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On October 24 2011 21:47 Champi wrote: I can't see this unit ever being made, as far as i can tell it is the equivilent of blizzard saying:
"ok protoss is having a problem with mutas, so we are gonna make the carrier the counter"
this unit will not be made by any protoss who wants to try to counter muta, it is too expensive, it will take too much time, and it is too slow.
mutalisks are a fast harrasment unit that appear in the mid game to pin the protoss in their base and keep them on 2 base for as long as possible, and threaten to base race if they try to leave.
if you think this unit will be the answer, just imagine in your head scouting a spire with an obs or halluc, and saying to yourself, ok hes going muta, time to make carriers.
it just doesnt work, you need corairs to counter mutalisks, imo they should give phoenixes splash damage, or change the ground to air damage of stalkers to do bonus to light instead of armoured, that way they can effectively combat high numbers of mutas
There are a lot of problems with the way Protoss and the Mutalisk interact.
The Mutalisk is one of 5 Zerg units that can hit air, one of two that get utterly dominated boy phoenixes.
Due to the unreasonable cost of hydralisks, terrible mobility of queens, corruptors, infestors, and spores, mutalisks are generally the best option for fighting phoenix play, even though they get dominated.
It takes 7 phoenix shots to kill a muta.
It takes 20 muta shots to kill a phoenix.
Phoenixs are faster, deal more damage, have a faster firing rate, have longer range, have more hp, and shields regen faster than muta hp.
Buffing the phoenix is not the answer, it already dominates the mutalisk.
That being said, massing enough mutalisks turns the tables. With fights numbered like 24 mutas to 14 phoenixs, generally 1 of each unit will die per volley.
The Tempest is a good unit for eventually forcing Zerg off muta play, but then you are stuck with the other side of the problem.
How does Zerg deal with an air army from protoss when they can't shoot up and mutalisks aren't viable?
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How do zergs deal with air protoss in HOTS? Like they did in WOL. The Infestor. Don't forget about your units in WOL.
Also,
The hydralisk? A mass air army's going to get wrecked by 100 food of hydras. Don't anticipate colossi because they're going mass air and you can change tech too.
Even the really late hive speed upgrade is viable because if they have a fleet beacon and a sizeable air army, I'm sure you can have a hive and an upgrade by then. This mass air army of phoenix+void+tempest will get absolutely shat on by just a mass of zerglings and some roaches. Tempest DPS as we've seen is slow and bad, void rays won't be able to deal with zerglings, and graviton lift against zerglings is just inefficient. A wall-off will be dealt with easy with banelings by the same concept. This is ridiculously cost efficient since these are generally mineral-favored units, though it is larva-heavy, so a macro hatch(or multiple on more than 2-3 bases... in the mid-late game... against mass air...) is pretty damn good. Also, fungal growth is a pretty good spell against the clump of units that will consist of 10 phoenixes. Essentially Free units. None of these units outrange neural either.
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On October 25 2011 02:49 Ktk wrote: How do zergs deal with air protoss in HOTS? Like they did in WOL. The Infestor. Don't forget about your units in WOL.
Also,
The hydralisk? A mass air army's going to get wrecked by 100 food of hydras. Don't anticipate colossi because they're going mass air and you can change tech too.
Even the really late hive speed upgrade is viable because if they have a fleet beacon and a sizeable air army, I'm sure you can have a hive and an upgrade by then. This mass air army of phoenix+void+tempest will get absolutely shat on by just a mass of zerglings and some roaches. Tempest DPS as we've seen is slow and bad, void rays won't be able to deal with zerglings, and graviton lift against zerglings is just inefficient. A wall-off will be dealt with easy with banelings by the same concept. This is ridiculously cost efficient since these are generally mineral-favored units, though it is larva-heavy, so a macro hatch(or multiple on more than 2-3 bases... in the mid-late game... against mass air...) is pretty damn good. Also, fungal growth is a pretty good spell against the clump of units that will consist of 10 phoenixes. Essentially Free units. None of these units outrange neural either.
Hydras are very effective against air in it's current WoL form... But I honestly do feel that the Tempest will be much more effective than the Carrier ever was since it appears to be a little faster, and it also does actual splash. I've been able to mass lift hydras before but I haven't had anything to actually kill them off quickly... The tempest will be much better suited to accomplish this than the Carrier IMO.
As for Zergling Roach, keep in mind that ling runbys are not going to be AS problematic as you can transform your base into a bunch of photon cannons via Arc Shield. I could forsee banelings being more of a problem, but as you aptly noted you need a lot of larvae and bases to make that work effectively, and going heavy air as Protoss with the permanent option to mass recall will make it much more difficult to secure bases than in the past for Zerg.
As for Neural Parasite/Fungal... That would definitely be a big big problem for air as if they got off a neural on some Tempests they could shred the Phoenix support rather quickly. But also keep in mind that Phoenixes can lift the infestors to break the neural, and combined with a bit of Oracle harass (basically try and deny that infestation pit for as long as possible) you could keep the Zerg army from getting maxed out too quickly.
The Oracle is the subtle key that I think will allow this all to work. Currently going air in protoss you tech straight to the colossus since you are anticipating hydras. Instead of teching completely differently, you're actually able to create your own timings by delaying that tech from being produced.
It's going to be very cat and mouse, and very exciting to play if you ask me.
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One thing to consider late game PvZ is that apparently ultralisks got changed from +armored to +light.
source: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/3424465304?page=7#129
If true I don't see ultras being very useful vs protoss anymore.
The big thing that I am interested in is the possibility of Oracles after some sort of forge expand. After a void ray you could make ~2 of them to first do some mineral harass since the zerg will not have many (if any) attacking units at all. Then as you go to push out, you can stasis their roach warren and they would have to hold some kind of 6 gate with +1 weapons with only lings. Stasis lasting 45 seconds is a long time.
Also given that zergs usually do not get much AA, you could harass with them all game for no additional cost.
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On October 25 2011 03:17 CrAzEdMiKe wrote: As for Zergling Roach, keep in mind that ling runbys are not going to be AS problematic as you can transform your base into a bunch of photon cannons via Arc Shield.
I think you're overestimating the strength of cannons a little, bro
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On the panel, they said the tempest is for 'those extreme late-game scenarios when zerg gets 50 mutalisks against protoss' because 'phoenixes are only good against mutas in small numbers'.
Now as for that statement.... it makes no sense imo. No one makes 40+ mutalisks against protoss. I guess maybe in like silver league there's a big problem where zerg will just suddenly make 40 mutalisks in ZvP, but at higher levels of play, no zerg ever makes mutalisks in zvp lategame. They are used in midgame, around 20-25 mutalisks, for a base trade scenario.
From what I played, it also seems ridiculously OP - but they already know that (they made comments saying that it's way too powerful right now, but it's just concept and they WILL nerf it from it's current incarnation). Not just for it's splash, but because it raped corruptors, and it's ground attack is stupidly strong. I think every other person at blizzcon tried out mass tempests, although most people at blizzcon were low level and probably couldn't use the mouse since they didn't have menu options (so if you were lefthanded, you were screwed, or if you played on less-than-insane-high sensitivity).
The swarm host seems kind of...useless, but I think they know that too. The whole point of the swarm host is when you are already way ahead in midgame, and someone is turtling on 2-3 bases as terran and you want to apply mild pressure on them. I don't think it'll have much use in ZvP?
Everyone thinks viper is op. Destiny said he thinks it's way op when asked.
All the new zerg stuff is hive tech - move banes, hydra speed. I think a lot of the new zerg stuff is mostly useless, with the exception of ultra charge.
I was dissapointed that zerg got new 'base' stuff like protoss got with their nexus.
Also, the "Arc" weapon that protoss nexus has, ONLY hurts light units. Meaning it won't do anything for roaches.
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someone correct me if im wrong but the entomb ability of the oracle locks out mineral patches, and as a result, all of the drones move to a mineral patch that can be mined, hence stacking
which is potentially very dangerous in combination with any AoE damage dealer.
eg, cast entomb on 6 mineral patches all 16 (or so) drones stack on the remaining 2 mineral patches cast psi storm which would hit every drone OR colossus drop OR archon drop
anyway, this all depends on drones react when entomb is cast. if they still mill around the entombed patches, this obviously wont work.
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I have question aabout HoT, would i need to buy both WoL and HoT to actually play with the new units or is having HoT enough?
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On October 25 2011 04:54 DeltaX wrote:One thing to consider late game PvZ is that apparently ultralisks got changed from +armored to +light. source: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/3424465304?page=7#129If true I don't see ultras being very useful vs protoss anymore. The big thing that I am interested in is the possibility of Oracles after some sort of forge expand. After a void ray you could make ~2 of them to first do some mineral harass since the zerg will not have many (if any) attacking units at all. Then as you go to push out, you can stasis their roach warren and they would have to hold some kind of 6 gate with +1 weapons with only lings. Stasis lasting 45 seconds is a long time. Also given that zergs usually do not get much AA, you could harass with them all game for no additional cost.
when i first played sc2, this is how i thought the overseers contaminate ability worked. but i do think this ability could be much too powerful against zerg. as you outlined, protoss can basically control the zerg composition by targeting certain buildings at key times, like at the start of a big 200 v 200 battle. a big part of zerg is being able to tech switch after these large engagements, giving toss a means to influence that part of zerg is not necessarily bad, especially since doing so would require extremely fine control and multitasking, but with the current calibre of players, i definitely think it is possible for it to be used to such a degree that the zerg has very limited options.
but this is all theory, it could be balanced quite well by the time its released :D
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^ Even after extensive internal testing and beta, the game likely won't be balanced until about a year after release, just like WoL. The hope is that it's at least 40-60 balance instead of 30-70, and that the game is interesting, rather than roach/hydra/corruptor > stalker/colossi like wol was at launch.
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i predict lots of tunneling banelings shall be replicated, despite the steep price. if indeed they're fully upgraded, (buckets of) workers will still pop to a single one.
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The coolest thing about new Protoss air is that you'll be ENCOURAGED to clump TONS of units, so that you can recall them all at once! Fungal is no longer the absolute bane to Protoss that it once was~!
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^ and why is that? FG wasn't changed.
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On October 25 2011 07:05 Demizzle wrote: I think you're overestimating the strength of cannons a little, bro
Well, even if the Arc Shield ONLY attacks light units, at 20 damage a pop on most of the buildings being attacked, supplemented by some sentries i don't see how Roach/Ling is going to crack through that easily. Plus the fact of the matter is, you're going air... Neither Roaches or Lings shoot up which means one mass recall will allow you to defend outlying expansions in plenty of time.
Air play is already frequently used in PvZ and yes there are Roach/Ling counteraggressions, but most good Protoss players are able to handle it already, nevermind the fact that we might have some incredibly good defensive tools to help us out.
Who knows... maybe future Protoss players are going to make "macro Nexus" lol (not likely i know, but it would be funny nonetheless).
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