Check out more about Protoss concepts - ruclips.net/video/fd9NnBAlHH8/видео.html Why Skytoss is a problem - ruclips.net/video/bjurICCIk1I/видео.html Timecodes: 00:00 What's it about 00:19 The issues with Protoss Race 01:15 Race Design in StarCraft 2 02:13 Why Protoss is both Weak and OP 04:40 What's the main problem with Protoss and how to fix it
Every Protoss ground unit does big, slow damage. None are fast firing. It means small Protoss armies get overwhelmed easily so they have to remain with the deathball.
I remember, when I was just entering Starcraft, I started playing protoss for their aesthetics and the feeling that it heavily relies on casters in order to win fights. I wish they had more ability variety instead of that deathball tactic
@@yangpaan453 Or play a game that discourage deathballing by other means instead of artificially limiting it with arbitrarily small unit groups and terrible pathfinding. If "it takes skill" to just move your army from one point of the map to the other and place them there, it's not a good game.
@@TyphoonJig It is not a good game because you cant select your entire army supply in one click and attack move it across the map? That is just the opinion of someone who simply cant handle having a high APM. Having to group you marines in 1 group to be able to stim them and control your medics along with them is real skill. You cant complain that something is not hard because it is not dumbed down for you.
The nexus's recall range used to be much bigger than it is now. Ive always played Terran because I love how they are only limited by how fast you want to burn out your wrists. One protoss player proxied a nexus beneath my ledge in the main in the fog, then recalled his army right onto the ledge. I watched the replay and admired his creativity. Now I am sad because I wish so badly that someone had done that against Idra in a pro game. The sale wouldve been unbelievable.
@@cannogabang1999 Someone used it on me a long time ago. I did see a video with PiG where he was doing a florencio showcase with it. The player called me a "piss sad round eye" at the end before I gg'd so I don't think it was florencio. Best insult ever.
This reminds me of the mothership core, and why it was a weird addition in the first place Originally, it was supposed to help Protoss in the early game because back then, Zealots and Stalkers were too weak to hold off attacks from Terran and Zerg. But instead of buffing Zealots and Stalkers, they added a new unit that you can only get one of that is decent, but it didn't fix much. They eventually removed the mothership core and buffed Zealots and Stalkers, but both still feel way too weak compared to marines and banes even in the late game. I think Warp Gate ultimately breaks Protoss as a race, as it breaks the balance of Gateway/Tier 1 units
Pretty much, yeah. Protoss offense is fine, as long as you have a proxy pylon or something. Aggressive early-game warp gate is generally pretty strong. But warp gate isn't much of a defensive advantage, because it mostly just gets your units across the map faster. Mothership core was originally envisioned as a defensive unit to give protoss back the defender's advantage that other races have, but Blizzard never really managed to make it function that way, and it became yet another offensive tool in an arsenal that was already fine. Someone else above mentioned that at some point the community was pushing for buffing zealots and stalkers and pushing warp gate to tier 3, and... yeah, thinking about it, that would probably help.
MSC got basically replaced with Shield Overcharge, which was honestly a pretty good move. Protoss's big issue is Warpgate being basically Tier 1, negating one of the few defender's advantage SC2 has: Reinforcement time. Unlike everyone else, Warpgate means that Protoss can effectively have production appear in your front door instead of having to walk across the map. If Gateway tech was strong at home, they'd be even more snowball-y smashing in bases, so they really couldn't afford for them to be that powerful. Compare to have insane it would be if Immortals could reinforce from a forwards pylon. Combined with a strange lack of powerful late game casters, P's unit compositions are a bit ironically fragile for the high tech aliens.
Zerg have powerful fast travel options in the form of Nydus Networks and Nydus Worms, but they are balanced by being restricted to Lair tech. Imagine Nydus being available without requiring Lair.
Lair tech isn't really a big restriction. It just seems like it is because of how most zerg players prioritize eco over tech, but actually you can get a Nydus very quickly if you just don't stop mining gas.
Terran is insanely supply efficient in the late game, with 160 army supply because of all the orbitals and MULEs, whereas toss is often stuck at 130 with worse eco
@@quentinsimon9434chronoboost gets outscaled late game. You cannot compete with 4+ orbitals spamming mules ever. Marauders beat all their robo units very easily and as he said, collosi is like the weakest backbone unit in the game. Skytoss has been nerfed so many times because casuals don't know how to micro. Protoss is harder to play as you climb higher and get better players as every loss in the early and mid game is really costly. Think of it like Garen in League of Legends. Easy to play and pick up at lower levels, very hard to pay at higher levels
There's just a lot wrong with Protoss. Now, the idea behind them I think was actually really cool. They were designed to be strong but micro-intensive in battle. Zerg was supposed to be micro-intensive in economy with Queens and creep tumors and all that, while Terran was in the middle. And so Protoss got caster units incredibly early. But, unfortunately, this concept doesn't scale well. Trying to get the maximum potential out of adepts, stalkers, and sentries quickly becomes inefficient when compared to a bio ball or zerg run in. They could find ways to buff those units so it does become efficient. But doing that would also mean Warpgate / Prism drops become more powerful. So, you can't do that. Which leaves ground Toss to instead trade up to bigger units to micro like disruptors and high templar, and babysitting colossus. While not using the high cost early units effectively anymore. So that huge swath of actually fairly skill intensive units gets turned to chaff, to be replaced with units that are largely less engaging but necessary to win actual fights. Or, they abandon ground and take an even worst solution, going into skytoss. Which is another issue, because it roughly mirrors the same pattern of problems. Phoenixes and oracles are arguably the best designed and microable early air units in the game. But they don't scale well either (though oracles do transition to detector/scouts) meaning the toss player must rely on the big dumb but strong carriers, void rays, and tempests. This is noticeably completely backwards from how other races are structured. Early zerg is largely a move, with you know, a few ravagers to mix things up. And marines and marauders have some micro, but they don't really get the boost until stim and medivacs get added to the mix. But then they expand their micro options with the game usually pushing the best players toward adding additional caster units and creating multiple strike forces to hit at separate times. It's sad to say since Toss is my favorite race. But I really do think it needed a whole rework from the ground up. The theory of a race that is battle micro focused from the start with less emphasis on economic mechanics isn't terrible. But the way to do that needed to be to start a little more than the other races and expand them further over time, rather than to narrow them.
Yeah, its really weird how Protoss has a bunch of relatively weak early game casters and strong A-move late game units, vs T and Z having basic combat units that get boosted by late game casters. And P's one late game caster (Mothership) being way too limited to be useful.
@@Appletank8 IMO, here's how I think they should have themed each race. Terran is defensive heavy, in that they should be building forward bunkers/planetary fortresses and setting up good siege tank + lib area denials, i.e. win by strategy. Zerg is attrition, they macro easy but units are inefficient, so their strategy is to attack in waves to wear down the opponent. Protoss is micro heavy, they should have all of their abilities unlocked (Stalkers with blink), but are much less effective until they research (blink is half the range with double the CD until normal research). Also, you should be able to "unsummon" warp gate units at a pylon, as a way to heal them. It's really weird to see damaged units last the entire game Zerg should really not have Vipers and Infestors, I'd argue that their abilities are a bit better than High Templars
The problem is that they gave Terran and Zerg all of the actually good toys and spellcasters and were afraid of making Protoss strong. And to be fair to Blizzard, EVERY TIME Protoss got something good, they broke the game. It's just been a constant swing of too strong and too weak. It's funny to see the difference when you go back to SC1 - Protoss had THE BEST casters in the game and their A-movers all hit really, really hard. But they were all terribly slow and vulnerable. The fast protoss units didn't hit hard. It was good balance. SC2, for whatever reason, never gave Protoss good, new spells outside of the Mothership but the history of that unit speaks for itself. Protoss was doomed from the start... doomed from the first mass Void Ray cheese in WoL Beta.
protoss was designed to have the most value per mineral spent, quality > quantity. if you let them expand and macro and build a bazillion units they can literally attack move and win, like in lower elos
Yeah but in reality, it ain't. 4 Full upgrade lings beat a full upgraded Zelot. Mass marine beat mass zelot with equal minerals spent even without micro. Hydra cost less than the stalker but is superior in every way, but mobility ... and so on. Even more widowmines have extra shield dmg, ghosts can counter everything toss has.. it's just sad. Zerg main speaking BTW.
@@Lmaokekw975 Given that protoss units are more cost-effective early-mid game, how should one approach it? Shouldn't protoss ideally perma-pressure to stall enemy expansion and use, say, blink sentry prism to stay flexible for offense, worker pickoffs and backdoor intercept which would cost the enemy low invest return ressources? And then fast expand to quickly pump tech? Toss lategame is just too inflexible, and templars against BL corruptor meatball and mass BC is outspokenly tough.
@@Wabbelpaddel the thing is, you can't be out on the map as a Protoss because if you're getting dropped, or getting run by'ed you're losing a base or two, tons of probes and tech in a matter of second while the opponent can easily defend at home. Besides, Protoss units aren't even that efficient in early game or mid game, it's only when you start getting storm, disruptors and collosi that Protoss starts to handle fights equally as well as the other two races sadly. This leads to Protoss either relying on gimmicks or allins as mentioned in the video. Sadly, everytime an all in is brought to the table blizzard gets it down with the nerf hammer without even leaving time for zergs and Terrans to adapt and overcome.
Toss issues all stem from the warp-in mechanic. Gateway units are balanced around potential rushes and timings using warp-in which negates most defenders advantage. To achieve this balance, Toss T1 units are tuned comparatively weak so that they don't kill zergs and terrans too easily with rushes and timings. But with weak T1 units, toss needs strong T2 units to survive the mid game. Disruptors, Colossi, Voidrays, Templar etc are very strong but only work as part of a big group where they can be protected - ie the deathball. The highly concentrated army (the deathball) is straightforward to control but difficult to control against. Below pro level, it's frustrating to play against and at pro level it doesn't provide the Toss players enough opportunities to express their skill through superior control.
I've stopped playing SC2 Years ago, fell back into the rabbit hole recently, glad to see some things never change and that despite having stats to prove Toss is on the weaker side of the balance people still call it broken and OP years after years for decades
majority of players are average to low skill. At low skill its easier to manage toss buildings and also tpss units are bulkier leading to more A move victories. I play all 3 races and by far I feel that if you are toss and slightly out of possition you can lose while as terran def is easier, as zerg its very fast to move around.
@@ixirion when I stopped playing (during the voidray meta) Protoss made up about 40-50% of gm depending on server, low gm was basically purely skytoss and cannon rushing Protoss players, for the few years before that Protoss was also over represented in gm specifically low-mid gm . Protoss is under represented in high gm/high tournament level players
I feel like Astrea summed it up very well in one of his interviews. The whole race seems to be balanced around the disruptor (and other gimmicky units). Redesigning these and then rebalancing the race afterwards would be the right way imo.
Unfortunately i feel with the leve of support we got its unrealistic to expect. Best we can hope for is small changes, that might make the balance a bit better, step by step.
@@ElfosDeMordor I think it was in one of those snippets they showed in between matches at Katowice this year. "Which unit would you remove from the game and why?" was the question and Astrea answered "Disruptor" and said because it's of its terrible influence on game design and balancing.
You failed to mention that protoss units always cost more not only in both minerals and gas, but also in supply, which means Zergs and terrans still have more units in the lategame. Also protoss has been repeatedly nerfed for a long time, it was a running joke in my friend group, that in legacy of the void, the protoss expansion, Protoss was the weakest race. I honestly think that the identity of Protoss as "the lategame race" was very healthy, because the protoss army is also very slow, so it's relatively easy to punish it by surrounding or outmaneuvering it and then it basically becomes a positioning battle. The problem of course is if that is not possible, but I believe it can be achieved. For me personally, I stopped playing when Zerg became the best lategame race. Such a drastic shift in identity of races shouldn't be done in any game imo.
how is zerg the best lategame race? because serral makes it look that way? then you have Maru's that fight as 3-4base terran vs 5-6base zerg and still make favourable trades with ghosts like there's tomorrow
@@schippes24 I'm not a specialist in TvZ, maybe terrans are better, ghosts are certainly a good unit. I was specifically referring to PvZ and basically the infestors and vipers that can ruin a lategame protoss in a straight engagement.
VEry good analysis. I think on of the things contributing to the Protoss balance problems was LotV, since when the game starts much faster with much stronger economy, getting to death balls or huge timing attacks much faster then before. In earlier times, the beefy early and mid game units of Protoss would give you value for a longer time, allowing you get ahead of the opponent through good trades.
because the zergling no matter the level or stage of the game is still the 'base' zerg unit. Protoss can skip gateways entirely. Beyond that just race differences. Protoss generally focuses more on counters by...building an archon which has advantage against all zerg units. zerg's strategy is much more 'I just have more stuff' instead of better/specific stuff. Making each faction's most generic 'base' unit similar ruins the uniqueness of the races
@@Skaliton man... you can skip gates entirelly? Are you abronze league hero? XDDD In all other cases you are just dead. Also how is zealot similiar to zergling except that they are both melee? Zealot is a tank/frontline, while ling is swarmer/skirmisher unit. Also archon is a mid game unit which is not viable at mass the moment lurkers/broods are out. Which is fine. If protoss mass only archons early you can counter him with Hydras no problem. SC2 is higly complex and quite well balanced game. every unit has counter. you can see ppl whiining about imba almost equally from the 3 races.
Protoss is the most rock-paper-scissors race. It lacks a solid gateway army base, Zeolots are melee, Stalkers are fragile. Gateway units lose straight up vs Terran and Zerg base armies so leans heavily on tech units like storm or colossus to bridge the gap. This puts all your eggs in one basket because if your colossus or storms die you loose, incentivizing the ball to protect them. And sometimes you just lose because you went colossus and the zerg went spire...should have built a stargate cause now you build-order lost. This sort of adds to the above, toss lacks flexible defenders advantage, Terran has bunkers, range, tanks and terrain. Zerg has Queens and speed on creep. Toss only has a shield battery. The solution to toss is to give them a real defenders advantage and a solid gateway army. Either baseline or via T1 upgrade give the units/buildings within the radius of a nexus a buff like shield armor. Next, Move the immortal to the gateway, with stats adjusted accordingly, to give toss an actual power unit in gateway that challenges other armies on the ground, with this stalkers can do more vs light units to give some answer to build order loss. My 2cent rambllings.
Don't worry. Theorycraft whiners, like the guy who made this video are largely ignored nowdays. Changes have been few and very small,a s they should in a 12 year old game
no they need to to finaly dont have nightmer abaut terran who all but all but rly all build are hell for protos and only way is skytos, canon rush or say good bye to enemy eco by spam adepts and HTemplars in enemy base
because Zerglings cannot attack into a Cannon fortified base (if you take your bases carefully with your main army standing next to it its impossible for a Zerg to attack in, and then again lings aren't free) because Swarm Hosts open up a possibility of counter attacking because you just tell your opponent you spend a lot of money on unit that fights every 30 seconds because Brood Lords are artillery units, therefore weak when fighting anything head-on, and can't attack air Cheap =/= free. And even if Zerg had realistically free units, no amount of units with the 200 cap will prevent a huge deathball army or skytoss from killing you in the first place unless youll manage to force out a basetrade
Zerg late game is the strongest late game because of its casters and broodlords. It just takes a lot of control, so casuals do not get it. That is one of the reasons why Zerg is dominant in high level.
Zerg has "free units" because Terran/Toss have insane defensive capabilities. You'll never break a sky-toss or mech player with hydra/lurker/viper. Their units and base defenses are simply too cost effective. Without broodlords and swarm hosts you'd lose to these compositions every time. Also..i'd literally trade both the broodlord/swarm host for either carriers or battlecruisers; free units aren't that great.
@@Konranjyoutai well... basically almost every time when I see a late PvZ programe then I see skytoss loosing slowly against Zerg with a spore crawler forest and viper/corruptor/brood lord blob. And if accidentally both armies are zeroed Zerg just instantly rebuild it's army with infinite amount of lings... which eats everything instantly with upgrades.
They could start by giving Zealots more movement speed, they just get kitted by terrant marauders slow or vaporized by banes. As for Collosus maybe a faster building time and make the viper harpoon drag Massive units halfway distance like it doesn't make sense that a freaking Mothership be dragged by a plane size bug xD
Yeah, I actually think Zealots need a movement speed buff. It would allow Protoss players to buy a bit more time on defense as well as more options when counterattacking.
No. Protoss needs rework. What you’re suggesting is the balance the game with only battles in mind. But high level StarCraft doesn’t work that way. At the high level, there’s really no OP units. It’s all about OP timing. There’s a reason why the gateway units are dogshit. Because in the past when they were somewhat decent, the mid-early game timing attack and all-ins of protoss are insanely good. I always takes Maru’s 3-peat year as example of how broken the toss is. That year, Protoss got buff, particularly stalker got a DPH buff. It was a miserable year for Terran as the number of GM Terran dropped to historic low(at the time), because of the improved stalker sniping ability made TvP unplayable for a lot of ppl since the early game protoss pressure its unstoppable. There was just no way for Terran to make a tank without losing 10 marines, or worse in the early game. Protoss would just snowball into a win if they didnt get a gg earlier. However, Maru still won it all, because of his perfect execution of TY’s proxy rack essentially nullified Protoss early aggression, and made the MvP matchup favors Maru because Terran has the superior production if done right. The changes on battle units alone isn’t the answer. Major overhaul is needed.
@@Telopead There is 0 chance that Blizzard will actually do a major overhaul. Would this be perfect? Yes, but we will never get it. That's why we should take a look at what is possible. Tweaking the numbers on units is possible. I like the idea of giving Zealots more speed. In lower level games that isn't much of an isuse, because there is very little kiting. In high level games the Zealots gets stronger, by making him suck less vs marauders. While at the same time making him not that much stronger in a "real" combat. Toss will just loose less zealots in a chase / kiting scenario.
@@wedgeantilles8575 I would agree with a speed buff of some sort for zealot. Imo maruaders should be countered more easily considering how easily they shut down colossus. The tradeoff should be made more fair.
yep, terran lose 1/3 army oh no anyway zerg lose 4/5 army, oh no anyway protos lose 2 immortal. gg xd like that micro is insane if ypu not do one of to stupid build like carriers rush
@@Darlf_Sevil fr, like when I play Zerg I can just throw my army at my enemy to save supply for new units, but when I play protoss, I can't throw money at the problem
Generally agree with much that was said in the video, but would also like to add at least one additional point here. Protoss' reliance on higher-strength, but lower-cost, units also means that there is far less of an ability to cheaply scout, which reduces the fog of war and randomness. Zerg has arguably the best scouting unit in the game and has total vision over everywhere they have creep spread + overlords. Terran has potentially the second best scouting unit in the game, sensor towers, and scans. While Protoss does have hallucinations for scouting, which is a very good ability, all other methods of scouting that Protoss has are much more cost-prohibitive than the other two races and hurt quite a bit more if the scouting units are lost. Both Zerg and Terran have some of the best tools to reduce randomness in matchups, which is a quality that's extremely favorable for top players who have a good chance at winning tournaments.
@@Framidan are you kiddin? teran have sensor towers/scans + Raven. observer cost shtiton of gas + stops your robo from producing. Its also easily sniped or by several towers cut from observing at all. As zerg you can make overssers everywhere on the map. terran scans whenever he needs. Its quite a fun if you dont have observer to run into cloacked/burrowed unit. if you drag it with army it runs ahead and gets killed etc.
@@ixirion scan aren't free, and you don't build sensor towers until midgame at least, ravens are good, but you need starport with the tech lab, that slows your stim and combat shield, and also it cost a lot of gas
was playing sc2 years ago 8hours a day grinding master trying to get into gm but stopped with LotV cause it was too much effort to stay good but man, love your videos they are bringing back so many late night memorys. good times;D
Tbh the problem is that the gap between casual and pros is so vast that buffs or nerfs that would benefit casuals would be a detriment to pros and vice versa. The recent lowering of target priority for intercepters for instance, on paper it means your units will target the carrier instead of the interceptors allowing them to kill the important unit. The problem is that it allows protoss to kite any player on A-Move because now units will try to follow the carrier instead of dealing with the interceptors. Ofc it requires micro on the protoss' part but the chasing player will very likely lose more units in the process. And even reverting that won't change much because it would mean we'd get back to the first problem of units targeting interceptors and never killing the carrier.
Protoss is broken because their most iconic technology breaks a fundamental rule of RTS games. Warp Gate breaks the principle of defender's advantage. Distance -and specifically map traversal time and reinforcement time- favor the defender with crucial extra time to react. Zealots and Stalkers cannot be allowed to be too strong because of that. Sentries were designed as defensive spellcasters, with forcefield specifically existing to block the ramp to the main base with 1 cast. High Templar lost their energy upgrade because of that. If it can warp in, it needs to gather energy or be a mediocre fighting unit. It was never about lategame or early game or micro. Protoss is the race with teleportation as one of its core mechanics. The only way to strengthen their defense without adding to their offense is global cooldown abilities. Recall, nexus overcharge, pylon overcharge, and shield battery overcharge. Protoss have always been the problem child because map size affects them the least. Either warp in units at the front, or recall an entire army back to defend; protoss units have the option to just not traverse the map but appear where needed. This problem has been known since the 4gate rush in 2010.
Warp in mechanism -> gateway units had to be horribly weak -> robo/stargate units were designed into pivots of the protoss army (unlike Brood War, in which all robo/stargate productions, except the carrier, are supporting units) -> army have to move around the core units and consequently in chunks
The answer as to why Protoss is weak on the pro level is very very VERY simple. They nerfed Zealots to the grave. Remember +30 chargelots? Yeah, give Protoss back their original ICONIC unit, just this one singular buff, and Protoss would be highly competitive again.
And nerf Ling/Bane. It's so fucking ignorant that Zergs complain about Protoss being a no brain, no micro race but ling/bane is literally invalidates all ground armies unless you have damn near perfect splits and good positioning and AoE but even good splits usually results in an even trade and zerg pushing creep and economy more. Ergo ur fucked.
I'd second the idea of boosting zealots (as a very casual terran) *IF* at the same time airtoss was slightly nerfed (my favorite: limit tempest range a bit which is INSANELY long: there are some maps where it's possible to place tempest in areas inaccessible by ground, out of range of missile turrets, but in range of tempests so that a protos can take out half of a terran's base completely unbothered until the terran can produce vikings)
@@morgwai667 by the time toss has tempests you should already have starport and counters ready - unless he was cheesing you with some kind of proxy / tempest rush or something
I've been saying this for so long, so glad someone took the time to articulate and made a video about it protoss is the only race that seemingly can't win with ONLY macro and straight up fights at a HIGH LEVEL, your win depends on luck ( Hogwarts level spell casting ) or out witting your opponent ( deemed cheese most of the times ) In a recent thread someone discussed one of the key problems that makes this hard to balance - the warp prism - i.e. to say the ability to subvert defenders advantage what do i mean ? if we buff base units, warping them into someone's main makes it too difficult to deal with in the mid - late game so keeping them crappy is only way to keep that in check; IMO remove the warp prism and buff / introduce some better gateway / mid game units this would make wins / losses feel a lot more fair since now you can't just warp in and destroy an enemies base BUT you can also simply fight a straight up like the other races can In your other video you addressed the reaver vs disruptor, I actually think the reavor is superior since it a bit less reliant on luck even though you'd have to babysit the unit To detractors of spell casting being somewhat reliant on luck - you have to make a prediction on where enemy units will be and cast your spell if they move in accordance with your prediction; your predictions are based off your experience with how other people play the race for sure but things like anti-mirco etc ( them just not moving their units ) or just them behaving differently can punish this concept; ( finally also I think Terrans need an AOE damaging spell - bring back seeker missile for terrans or something akin to it )
I'm not a very experienced player so take this with a spoonful of salt, but I think the warp-in mechanic, cool as it is, is actually part of the problem. Protoss is the only race capable of instantly mass producing units, without delay, anywhere on the map where they have power. Practically a single pylon or warp prism erases or drastically reduces the defender's advantage. It's like a proxy without actually having to commit to a proxy. This means that if gateway units were actually powerful, protoss would be completely broken. As a consequence gateway units, while still individually strong, overall aren't as good as equal tier zerg and terran armies, which is why protoss needs to rely on wonky shit, or somehow survive until mass carriers.
Ahhh this reminds me of so many years of theorycrafting and proposals to the toss race (Random here BTW) At some point I remember reading ideas about making warpgate Tier 3 and allowing to buff the T1 at somepoint which had quite a bit of traction in team liquid, going as far as making test maps Then dragoons instead of stalkers which to some degree got implemented when they changed the attack speed and actual damage value of stalkers Nerfed tanks so the robo units were good therefore effing mech in WOL only to buff mines later on to have more damage vs shields Khaydarin removed due to warp in storms killing quick harass that got fixed by the oracle in Hots (to some degree) Colli doing less damage overall to make it good only against light, therefore cursing it against bio since mauraders suddenly took half damage, I still disagree with this particular change as I never have liked disruptors Charge damage on zealots nerf anyone? I remember I think it was your video explaining how they went from strong units to screwed damage wise by the change which you could completely feel in a PvT against running bio Feedback doing half damage to avoid energy snipping Etc, etc, etc. Toss is sadly trapped in between ZvT since changing them would completely screw the balance that the other races have between them, change one thing in toss and you have to fix the other races acordingly, so its easier to keep toss ina weird match after they had to learn their race 3 different times rather than fixing it and basically restarting the balance changes. Reminds me a bit of WC3 where I dont remember which race was left in the dust so the other 3 could fight.
I sweat to God, I left my own comment before. If Protoss, was given, the +30 dmg chargelots back, at the PRO level, things would instantly change, without touching anything else on the race. This one simple revert. Zealots are meant to be strong, yet got hammered to the grave. They give us more speed on the Zealots, wooptyfuckingdo.
@@JohnMelon I think the idea should be different. Zerglings should be nerfed to some degree like adrino should do 1 more dmg and maybe a little less att.movement speed. Same for terran bio- a little percentage of att speed less. Zealots charge may give + 5 charge dmg and 20 extra shields for 2 sec. Atm bio/zeg can kill zealots and basses way too fast to be fair. Probably 20% more hp on Nexus, Pylon will be ok.
Yep, I`ve been saying since the game launch that Zealots need a buff. Both zerglings and marines are great units, Zealots are mostly dead weight except for meatshields and some niche uses.
Problem I always had and will have with Protoss at this point is exacly the low level superiority. Protoss units, especially air (and yes I'm currently looking at Void Rays) are stupidly powerful in low level matches.
I usually agree with your takes, but not on this one. You make it sound like the protoss race is in dire need of a rework, which it isnt imo. It just got nerfed harder than it should've been (debate if it should have been nerfed at all). There are some minor issues, but not with the race in total. In my opinion (I have low league friends, I play at low master level), the protoss race as a whole is fine. I don't think their late game is unbeatable at any level. The boring skytoss vs. Zerg stalemate wasn't always won by protoss, zerg has big chances with infestors and vipers. What needs to be said is that the ground toss is very hard to play in the late game at my skill level, because of high lurker count or tank/ghost (the ghost is still a ridiculous unit) The only big design flaw is in my opinion the disruptor. It's a bad concept, as you just hope you hit a lucky shot. You can't really do anything except hope your opponent messes up. If he micros well, you loose everything, if they make one mistake, they loose everything. I believe there should be other options for the disruptor. Also, especially with the current map pool, protoss is just generally underwhelming. But I think that could be fixed with minor tweaks etc. Don't really see the total design flaw though Thoughts? And sorry for writing this much lol
Honestly I think Templar should have been what Disruptors get used for, except EMP makes it very difficult to actually use them. Wonder if hiding them in Prisms will ever become a thing.
@@Appletank8 yeah I agree. don't know if you are being sarcastic but the templar warp prism strat is being used by high level players. The problem is just that ghost emp is significantly easier to use than HT. So at the same skill level, you can emp but can't really do the warpprism strat
@@mEtil5656 Mostly it's just that 90% of the time I see Disruptors being used than HTs, despite how good people are at dodging them now at the high level.
First of all I think it all begins with LotV. It became such a hard and complexe game to balance with their need to add so much new stuff for the Protoss campaign. Imo you would have to go back to HotS and do adjustments from there. Remove the fast economy concept, because it all often ends up being a matter of how many workers you can kill and let players focus on real strategies depending on the match up and maps. From this point Protoss would need to be redesigned, and still gl with that.
killing workers is s strategy, but yes now is to fast llike befor terrans and zergs do faster first workers protect and protos turn nexsus into free pain for all enemy on big area, so attack like that need big army and if you lose it well , now i send one empty prism who die to enemy base 2 another full of Htemplars to main and easy take all workers and spawn some adepts to do some random dmg stuf and run templars and prism, all cost me 250 minerals from one trap prism and some adepts who alos kill some enemy back to base, if i lose another prism oh no i send more and more until enemy dont have money even for workers, but they can do the same and is who first do it in this time sadly, not a option for a game just you must do it
problem with protos lies in blizard they ruined they ground foruces , first nerfed immortal remove old hard shields, than, changed ability High Templar feed that no longer can burn energy on Battlecruisers, than buffed maruders they double damage than stalkers and gave them medivacs, game was perfectly balanced in Early fist year after wings of liberty than they broke initial balance
protoss to me has always seemed to have the shallowest skill curve, i.e. easier to play but less max power potential, which causes it to be overpowered below the pro-level and underpowered at the pro level. kinda like stunlock rogues in wow vanilla, any moron can play it but a solid pro knows how to easily handle one
As a casual player watching tournaments, the problem is spell casters in other races. At a casual level, players don't have the apm to micro their vipers, ghosts, ravens, etc. At a tournament level the micro of units gives zeg and protoss a huge advantage. Protoss maxes out on a skill level much lower. Even basic units like corruptors, mutas, marines, and vikings get huge micro advantages. The main micro ability for protoss is blink stalker, warp prism, and disruptor shots. Add onto that the requirement to abandon control to warp in gateway units. In summary, at low levels players of other races have a point that protoss is just the a-move race. At higher levels, they can't get the same skill advantage the other races enjoy. To improve balance at high level they could increase micro potential of units and make warping in units have a designated pylon or prism while also decreasing the micro requirements/potential on the other races.
I think Protoss is a powerful race but it is very unflexible. Your phrase that units become not up to date quickly, is the right conclusion. To make Protoss flexible we need a Disruption Web for Phoenix from Broodwar :). The ground army of Protoss is strong enough, but air army is inflexible and Tempests can't compensate this.
Seems like a reasonable explanation. It indeed feel like the game can tip more easily with protoss in a match both for or against the protoss player, it's a top heavy race :). Still it does not need major change, balance still seems quite close to where it needs to be. I do think the colossus or sentry/ravager might need a tweak to be more balanced. Maybe make so force field cost a bit less mana, or make so ravager bile cool down longer be upgradeable to reduce it back. Otherwise colossus could either have another +1 range, a tiny bit more movement speed or a tiny bit more damage against units that are not light units (I would not advise HoTS level at all, but there is room there since it was halves if I recall correctly).
I think protoss can spiral way to quick out of control and punishes way to hard which will not happen on pro lvl but will destroy casual players and thats why it is so hated
Used to be protos would saturate 1 base 4 gate and A- move to win a lot of games. The race does not teach macro that well because of its simplistic and qol features. If you were a low zerg you got 4 gated and if could not manage your larva , you had no notion of timings , you were just dead on arrival. As a zerg I spend 2 yrs learning timings for every cheese under the sun , before I got to some macro proteases, that actually played for macro rather than all ins or weak time pushes.
As a Zerg player I do think Protoss needs a buff of some sort, as it seems slightly unpowered at the highest levels. I just don’t quite trust Blizzard and what’s left of the sc2 balance team not to fuck it up. I don’t think the other races needs nerfs, I just think Protoss needs something new, but a rework is probably unrealistic. I feel like Terran is definitely the race with the highest potential and is the strongest, but to me it also seems like the mechanically hardest to play.
as i see it, it's because of the maps, they are just too small and the spaces to fight is just corridors, gateway units are good in small numbers being spreadout, they just don't clump up well in comparison to other mid-game armies which forces them to have splash damage in order to deal with anything that comes at them through these corridors, and well the splash damage units protoss have are hard to use as they are fragile and cost a lot and some take up a lot of supply so while you want a lot of units you really can't because you have to invest into splash damage but you want a lot of units just to soak damage from the enemy just so you can aoe which is a hard thing to balance between, so your game is always on a knifes edge determined by splash damage units in any straight up fight, which i think design wise just suck to play against and use for yourself. hydras and mutas and terran bio ball is basically the biggest reason why protoss relies on splash damage because you'd just get stomped otherwise due to just pure dps output as everything is choked out into these small corridors which even more emphasizes the importance of splash damage. in SC:BW you really don't need that much splash damage to take a fight it's just there for specific areas of the map to hold chokes or to kill a lot of workers but the main middle area is typically a big widespread area that has no chokes, that's why you could get away with zealot/dragoon for most of it.
Oh man including Viva La Dirt League also brings back memories of all the Parody Songs inspired by Starcraft. They have a really successful channel now doing high quality film skits, but Starcraft will always be their beginning.
i'm just a casual, but: like others already suggested, buff zealots and stalkers to be more of a core unit. give the charge-upgrade a passive movementspeed as well, to be more on par with marines. marines mostly get strong because they scale so well with those upgrades.. stim + flyinghealybois is a combo that gets rid of any pathing-problems medics caused in sc1 and give you a quick "lets get outta here" mode, that mostly is better than recall. make stalkers tankier, buff attack speed and reduce their dmg. to make up for the core-buff, make templar archive a necessity for warpgate and give warpgate an actual up+downside.. normally produced gatewayunits are a bit cheaper, but produced slower. warpgate makes units a bit more costly, yet they are produced faster and be warped wherever is a pylon. that's my take on it
Ultimately, at high levels of play, the winning side (in an equal skill match) will be the one with the higher power ceiling with micro and the least vulnerability to the same. Protoss have at best equal to Zerg/Terran levels of micro power, while being more vulnerable to micro. A mistake by the P player or really good play by their opponent ends the match right there, because of that situation. At casual and lower levels of play (even up into tournament rankings!) the consistency of said peak performance micro is so small that the raw numbers game favors the Protoss. Thus you have a race that serves as a beef gate to winning tournaments. Either you can consistently out play the Protoss at micro, or you _will_ lose to them. But peak performance Protoss doesn't measure up to their opponents top level of play (Outside of Mirror matches, which will always be pure skill naturally.) in terms of power. At to top of the heap, 0.1% changes make all the difference. The only dodge to the problem is having a separate non-tournament rules balance set, which is a non-starter for E-sports inherently as it alienates the target audience.
Buff Zeolots, tweek Stalkers to be agile hit & run anti-light units, move immortal to Gateway as powerful anti-armor option. swapping sentry to robotics with buff stats.
Protoss is one of the most unique of the three in two negative ways. They have the worst base structure. Terran build extra command centers for orbital scans or defensive fortresses. Zerg build macro hatches for more unit production. The utility of nexus is so basic, and covered by one at each base, that you don't really see toss building extra. Most importantly is map vision. At the highest levels, toss have garbage vision compared to T & Z. Terran have scans and sensor towers, zerg have tumors. Both don't cut into their supply for map vision. Both provide massive map vision in the hands of the experts. Toss gets the shit observer. A supply costing, non-trivial gas sucking unit that won't have the coverage of the competitors and won't last long at the highest levels.
@@blessyou3999 I'm not getting into a pointless "is protoss OP or UP?" debate with you. I'm talking about tippy top one in a million pro players and the observed distinctions I see. I don't play SC anymore and wasn't good when I did. I watch it a lot, especially tournaments. It's annoying to watch the best toss professionals in the world play against Z and T players that are at their level.
On a global scale, i think its fair that the easiest race is also the weakest at higher levels. However it does truly suck for the viewer to watch competitive starcraft and not having a nice distribution across tournament top 8s
There is contradiction there, that also means it is hardest to win with at higher levels so which is it? Hardest or easiest, so where is fairness here. You are basically saying it is fair for race to be weak because it is a bit easier on low levels.
As a toss player, I don't think non toss really know what it's like to play the race. It's the hardest to expand with, and by far the most difficult to rebuild an army after a fight. Gateway units stop having an impact once you reach the mid-game (aside from Templars). Not only that, but being the only race whose structures require you to be within range of your supply buildings is also a pain in the ass. We can't just drop gateways and robos in random places without the added expense of the pylon. It usually comes down to how the first major engagement goes. If you deal enough damage to the enemy, you can usually win. If you lose that first battle though, it can be almost impossible to come back from. MMM from Terran can be strong throughout the entire game and can rebuild so fast, and the zerg can dump all their resources in a heartbeat. That's impossible to keep pace with most of the time
lmao " protoss race needs rework". and whos gonn "work" on it? Starcraft II is an abbandoned project and nothing will change about gameplay unless community hands blizzard a patch or update on a silver plate.
They should buff ground toss damage against units but nerf against buildings That way, they are more effective at fights and killing drones, but not for straight up destroying bases. Make them able to 1v4 zerglings together at full upgrade, but deal damage equivalent to 1 zergling if attacking buildings. (so static defence becomes a must, but so is pulling the drones away) Make dark templars visible when attacking buildings for 4 seconds, but do 1.5x damage to buildings, and do 1/2 damage VS workers. A zealot run by would be almost unstoppable except by a bunch of banelings/tanks/widow mines/some kinda toss aoe.
Balancing Protoss without just straight up removing the problem elements absolutely is a nightmare. For example, a well executed early game Warp Gate pressure can make Protoss look like the most broken race in the game, making even some of the best players in the world struggle with dealing with it. Which means that buffing Gateway units is an extremely volatile exercise to begin with; Then add in the fact that Warp Prisms can just cancel defender's advantage at every point in the game, making Warp Gate yet more powerful, and you have the recipe for a nightmare for balancing efforts. If you buff a Gateway unit, the effects it will have on the entire game are extremely difficult to foresee due to this. Then there are Stalkers that, due to their mobility suffer from this doubly. If controlled near perfectly, they are already an oppressive force that can win games from early game harassment from which they can get away for free (picking off a unit or two for no health damage repeatedly), which can set a Protoss player up for an easy win in the mid game. However, if they fail at that or they get defended against well enough, then they are just a clumsy, relatively fragile unit that fails to be efficient enough to justify it's costs. This also applies to a lesser extent to the other unit with the other variety of Blink. Then there is the Adept, that has single/handedly redefined the early game against Protoss, yet fails to scale well enough into even the mid-game. There is also something to be said about Adepts and Stalkers stepping on each other's toes as far as their roles are considered. Then outside of the gateway, the Robotics Facility also has some extremely powerful units that are hard to balance around. Disruptors single-handedly make the case that Protoss is fine against ground units already; Even though they are an inconsistent mess usually. Having half a dozen of them gives even the most aggressive players pause, yet they almost never pay for themselves and rarely if ever manage to amount to enough for a Protoss win. They are also stepping on the toes of Colossi. And even in the Stargate, Void Rays and Pheonixes both have this same issue. Too strong early on for a buff, too weak later on to really swing the game. With Void Rays, early aggression can do game ending damage if not handled near perfectly, but they lose efficiency as the number of targets grow. Pheonixes are also a unit that can make the game absolutely miserable in the early game, so giving them more power could make them close out games before the 5 minute mark. Of course, all these issues that these units have in the late game only become apparent if the Protoss player fails to do substantial damage of some sort in the early game, which will continue to become progressively harder as Zerg and Terran players both get better and learn how to handle some of the more esoteric builds of Protoss players. There is also something to be said about upgrades tied behind higher levels of tech as a half-solution to this power imbalance, but SC2 players have shown themselves quite apt at rushing certain powerful abilities just to score some early advantage - For example, Battlecruiser rushes, before Zerg players realized that just building more Queens solves all their issues. Now, with the issues out of the way, we can actually try fixing them. With Warp Gate, the solution is hard, but it's massive power needs to be curtailed (assuming we don't start thinking about removing it completely); Substantially slowing down warp-in speeds for Pylons not in range of a Nexus would be a start (and making Warp Prism warp-in speeds be the same as non-super Pylons). That way, it wouldn't be quite as powerful while still retaining some of it's unique Protoss flavour of having multiple angles of reinforcement and harassment. Also, before anyone tries to retort by mentioning Nydus Worms - While they are definetly a powerful and woefully underutilized tool in the Zerg arsenal, they take 14 seconds (and resources) to build and give off a massive, directional audio signal when they become a threat, as opposed to a Prism, that takes half a second to deploy and can silently warp in 20-30 supply of units within 3-4 seconds without any indication that it's happening. With Blinks, I would give them the same treatment as Stim; Make using the ability damage the unit. Somewhere around 40-60 damage per Blink for both units. That way, they couldn't use their ridiculous mobility to do damage for completely free in the early game (at least not without a substantially greater investment of effort) without completely removing their movement abilities either. Adepts just simply need to be given the Reaper treatment and get reduced into scouting units, rather than be the existential threat that they currently are. Lower their damage so that they are not a constant economic threat any more. For Disruptors, I think the best fix would be to just straight up remove them and buff the Colossus instead. Less gambling, more RTS gameplay that way. Pheonixes would probably benefit greatly from going from an energy unit to a cooldown-based one; That way, they would stop being a nightmare when massed, but would almost always have the ability ready to use (primarily thinking about Ghosts and High Templar screwing them over). The only unit I have no real "fixes" for here are the Void Rays, but with all the other changes, I don't think they would really need it either. Once these changes are present, buffing the units in question can be done almost with reckless abandon. Give Stalkers more range and faster attacks. Give Chargelots back their impact damage. Make Colossi a threat to all massed units again. Let Pheonixes fill their primary anti-air role properly with only minor drips into being an assassin unit. tl;dr - The main reason why Protoss units can't be buffed is because most of them have a period in the game where they are already dominating the game near-completely.
Mothership core prevented every rush as sustained protoss till mid game, then a death ball and gg. That was my experience with toss. Also blink stalkers were so good for rushing for many years, look at MC, he made most of his pro career just by blink stalker rushing most of the games. Anyway toss was a pain to fight with, though recent years it's more balanced.
I was listened that the zerg is broken race in StarCraft 2 especially in mid and late game when they have infestors, broodlords and lurkers. (Hello Basset, good luck! )
The big issue with competitive games. Unless you are theat 0,2% of a massive playerbase there is "not much room to complain". Until you reach grandmaster you are only learning the game... But the way rank system works is your mmr/elo is a numeric position in the playerbase. Two really memorable game I always recall in sc2: 1) was a ZvT where zerg was considered imba with the swarm mechanic. The terran strategy was long, yet simple. Contest the last available base on the map and bleed out the enemy resources. 2) zvp where skytoss was defeated with ULTRALISK! Most high level games I watch the game is not over with a single clash. A seemingly powerful army is destroyed with backup. The point is people focused way too much on those head on battle simulator videos. Meanwhile a question. Giving Adepts a mid game glave tech where the attack bounces to the next 1-2 target? Adepts are like reapers. You see 1-2 made in each game and forgotten.
Yo, I never knew Destiny was an SC2 player. I only learned about him recently. Not really related to the topic of your video I know, but it was just something I noticed
Blizzard should let us customize tech tree and units we want to have. Ex. we can decide to own hellbat, firebat or helion. Also let us upgrade units with unique ability. Ex. invinsible tanks or regenerating mechanic troops :D. That would be cool mechanic and of course it would need some kind of balance. Maybe points we are given and let us pick the tech we want for a price of points? Hope we get it in SC3 if it comes out.
It is easier for low level players to get value, but at high level the tools T and Z have outclass P's when micro'd properly. So it depends on what you prioritize.
I was there in Katowice when creator broke down and cried, me and my friends didn’t know if we should jump up and comfort him :D everyone was saying that
When I play Protos, Terran players always kill me by attacking me around the 4-5 minute mark with marrines and tanks and sometimes with maruders. By this time I can’t even get a colossus out.
As a casual I can't really comment with any actual credibility, but I've always felt that Protoss in SC2 was the least forgiving to mistakes. You lose one key unit and that can swing the game against you. Zerg seems the most forgiving as they don't see to have as many situations where losing one key unit is as huge of a deal as you frequently see with Protoss, such as an immortal, disruptor, or colossus, or letting lings slip past your wall. Terran have the issue with having medivacs shot out of the sky as well as clumps of marines hit by some banelings from a control mistake or not looking. Zerg seems least effected by the potential of large swings in the game from small mistakes. My casual opinion.
I’d argue that Protoss requires the most precise micro, because losing even one unit or being slightly off position is an instant loss to high level opponents. + most Protoss units don’t win 1v1 battles with their counterparts because they got weaker over the years This is why they rarely win big tourneys because when both sides play nearly perfectly, Protoss is more fragile and doesn’t have the power to compensate for that
great video that actually talks about the subject properly no just whining. Protoss feels slimy on the ladder but heavily under represented on big stage.
Protoss seems obliterated by a 1base Zerg rush swarmhost+nydus Seems dumb but every Time you rush your pool to make 6 lings, protoss wall himself and then can't handle 3-4 teleporting sh
Protoss race is not broken. "Broken" term is reserved for zerg during that cursed patch in Heart of the Swarm. Now that was broken state. I recall Protoss had annoying strategy in "Hots", where they would rush oracles. Oracles would melt marines, and they could kill queens if macro correctly.
The thing is Protoss always done this double nerf. Blizzard decided to nerf one thing and compensate it with another buff, but later found out that buff is too much so it was reverted, yet the original nerf which the buff was supposed to balance never got switched back. For example pylon range nerf was supposed to nerf warp gate all in, but later blizzard decide that is not enough and nerf the warp gate as a whole but never revert the pylon range back. Same goes with attack/defense upgrade, nerfed first compensated with stronger air units, but now air unit are nerfed back, the ground upgrades revert less than half. So essentially Protoss as a race constantly got nerfed as whole. None of it would matter for ladder player at all since the changes are way too small anyway, but had a huge influence among pro players to the extend many just quit. Why bother inventing new things when it will be nerfed straight away in the next patch?
as a protoss player I think most of the hate is in late game. I mean think about it there are so many ways to crush a protoss player before the mid game even starts, it all comes down to scouting and knowing what you can do to stop a play, just like in any matchup. Even with carrier play thors, drop harass for terrans, or ling runbys infestors and even spore forests are a pretty good counter, i feel that as a protoss you have all these tools to micro and only people who can handle all these tools do good in the long run. For the pros protoss players have to innovate and every little unit counts. I feel broken is a stretch because every race has their "wtf" mechanic. Zerg with the instant larvae remax, terran with their 3 rax stim or concussive in the early game or hell even the ghost in the late game. Every race is "broken" it just depends on the player in the end.
In short, Protoss has low skill ceiling, so lower level players can easily reach its maximum potential and top level players cannot do better than other race after hitting the skill ceiling. You can ask Maru or Serral to play Protoss and they won't be any better than the top Protoss players now, because their superior skills are limited by Protoss skill ceiling. What Protoss need is units that are more microable. Protoss units are mostly slow and clunky, they cannot keep up with zerglings runby or terran bio drops. That's why they need tools like recall and battery to defend. But in the end, the race with more mobility can make the play, force trades or recalls. Protoss are stuck with reacting or just straight up cheese to avoid such scenarios.
... thers a lot that is wrong with your initial statement SUpply cap, balances the entire game for out play end game, like brood war one. Each unit has a supply cost, that is roughly balanced to its work use and value. Most units are pretty close to tehir actual work value. What you have is often just bad choices by players. If I were to realyl think about imbalance. Zealots late game of significantly less value because they do not have any extra benefit like the bast mineral unit costs of zerg or terran units, which should be addressed, Base mineral cost units should be roughly balanced. Zerg - Zergling Gets. Normal upgrades 3/3 Gets a speed augmentation, Gets a life augmentation, Gets Adrenal glands so it hits, much faster between attacks, which is huge. Terran - Marine Gets. Normal upgrades, 3/3, Gets Stimp pack, A massive hp increase. Terran also has hellions, with blue flame, trasnformation, and normal upgrades, in some cases even an armor boost, or special mech combo upgrades, ie servos. Terran has two units which only cost minerals, attacking. Zerg has 1 unit whihc only cost minerals, attacking. Protoss has 1 unit which only cost minerals, attacking. All the base units of all the species have various attack upgrdes which is typically two. Depending on the current patch. Zealot: only has charge. Proposed change to Zealot lategame via another upgrade is a melee/psi blade enhancement for bonus damage to armour and biological life forms. THis owuld balance them in lien with late game, making the melee unit cost so much more if it does connect. The speed of terran stim + concussive shells, ot a melee unit makes the so called powerful melee warrior, a paper doll and not worth its value lat game. Zealot diminishes towards the end game. Peopel cna often udner value the power ofa protss army but its uspply cost is reltively on par... 40 zealots should feel like 80 marines, or 160 lings. each without special upgrades, be fairly close to 1 on 1. Proposed changes is charge turns into a dark templar blink attack, so the distance can be zeroed, unless they are udner a debuff. range 3/4 or something. + 3 to bio and armour, effective worth 6 damage since they do do a double attack naturally. Zealots supported by a sentry are a bit more effective... but meh... Late game zealot doesn't match well with zerglings and marines. Technically golden armada is sc2, so its protoss world, so peopel shoudl go air as protoss but ther was some blatent imbalances in the initial release of protoss, Such as void rays, killing you instantly with no real means of defending a early void rush, since they oculd pre charge or charge, up and since hte beam is constant damage, out damage, everything killing entire bases in basically a few seconds, its what turned me off of sc2 competitive play, since it was a pretty obvious oversight. Offer protss a 100/ 150 mineral unit for flying... that can do damage with out vespene could be interesting... but meh.. onyl real imbalance ,and structural build systems and defence. Meh...
that's not true about the supply , terran is the only race that can fund a 200supply army because of mules which is underutilized , and zerg is the only race that can go over the 200suply mark but that's even more underutilized...
agree. For regular players Toss are TOTAL OP... Just survive 10 min and F2 move. thats it. As diamond player if i dont kill toss fast i alway lose to Carries or other bullshit
Than you are doing something very wrong. Corruptors or thors/ bcs/vikings can kill carrers easily. I would say as low level where Protoss might be op is Platinum and belowe, maybe even Gold and below.
Kinda funny in SC and SCBW protoss was a high tech army with superior individual units that had zero of the issues SC2 protoss has, while alsp being an overall healthier army with zero death balling. Then again it wasn't just the army design but the fact you couldn't put your entire army into a single command group.
I imagine the individual units were stronger too so a deathball wasn't virtually your only option, right? (I don't know of anything but the arbiter for protoss in sc2)
@@ZatralTMF Protoss always had the "out individual units are super strong but we can't make a bunch of them" as their motiff. They still tried to carry that into SC2 but the thing is when you can just group a bunch of these super strong units into a giant clusterball of death the individual weakness those units might have suddenly disappear.
@@Kingofredeyes yeah, the only counters I've seen so far is marauder, widow mine, ghost, tank, liberator, viper, but I get the point, yeah. Mostly just being bitter about Terran power creep at this point but I appreciate the explanation
Check out more about Protoss concepts - ruclips.net/video/fd9NnBAlHH8/видео.html
Why Skytoss is a problem - ruclips.net/video/bjurICCIk1I/видео.html
Timecodes:
00:00 What's it about
00:19 The issues with Protoss Race
01:15 Race Design in StarCraft 2
02:13 Why Protoss is both Weak and OP
04:40 What's the main problem with Protoss and how to fix it
Protoss has a bit less depth. High skilled players for zerg and terran can squeeze more from it than protoss.
Bruh, as a protoss player. Our Ground units are too expensive for little damage and little tankiness. THey suck hard.
@@ralphwarom2514 What about OP Protoss Ball😁
Every Protoss ground unit does big, slow damage. None are fast firing. It means small Protoss armies get overwhelmed easily so they have to remain with the deathball.
Only exceptions to this as phoenix and carrier. One of those obviously isn't a midgame unit and the other is a strong opener for a reason
@@elliejohnson2786 as protos i want carriers delete from this game, alos crusiers
a+ click = gg. no skill race
@@davidmp8539 yes terran are no skill :p
@@Darlf_Sevil terran full micro and multitask
I remember, when I was just entering Starcraft, I started playing protoss for their aesthetics and the feeling that it heavily relies on casters in order to win fights. I wish they had more ability variety instead of that deathball tactic
I did the same lol
Play broodwar, no deathball garbage in that game. Actually takes skill to control your whole army.
Bruh I can't play well using skytoss imagine playing having to press lots of buttons lol
@@yangpaan453 Or play a game that discourage deathballing by other means instead of artificially limiting it with arbitrarily small unit groups and terrible pathfinding. If "it takes skill" to just move your army from one point of the map to the other and place them there, it's not a good game.
@@TyphoonJig It is not a good game because you cant select your entire army supply in one click and attack move it across the map? That is just the opinion of someone who simply cant handle having a high APM. Having to group you marines in 1 group to be able to stim them and control your medics along with them is real skill. You cant complain that something is not hard because it is not dumbed down for you.
I actually felt really bad for Creator when I saw that clip live. He was so distraught :/
Never seen any players that freaked out lol. Did he need the tournament money for rent or something? Lol.
never feel bad for protoss players.
@@bananian he's always been an extremely emotional player.
@No Fun Really? Dude Terran is the most IMBA race. MMM destroys all of P units. MMM is meant for zerg, the game is broken.
@@etishbite456 it is a bit ridiculous how much damage marines put out.
The nexus's recall range used to be much bigger than it is now. Ive always played Terran because I love how they are only limited by how fast you want to burn out your wrists. One protoss player proxied a nexus beneath my ledge in the main in the fog, then recalled his army right onto the ledge. I watched the replay and admired his creativity. Now I am sad because I wish so badly that someone had done that against Idra in a pro game. The sale wouldve been unbelievable.
Is that Florencio proxy Nexus lol
@@cannogabang1999 Someone used it on me a long time ago. I did see a video with PiG where he was doing a florencio showcase with it. The player called me a "piss sad round eye" at the end before I gg'd so I don't think it was florencio. Best insult ever.
the hallucinated army did its job ;)
This reminds me of the mothership core, and why it was a weird addition in the first place
Originally, it was supposed to help Protoss in the early game because back then, Zealots and Stalkers were too weak to hold off attacks from Terran and Zerg. But instead of buffing Zealots and Stalkers, they added a new unit that you can only get one of that is decent, but it didn't fix much. They eventually removed the mothership core and buffed Zealots and Stalkers, but both still feel way too weak compared to marines and banes even in the late game. I think Warp Gate ultimately breaks Protoss as a race, as it breaks the balance of Gateway/Tier 1 units
Pretty much, yeah. Protoss offense is fine, as long as you have a proxy pylon or something. Aggressive early-game warp gate is generally pretty strong. But warp gate isn't much of a defensive advantage, because it mostly just gets your units across the map faster. Mothership core was originally envisioned as a defensive unit to give protoss back the defender's advantage that other races have, but Blizzard never really managed to make it function that way, and it became yet another offensive tool in an arsenal that was already fine.
Someone else above mentioned that at some point the community was pushing for buffing zealots and stalkers and pushing warp gate to tier 3, and... yeah, thinking about it, that would probably help.
MSC got basically replaced with Shield Overcharge, which was honestly a pretty good move.
Protoss's big issue is Warpgate being basically Tier 1, negating one of the few defender's advantage SC2 has: Reinforcement time. Unlike everyone else, Warpgate means that Protoss can effectively have production appear in your front door instead of having to walk across the map. If Gateway tech was strong at home, they'd be even more snowball-y smashing in bases, so they really couldn't afford for them to be that powerful. Compare to have insane it would be if Immortals could reinforce from a forwards pylon.
Combined with a strange lack of powerful late game casters, P's unit compositions are a bit ironically fragile for the high tech aliens.
Zerg have powerful fast travel options in the form of Nydus Networks and Nydus Worms, but they are balanced by being restricted to Lair tech. Imagine Nydus being available without requiring Lair.
Lair tech isn't really a big restriction. It just seems like it is because of how most zerg players prioritize eco over tech, but actually you can get a Nydus very quickly if you just don't stop mining gas.
On the "stalkers are too weak", just remember this:
Queens have more HP, more DPS, and can heal. And cost NO GAS.
Stalkers are wayyyyyyyy too weak.
Terran is insanely supply efficient in the late game, with 160 army supply because of all the orbitals and MULEs, whereas toss is often stuck at 130 with worse eco
same with chronoboost, but units and much stronger for protoss and easy to play.
@@quentinsimon9434are battlecruisers/tors hard for you
@@quentinsimon9434chronoboost gets outscaled late game. You cannot compete with 4+ orbitals spamming mules ever. Marauders beat all their robo units very easily and as he said, collosi is like the weakest backbone unit in the game. Skytoss has been nerfed so many times because casuals don't know how to micro. Protoss is harder to play as you climb higher and get better players as every loss in the early and mid game is really costly. Think of it like Garen in League of Legends. Easy to play and pick up at lower levels, very hard to pay at higher levels
@@raptorate2872 lol @ using a league example. utter pleb playing a shit game (lol) and defending a gimmicky overpowered race (protoss)
@@quentinsimon9434what makes it easier to play?
There's just a lot wrong with Protoss. Now, the idea behind them I think was actually really cool. They were designed to be strong but micro-intensive in battle. Zerg was supposed to be micro-intensive in economy with Queens and creep tumors and all that, while Terran was in the middle. And so Protoss got caster units incredibly early. But, unfortunately, this concept doesn't scale well. Trying to get the maximum potential out of adepts, stalkers, and sentries quickly becomes inefficient when compared to a bio ball or zerg run in. They could find ways to buff those units so it does become efficient. But doing that would also mean Warpgate / Prism drops become more powerful. So, you can't do that. Which leaves ground Toss to instead trade up to bigger units to micro like disruptors and high templar, and babysitting colossus. While not using the high cost early units effectively anymore. So that huge swath of actually fairly skill intensive units gets turned to chaff, to be replaced with units that are largely less engaging but necessary to win actual fights.
Or, they abandon ground and take an even worst solution, going into skytoss. Which is another issue, because it roughly mirrors the same pattern of problems. Phoenixes and oracles are arguably the best designed and microable early air units in the game. But they don't scale well either (though oracles do transition to detector/scouts) meaning the toss player must rely on the big dumb but strong carriers, void rays, and tempests.
This is noticeably completely backwards from how other races are structured. Early zerg is largely a move, with you know, a few ravagers to mix things up. And marines and marauders have some micro, but they don't really get the boost until stim and medivacs get added to the mix. But then they expand their micro options with the game usually pushing the best players toward adding additional caster units and creating multiple strike forces to hit at separate times.
It's sad to say since Toss is my favorite race. But I really do think it needed a whole rework from the ground up. The theory of a race that is battle micro focused from the start with less emphasis on economic mechanics isn't terrible. But the way to do that needed to be to start a little more than the other races and expand them further over time, rather than to narrow them.
right, the carriers should be the ones micro-intensives and the early game units, not so much, its backwards
Yeah, its really weird how Protoss has a bunch of relatively weak early game casters and strong A-move late game units, vs T and Z having basic combat units that get boosted by late game casters. And P's one late game caster (Mothership) being way too limited to be useful.
@@Appletank8 IMO, here's how I think they should have themed each race.
Terran is defensive heavy, in that they should be building forward bunkers/planetary fortresses and setting up good siege tank + lib area denials, i.e. win by strategy.
Zerg is attrition, they macro easy but units are inefficient, so their strategy is to attack in waves to wear down the opponent.
Protoss is micro heavy, they should have all of their abilities unlocked (Stalkers with blink), but are much less effective until they research (blink is half the range with double the CD until normal research). Also, you should be able to "unsummon" warp gate units at a pylon, as a way to heal them. It's really weird to see damaged units last the entire game
Zerg should really not have Vipers and Infestors, I'd argue that their abilities are a bit better than High Templars
Tldr, youre mom
The problem is that they gave Terran and Zerg all of the actually good toys and spellcasters and were afraid of making Protoss strong. And to be fair to Blizzard, EVERY TIME Protoss got something good, they broke the game. It's just been a constant swing of too strong and too weak.
It's funny to see the difference when you go back to SC1 - Protoss had THE BEST casters in the game and their A-movers all hit really, really hard. But they were all terribly slow and vulnerable. The fast protoss units didn't hit hard. It was good balance. SC2, for whatever reason, never gave Protoss good, new spells outside of the Mothership but the history of that unit speaks for itself. Protoss was doomed from the start... doomed from the first mass Void Ray cheese in WoL Beta.
protoss was designed to have the most value per mineral spent, quality > quantity. if you let them expand and macro and build a bazillion units they can literally attack move and win, like in lower elos
Yeah but in reality, it ain't. 4 Full upgrade lings beat a full upgraded Zelot. Mass marine beat mass zelot with equal minerals spent even without micro. Hydra cost less than the stalker but is superior in every way, but mobility ... and so on. Even more widowmines have extra shield dmg, ghosts can counter everything toss has.. it's just sad. Zerg main speaking BTW.
@@Lmaokekw975 Given that protoss units are more cost-effective early-mid game, how should one approach it?
Shouldn't protoss ideally perma-pressure to stall enemy expansion and use, say, blink sentry prism to stay flexible for offense, worker pickoffs and backdoor intercept which would cost the enemy low invest return ressources?
And then fast expand to quickly pump tech?
Toss lategame is just too inflexible, and templars against BL corruptor meatball and mass BC is outspokenly tough.
@@Wabbelpaddel the thing is, you can't be out on the map as a Protoss because if you're getting dropped, or getting run by'ed you're losing a base or two, tons of probes and tech in a matter of second while the opponent can easily defend at home.
Besides, Protoss units aren't even that efficient in early game or mid game, it's only when you start getting storm, disruptors and collosi that Protoss starts to handle fights equally as well as the other two races sadly.
This leads to Protoss either relying on gimmicks or allins as mentioned in the video. Sadly, everytime an all in is brought to the table blizzard gets it down with the nerf hammer without even leaving time for zergs and Terrans to adapt and overcome.
@@Lmaokekw975 Lol disruptors destroy everithing in the ground and no air composition can beat Skytoss
@@Lmaokekw975 "Every way but mobility". Yo, when talking about a unit with blink, that "but mobility" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Toss issues all stem from the warp-in mechanic.
Gateway units are balanced around potential rushes and timings using warp-in which negates most defenders advantage. To achieve this balance, Toss T1 units are tuned comparatively weak so that they don't kill zergs and terrans too easily with rushes and timings.
But with weak T1 units, toss needs strong T2 units to survive the mid game. Disruptors, Colossi, Voidrays, Templar etc are very strong but only work as part of a big group where they can be protected - ie the deathball.
The highly concentrated army (the deathball) is straightforward to control but difficult to control against. Below pro level, it's frustrating to play against and at pro level it doesn't provide the Toss players enough opportunities to express their skill through superior control.
I've stopped playing SC2 Years ago, fell back into the rabbit hole recently, glad to see some things never change and that despite having stats to prove Toss is on the weaker side of the balance people still call it broken and OP years after years for decades
majority of players are average to low skill. At low skill its easier to manage toss buildings and also tpss units are bulkier leading to more A move victories. I play all 3 races and by far I feel that if you are toss and slightly out of possition you can lose while as terran def is easier, as zerg its very fast to move around.
like how basically every single GM player is protoss? lol
@@tim1259 What do you mean? Do you have some statistics I dont know about?
Zerg and Terran are so OP it made me quit. I have more fun playing Broodwar.
@@ixirion when I stopped playing (during the voidray meta) Protoss made up about 40-50% of gm depending on server, low gm was basically purely skytoss and cannon rushing Protoss players, for the few years before that Protoss was also over represented in gm specifically low-mid gm . Protoss is under represented in high gm/high tournament level players
I feel like Astrea summed it up very well in one of his interviews. The whole race seems to be balanced around the disruptor (and other gimmicky units). Redesigning these and then rebalancing the race afterwards would be the right way imo.
Unfortunately i feel with the leve of support we got its unrealistic to expect. Best we can hope for is small changes, that might make the balance a bit better, step by step.
Which interview?
@@ElfosDeMordor I think it was in one of those snippets they showed in between matches at Katowice this year. "Which unit would you remove from the game and why?" was the question and Astrea answered "Disruptor" and said because it's of its terrible influence on game design and balancing.
The whole race is based around that because it's really the only unit Terran doesn't have a hard (and I mean HARD) counter to (idk about Zerg)
lol the destiny rage
You failed to mention that protoss units always cost more not only in both minerals and gas, but also in supply, which means Zergs and terrans still have more units in the lategame. Also protoss has been repeatedly nerfed for a long time, it was a running joke in my friend group, that in legacy of the void, the protoss expansion, Protoss was the weakest race. I honestly think that the identity of Protoss as "the lategame race" was very healthy, because the protoss army is also very slow, so it's relatively easy to punish it by surrounding or outmaneuvering it and then it basically becomes a positioning battle. The problem of course is if that is not possible, but I believe it can be achieved.
For me personally, I stopped playing when Zerg became the best lategame race. Such a drastic shift in identity of races shouldn't be done in any game imo.
how is zerg the best lategame race? because serral makes it look that way? then you have Maru's that fight as 3-4base terran vs 5-6base zerg and still make favourable trades with ghosts like there's tomorrow
@@schippes24 I'm not a specialist in TvZ, maybe terrans are better, ghosts are certainly a good unit. I was specifically referring to PvZ and basically the infestors and vipers that can ruin a lategame protoss in a straight engagement.
I love how drops are considered a super important and viable strategy for terran, but are a gimmick for protoss
This is why we have *"Beating grandmasters with stupid stuffs"*
So we can fully explore the hidden potential of Protoss 🤣
Lol, funny to find you here fellow Miofa
VEry good analysis. I think on of the things contributing to the Protoss balance problems was LotV, since when the game starts much faster with much stronger economy, getting to death balls or huge timing attacks much faster then before. In earlier times, the beefy early and mid game units of Protoss would give you value for a longer time, allowing you get ahead of the opponent through good trades.
Why not add some T2 or T3 upgrades to zealot and stalkers like the adrenal one for zerglings
they should nerf adrino instead.
@@ixirion good point
Because Zerg and Terran will cry about it.
because the zergling no matter the level or stage of the game is still the 'base' zerg unit. Protoss can skip gateways entirely. Beyond that just race differences. Protoss generally focuses more on counters by...building an archon which has advantage against all zerg units. zerg's strategy is much more 'I just have more stuff' instead of better/specific stuff. Making each faction's most generic 'base' unit similar ruins the uniqueness of the races
@@Skaliton man... you can skip gates entirelly? Are you abronze league hero? XDDD In all other cases you are just dead. Also how is zealot similiar to zergling except that they are both melee? Zealot is a tank/frontline, while ling is swarmer/skirmisher unit. Also archon is a mid game unit which is not viable at mass the moment lurkers/broods are out. Which is fine. If protoss mass only archons early you can counter him with Hydras no problem. SC2 is higly complex and quite well balanced game. every unit has counter. you can see ppl whiining about imba almost equally from the 3 races.
The problem here is that strong pro players can beat protoss deathballs whereas the average player cannot due to the amount of micro that is needed.
I like that thought on the colossus, It's indeed underpowered
I say we go back to WoL, flat 15 dmg +2/upgrade instead of this bonus vs. light. Maybe not 15, perhaps 12; just needs a buff.
@@scottevensen2615honestly WoL/HotS feels just so much better gameplay-wise
Protoss is the most rock-paper-scissors race. It lacks a solid gateway army base, Zeolots are melee, Stalkers are fragile. Gateway units lose straight up vs Terran and Zerg base armies so leans heavily on tech units like storm or colossus to bridge the gap.
This puts all your eggs in one basket because if your colossus or storms die you loose, incentivizing the ball to protect them. And sometimes you just lose because you went colossus and the zerg went spire...should have built a stargate cause now you build-order lost.
This sort of adds to the above, toss lacks flexible defenders advantage, Terran has bunkers, range, tanks and terrain. Zerg has Queens and speed on creep. Toss only has a shield battery.
The solution to toss is to give them a real defenders advantage and a solid gateway army. Either baseline or via T1 upgrade give the units/buildings within the radius of a nexus a buff like shield armor. Next, Move the immortal to the gateway, with stats adjusted accordingly, to give toss an actual power unit in gateway that challenges other armies on the ground, with this stalkers can do more vs light units to give some answer to build order loss.
My 2cent rambllings.
Conclusion: Protoss needs a redesign!
me, a protoss player: ah s***, here we go again...
Don't worry. Theorycraft whiners, like the guy who made this video are largely ignored nowdays. Changes have been few and very small,a s they should in a 12 year old game
no they need to to finaly dont have nightmer abaut terran who all but all but rly all build are hell for protos and only way is skytos, canon rush or say good bye to enemy eco by spam adepts and HTemplars in enemy base
You know this guy is a high tier grandmaster right?
Oh well... if Protoss was designed for a late game race then why Zerg have a lot of free units?
because Zerglings cannot attack into a Cannon fortified base (if you take your bases carefully with your main army standing next to it its impossible for a Zerg to attack in, and then again lings aren't free)
because Swarm Hosts open up a possibility of counter attacking because you just tell your opponent you spend a lot of money on unit that fights every 30 seconds
because Brood Lords are artillery units, therefore weak when fighting anything head-on, and can't attack air
Cheap =/= free. And even if Zerg had realistically free units, no amount of units with the 200 cap will prevent a huge deathball army or skytoss from killing you in the first place unless youll manage to force out a basetrade
Zerg late game is the strongest late game because of its casters and broodlords. It just takes a lot of control, so casuals do not get it. That is one of the reasons why Zerg is dominant in high level.
Zerg has "free units" because Terran/Toss have insane defensive capabilities. You'll never break a sky-toss or mech player with hydra/lurker/viper. Their units and base defenses are simply too cost effective. Without broodlords and swarm hosts you'd lose to these compositions every time. Also..i'd literally trade both the broodlord/swarm host for either carriers or battlecruisers; free units aren't that great.
@@Konranjyoutai well... basically almost every time when I see a late PvZ programe then I see skytoss loosing slowly against Zerg with a spore crawler forest and viper/corruptor/brood lord blob. And if accidentally both armies are zeroed Zerg just instantly rebuild it's army with infinite amount of lings... which eats everything instantly with upgrades.
@@saxus whatever nerds I don't care about a game like StarCraft I know WW3 will break out soon.
"Hard to win with, easy to lose to." -Protoss.
hard to win,easy to lose*
@@jbosssenpai3266 wrong
@@XpomAE get to my level then you can tell me that im wrong. cry me a river
@@jbosssenpai3266 i don't want to be on such low lovel of understanding jokes
@@jbosssenpai3266 btw make your comments less toxic, otherwise youtube shows them only to me
They could start by giving Zealots more movement speed, they just get kitted by terrant marauders slow or vaporized by banes. As for Collosus maybe a faster building time and make the viper harpoon drag Massive units halfway distance like it doesn't make sense that a freaking Mothership be dragged by a plane size bug xD
Yeah, I actually think Zealots need a movement speed buff. It would allow Protoss players to buy a bit more time on defense as well as more options when counterattacking.
No. Protoss needs rework.
What you’re suggesting is the balance the game with only battles in mind. But high level StarCraft doesn’t work that way.
At the high level, there’s really no OP units. It’s all about OP timing. There’s a reason why the gateway units are dogshit. Because in the past when they were somewhat decent, the mid-early game timing attack and all-ins of protoss are insanely good.
I always takes Maru’s 3-peat year as example of how broken the toss is.
That year, Protoss got buff, particularly stalker got a DPH buff. It was a miserable year for Terran as the number of GM Terran dropped to historic low(at the time), because of the improved stalker sniping ability made TvP unplayable for a lot of ppl since the early game protoss pressure its unstoppable. There was just no way for Terran to make a tank without losing 10 marines, or worse in the early game. Protoss would just snowball into a win if they didnt get a gg earlier.
However, Maru still won it all, because of his perfect execution of TY’s proxy rack essentially nullified Protoss early aggression, and made the MvP matchup favors Maru because Terran has the superior production if done right.
The changes on battle units alone isn’t the answer. Major overhaul is needed.
@@Telopead There is 0 chance that Blizzard will actually do a major overhaul.
Would this be perfect? Yes, but we will never get it.
That's why we should take a look at what is possible. Tweaking the numbers on units is possible.
I like the idea of giving Zealots more speed.
In lower level games that isn't much of an isuse, because there is very little kiting.
In high level games the Zealots gets stronger, by making him suck less vs marauders. While at the same time making him not that much stronger in a "real" combat. Toss will just loose less zealots in a chase / kiting scenario.
@@wedgeantilles8575 I would agree with a speed buff of some sort for zealot. Imo maruaders should be countered more easily considering how easily they shut down colossus. The tradeoff should be made more fair.
Bring back dark archon... 😏
As far as I've seen, Protoss has the lowest win rate pretty much every year in the big tournaments.
yep, terran lose 1/3 army oh no anyway
zerg lose 4/5 army, oh no anyway
protos lose 2 immortal. gg
xd like that micro is insane if ypu not do one of to stupid build like carriers rush
@@Darlf_Sevil fr, like when I play Zerg I can just throw my army at my enemy to save supply for new units, but when I play protoss, I can't throw money at the problem
They have lasers, ofcourse they’re OP
Frickin lasers man
Generally agree with much that was said in the video, but would also like to add at least one additional point here. Protoss' reliance on higher-strength, but lower-cost, units also means that there is far less of an ability to cheaply scout, which reduces the fog of war and randomness. Zerg has arguably the best scouting unit in the game and has total vision over everywhere they have creep spread + overlords. Terran has potentially the second best scouting unit in the game, sensor towers, and scans. While Protoss does have hallucinations for scouting, which is a very good ability, all other methods of scouting that Protoss has are much more cost-prohibitive than the other two races and hurt quite a bit more if the scouting units are lost. Both Zerg and Terran have some of the best tools to reduce randomness in matchups, which is a quality that's extremely favorable for top players who have a good chance at winning tournaments.
You forgot that the observer is fucking insane, actually terran has the worst sistem to detect enemies.
Don't forget about the pillars in almost every map, just so the overlords can safely scout your entrance
@@Framidan are you kiddin? teran have sensor towers/scans + Raven. observer cost shtiton of gas + stops your robo from producing. Its also easily sniped or by several towers cut from observing at all. As zerg you can make overssers everywhere on the map. terran scans whenever he needs. Its quite a fun if you dont have observer to run into cloacked/burrowed unit. if you drag it with army it runs ahead and gets killed etc.
@@ixirion scan aren't free, and you don't build sensor towers until midgame at least, ravens are good, but you need starport with the tech lab, that slows your stim and combat shield, and also it cost a lot of gas
@@Framidan well man. nothing is trully free. and scouting early game is SCV/probe. So you preffer your scan to cost 25/75 or 50 energy?
was playing sc2 years ago 8hours a day grinding master trying to get into gm but stopped with LotV cause it was too much effort to stay good but man, love your videos they are bringing back so many late night memorys. good times;D
Tbh the problem is that the gap between casual and pros is so vast that buffs or nerfs that would benefit casuals would be a detriment to pros and vice versa.
The recent lowering of target priority for intercepters for instance, on paper it means your units will target the carrier instead of the interceptors allowing them to kill the important unit. The problem is that it allows protoss to kite any player on A-Move because now units will try to follow the carrier instead of dealing with the interceptors.
Ofc it requires micro on the protoss' part but the chasing player will very likely lose more units in the process. And even reverting that won't change much because it would mean we'd get back to the first problem of units targeting interceptors and never killing the carrier.
Protoss is broken because their most iconic technology breaks a fundamental rule of RTS games. Warp Gate breaks the principle of defender's advantage. Distance -and specifically map traversal time and reinforcement time- favor the defender with crucial extra time to react. Zealots and Stalkers cannot be allowed to be too strong because of that. Sentries were designed as defensive spellcasters, with forcefield specifically existing to block the ramp to the main base with 1 cast. High Templar lost their energy upgrade because of that. If it can warp in, it needs to gather energy or be a mediocre fighting unit.
It was never about lategame or early game or micro. Protoss is the race with teleportation as one of its core mechanics. The only way to strengthen their defense without adding to their offense is global cooldown abilities. Recall, nexus overcharge, pylon overcharge, and shield battery overcharge. Protoss have always been the problem child because map size affects them the least. Either warp in units at the front, or recall an entire army back to defend; protoss units have the option to just not traverse the map but appear where needed. This problem has been known since the 4gate rush in 2010.
2:22 - damn, that moment when Medoed just grabs a little shuteye after a-clicking opponent base with golden armada. What joyous days those were
the funny thing he's main race choice used to be (and still is, if I am not wrong) zergs.
Warp in mechanism -> gateway units had to be horribly weak -> robo/stargate units were designed into pivots of the protoss army (unlike Brood War, in which all robo/stargate productions, except the carrier, are supporting units) -> army have to move around the core units and consequently in chunks
The answer as to why Protoss is weak on the pro level is very very VERY simple. They nerfed Zealots to the grave. Remember +30 chargelots? Yeah, give Protoss back their original ICONIC unit, just this one singular buff, and Protoss would be highly competitive again.
And nerf Ling/Bane. It's so fucking ignorant that Zergs complain about Protoss being a no brain, no micro race but ling/bane is literally invalidates all ground armies unless you have damn near perfect splits and good positioning and AoE but even good splits usually results in an even trade and zerg pushing creep and economy more. Ergo ur fucked.
At least against bio ffs, like now they are cannon fodder 90% of times.
Flesh melts from energy beams, metal armor withstands it 🤷♂️
I'd second the idea of boosting zealots (as a very casual terran) *IF* at the same time airtoss was slightly nerfed (my favorite: limit tempest range a bit which is INSANELY long: there are some maps where it's possible to place tempest in areas inaccessible by ground, out of range of missile turrets, but in range of tempests so that a protos can take out half of a terran's base completely unbothered until the terran can produce vikings)
and buff skytoss while at it
@@morgwai667 by the time toss has tempests you should already have starport and counters ready - unless he was cheesing you with some kind of proxy / tempest rush or something
I've been saying this for so long, so glad someone took the time to articulate and made a video about it
protoss is the only race that seemingly can't win with ONLY macro and straight up fights at a HIGH LEVEL, your win depends on luck ( Hogwarts level spell casting ) or out witting your opponent ( deemed cheese most of the times )
In a recent thread someone discussed one of the key problems that makes this hard to balance - the warp prism - i.e. to say the ability to subvert defenders advantage
what do i mean ? if we buff base units, warping them into someone's main makes it too difficult to deal with in the mid - late game so keeping them crappy is only way to keep that in check;
IMO remove the warp prism and buff / introduce some better gateway / mid game units
this would make wins / losses feel a lot more fair since now you can't just warp in and destroy an enemies base BUT you can also simply fight a straight up like the other races can
In your other video you addressed the reaver vs disruptor, I actually think the reavor is superior since it a bit less reliant on luck even though you'd have to babysit the unit
To detractors of spell casting being somewhat reliant on luck - you have to make a prediction on where enemy units will be and cast your spell if they move in accordance with your prediction; your predictions are based off your experience with how other people play the race for sure but things like anti-mirco etc ( them just not moving their units ) or just them behaving differently can punish this concept;
( finally also I think Terrans need an AOE damaging spell - bring back seeker missile for terrans or something akin to it )
I'm not a very experienced player so take this with a spoonful of salt, but I think the warp-in mechanic, cool as it is, is actually part of the problem. Protoss is the only race capable of instantly mass producing units, without delay, anywhere on the map where they have power. Practically a single pylon or warp prism erases or drastically reduces the defender's advantage. It's like a proxy without actually having to commit to a proxy. This means that if gateway units were actually powerful, protoss would be completely broken. As a consequence gateway units, while still individually strong, overall aren't as good as equal tier zerg and terran armies, which is why protoss needs to rely on wonky shit, or somehow survive until mass carriers.
Ahhh this reminds me of so many years of theorycrafting and proposals to the toss race (Random here BTW)
At some point I remember reading ideas about making warpgate Tier 3 and allowing to buff the T1 at somepoint which had quite a bit of traction in team liquid, going as far as making test maps
Then dragoons instead of stalkers which to some degree got implemented when they changed the attack speed and actual damage value of stalkers
Nerfed tanks so the robo units were good therefore effing mech in WOL only to buff mines later on to have more damage vs shields
Khaydarin removed due to warp in storms killing quick harass that got fixed by the oracle in Hots (to some degree)
Colli doing less damage overall to make it good only against light, therefore cursing it against bio since mauraders suddenly took half damage, I still disagree with this particular change as I never have liked disruptors
Charge damage on zealots nerf anyone? I remember I think it was your video explaining how they went from strong units to screwed damage wise by the change which you could completely feel in a PvT against running bio
Feedback doing half damage to avoid energy snipping
Etc, etc, etc. Toss is sadly trapped in between ZvT since changing them would completely screw the balance that the other races have between them, change one thing in toss and you have to fix the other races acordingly, so its easier to keep toss ina weird match after they had to learn their race 3 different times rather than fixing it and basically restarting the balance changes. Reminds me a bit of WC3 where I dont remember which race was left in the dust so the other 3 could fight.
I sweat to God, I left my own comment before. If Protoss, was given, the +30 dmg chargelots back, at the PRO level, things would instantly change, without touching anything else on the race. This one simple revert. Zealots are meant to be strong, yet got hammered to the grave. They give us more speed on the Zealots, wooptyfuckingdo.
@@JohnMelon I think the idea should be different. Zerglings should be nerfed to some degree like adrino should do 1 more dmg and maybe a little less att.movement speed. Same for terran bio- a little percentage of att speed less. Zealots charge may give + 5 charge dmg and 20 extra shields for 2 sec. Atm bio/zeg can kill zealots and basses way too fast to be fair. Probably 20% more hp on Nexus, Pylon will be ok.
Yep, I`ve been saying since the game launch that Zealots need a buff.
Both zerglings and marines are great units, Zealots are mostly dead weight except for meatshields and some niche uses.
@@ixirion 20% more HP on pylons could be disgusting in cannon rushes. Extensive testing would have to be done.
@@tatsunithelennyking2540 true. ok. Nexus only is more viable
Problem I always had and will have with Protoss at this point is exacly the low level superiority.
Protoss units, especially air (and yes I'm currently looking at Void Rays) are stupidly powerful in low level matches.
I usually agree with your takes, but not on this one. You make it sound like the protoss race is in dire need of a rework, which it isnt imo. It just got nerfed harder than it should've been (debate if it should have been nerfed at all). There are some minor issues, but not with the race in total. In my opinion (I have low league friends, I play at low master level), the protoss race as a whole is fine. I don't think their late game is unbeatable at any level. The boring skytoss vs. Zerg stalemate wasn't always won by protoss, zerg has big chances with infestors and vipers.
What needs to be said is that the ground toss is very hard to play in the late game at my skill level, because of high lurker count or tank/ghost (the ghost is still a ridiculous unit)
The only big design flaw is in my opinion the disruptor. It's a bad concept, as you just hope you hit a lucky shot. You can't really do anything except hope your opponent messes up. If he micros well, you loose everything, if they make one mistake, they loose everything. I believe there should be other options for the disruptor.
Also, especially with the current map pool, protoss is just generally underwhelming. But I think that could be fixed with minor tweaks etc. Don't really see the total design flaw though
Thoughts? And sorry for writing this much lol
Also when you think about it protoss has only been nerfed in the last few patches, right? Except the void rework maybe?
Honestly I think Templar should have been what Disruptors get used for, except EMP makes it very difficult to actually use them. Wonder if hiding them in Prisms will ever become a thing.
@@Appletank8 yeah I agree. don't know if you are being sarcastic but the templar warp prism strat is being used by high level players. The problem is just that ghost emp is significantly easier to use than HT. So at the same skill level, you can emp but can't really do the warpprism strat
@@mEtil5656
Mostly it's just that 90% of the time I see Disruptors being used than HTs, despite how good people are at dodging them now at the high level.
disruptors were never meant to be used ofensively, kinda sad that toss players have resorted to apm-checking their oponents with it
Protos is so OP that Serral just walks all over it with a 70+ win rate against them.
First of all I think it all begins with LotV.
It became such a hard and complexe game to balance with their need to add so much new stuff for the Protoss campaign.
Imo you would have to go back to HotS and do adjustments from there.
Remove the fast economy concept, because it all often ends up being a matter of how many workers you can kill and let players focus on real strategies depending on the match up and maps.
From this point Protoss would need to be redesigned, and still gl with that.
killing workers is s strategy, but yes now is to fast llike befor terrans and zergs do faster first workers protect and protos turn nexsus into free pain for all enemy on big area, so attack like that need big army and if you lose it well , now i send one empty prism who die to enemy base 2 another full of Htemplars to main and easy take all workers and spawn some adepts to do some random dmg stuf and run templars and prism, all cost me 250 minerals from one trap prism and some adepts who alos kill some enemy back to base, if i lose another prism oh no i send more and more until enemy dont have money even for workers, but they can do the same and is who first do it in this time sadly, not a option for a game just you must do it
m core back i think repair protos after economy slow, like give a time to build a army
Bring back Arbiter. Remove mothership.
Yeah it would be cool to see, but not sure if it can fit the current metagame
It would break the meta. with multiple arbiters, protoss could just recall all over the map, allowing it to have control over the whole map.
Make toss even stronger?
Stasis field sounds too OP to me...
@@lvo9197 and?
problem with protos lies in blizard they ruined they ground foruces , first nerfed immortal remove old hard shields, than, changed ability High Templar feed that no longer can burn energy on Battlecruisers, than buffed maruders they double damage than stalkers and gave them medivacs, game was perfectly balanced in Early fist year after wings of liberty than they broke initial balance
im glad you included my gorilla f2 video XD i feel honored
protoss to me has always seemed to have the shallowest skill curve, i.e. easier to play but less max power potential, which causes it to be overpowered below the pro-level and underpowered at the pro level. kinda like stunlock rogues in wow vanilla, any moron can play it but a solid pro knows how to easily handle one
As a casual player watching tournaments, the problem is spell casters in other races. At a casual level, players don't have the apm to micro their vipers, ghosts, ravens, etc. At a tournament level the micro of units gives zeg and protoss a huge advantage. Protoss maxes out on a skill level much lower. Even basic units like corruptors, mutas, marines, and vikings get huge micro advantages. The main micro ability for protoss is blink stalker, warp prism, and disruptor shots. Add onto that the requirement to abandon control to warp in gateway units.
In summary, at low levels players of other races have a point that protoss is just the a-move race. At higher levels, they can't get the same skill advantage the other races enjoy.
To improve balance at high level they could increase micro potential of units and make warping in units have a designated pylon or prism while also decreasing the micro requirements/potential on the other races.
Protoss is the only race that has had every unit except their workers nerfed/changed/reworked.
This is the dumbest comment i've ever read. You should go watch some Beta/first six months of WOL Sc2. No unit is the same.
I think Protoss is a powerful race but it is very unflexible. Your phrase that units become not up to date quickly, is the right conclusion. To make Protoss flexible we need a Disruption Web for Phoenix from Broodwar :). The ground army of Protoss is strong enough, but air army is inflexible and Tempests can't compensate this.
Seems like a reasonable explanation. It indeed feel like the game can tip more easily with protoss in a match both for or against the protoss player, it's a top heavy race :). Still it does not need major change, balance still seems quite close to where it needs to be. I do think the colossus or sentry/ravager might need a tweak to be more balanced. Maybe make so force field cost a bit less mana, or make so ravager bile cool down longer be upgradeable to reduce it back. Otherwise colossus could either have another +1 range, a tiny bit more movement speed or a tiny bit more damage against units that are not light units (I would not advise HoTS level at all, but there is room there since it was halves if I recall correctly).
Really though how can you not like protoss after that LotV intro cinematic?
I think protoss can spiral way to quick out of control and punishes way to hard which will not happen on pro lvl but will destroy casual players and thats why it is so hated
Used to be protos would saturate 1 base 4 gate and A- move to win a lot of games. The race does not teach macro that well because of its simplistic and qol features.
If you were a low zerg you got 4 gated and if could not manage your larva , you had no notion of timings , you were just dead on arrival.
As a zerg I spend 2 yrs learning timings for every cheese under the sun , before I got to some macro proteases, that actually played for macro rather than all ins or weak time pushes.
As a Zerg player I do think Protoss needs a buff of some sort, as it seems slightly unpowered at the highest levels. I just don’t quite trust Blizzard and what’s left of the sc2 balance team not to fuck it up. I don’t think the other races needs nerfs, I just think Protoss needs something new, but a rework is probably unrealistic.
I feel like Terran is definitely the race with the highest potential and is the strongest, but to me it also seems like the mechanically hardest to play.
toss needs mechanics to make plays.
just buffing stats would be unattractive for ladder/casual. think specifically of GM or tournament qualifiers.
as i see it, it's because of the maps, they are just too small and the spaces to fight is just corridors, gateway units are good in small numbers being spreadout, they just don't clump up well in comparison to other mid-game armies which forces them to have splash damage in order to deal with anything that comes at them through these corridors, and well the splash damage units protoss have are hard to use as they are fragile and cost a lot and some take up a lot of supply so while you want a lot of units you really can't because you have to invest into splash damage but you want a lot of units just to soak damage from the enemy just so you can aoe which is a hard thing to balance between, so your game is always on a knifes edge determined by splash damage units in any straight up fight, which i think design wise just suck to play against and use for yourself.
hydras and mutas and terran bio ball is basically the biggest reason why protoss relies on splash damage because you'd just get stomped otherwise due to just pure dps output as everything is choked out into these small corridors which even more emphasizes the importance of splash damage.
in SC:BW you really don't need that much splash damage to take a fight it's just there for specific areas of the map to hold chokes or to kill a lot of workers but the main middle area is typically a big widespread area that has no chokes, that's why you could get away with zealot/dragoon for most of it.
Oh man including Viva La Dirt League also brings back memories of all the Parody Songs inspired by Starcraft. They have a really successful channel now doing high quality film skits, but Starcraft will always be their beginning.
I didn't know that Starcraft is how they started. Interesting, thanks.
What they did for the cyclone they should of done for the stalker. It needs a higher Fire rate.
i'm just a casual, but:
like others already suggested, buff zealots and stalkers to be more of a core unit. give the charge-upgrade a passive movementspeed as well, to be more on par with marines. marines mostly get strong because they scale so well with those upgrades.. stim + flyinghealybois is a combo that gets rid of any pathing-problems medics caused in sc1 and give you a quick "lets get outta here" mode, that mostly is better than recall.
make stalkers tankier, buff attack speed and reduce their dmg.
to make up for the core-buff, make templar archive a necessity for warpgate and give warpgate an actual up+downside.. normally produced gatewayunits are a bit cheaper, but produced slower. warpgate makes units a bit more costly, yet they are produced faster and be warped wherever is a pylon.
that's my take on it
This. Protoss core units have always just been...bad, since WoL. Back then a single missed blocking force field and GG game's over.
Them Conclave need to wake up from their fleeting dream - Zeratul
seeing destiny on starcraft again made me shed a tear
Ultimately, at high levels of play, the winning side (in an equal skill match) will be the one with the higher power ceiling with micro and the least vulnerability to the same. Protoss have at best equal to Zerg/Terran levels of micro power, while being more vulnerable to micro. A mistake by the P player or really good play by their opponent ends the match right there, because of that situation. At casual and lower levels of play (even up into tournament rankings!) the consistency of said peak performance micro is so small that the raw numbers game favors the Protoss. Thus you have a race that serves as a beef gate to winning tournaments. Either you can consistently out play the Protoss at micro, or you _will_ lose to them. But peak performance Protoss doesn't measure up to their opponents top level of play (Outside of Mirror matches, which will always be pure skill naturally.) in terms of power. At to top of the heap, 0.1% changes make all the difference.
The only dodge to the problem is having a separate non-tournament rules balance set, which is a non-starter for E-sports inherently as it alienates the target audience.
Buff Zeolots, tweek Stalkers to be agile hit & run anti-light units, move immortal to Gateway as powerful anti-armor option. swapping sentry to robotics with buff stats.
Protoss is one of the most unique of the three in two negative ways.
They have the worst base structure. Terran build extra command centers for orbital scans or defensive fortresses. Zerg build macro hatches for more unit production. The utility of nexus is so basic, and covered by one at each base, that you don't really see toss building extra.
Most importantly is map vision. At the highest levels, toss have garbage vision compared to T & Z. Terran have scans and sensor towers, zerg have tumors. Both don't cut into their supply for map vision. Both provide massive map vision in the hands of the experts. Toss gets the shit observer. A supply costing, non-trivial gas sucking unit that won't have the coverage of the competitors and won't last long at the highest levels.
warp - mechanics is not good?
1 Probe builds several buildings without mining loss?
almost immediately units?
vision therefore oracle.
@@blessyou3999 I'm not getting into a pointless "is protoss OP or UP?" debate with you. I'm talking about tippy top one in a million pro players and the observed distinctions I see.
I don't play SC anymore and wasn't good when I did. I watch it a lot, especially tournaments. It's annoying to watch the best toss professionals in the world play against Z and T players that are at their level.
On a global scale, i think its fair that the easiest race is also the weakest at higher levels. However it does truly suck for the viewer to watch competitive starcraft and not having a nice distribution across tournament top 8s
this is sadly true
There is contradiction there, that also means it is hardest to win with at higher levels so which is it? Hardest or easiest, so where is fairness here. You are basically saying it is fair for race to be weak because it is a bit easier on low levels.
As a toss player, I don't think non toss really know what it's like to play the race. It's the hardest to expand with, and by far the most difficult to rebuild an army after a fight. Gateway units stop having an impact once you reach the mid-game (aside from Templars).
Not only that, but being the only race whose structures require you to be within range of your supply buildings is also a pain in the ass. We can't just drop gateways and robos in random places without the added expense of the pylon.
It usually comes down to how the first major engagement goes. If you deal enough damage to the enemy, you can usually win. If you lose that first battle though, it can be almost impossible to come back from. MMM from Terran can be strong throughout the entire game and can rebuild so fast, and the zerg can dump all their resources in a heartbeat. That's impossible to keep pace with most of the time
lmao " protoss race needs rework". and whos gonn "work" on it? Starcraft II is an abbandoned project and nothing will change about gameplay unless community hands blizzard a patch or update on a silver plate.
They should buff ground toss damage against units but nerf against buildings
That way, they are more effective at fights and killing drones, but not for straight up destroying bases. Make them able to 1v4 zerglings together at full upgrade, but deal damage equivalent to 1 zergling if attacking buildings. (so static defence becomes a must, but so is pulling the drones away)
Make dark templars visible when attacking buildings for 4 seconds, but do 1.5x damage to buildings, and do 1/2 damage VS workers.
A zealot run by would be almost unstoppable except by a bunch of banelings/tanks/widow mines/some kinda toss aoe.
Balancing Protoss without just straight up removing the problem elements absolutely is a nightmare.
For example, a well executed early game Warp Gate pressure can make Protoss look like the most broken race in the game, making even some of the best players in the world struggle with dealing with it. Which means that buffing Gateway units is an extremely volatile exercise to begin with; Then add in the fact that Warp Prisms can just cancel defender's advantage at every point in the game, making Warp Gate yet more powerful, and you have the recipe for a nightmare for balancing efforts.
If you buff a Gateway unit, the effects it will have on the entire game are extremely difficult to foresee due to this.
Then there are Stalkers that, due to their mobility suffer from this doubly. If controlled near perfectly, they are already an oppressive force that can win games from early game harassment from which they can get away for free (picking off a unit or two for no health damage repeatedly), which can set a Protoss player up for an easy win in the mid game.
However, if they fail at that or they get defended against well enough, then they are just a clumsy, relatively fragile unit that fails to be efficient enough to justify it's costs.
This also applies to a lesser extent to the other unit with the other variety of Blink.
Then there is the Adept, that has single/handedly redefined the early game against Protoss, yet fails to scale well enough into even the mid-game. There is also something to be said about Adepts and Stalkers stepping on each other's toes as far as their roles are considered.
Then outside of the gateway, the Robotics Facility also has some extremely powerful units that are hard to balance around. Disruptors single-handedly make the case that Protoss is fine against ground units already; Even though they are an inconsistent mess usually.
Having half a dozen of them gives even the most aggressive players pause, yet they almost never pay for themselves and rarely if ever manage to amount to enough for a Protoss win. They are also stepping on the toes of Colossi.
And even in the Stargate, Void Rays and Pheonixes both have this same issue. Too strong early on for a buff, too weak later on to really swing the game.
With Void Rays, early aggression can do game ending damage if not handled near perfectly, but they lose efficiency as the number of targets grow.
Pheonixes are also a unit that can make the game absolutely miserable in the early game, so giving them more power could make them close out games before the 5 minute mark.
Of course, all these issues that these units have in the late game only become apparent if the Protoss player fails to do substantial damage of some sort in the early game, which will continue to become progressively harder as Zerg and Terran players both get better and learn how to handle some of the more esoteric builds of Protoss players.
There is also something to be said about upgrades tied behind higher levels of tech as a half-solution to this power imbalance, but SC2 players have shown themselves quite apt at rushing certain powerful abilities just to score some early advantage - For example, Battlecruiser rushes, before Zerg players realized that just building more Queens solves all their issues.
Now, with the issues out of the way, we can actually try fixing them.
With Warp Gate, the solution is hard, but it's massive power needs to be curtailed (assuming we don't start thinking about removing it completely); Substantially slowing down warp-in speeds for Pylons not in range of a Nexus would be a start (and making Warp Prism warp-in speeds be the same as non-super Pylons). That way, it wouldn't be quite as powerful while still retaining some of it's unique Protoss flavour of having multiple angles of reinforcement and harassment.
Also, before anyone tries to retort by mentioning Nydus Worms - While they are definetly a powerful and woefully underutilized tool in the Zerg arsenal, they take 14 seconds (and resources) to build and give off a massive, directional audio signal when they become a threat, as opposed to a Prism, that takes half a second to deploy and can silently warp in 20-30 supply of units within 3-4 seconds without any indication that it's happening.
With Blinks, I would give them the same treatment as Stim; Make using the ability damage the unit. Somewhere around 40-60 damage per Blink for both units. That way, they couldn't use their ridiculous mobility to do damage for completely free in the early game (at least not without a substantially greater investment of effort) without completely removing their movement abilities either.
Adepts just simply need to be given the Reaper treatment and get reduced into scouting units, rather than be the existential threat that they currently are. Lower their damage so that they are not a constant economic threat any more.
For Disruptors, I think the best fix would be to just straight up remove them and buff the Colossus instead. Less gambling, more RTS gameplay that way.
Pheonixes would probably benefit greatly from going from an energy unit to a cooldown-based one; That way, they would stop being a nightmare when massed, but would almost always have the ability ready to use (primarily thinking about Ghosts and High Templar screwing them over).
The only unit I have no real "fixes" for here are the Void Rays, but with all the other changes, I don't think they would really need it either.
Once these changes are present, buffing the units in question can be done almost with reckless abandon. Give Stalkers more range and faster attacks. Give Chargelots back their impact damage. Make Colossi a threat to all massed units again. Let Pheonixes fill their primary anti-air role properly with only minor drips into being an assassin unit.
tl;dr - The main reason why Protoss units can't be buffed is because most of them have a period in the game where they are already dominating the game near-completely.
Mothership core prevented every rush as sustained protoss till mid game, then a death ball and gg. That was my experience with toss. Also blink stalkers were so good for rushing for many years, look at MC, he made most of his pro career just by blink stalker rushing most of the games. Anyway toss was a pain to fight with, though recent years it's more balanced.
very informative video. thx!
I was listened that the zerg is broken race in StarCraft 2 especially in mid and late game when they have infestors, broodlords and lurkers. (Hello Basset, good luck! )
The big issue with competitive games.
Unless you are theat 0,2% of a massive playerbase there is "not much room to complain".
Until you reach grandmaster you are only learning the game... But the way rank system works is your mmr/elo is a numeric position in the playerbase.
Two really memorable game I always recall in sc2:
1) was a ZvT where zerg was considered imba with the swarm mechanic. The terran strategy was long, yet simple. Contest the last available base on the map and bleed out the enemy resources.
2) zvp where skytoss was defeated with ULTRALISK!
Most high level games I watch the game is not over with a single clash. A seemingly powerful army is destroyed with backup.
The point is people focused way too much on those head on battle simulator videos.
Meanwhile a question.
Giving Adepts a mid game glave tech where the attack bounces to the next 1-2 target?
Adepts are like reapers. You see 1-2 made in each game and forgotten.
Best video yet dude, well done!!!
now I gotta see that dark vs creater game
Yo, I never knew Destiny was an SC2 player. I only learned about him recently. Not really related to the topic of your video I know, but it was just something I noticed
Blizzard should let us customize tech tree and units we want to have. Ex. we can decide to own hellbat, firebat or helion. Also let us upgrade units with unique ability. Ex. invinsible tanks or regenerating mechanic troops :D. That would be cool mechanic and of course it would need some kind of balance. Maybe points we are given and let us pick the tech we want for a price of points? Hope we get it in SC3 if it comes out.
I'd like to point out that it's technically species, not race. Race is the variation within the same species.
According to this video, Protoss is both OP and not OP enough. So it's balanced?
Sooo If I am too fat but also very tall am I balanced as well? xD
It is easier for low level players to get value, but at high level the tools T and Z have outclass P's when micro'd properly. So it depends on what you prioritize.
At some levels it’s too powerful, and at the tournament level it’s underpowered. That means it needs to be redesigned to benefit all players
I was there in Katowice when creator broke down and cried, me and my friends didn’t know if we should jump up and comfort him :D everyone was saying that
When I play Protos, Terran players always kill me by attacking me around the 4-5 minute mark with marrines and tanks and sometimes with maruders. By this time I can’t even get a colossus out.
As a casual I can't really comment with any actual credibility, but I've always felt that Protoss in SC2 was the least forgiving to mistakes. You lose one key unit and that can swing the game against you. Zerg seems the most forgiving as they don't see to have as many situations where losing one key unit is as huge of a deal as you frequently see with Protoss, such as an immortal, disruptor, or colossus, or letting lings slip past your wall. Terran have the issue with having medivacs shot out of the sky as well as clumps of marines hit by some banelings from a control mistake or not looking.
Zerg seems least effected by the potential of large swings in the game from small mistakes. My casual opinion.
I’d argue that Protoss requires the most precise micro, because losing even one unit or being slightly off position is an instant loss to high level opponents.
+ most Protoss units don’t win 1v1 battles with their counterparts because they got weaker over the years
This is why they rarely win big tourneys because when both sides play nearly perfectly, Protoss is more fragile and doesn’t have the power to compensate for that
great video that actually talks about the subject properly no just whining. Protoss feels slimy on the ladder but heavily under represented on big stage.
Protoss seems obliterated by a 1base Zerg rush swarmhost+nydus
Seems dumb but every Time you rush your pool to make 6 lings, protoss wall himself and then can't handle 3-4 teleporting sh
Yeah it does work well until GM league, that's a nasty strategy
Protoss race is not broken. "Broken" term is reserved for zerg during that cursed patch in Heart of the Swarm. Now that was broken state.
I recall Protoss had annoying strategy in "Hots", where they would rush oracles. Oracles would melt marines, and they could kill queens if macro correctly.
The game is probably the most balanced it has ever been atm.
Id ne interested to see artanis' healing storm added to templars so a 130 supply toss army can survive a 60 supply MMM with ghosts
The thing is Protoss always done this double nerf. Blizzard decided to nerf one thing and compensate it with another buff, but later found out that buff is too much so it was reverted, yet the original nerf which the buff was supposed to balance never got switched back.
For example pylon range nerf was supposed to nerf warp gate all in, but later blizzard decide that is not enough and nerf the warp gate as a whole but never revert the pylon range back. Same goes with attack/defense upgrade, nerfed first compensated with stronger air units, but now air unit are nerfed back, the ground upgrades revert less than half. So essentially Protoss as a race constantly got nerfed as whole.
None of it would matter for ladder player at all since the changes are way too small anyway, but had a huge influence among pro players to the extend many just quit. Why bother inventing new things when it will be nerfed straight away in the next patch?
this doesn't just happen toss.
as a protoss player I think most of the hate is in late game. I mean think about it there are so many ways to crush a protoss player before the mid game even starts, it all comes down to scouting and knowing what you can do to stop a play, just like in any matchup. Even with carrier play thors, drop harass for terrans, or ling runbys infestors and even spore forests are a pretty good counter, i feel that as a protoss you have all these tools to micro and only people who can handle all these tools do good in the long run. For the pros protoss players have to innovate and every little unit counts. I feel broken is a stretch because every race has their "wtf" mechanic. Zerg with the instant larvae remax, terran with their 3 rax stim or concussive in the early game or hell even the ghost in the late game. Every race is "broken" it just depends on the player in the end.
toss late game is pretty anemic tho
Cannon rushes
In short, Protoss has low skill ceiling, so lower level players can easily reach its maximum potential and top level players cannot do better than other race after hitting the skill ceiling. You can ask Maru or Serral to play Protoss and they won't be any better than the top Protoss players now, because their superior skills are limited by Protoss skill ceiling.
What Protoss need is units that are more microable. Protoss units are mostly slow and clunky, they cannot keep up with zerglings runby or terran bio drops. That's why they need tools like recall and battery to defend. But in the end, the race with more mobility can make the play, force trades or recalls. Protoss are stuck with reacting or just straight up cheese to avoid such scenarios.
i feel like toss skill ceiling is equal to zerg
Multiplayer competitive is very stressful and overwhelming. I like playing SC2 with bots and protoss air units get the job done
When a highly sophisticated race uses melee in a modern battlefield.
... thers a lot that is wrong with your initial statement
SUpply cap, balances the entire game for out play end game, like brood war one. Each unit has a supply cost, that is roughly balanced to its work use and value. Most units are pretty close to tehir actual work value.
What you have is often just bad choices by players.
If I were to realyl think about imbalance.
Zealots late game of significantly less value because they do not have any extra benefit like the bast mineral unit costs of zerg or terran units, which should be addressed, Base mineral cost units should be roughly balanced.
Zerg - Zergling Gets. Normal upgrades 3/3 Gets a speed augmentation, Gets a life augmentation, Gets Adrenal glands so it hits, much faster between attacks, which is huge.
Terran - Marine Gets. Normal upgrades, 3/3, Gets Stimp pack, A massive hp increase. Terran also has hellions, with blue flame, trasnformation, and normal upgrades, in some cases even an armor boost, or special mech combo upgrades, ie servos.
Terran has two units which only cost minerals, attacking.
Zerg has 1 unit whihc only cost minerals, attacking.
Protoss has 1 unit which only cost minerals, attacking. All the base units of all the species have various attack upgrdes which is typically two. Depending on the current patch.
Zealot: only has charge.
Proposed change to Zealot lategame via another upgrade is a melee/psi blade enhancement for bonus damage to armour and biological life forms. THis owuld balance them in lien with late game, making the melee unit cost so much more if it does connect. The speed of terran stim + concussive shells, ot a melee unit makes the so called powerful melee warrior, a paper doll and not worth its value lat game. Zealot diminishes towards the end game. Peopel cna often udner value the power ofa protss army but its uspply cost is reltively on par... 40 zealots should feel like 80 marines, or 160 lings. each without special upgrades, be fairly close to 1 on 1.
Proposed changes is charge turns into a dark templar blink attack, so the distance can be zeroed, unless they are udner a debuff. range 3/4 or something. + 3 to bio and armour, effective worth 6 damage since they do do a double attack naturally. Zealots supported by a sentry are a bit more effective... but meh...
Late game zealot doesn't match well with zerglings and marines.
Technically golden armada is sc2, so its protoss world, so peopel shoudl go air as protoss but ther was some blatent imbalances in the initial release of protoss, Such as void rays, killing you instantly with no real means of defending a early void rush, since they oculd pre charge or charge, up and since hte beam is constant damage, out damage, everything killing entire bases in basically a few seconds, its what turned me off of sc2 competitive play, since it was a pretty obvious oversight. Offer protss a 100/ 150 mineral unit for flying... that can do damage with out vespene could be interesting... but meh.. onyl real imbalance ,and structural build systems and defence. Meh...
Stalkers are fun to kill as a terran bio ball :D
“It is both powerful, and weak” that is how it should be, for all 3 races
0:38 wait, that's a recent clip of Destiny. When did he return to Starcraft?
that's not true about the supply , terran is the only race that can fund a 200supply army because of mules which is underutilized , and zerg is the only race that can go over the 200suply mark but that's even more underutilized...
Every TvP i've ever played always felt like it was their game to lose. Whatever i did or didnt do did not affect the outcome of the game.
agree. For regular players Toss are TOTAL OP... Just survive 10 min and F2 move. thats it.
As diamond player if i dont kill toss fast i alway lose to Carries or other bullshit
Than you are doing something very wrong. Corruptors or thors/ bcs/vikings can kill carrers easily. I would say as low level where Protoss might be op is Platinum and belowe, maybe even Gold and below.
Game is abandoned by devs xD tournaments are slashed so even pro scene is shrinking xD there wont be any fix lol
The community and ESL still works on balance patches as Blizzard agreed to outsource that to us
Kinda funny in SC and SCBW protoss was a high tech army with superior individual units that had zero of the issues SC2 protoss has, while alsp being an overall healthier army with zero death balling.
Then again it wasn't just the army design but the fact you couldn't put your entire army into a single command group.
I imagine the individual units were stronger too so a deathball wasn't virtually your only option, right? (I don't know of anything but the arbiter for protoss in sc2)
@@ZatralTMF Protoss always had the "out individual units are super strong but we can't make a bunch of them" as their motiff. They still tried to carry that into SC2 but the thing is when you can just group a bunch of these super strong units into a giant clusterball of death the individual weakness those units might have suddenly disappear.
@@Kingofredeyes yeah, the only counters I've seen so far is marauder, widow mine, ghost, tank, liberator, viper, but I get the point, yeah. Mostly just being bitter about Terran power creep at this point but I appreciate the explanation
I heard zealots charge does dmg before, i want to try it