive a gateway push is to match your opponents unit count or abuse the crap out of your ramp (sentries, hooo). This is how the 4gate v 4gate metagame evolved, especially on TD Altar. Cannons represent an absurd deviation from normal tech in order to provide a defender advantage, since there is no defensive structure after gateway. Scouting a forge + 2 cannons (450 minerals) can be responded to with a free expansion (400 minerals), since the cannoning player theoretically cannot attack with more units than the expanding one. But PvP, as a mirror matchup, is inherently balanced no matter the design flaws, so I'll ignore it for now. Still, there are other implications of the Protoss equivalency of offense and defense. The three types of engagementsThere are three fundamental types of engagements in SC2. It's basically common sense, but it'll help to give them names. When you do a (1) timing push, you have usually sacrificed a small amount of economy for a stronger army at a specific time in the game. Therefore, when you push and engage, you have a stronger army then your opponent. This is the first type of engagement. If you are (2) defending a timing push, your goal is usually to use your smaller army together with a defenders advantage to defend and later capitalize on your stronger economy. This is the second type of engagement. Finally, in the lategame, midmap engagements are commonplace, where both players have relatively evenly matched armies. We'll call this an (3) even fight. As mentioned before, Protoss has a natural advantage in timing pushes because of the warp mechanic. I feel that if a Protoss is engaging in a timing push, game feels well balanced - extremely strong Protoss timing pushes can punish greedy Terran or Zerg play, and well executed defenses can hold in safe play. A pushing Protoss, with a stronger army and a short rally, is meant to have a fair shake at attacking a smaller, but defensive structure and rally fortified Terran or Zerg.As a defender, Protosses have cannons for defense, a rally advantage, and a ramp / choke advantage. Cannons, because of their sometimes inconvenient tech, are missing from a Protoss defense in a lot of earlygame scenarios (4gate, 2 or 3rax, roach+ling aggression on expo). This reduces Protoss defensive options to a ramp or choke advantage, and a rally advantage. Protosses can defend using the choke advantage very well, by using forcefields. However, on maps with open expansions, this becomes extremely difficult. This is why Protosses prefer maps with narrowly choked off naturals, like Shakuras, or Anitga. On open maps, the choke advantage disappears almost completely. So what about the rally advantage? Here's the problem. Because of the warp mechanic, Protoss is balanced as if they have the rally advantage for a timing push engagement. In a defensive sense, the warpin mechanic provides no additional benefit compared to an offensive one. As the Protoss is playing defensively, they have a smaller army compared to the pushing player. The choke advantage is missing at the natural on many maps. Cannons are absent because of tech inconvenience. All that's left is the rally - which is designed to be fair for a PUSHING Protoss! A defending Protoss, with a weaker army at home, has no significant defender's advantage over a timing push from the opponent, making the battle favor the pushing player.The differences in the races amounts to basic units and their defenders advantage. A Zealot, Stalker, Sentry army is equally good on offense and on defense. A Marine, Marauder force is good on offense, but BETTER on defense, because of bunkers and a shorter rally compared to their offense. Same goes for Zerg - a force at home is BETTER than an attacking force because of creep, spines, and relatively short rally. This lets you open economically and defend with a smaller, but advantaged army. A defending Protoss army has no advantage compared to an attacking one, no edge to capitalize on. So, if a Protoss early expands, their weaker army cannot make up for their lack of size with any external forces like a Terran or Zerg one can, and is vulnerable to timing pushes from the enemy. As a result of this, Protoss expansion builds, in order to be safe to strong early timing attacks, must have one of the following characteristics to provide the necessary missing defenders advantage: - An early forge (FFE v Z, delays tech because of forge tech being out of the way... imagine expanding as Terran by going ebay+turrets... tech and units for your own offense are going to be slow!)
- A map with a choke for sentries to use (Shak, Antiga, this is by far the best option)
- A lot of units (3gate exp, sacs econ compared to other races expo builds)
TL;DR:
- An offensive and a defensive Protoss have the same rally distance.
- Protoss timing attacks with large armies are balanced against defensive, economic Terrans and Zergs (both races have economic openings that are ahead after defending a Protoss timing, but there is potential to do damage against a greedy opponent).
- Because of these two points, a defensive Protoss with an small unit count and economic opener is weak because what is normally a defenders advantage is not a defenders advantage for them, it's a given in both offense and defense.
- The lack of a defensive structure after gateway adds to this problem.
- Therefore, the lack of a strong defenders advantage means Protoss has no safe, economic openers.
As an aside (not to be taken too seriously), To fix this: Add additional defensive building. A buffed shield battery could be awesome as a defensive tool if it were available after gateway. Not necessarily a clone of the BW one, maybe something more like a stationary medivac for shields only. ADDENDUM:+ Show Spoiler +Ok here, look at it this way - Expand vs Pressure builds.
A) Look at a Protoss timing push vs a Terran expand build. Protoss 3gate pressure (into expand), vs a Terran 1rax gasless expand into 3 rax.
Terran expands, scouts the 3gate pressure, and bunkers up. Would you say this is a fair fight? Protoss is probably going to get repelled, but theres a chance that they can break it if the Terran is sloppy. It can go both ways, theres tension in the matchup, and it feels balanced. If the attack fails, Protoss is behind, and Terran has defended well. If the attack does damage, the attack has succeeded, and the Terran is behind.
What's actually happening in this example is that the Terran is compensating for their smaller army (since they expanded first) by using a defenders advantage - the bunker with repair. The salient features are: Protoss has a larger army (expanded later, pumped units early) Protoss has a short rally (warpin) Terran has a small army (expanded first, units later) Terran has bunkers (defenders advantage) Terran has a short rally (home base)
And this SET of features creates a fair fight.
B) Now flip the roles. Terran's doing a 2rax pressure (12 + 16 rax, 1 tech 1 reactor, concussive researched) vs a Protoss 1gate expand into 4gates.
These are more or less equivalent builds to the previous example, except its 2rax+addons which is slightly cheaper than 3gates + cyber. Anyways, Protoss scouts the 2rax. The Protoss, on 1 base with a nexus building and 4gates on their way, cannot get cannons up in time. No defensive structure is available, and the natural is wide open. The Protoss expanded off 1 gate, so they have at most, 3 units when the push hits (Stalker Sentry x2 usually), with no repaired bunker to fall back on.
I think we're all familiar with this situation. MC lost in this exact situation to Polt. This fight is NOT fair, its almost a build order loss. You either sac your nexus and abuse your defenders advantage (ramp + sentry), or SEVERELY outmicro your opponent. (Or you could be on Shakuras and you can FF your natural. Which is why I stated in the OP that these maps are good)
Again, examining the salient features: Protoss has a smaller army (expanded first) Protoss has a short rally (home base) Protoss has no defensive structure after gate Terran has a larger army (units first) Terran has a LONG rally (attacking)
And this SET of conditions results in a Terran gaining an advantage the majority of the time.
My argument is that an economically focused, defending Protoss, when they engage, has essentially the same characteristics as a Protoss doing a timing attack with a small army... which is, of course, a terrible idea, and results in losses.
There's something you missed with your advantages to warp ins. POSITIONAL ADVANTAGE. When units pop out of a rally (Zerg and Terran), they are always on move command and sometimes pass through an enemy army. Even with high apm to get them all to attack move to the enemy army (or pull back in an ATTEMPT to regroup, which rarely works) isn't nearly as powerful as just plopping down a handful of units EXACTLY where you need them to reinforce. As Zerg or Terran, if they get to your production, units that come out of those production buildings are basically dead. As Protoss, you can easily warp them in somewhere safe and group up.
Also, you failed to mention that "even engagements" severely favor a Protoss player. NO OTHER RACE can DIRECTLY REINFORCE DURING A BATTLE. In a 200/200 battle, assuming both armies are equal and should completely destroy each other, with a single Pylon behind the army, as Protoss loses supply, they can immediately reinforce DIRECTLY TO THE BATTLE with a brand new army. As a result, the army gets significantly stronger and is essentially equal to an army much greater than 200/200 in size. And even battles become severely lopsided battles if you add even a handful of units to one side. As a result, you get much better army retention, get to your opponent's base, kill units as they rally move to their death, and reinforce directly to their base.
Also, you failed to mention (until next patch hopefully) that Warp ins also essentially negate the ramp advantage. When they can warp units right in your base, or above the ramp, the requirement to go through a choke in order to attack is completely removed.
And during a contain, you can warp units outside your base and around the contain using Pylons on the edge of your cliff.
Warp ins are far more powerful and flexible than you give them credit for. While you do have a point about Protoss expansion defenses being relatively weak, that's more so a result of Protoss units just being so damn expensive and taking so long to make during the early parts of the game.
Also, repairing a Bunker costs a lot of economy. You lose minerals per second and you lose a lot of mining time. So as a result, you're reduced to essentially a 1 base economy at best so your production is even instead of being ahead like it should be. Transfusing a Spine Crawler costs Larvae Injects unless you spend money on an extra Queen(s). And with Terran, a Bunker is useless unless you have units inside. For Protoss, it's the only static defense that attacks both air and ground. Bunkers attack air and ground only if filled with Marines or Ghosts. And Zerg has to make Spore Crawlers to attack air. Also, Spine Crawlers and Bunkers don't give any detection. So in actuality, the Photon Cannon is by far the best static defense. But sadly it requires power and can become unpowered. Everything has it's ups and downs. And with a 2 rax pressure, unless it's all in, it's relatively easy to defend as it's only 5 Marines and a Marauder. Chrono Boost properly and you should be more than safe (I can't say I know exactly what to Chrono Boost and when to Chrono Boost them).
On September 08 2011 19:07 MCMXVI wrote: Good read, and I agree. Not only is it easier for terran to macro than for protoss and zerg (warp in and larva injects instead of queue queue queue), but to your question; how should they make offensive warp-ins weaker? Units spawn with less shields or armor or something?
Queue may be easier to to, but it's also less efficient. People are more likely to have idle resources in excessively queued units than with Warp Gates or Larvae. You CAN'T have idle resources in your production with Zerg and Protoss. When you make a unit, you spend a Larvae or a cooldown and you can't overspend into production like you can with Terran (how many times have you seen low level Terrans queue up 5 Banshees, 5 Marauders, 5 or 8 Marines, and so on? How many times have you seen a Protoss somehow have an extra 500~ minerals invested in units that aren't being produced? How many times have you seen that for Zerg? Just because something is easier doesn't make it better at all.
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If we make Protoss in offense equal to Terran in defense, Protoss is underpowered in defense. Not balanced. (the logic of this thread)
If we make Protoss in defense equal to Terran in offense, Protoss is overpowered in offense. Not balanced.
So why are we assuming the the first situation is necessary? Instead if we put protoss strength in between these 2 situations, we have balance. Let's pick that one. The first one isn't necessary.
It's like saying a 500 damage colossus would be imbalanced. Yes, it would, but we can just put a normal damage colossus in the game instead, voila we have balance and we don't have to worry about 500 damage colossi.
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Has this thread addressed switching warp gate and gateway cooldown times yet?
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On September 11 2011 09:39 iblink wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2011 06:02 Gheed wrote:On September 11 2011 05:48 iblink wrote:On September 11 2011 01:16 HolyHenk wrote: Warp gate is the big problem of protoss and it is probably extremely hard to balance for blizzard. The problem is that warp gates give a huge offensive advantage. Imagine terran or zerg having warp gates and instantly teleporting units to your base. This would be completely insane and thats why protoss units are made weaker. This way protoss might still have a small offensive advantage but the weaker units give a defensive disadvantage. Combine this with weak static defences and a lack of detection and you can see why protoss early game is so vulnerable. Protoss does have sentries to defend but the other races are figuring out ways to nullify them and they aren't that effecient on every map. The reason that the 1 - 1 -1 build is so strong is because it exploits the weaknesses of protoss. Forcefields are quite useless, you need observers and you need the power to defeat the opponents army. Give this man a medal. But seriously the problem when playing against 1-1-1 and the problem with protoss early game in general is exactly that: PROTOSS NEEDS DETECTION WITHOUT NECESSARILY GOING ROBO. Protoss needs more options for detection. Making your point bold and underlined doesn't make it correct. Cloaked banshees are tier 3 + upgrade, and not every 111 all-in uses them. It's perfectly reasonable to expect a player to have to build a tier 2 unit to detect a tier 3 cloaked unit. What would be the point of cloaked units if the effect of their cloaking was so easy nullified? That's not what the thread is about, anyway. man.. seriously what are you talking about? first of all what does tier 3+ mean? do you know at which time in the game you have cloaked banshees? that's right, very early. the same thing with colossus, it is considered to be 'tier 3' but it comes really early if you rush for it. the only true tier 3 units i can think about off the top of my head are ultralisk and broodlord - these two do come REALLY late. The most important thing you forget though is that protoss doesn't know if terran goes cloak or not on his banshees. that's why he has to get robo and detection even though terran maybe won't eventually go for cloak. and protoss just cannot afford to go robo AND have enough (weak) gateway units to deal with powerful unit compositions like marine tank banshee. it seems to me like you forget how flexible the terran race is with their swapping add-ons and stuff. if you don't play protoss, please do not post nonsense. no offence whatsoever but calling banshees tier 3 is just wrong and untrue.
Banshees come out of the third tier of terran structures; they are tier 3. Cloak requires research. An observer comes out of the second tier of protoss structures; it is tier 2. There's no reason to argue semantics. If a terran is rushing for banshees, then he is spending a lot of gas on things that are not stim/siege mode/extra tanks/extra banshees, or he is delaying the 111 push. It would be pretty stupid if terran teched all the way to starport, used a tech lab, researched cloak, and produced the banshees themselves only for the protoss to be able to completely thwart them no matter what tech path he went down, which is what the poster I quoted was rather boldly suggesting. The only way to follow that poster's suggestion would be to give protoss mobile detection at tier 1, or add detection at the stargate. Either way would be stupid and basically eliminate the cloaked banshee and DT from play against protoss. If you're complaining about how difficult it is to scout terrans, than that isn't really material to the thread. Go complain in the "why 111 is imbalanced" thread. Trying to hold off 111 with gateway units only is pretty futile, anyway, and gateway units are what this thread is about.
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On September 11 2011 10:21 GMonster wrote: Oh there is so many things wrong with this post it actually hurts my brain.
Lets split this post up a bit:
On September 11 2011 10:21 GMonster wrote:Yeah so if terran wants to stop any early game aggression by Protoss they need 3 to 4 bunkers. After Warpgate is finished, because of the influx of units you will never seen a Protoss get attacked as Warpgate finishes (TvP anyways) Good, you found a point in the game where terran can't attack. This has nothing to do with the OP whatsoever.
On September 11 2011 10:21 GMonster wrote: The abbility to WARP IN to where you want to defend IS A DEFENDERS advantage. Instead of T and Z having to rally (which can lead to bad positioning ie. Forcefield or ramp chokes) you get them @ your natural... Not really. Because protoss units are so incredibly weak by themselves, warping in to "defend" anything is usually incredibly hard. The best you can do is warp in a bunch og zealots to buy a bit more time until your real army comes to the rescue. Again, you're missing the point completely here.
I explained this earlier, but lets do it again:
7 minutes in the game, terran attacks a Zerg. With a 1 minute walking distance, the zerg now has a 8 minute army to defend with. This is called "defenders advantage".
8 minutes in the game, protoss attacks the terran. The terran now has a 8 minute army to defend with. This seems incredibly strong! Protoss units thus are equally bad, to leave the terran a chance to fend for himself. Protoss 8 minute attack is nerfed to become a 7 minute attack. But heres the bad part about this:
7 minutes in the game, terran attacks the protoss. With 1 minute walking distance, the protoss now has a 8 minute army to defend himself with. But wait! the protoss army is weakened to become a 7 minute army, as to not become too strong offensively. This means protoss has no defenders advantage whatsoever. This is the essence of what the OP is on about. Now go back and read the OP again.
On September 11 2011 10:21 GMonster wrote: Saying the Marine Maraduer force is good because of Bunkers defensivly is like saying... Well Zerglings do better if there is a Spinecrawler, Zealots do better if there is a Cannon.
Can't believe this was not closed...
Zealots don't do better if there are canons vs terran. Thats largely the problem here. That, pluss the fact that spines and bunkers 1. comes from pool/barracks, while canon comes from forge, which is out of the way early on, and 2. Can't be moved or salvaged.
Thus canons, while helpful, doesn't provide the optimal way to defend yourself compared to spines and bunkers. Again, this was explained in the OP to the detail..
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On September 11 2011 09:39 iblink wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2011 06:02 Gheed wrote:On September 11 2011 05:48 iblink wrote:On September 11 2011 01:16 HolyHenk wrote: Warp gate is the big problem of protoss and it is probably extremely hard to balance for blizzard. The problem is that warp gates give a huge offensive advantage. Imagine terran or zerg having warp gates and instantly teleporting units to your base. This would be completely insane and thats why protoss units are made weaker. This way protoss might still have a small offensive advantage but the weaker units give a defensive disadvantage. Combine this with weak static defences and a lack of detection and you can see why protoss early game is so vulnerable. Protoss does have sentries to defend but the other races are figuring out ways to nullify them and they aren't that effecient on every map. The reason that the 1 - 1 -1 build is so strong is because it exploits the weaknesses of protoss. Forcefields are quite useless, you need observers and you need the power to defeat the opponents army. Give this man a medal. But seriously the problem when playing against 1-1-1 and the problem with protoss early game in general is exactly that: PROTOSS NEEDS DETECTION WITHOUT NECESSARILY GOING ROBO. Protoss needs more options for detection. Making your point bold and underlined doesn't make it correct. Cloaked banshees are tier 3 + upgrade, and not every 111 all-in uses them. It's perfectly reasonable to expect a player to have to build a tier 2 unit to detect a tier 3 cloaked unit. What would be the point of cloaked units if the effect of their cloaking was so easy nullified? That's not what the thread is about, anyway. man.. seriously what are you talking about? first of all what does tier 3+ mean? do you know at which time in the game you have cloaked banshees? that's right, very early. the same thing with colossus, it is considered to be 'tier 3' but it comes really early if you rush for it. the only true tier 3 units i can think about off the top of my head are ultralisk and broodlord - these two do come REALLY late. The most important thing you forget though is that protoss doesn't know if terran goes cloak or not on his banshees. that's why he has to get robo and detection even though terran maybe won't eventually go for cloak. and protoss just cannot afford to go robo AND have enough (weak) gateway units to deal with powerful unit compositions like marine tank banshee. it seems to me like you forget how flexible the terran race is with their swapping add-ons and stuff. if you don't play protoss, please do not post nonsense. no offence whatsoever but calling banshees tier 3 is just wrong and untrue.
Depending on how you look at the Terran tech tree, Banshees ARE Tier 3. Barracks being Tier 1, Factory being Tier 2, and Starport being Tier 3. However, Terran also has add ons. So does that add an extra .5? Would that make Banshees Tier 3.5? Then Battlecruisers with their additional requirement of a Fusion Core becomes Tier 4? The Terran tech tree is just odd to call what is what tier. But for Banshees, they are absolutely at least Tier 2.5. To say they are anything less is absolutely untrue (because they are fucking retarded units). A Thor though would be considered Tier 3, probably due to it following the same system Protoss has.
For the Protoss tech tree, Tier 3 is basically any unit that is built from a Tier 2 building but requires an additional building to unlock it (Fleet Beacon for Tier 3 Carriers and Robotics Support Bay for Tier 3 Colossi; although I suppose Dark Shrine and Templar Archives also count for Tier 3).
For Zerg, it's clear-cut. Hatchery tech is Tier 1. Lair tech is Tier 2. Hive tech is Tier 3.
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On September 11 2011 10:33 Gheed wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2011 09:39 iblink wrote:On September 11 2011 06:02 Gheed wrote:On September 11 2011 05:48 iblink wrote:On September 11 2011 01:16 HolyHenk wrote: Warp gate is the big problem of protoss and it is probably extremely hard to balance for blizzard. The problem is that warp gates give a huge offensive advantage. Imagine terran or zerg having warp gates and instantly teleporting units to your base. This would be completely insane and thats why protoss units are made weaker. This way protoss might still have a small offensive advantage but the weaker units give a defensive disadvantage. Combine this with weak static defences and a lack of detection and you can see why protoss early game is so vulnerable. Protoss does have sentries to defend but the other races are figuring out ways to nullify them and they aren't that effecient on every map. The reason that the 1 - 1 -1 build is so strong is because it exploits the weaknesses of protoss. Forcefields are quite useless, you need observers and you need the power to defeat the opponents army. Give this man a medal. But seriously the problem when playing against 1-1-1 and the problem with protoss early game in general is exactly that: PROTOSS NEEDS DETECTION WITHOUT NECESSARILY GOING ROBO. Protoss needs more options for detection. Making your point bold and underlined doesn't make it correct. Cloaked banshees are tier 3 + upgrade, and not every 111 all-in uses them. It's perfectly reasonable to expect a player to have to build a tier 2 unit to detect a tier 3 cloaked unit. What would be the point of cloaked units if the effect of their cloaking was so easy nullified? That's not what the thread is about, anyway. man.. seriously what are you talking about? first of all what does tier 3+ mean? do you know at which time in the game you have cloaked banshees? that's right, very early. the same thing with colossus, it is considered to be 'tier 3' but it comes really early if you rush for it. the only true tier 3 units i can think about off the top of my head are ultralisk and broodlord - these two do come REALLY late. The most important thing you forget though is that protoss doesn't know if terran goes cloak or not on his banshees. that's why he has to get robo and detection even though terran maybe won't eventually go for cloak. and protoss just cannot afford to go robo AND have enough (weak) gateway units to deal with powerful unit compositions like marine tank banshee. it seems to me like you forget how flexible the terran race is with their swapping add-ons and stuff. if you don't play protoss, please do not post nonsense. no offence whatsoever but calling banshees tier 3 is just wrong and untrue. Banshees come out of the third tier of terran structures; they are tier 3. Cloak requires research. An observer comes out of the second tier of protoss structures; it is tier 2. There's no reason to argue semantics. If a terran is rushing for banshees, then he is spending a lot of gas on things that are not stim/siege mode/extra tanks/extra banshees, or he is delaying the 111 push. It would be pretty stupid if terran teched all the way to starport, used a tech lab, researched cloak, and produced the banshees themselves only for the protoss to be able to completely thwart them no matter what tech path he went down, which is what the poster I quoted was rather boldly suggesting. The only way to follow that poster's suggestion would be to give protoss mobile detection at tier 1, or add detection at the stargate. Either way would be stupid and basically eliminate the cloaked banshee and DT from play against protoss. If you're complaining about how difficult it is to scout terrans, than that isn't really material to the thread. Go complain in the "why 111 is imbalanced" thread. Trying to hold off 111 with gateway units only is pretty futile, anyway, and gateway units are what this thread is about.
On September 11 2011 10:35 RyLai wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2011 09:39 iblink wrote:On September 11 2011 06:02 Gheed wrote:On September 11 2011 05:48 iblink wrote:On September 11 2011 01:16 HolyHenk wrote: Warp gate is the big problem of protoss and it is probably extremely hard to balance for blizzard. The problem is that warp gates give a huge offensive advantage. Imagine terran or zerg having warp gates and instantly teleporting units to your base. This would be completely insane and thats why protoss units are made weaker. This way protoss might still have a small offensive advantage but the weaker units give a defensive disadvantage. Combine this with weak static defences and a lack of detection and you can see why protoss early game is so vulnerable. Protoss does have sentries to defend but the other races are figuring out ways to nullify them and they aren't that effecient on every map. The reason that the 1 - 1 -1 build is so strong is because it exploits the weaknesses of protoss. Forcefields are quite useless, you need observers and you need the power to defeat the opponents army. Give this man a medal. But seriously the problem when playing against 1-1-1 and the problem with protoss early game in general is exactly that: PROTOSS NEEDS DETECTION WITHOUT NECESSARILY GOING ROBO. Protoss needs more options for detection. Making your point bold and underlined doesn't make it correct. Cloaked banshees are tier 3 + upgrade, and not every 111 all-in uses them. It's perfectly reasonable to expect a player to have to build a tier 2 unit to detect a tier 3 cloaked unit. What would be the point of cloaked units if the effect of their cloaking was so easy nullified? That's not what the thread is about, anyway. man.. seriously what are you talking about? first of all what does tier 3+ mean? do you know at which time in the game you have cloaked banshees? that's right, very early. the same thing with colossus, it is considered to be 'tier 3' but it comes really early if you rush for it. the only true tier 3 units i can think about off the top of my head are ultralisk and broodlord - these two do come REALLY late. The most important thing you forget though is that protoss doesn't know if terran goes cloak or not on his banshees. that's why he has to get robo and detection even though terran maybe won't eventually go for cloak. and protoss just cannot afford to go robo AND have enough (weak) gateway units to deal with powerful unit compositions like marine tank banshee. it seems to me like you forget how flexible the terran race is with their swapping add-ons and stuff. if you don't play protoss, please do not post nonsense. no offence whatsoever but calling banshees tier 3 is just wrong and untrue. Depending on how you look at the Terran tech tree, Banshees ARE Tier 3. Barracks being Tier 1, Factory being Tier 2, and Starport being Tier 3. However, Terran also has add ons. So does that add an extra .5? Would that make Banshees Tier 3.5? Then Battlecruisers with their additional requirement of a Fusion Core becomes Tier 4? The Terran tech tree is just odd to call what is what tier. But for Banshees, they are absolutely at least Tier 2.5. To say they are anything less is absolutely untrue (because they are fucking retarded units). A Thor though would be considered Tier 3, probably due to it following the same system Protoss has. For the Protoss tech tree, Tier 3 is basically any unit that is built from a Tier 2 building but requires an additional building to unlock it (Fleet Beacon for Tier 3 Carriers and Robotics Support Bay for Tier 3 Colossi; although I suppose Dark Shrine and Templar Archives also count for Tier 3). For Zerg, it's clear-cut. Hatchery tech is Tier 1. Lair tech is Tier 2. Hive tech is Tier 3.
Stop derailing the thread please. This is not a discussion about whetever you believe in tiers like its somekind of religion. The only thing thats true is that they can't be compared crossrace. Zerg has to upgrade their main building to reach each "tier", terran can change between these "tiers" as if changing socks, and protoss has to choose between one of 3 "tiers".
This is what makes this game unique after all.
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On September 11 2011 10:39 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2011 10:33 Gheed wrote:On September 11 2011 09:39 iblink wrote:On September 11 2011 06:02 Gheed wrote:On September 11 2011 05:48 iblink wrote:On September 11 2011 01:16 HolyHenk wrote: Warp gate is the big problem of protoss and it is probably extremely hard to balance for blizzard. The problem is that warp gates give a huge offensive advantage. Imagine terran or zerg having warp gates and instantly teleporting units to your base. This would be completely insane and thats why protoss units are made weaker. This way protoss might still have a small offensive advantage but the weaker units give a defensive disadvantage. Combine this with weak static defences and a lack of detection and you can see why protoss early game is so vulnerable. Protoss does have sentries to defend but the other races are figuring out ways to nullify them and they aren't that effecient on every map. The reason that the 1 - 1 -1 build is so strong is because it exploits the weaknesses of protoss. Forcefields are quite useless, you need observers and you need the power to defeat the opponents army. Give this man a medal. But seriously the problem when playing against 1-1-1 and the problem with protoss early game in general is exactly that: PROTOSS NEEDS DETECTION WITHOUT NECESSARILY GOING ROBO. Protoss needs more options for detection. Making your point bold and underlined doesn't make it correct. Cloaked banshees are tier 3 + upgrade, and not every 111 all-in uses them. It's perfectly reasonable to expect a player to have to build a tier 2 unit to detect a tier 3 cloaked unit. What would be the point of cloaked units if the effect of their cloaking was so easy nullified? That's not what the thread is about, anyway. man.. seriously what are you talking about? first of all what does tier 3+ mean? do you know at which time in the game you have cloaked banshees? that's right, very early. the same thing with colossus, it is considered to be 'tier 3' but it comes really early if you rush for it. the only true tier 3 units i can think about off the top of my head are ultralisk and broodlord - these two do come REALLY late. The most important thing you forget though is that protoss doesn't know if terran goes cloak or not on his banshees. that's why he has to get robo and detection even though terran maybe won't eventually go for cloak. and protoss just cannot afford to go robo AND have enough (weak) gateway units to deal with powerful unit compositions like marine tank banshee. it seems to me like you forget how flexible the terran race is with their swapping add-ons and stuff. if you don't play protoss, please do not post nonsense. no offence whatsoever but calling banshees tier 3 is just wrong and untrue. Banshees come out of the third tier of terran structures; they are tier 3. Cloak requires research. An observer comes out of the second tier of protoss structures; it is tier 2. There's no reason to argue semantics. If a terran is rushing for banshees, then he is spending a lot of gas on things that are not stim/siege mode/extra tanks/extra banshees, or he is delaying the 111 push. It would be pretty stupid if terran teched all the way to starport, used a tech lab, researched cloak, and produced the banshees themselves only for the protoss to be able to completely thwart them no matter what tech path he went down, which is what the poster I quoted was rather boldly suggesting. The only way to follow that poster's suggestion would be to give protoss mobile detection at tier 1, or add detection at the stargate. Either way would be stupid and basically eliminate the cloaked banshee and DT from play against protoss. If you're complaining about how difficult it is to scout terrans, than that isn't really material to the thread. Go complain in the "why 111 is imbalanced" thread. Trying to hold off 111 with gateway units only is pretty futile, anyway, and gateway units are what this thread is about. Stop derailing the thread please. This is not a discussion about whetever you believe in tiers like its somekind of religion. The only thing thats true is that they can't be compared crossrace. Zerg has to upgrade their main building to reach each "tier", terran can change between these "tiers" as if changing socks, and protoss has to choose between one of 3 "tiers". This is what makes this game unique after all.
... Did you even read my post?
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At this point I don't think even half of the posts on these last few pages are discussing anything related to what the OP was about.
Rampant debates over semantics of what is considered Tier 1/2/3 are completely irrelevant here.
Also if your POSTS are written CAREFULLY and CLEANLY there should be NO REASON to RANDOMLY capitalize WORDS in the MIDDLE of your SENTENCES so as to ARTIFICIALLY INTRODUCE EMPHASIS into your POINTS.
In any case I think Warpgates as a whole when they were first introduced were a bad idea for the exact reasons in the OP. It continues to be a problem when any balance discussion pops up since its inextricably tied in with everything now.
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On September 11 2011 10:41 Gheed wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2011 10:39 Excludos wrote:On September 11 2011 10:33 Gheed wrote:On September 11 2011 09:39 iblink wrote:On September 11 2011 06:02 Gheed wrote:On September 11 2011 05:48 iblink wrote:On September 11 2011 01:16 HolyHenk wrote: Warp gate is the big problem of protoss and it is probably extremely hard to balance for blizzard. The problem is that warp gates give a huge offensive advantage. Imagine terran or zerg having warp gates and instantly teleporting units to your base. This would be completely insane and thats why protoss units are made weaker. This way protoss might still have a small offensive advantage but the weaker units give a defensive disadvantage. Combine this with weak static defences and a lack of detection and you can see why protoss early game is so vulnerable. Protoss does have sentries to defend but the other races are figuring out ways to nullify them and they aren't that effecient on every map. The reason that the 1 - 1 -1 build is so strong is because it exploits the weaknesses of protoss. Forcefields are quite useless, you need observers and you need the power to defeat the opponents army. Give this man a medal. But seriously the problem when playing against 1-1-1 and the problem with protoss early game in general is exactly that: PROTOSS NEEDS DETECTION WITHOUT NECESSARILY GOING ROBO. Protoss needs more options for detection. Making your point bold and underlined doesn't make it correct. Cloaked banshees are tier 3 + upgrade, and not every 111 all-in uses them. It's perfectly reasonable to expect a player to have to build a tier 2 unit to detect a tier 3 cloaked unit. What would be the point of cloaked units if the effect of their cloaking was so easy nullified? That's not what the thread is about, anyway. man.. seriously what are you talking about? first of all what does tier 3+ mean? do you know at which time in the game you have cloaked banshees? that's right, very early. the same thing with colossus, it is considered to be 'tier 3' but it comes really early if you rush for it. the only true tier 3 units i can think about off the top of my head are ultralisk and broodlord - these two do come REALLY late. The most important thing you forget though is that protoss doesn't know if terran goes cloak or not on his banshees. that's why he has to get robo and detection even though terran maybe won't eventually go for cloak. and protoss just cannot afford to go robo AND have enough (weak) gateway units to deal with powerful unit compositions like marine tank banshee. it seems to me like you forget how flexible the terran race is with their swapping add-ons and stuff. if you don't play protoss, please do not post nonsense. no offence whatsoever but calling banshees tier 3 is just wrong and untrue. Banshees come out of the third tier of terran structures; they are tier 3. Cloak requires research. An observer comes out of the second tier of protoss structures; it is tier 2. There's no reason to argue semantics. If a terran is rushing for banshees, then he is spending a lot of gas on things that are not stim/siege mode/extra tanks/extra banshees, or he is delaying the 111 push. It would be pretty stupid if terran teched all the way to starport, used a tech lab, researched cloak, and produced the banshees themselves only for the protoss to be able to completely thwart them no matter what tech path he went down, which is what the poster I quoted was rather boldly suggesting. The only way to follow that poster's suggestion would be to give protoss mobile detection at tier 1, or add detection at the stargate. Either way would be stupid and basically eliminate the cloaked banshee and DT from play against protoss. If you're complaining about how difficult it is to scout terrans, than that isn't really material to the thread. Go complain in the "why 111 is imbalanced" thread. Trying to hold off 111 with gateway units only is pretty futile, anyway, and gateway units are what this thread is about. Stop derailing the thread please. This is not a discussion about whetever you believe in tiers like its somekind of religion. The only thing thats true is that they can't be compared crossrace. Zerg has to upgrade their main building to reach each "tier", terran can change between these "tiers" as if changing socks, and protoss has to choose between one of 3 "tiers". This is what makes this game unique after all. ... Did you even read my post?
Yes, I was responding to the fact that this thread started derailing into whetever or not Starcraft 2 has "tiers". Part of this started with your: "Cloaked banshees are tier 3 + upgrade, and not every 111 all-in uses them. It's perfectly reasonable to expect a player to have to build a tier 2 unit to detect a tier 3 cloaked unit."
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On September 11 2011 10:48 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2011 10:41 Gheed wrote:On September 11 2011 10:39 Excludos wrote:On September 11 2011 10:33 Gheed wrote:On September 11 2011 09:39 iblink wrote:On September 11 2011 06:02 Gheed wrote:On September 11 2011 05:48 iblink wrote:On September 11 2011 01:16 HolyHenk wrote: Warp gate is the big problem of protoss and it is probably extremely hard to balance for blizzard. The problem is that warp gates give a huge offensive advantage. Imagine terran or zerg having warp gates and instantly teleporting units to your base. This would be completely insane and thats why protoss units are made weaker. This way protoss might still have a small offensive advantage but the weaker units give a defensive disadvantage. Combine this with weak static defences and a lack of detection and you can see why protoss early game is so vulnerable. Protoss does have sentries to defend but the other races are figuring out ways to nullify them and they aren't that effecient on every map. The reason that the 1 - 1 -1 build is so strong is because it exploits the weaknesses of protoss. Forcefields are quite useless, you need observers and you need the power to defeat the opponents army. Give this man a medal. But seriously the problem when playing against 1-1-1 and the problem with protoss early game in general is exactly that: PROTOSS NEEDS DETECTION WITHOUT NECESSARILY GOING ROBO. Protoss needs more options for detection. Making your point bold and underlined doesn't make it correct. Cloaked banshees are tier 3 + upgrade, and not every 111 all-in uses them. It's perfectly reasonable to expect a player to have to build a tier 2 unit to detect a tier 3 cloaked unit. What would be the point of cloaked units if the effect of their cloaking was so easy nullified? That's not what the thread is about, anyway. man.. seriously what are you talking about? first of all what does tier 3+ mean? do you know at which time in the game you have cloaked banshees? that's right, very early. the same thing with colossus, it is considered to be 'tier 3' but it comes really early if you rush for it. the only true tier 3 units i can think about off the top of my head are ultralisk and broodlord - these two do come REALLY late. The most important thing you forget though is that protoss doesn't know if terran goes cloak or not on his banshees. that's why he has to get robo and detection even though terran maybe won't eventually go for cloak. and protoss just cannot afford to go robo AND have enough (weak) gateway units to deal with powerful unit compositions like marine tank banshee. it seems to me like you forget how flexible the terran race is with their swapping add-ons and stuff. if you don't play protoss, please do not post nonsense. no offence whatsoever but calling banshees tier 3 is just wrong and untrue. Banshees come out of the third tier of terran structures; they are tier 3. Cloak requires research. An observer comes out of the second tier of protoss structures; it is tier 2. There's no reason to argue semantics. If a terran is rushing for banshees, then he is spending a lot of gas on things that are not stim/siege mode/extra tanks/extra banshees, or he is delaying the 111 push. It would be pretty stupid if terran teched all the way to starport, used a tech lab, researched cloak, and produced the banshees themselves only for the protoss to be able to completely thwart them no matter what tech path he went down, which is what the poster I quoted was rather boldly suggesting. The only way to follow that poster's suggestion would be to give protoss mobile detection at tier 1, or add detection at the stargate. Either way would be stupid and basically eliminate the cloaked banshee and DT from play against protoss. If you're complaining about how difficult it is to scout terrans, than that isn't really material to the thread. Go complain in the "why 111 is imbalanced" thread. Trying to hold off 111 with gateway units only is pretty futile, anyway, and gateway units are what this thread is about. Stop derailing the thread please. This is not a discussion about whetever you believe in tiers like its somekind of religion. The only thing thats true is that they can't be compared crossrace. Zerg has to upgrade their main building to reach each "tier", terran can change between these "tiers" as if changing socks, and protoss has to choose between one of 3 "tiers". This is what makes this game unique after all. ... Did you even read my post? Yes, I was responding to the fact that this thread started derailing into whetever or not Starcraft 2 has "tiers". Part of this started with your: "Cloaked banshees are tier 3 + upgrade, and not every 111 all-in uses them. It's perfectly reasonable to expect a player to have to build a tier 2 unit to detect a tier 3 cloaked unit."
So I'm the one derailing the thread because someone grossly misinterpreted the colloquial use of the word tier with regards to SC2 and then used his post to complain about 111, which only tangentially relates to what the OP is about? Yeah, I don't think so.
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I agree with the OP. I've been saying this for quite a while, and I think there is only one real solution if Blizzard is really keen on keeping their warp-gate mechanic. Give normal gateways a faster production time than warp-gates, and let people decide between offense and defense. If it takes 12 seconds from one natural to the other, then all you need to have is units to come out 4-8 seconds faster. You won't increase P's offensive power but significantly make them better at defending. Obviously these numbers should be changed according to testing and what not.
This adds a shit ton more depth to P strategy and adds another thing they (we) need to think about.
1) Pushes don't become any better as it is always faster to just warp in units with a proxy pylon (which will use the old warp-gate timings)
2) Defending timing pushes becomes much easier, allowing for more economic openings and more macro games.
3) Fixes PvP. Not "fix pvp like Blizz tried to do" but ACTUALLY fix PvP. You get the defender's advantage and reactionary 3/4 gates will be able to hold fast 4 gate.
4) Allows a dynamic for the players where they have to decide if they want to be agressive or defensive or maybe even both. How many gateways you want as warp-gate becomes a real decision throughout the game, and becomes more important as the game progresses.
5) P is the easiest race to macro in, and the chronoboost mechanic is much easier than larva inject or creep tumor because you can forget it and then catch up without problems. Even T has to think about if they want to save 50-100 energy for mules at a certain period of the game. This gives P another thing to do, switching between gateways and warpgates throughout the game to maximize production, according to your strategy.
I honestly don't see any negatives, but feel free to add/correct anything I might have said wrong.
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