Hi Lowko! This has a good chance of reaching you because ya just uploaded it, and I just wanted to thank you for making the amazing content you do; it's carrying me through quarantine. Keep up the good work!
Suggestion: You know how you like Scourge from SC? Nerf interceptor damage slightly and add a carrier toggle ability to turn interceptors into kamazee units. Skill is required because if you lose all your interceptors your carriers are just targets. The micro isn't with the unit's positioning as much as with which carriers are in kamikaze mode and which aren't. In lower levels of play this adds the chance for Protoss to make mistakes and lowers the skytoss attack move damage slightly to make it a less effective strategy. In higher levels of play this creates the opportunity for burst damage to overwhelm the zerg army at the cost of a long time to regain your carrier damage output. Furthermore if the balance isn't right you can then adjust the ability in a variety of ways(How much damage it does or cannot regenerate interceptors when in kamikaze mode as an examples.) to make it more fun.
It is interesting idea but carriers don't have huge strong units as counters, they have little and clumped up ones. If these kamikazes deal splash this will make a significant change cause of the count of the interceptors, how fast they fly and the damage, even if it's lowered.
That would be fun to have in the game, though I don't think it would be a long term fix, definitely adds something to the meta though. If blizzard keeps the mothership abductable, I would say that the mothership should boost health for the protoss units, so that it's more valuable. Or at make an upgrade that we have to buy to make it harder to abduct, somehow. Idk exaclty, but the mothership should have some boost to it.
seems like quicker-dying higher-dps interceptors would be nice but kamikaze seems out of flavour for protoss. Maybe a slight buff to interceptor damage and range and nerf to health would be good - gives carriers a lot more ability to "siege" armies from afar provided you target-fire and micro back (which would also make them simpler to micro alongside tempest because they're more in sync).
@@mastersonogashira1796 your idea is incredibly gamebreaking youre proposing turning carriers into tankier flying swarm hosts there would be no counterplay
I had 2 thoughts on changes to the carrier. First would be to add a fighting mode to it that would alter the interceptor AI, for example a defensive mode that has a closer radius of attack range for the interceptors and an attack mode where you can send out the interceptors like scouts. My second idea was to change up the interceptor strength by having an ability on the carrier that would transfer all of their shield values to the interceptors (split evenly among however many interceptors there are). That would make the interceptors stronger when they go in to attack the enemy's army, but would also weaken the carriers to counterattacks.
Maybe tempests could have two modes of fire against air, like thors do. The one they have right now, and some sort of shorter range splash that only targets air. It might help against corruptors just clumping up to one shot ships, but would still preserve traditional weaknesses to hydras and neurals.
sounds awesome but it might be a bit OP as the zergs only counter to carriers is mass corruptor+ overseer+ viper clump and having a unit shred those units with splash and without much micro required is a bit too strong. A way to make that idea more balanced would be to make the splash attack a spell that has to target a unit and then splash around the target or make the firing mode short range so corruptors can pick them off from a distance
That might work, when you change it to an ability that needs to be activated. You might get an alternative to storm - weaker and only anti air - and brood lords killing your fragile Templar wouldn't be so devastating anymore.
Carriers - reduce interceptor build time from 11 seconds to 9 seconds adds a new ability that targets an enemy unit or building for 7 seconds with 9 cast range - requires research, cost 100/100 80 seconds - interceptor launches faster(from 4 seconds to 3 seconds for 8 interceptors to fully launch) and locks onto the targeted unit - interceptor cannot target other units or return to carriers while ability is active unless the targeted unit dies - interceptors remain active for the duration of the ability even when carrier is destroyed, however at the end of the ability the interceptors dies when there's no carrier to return to This new ability allows carriers to launch interceptors slightly faster in head on engagement if ability is used(requires micro). It also provides a little more value for carriers to do some damage even after it dies, i.e from being caught in a bad position or being abducted(requires quick reaction and micro). It also can be used as a siege ability to release interceptors from a distance at a target while carrier move backwards. The risk however is if used poorly, the interceptors cannot return to the carrier for 7 seconds, if exposed and unsupported all 8 interceptors costing 120 minerals can be wiped out for free. It should allow for some interesting harassment play by flying the carriers into opponent base and use the ability on a target build and recalls the carriers home, interceptors will hit the targeted building for 7 seconds before flying all the way back home to the carriers. During that time interceptors are exposed and can be easily fungal or gun down by anti air. If opponent wants to catch the interceptors in the middle of the map, they have to guess or scout which location the carriers are recalled to to determine the interceptor's flight path back home. ------ Tempests adds new ability for tempests to switch between siege or rapid mode - requires research. cost 100/100 80 seconds - ability takes 1 seconds to transform - in rapid mode, tempest movement speed increased from 3.15 to 3.55 - in rapid mode, tempest range reduce from 14 to 10 air and 10 to 7 ground - in rapid mode, tempest damage reduce from 30(+3) to 20(+2) air and 40(+4) to 30(+3) ground but shoots twice as fast. While tempest is a good siege unit it actually has terrible dps for a 5 supply unit and has little value in head on engagement. For comparison carriers have more than 2x dps and BCs have more than 3x dps. Even vikings with way lesser supply cost do more dps than tempests. With rapid mode the dps of tempests will still be lower than carriers and BCs but it should provide some additional value if needed.
Like the concept on carriers however; (research required range = 3) consider air (only) laser barrage (see Colossus vs ground) that can be used if it has interceptors and as selected attack. This would give the carrier close quarters attack threat if abducted. Then remove time warp from Mothership and add Arbitor's stacis field with area effect. Energy cost to prevent both tactical recall and stacis being able to used in quick succession.
Lol Carriers become Boordlord? Kappa And Tempest become Pew Pew(starwars) unit's? LUL But I like this idea still is kinda slightly overpower so you need suggest other race to balance up
I really just think interceptor should just be free and tempest should deal AoE damage. Both should be immune to neural parasite and abduct. It is so stupid to see abduct can kill expensive unit with hardly any effort
I think the problems with late game PvZ comes to the lack of tools protoss has. The only real spellcaster protoss has in the late game is the high templar. Sentries are pretty much useless at that point and there can only be one mothership, which only has a positional tool and then one spell that takes half of its maximum energy. Then the mothership, carriers, and high templar are all incredibly immobile. One change that Astrea suggested in the Pylon Show that I think would help would be increasing the mothership's acceleration, since it currently takes quite a bit to get going, which is part of what makes it so vulnerable to abducts. This is generally a huge weakness of skytoss Another change that actually existed until patch 3.8 is the Release Interceptors ability for carriers. What it used to do was immediately release all interceptors in the carrier to a target area, where they would stay (unable to return back to the carrier) for 43 seconds and the ability had a 29 second cooldown. When they removed this ability, they also reduced the cost of interceptors down to 5 minerals, and have since brought it up to 15 (it was at 25). I think that bringing this ability back in some form could help with the microability of skytoss. I think the old iteration definitely had some problems, so here's my proposed rework would have an increased cooldown of 80 seconds and a reduced duration of 30 seconds. I think also increasing the interceptor build time from 9 seconds to 10 seconds would make this a balanced ability. My initial thoughts with those numbers are that the cooldown for the ability matches up with the time to rebuild all eight interceptors (if the build time is increased to 10 seconds), so protoss players won't have the option of having as many interceptors potentially fighting from each carrier. I don't think this ability is particularly strong, since it effectively sacrifices all the interceptors after the duration is complete, forcing them to be rebuilt and so the damage output increases only slightly. I think it would mostly be used a positional tool if the protoss army gets ambushed. Releasing all the interceptors from a group of carriers would provide a lot of burst damage, potentially buying enough time for a recall to regroup. Some other changes that could accompany this are reducing the cost of interceptors to 10. If there are still concerns with the ability, then maybe making it so that carriers cannot rebuild interceptors that have been released with the ability. I'd be wary about that since it adds another half minute before the carries are at full strength again, which would probably be too much of a vulnerable period. Apart from the lack of spellcasters and microability of skytoss armies, I think the other main weakness compared to terran and zerg is the lack of anti-air splash damage. The only splash damage protoss has against air is psionic storm and technically archons, though the radius of their splash is pretty minimal and it doesn't take much spreading to greatly reduce the effectiveness of archons. In comparison, zerg has fungal growth and parasitic bomb, which also work really well together and though Lowko said that parasitic bomb just tickles skytoss, when paired with fungal growth it should only take two or three solid connections with both those spells to seriously weaken, if not kill, the skytoss army. Terran has Thors, EMP round, and liberators, as well as the anti-armour missile.. Thors will often be in high impact payload mode against skytoss to more quickly destroy carriers themselves (as well as tempests). EMP is one of the most powerful spells in the game. It has the same base radius as psi storm and can be upgraded to have a larger radius, it does its effect occurs instantly, unlike psi storm's tick based damage output, and it's total "damage" to each unit is higher than that of psi storm (100 shields vs 80 health). Yes, it doesn't do anything to health directly, but if used before the shields of a protoss army have already taken damage, then it will do a lot more damage than psi storm, and also greatly reduce the number of storms protoss will have available. Small numbers of liberators aren't much of a problem as their damage is pretty low, but because of the low speed and maneuverability of skytoss, a dozen or so liberators will tear through a skytoss army surprisingly quickly. All of this can then be compounded with the anti-armour missile which deals indirect splash damage that is incredibly powerful when paired with high attack speed units or other sources of splash damage. Perhaps a change that would help with this would be giving the tempest some minor splash damage (perhaps a radius similar to that of the archon) on its anti-air attack. This way it would still maintain its primary role as an siege-anti-siege unit, while also adding a little bit to an area that protoss is lacking in. Both these suggestions (new carrier ability and tempest splash damage) I believe are definitely not powerful enough to suddenly switch the balance in the favour of protoss, however, I will admit that I also wouldn't mind seeing protoss doing better in premiere tournaments. The last time there wasn't a zerg in the finals of a Blizzcon was 2012, only two of the Blizzcon finalists in legacy of the void weren't zerg (Stats' 2nd place in 2018 and Byun's 1st place in 2016), there has not been a protoss winner of the IEM world championship in Legacy of the Void (Polt 2016, TY 2017, Rogue 2018, soO 2019, Rogue 2020). Then in the GSL, only Zest in 2016 and Stats in 2017 have actually won a season. There have also only been two zerg wins, however both of those were far more recent (Dark and Rogue in 2019). I haven't been keeping up with the WCS circuit winners, but I believe that recently it's been mostly Reynor and Serral who have been winning. Last I remember a protoss doing well was when Neeb won 3 WCS circuit events in 2017. So I think that in the past couple years (so after 2017), the only major events won by a protoss player are Stats in the ASUS ROG 2019, Stats in the GSL Super Tournament 1 2018, Classic in the GSL Super Tournament 2 in 2018 and Super Tournament 1 in 2019. Now I think it's also best to acknowledge that it is also possible that the zergs and terrans who are winning are just better players, and definitely some of the incredible results seen is due to the ridiculous skill of Maru, Rogue, Serral, Reynor, Dark, Innovation (to name a few), but I the fact that there aren't any protoss players with the same caliber of results or even perceived skill level. Stats was viewed as very strong in 2018, but has since dropped in terms of results. A lot of people have been talking about Zest recently, but his last win in a premiere event was in 2016. Apart from that, I think the best results from a protoss would be sOs's two Blizzcon wins and an IEM world championship win, though those were all in Heart of the Swarm. His greatest achievement in Legacy of the Void was winning IEM Taipei in 2016 and his second place to Classic in the second GSL Super Tournament of 2018. Also sOs falls into a weird place since his achievements were less due to having better control or any imbalance between the races and more due to outsmarting his opponents and winning with mind games and confusing builds.
@@dan0047 The mothership doesn't do splash damage and while increasing the radius of time warp would make it better for zoning, and perhaps increase the value that can be gained from psionic storm, most of the time you'll only have 1 time warp available. I also don't think that changes to the mothership are the best way to go about solving the problem. I mentioned Astrea's suggestion because it's a really simple thing that would make things better, but it's not that significant. My main problem with trying to address the problem with the mothership is that it is already the biggest target (which it does need to be) and it'll just make fights even more centred around how long the mothership stays alive.
@@isaacsylee I read your long comment and find it quite interesting. I do not play the game but I like to think about it. It might sound ridiculous but what about giving carrier a blink ability ? To me, carriers kind of suck because either they demolish everything or get demolished, there is no in between. They are bound to loose against an army able to perform pick off, a.k.a abduct as they are not mobile enough. In order to balance things out and make the carrier more microable unit, i'd reduce its health (I don't know how much, say a third) and give it a blink and a shield ability which would give an additionnal 50% shield to the carrier with a small active duration (2 seconds or so, not much). The idea is to make the carrier more like a glass canon, give it more mobility for pick off situation and big fight. Just like stalker are able to win some fight thanks to blinking balancing the damage as much as possible across the units, carriers would be able to do the same. I don't know how it would match with the mothership mobility, didn't thought that far. I also don't know how this would interact with zerg army as it would force it out of creep (in the event zerg is defending a base) if the zerg wants to take the skytoss down, i'm guessing it will favors the skytoss. It also leaves the protoss ground army on the trail of the carrier, giving the time for archon to perform potentially big shot on the corruptor. I haven't thought much of how it would play out against terran, I'll leave that to you guys. And if it's just a real bad idea, no problem about it as long as you kindly give me the appropriate explanation :) Thanks.
@@dan0047 I haven't played the LotV campaign, but looking at the details on the carrier there, I don't think that would be enough. I'll readily admit that I would like to see some way for protoss to repair since they're the only race that has truly permanent damage, but adding that little bit of healing won't help that much as it's effective against smaller amounts of damage over time and not the sudden bursts of damage that come from a swarm of corruptors targeting down carriers and this extra sustainability can also be achieved by fighting near shield batteries. What's powerful about the zerg's main healing, transfuse, is that there's a certain amount of health that's instantly healed.
I do think motherships should be immune to abduct, but give vipers a different counter to them. Maybe an ability like revelation that only reveals invisible air units? Still counteracts the mothership but doesn't activate 400/400 meme.
give the mothership a spell that sends nearby carrier interceptors to a location to fight, extend the reach of carriers without making them powerful by themselves, while still costing resources for interceptors lost
I don't think he lost because the Mothership is bad. He lost because he kept making the same mistake. He was basically using one trick at the end and Scarlet adapted better (even though she made tactical mistakes).
rasmasyean exactly right in this case. He was using mothership like a tank instead of the carriers when it’s clearly the most vulnerable. Scarlet made several mistakes which gave him an edge but instead of pushing into enemy base to hurt them on multiple occasions (before the wall of spore crawlers) he just turtled and tried to wait out the resources.
@@SadunKal Original dropships, lorewise, are made to carry a siege tanks and squad of marines, medivacs retained the orignal design. Thor is a bit trickier one, but since it hangs down from Medivac... well, I think the math may add up in here
Nice game! Cheers for the upload Lowko! Late game design ideas for Skytoss: Carriers get a burst production ability, speeding up interceptor build time for a few seconds. The trade off is that if you have 15 carriers all doing that at the same time, RIP economy. Motherships could have a FTL emergency jump, taking them back to the base they were built from almost immediately, and having it unusable whilst it repairs. Tempests could have a long CD pulsar missile strike ability that slows/damages units in a magnetic field at the point of interception, like combining psionic storm with the raven anti armour missile.
Solution: the bigger the target you're trying to abduct, the less distance it gets pulled. So for example, an immortal could be abducted all the way like it is now, but a carrier for example could only be pulled 3/4 the distance so that you would need 2 pulls? Mothership 1/2 distance?
that means though at pro level you won't be able to pull the enemy mothership unless your opponent makes a mistake. the only counter right now of zerg to the protoss ball is to get the mothership, and then they can pick off the carriers. but if the pull range is reduced, no way the pro zerg players can abduct the mothership of a pro protoss
@@N0noy1989 (disclaimer: i was a barely plat zerg a few years ago) I *think* you're misunderstanding, the cast range of Abduct would stay the same, just the distance moved would be smaller. So you'd need to abduct twice to get the same distance but once you get the first one the rest of your vipers are probably all in range now. I do think it might be considered not sufficiently intuitive a mechanic for them to make a change like that though. And of course, it might not really help much anyway since it'd just be an increase in Viper energy cost and a very small increase in the amount of time the mothership lives.
@Jermaine Beetstra, i got similar idea, but i still think you should give Zerg fraction something in return otherwise skytoss have passive defencive buff that require less micro and positioning then zerg vipers to counter it. My suggestion is to change both sides of engagement and 1) Make a different range for Air and ground abduct, based on realistic diagonal distance air abduct should be longer range. Something like +2 should be ok. 2) Massive units should travel 3/4 of the range that's practically almost old version but a little shorter, but abducting them makes viper itself move tovards the unit for missing 1/4. This changes mostly affect interactions between valuable air units and vipers. Lower value air units are merely scouts for the time of Hive tech and it makes easier for zerg to get rid of them, but not for realy much because it still cost lots of energy that spent not on main fight. Larger units require practically viper sacrifice for such an abduct. It would be casted from longer range but total travel distance would be smaller and viper probably wouldn't survive engagement if distance between main forces was too far. From zerg perspective it's important not only provide distance for abduct but also support viper or sacrifice it to destroy valuable unit. From opponents perspective it's important to react faster and at least take a trade if its considered efficient.
Thanks for the great cast Lowko! Since Carriers have no burst attack or escape capabilities like the BC, I'd like to see them have something. Seeing how they are vulnerable when units get on top of them, my suggestion - Give them a repulsion ability that pushes all enemy ground and air units around the Carrier out to 8 range. This will function as a crowd control ability forcing most units out of their own attack range while still being within the Carrier's attack range. This forces enemy units to get in close again while allowing the Carrier additional attacks from their Interceptors. This can be used offensively for attacking and kiting. Those with good micro can really benefit. This can also be used defensively to push units back while escaping. This can also be used to disrupt enemy lines and formations if the Carriers get on top of them. Another similar suggestion is instead of making the repulsion point from the Carrier itself, have the repulsion ability target a space instead.
Why did neither of them press the attack after wiping out the opposing force? I get that corrupters can't do much to ground, but I'm utterly confused by not attacking with carriers.
These are my thoughts Microbial shroud: -increases range of ground units inside by 2 -increases the attack speed of units inside by 50% Carrier: Sun Beam: Fires a beam that does 10 damage (+15 vs Armored) with an attack speed of .5 for 15 seconds, Cooldown: 140 seconds
Like Lowko said, only way Protoss will win is if other player makes some kind of mistake toss can capitalize on. Which is why they need some kind of revamping to equal playing field. Cuz at the moment a semi-shit Zerg/Terran playing can stomp most Protoss mid to late game. Which is why zealot/photon rushing is was the usual go-to
When the video starts i always say:hello every one my names is lowko and welcome back to a professional match of starcraft 2. My parents always ask me why I always said that😳
Solution for balance: the viper pulls “big targets” 1/4 of the distance. Zerg players would have to chain multiple pulls to get the same effect, giving the Protoss player a chance to throw out a psionic storm or recall. Banelings can stand to be a little less tanky as well.
Balance suggestion: Now here me out, make the interceptors on the carrier an activated ability that can be toggled on or off. When on the interceptors have to be activated. The activated interceptors "charge" and do extra damage to a single target (this could also be an upgrade in the fleet beacon) Lower ladder players would like it to be on auto-cast but if you pay attention to your fleet and have good micro you can do a little extra damage with carriers. Or carriers should have a "scout" feature. They send out one interceptor in a single direction max range about 10 that can be recalled. This gives only information at the potential price of 15 minerals. It gives the carrier extra value for high level players but doesn't really solve the a-move problem lower on the ladder. Yes I am a protoss main :)
@@zufallrap phoenixes doesn't seem to have a place in the late game. Mayde an upgrade? One that gives it another ability, since it is already a spellcaster? Make it like the Oracle, that can be usefull later
@@zufallrap That's straight up wrong. For example, corruptors loose their match up against void rays who can target anything but loose against hydras who in turn loose against most late game units. It's not the corruptor that is so mighty, it is it's combination with other units as vipers in this match.
This was so painful to watch. Creator has the game won when he kills the Zerg army (Minute 32) and then just sits back and lets Scarlet get back into the game. Completly passive with a huge army leaving the bases in the top right alone the entire game. Instead attacking the left side that is already mined out for 10 minutes. Of course, he doesnt know how much army the Zerg has but at least harass or pock a bit and not sit there with 10 Carriers and do nothing.
yeah, he can't know what she has, or is going to build with her larva bank and the spore crawlers make harassing with the remaining carriers a bit costly. Scarlet made the trade likely because she had the gas to replace her army, but loosing the 5 brood lords was really painful.
To add to Arni, The amount of huge static defense is very risky to engage upon. Lets say you decide to go after that, you lose interceptors (and money) and you are essentially exposed from flanks since you have to commit. Scarlett abduct you or uses infestors and turn it all around. Thats the real danger. Hes playing the attrition game. On top of not knowing Scarlet bank and larva count. Since Scarlett didnt gg, that in itself got him to reconsider.
At first I thought the same but there's little the protoss can do to finish the game there. Going for the mining bases while risking your own bases to a run by with zerlings? While the zerg can get to your main army in half the time the toss army gets there?
I think the carrier should get a spell that burst creates more interceptors that would cost energy and the minerals needed for those interceptors. OR they could have a burst damage ability, similar in function to the battlecruiser, that would do damage to a single target. Both these I think would help carriers fight corrupters and help in a sustained battle against the spore crawler forest
How about the Abduct is Nerfed in a way that massive units can't be pulled off to a that far distance as other units are like reducing the Abduct distance less
I think the very idea of having abduct is to give zergs some way to deal with massive units in deathball toss armies (colossus and tempests) and tanks and thors in terran armies. This is literally why the spell was introduced into the game. Without it, it would be more than useless. What would you abduct then, marines and stalkers?
@@inohope I meant, like if they Abduct carriers then they get abducted to max distance but mother ship, is just -400, -400 for protoss, so I think regarding mother ship it should be less
I love her caster and static defense usage, even the way she spreads the changelings, soo efficient! I was praying for her to add nydus swarm host/infestor hit squad during the match just for some icing on that cake.
Honestly yeah. Even if it's half the range of what it is in the campaign/co-op versions of the game. Just something to let it stutter step out at the last second before a viper gets in range.
Zealots have sweeping damage as they swung their blades instead of single unit damage, so they are harder to just swarm. (Edit)Another feature could be patrolling interceptors, where you can send your interceptors 1 at a time to patrol an area, this could be used to scout an area and defend the carrier, and since you can send 1 and leave the rest, you do can surround your carrier, however, when a carrier has patrolling interceptors, it is slower and is limited in distance it can move from away the interceptor, also, a patrolling interceptor can be in an attack move, or a passive move
Nicolas Sicard - Personne n'en parle fair enough, but it would be good against a Zerg all in, it could maybe work on only specific units, or is only the first swing after it stops moving
Maybe a good idea would be to add a spell to the carriers. Perhaps 2 spells. One to buff shields and one to remove shields from the carrier to add attack speed or damage.
Since Lowko said don't say below: I will answer him with. You can still abduct individual carriers even if they are cloaked. You just have to keep some detection overseers nearby. Which you have anyway. Just make the mothership unable to be abducted. It makes no sense that a small viper can abduct a huge mothership anyway... Heck it would be funny if the viper pulled itself to the mothership if it targeted abduct on it xD
I said it in the past, I will say it again: Zerg late game army is boring. It's always the same, wait on creep until the enemy comes to you and yoink the most expensive unit with the viper. Repeat until the enemy makes an mistake. It feels so much different than the aggressive early /mid game Zerg (at least watching wise) As a change? Make the viper abduction slower, so the enemy unit doesn't get yeeted into the swarm, and you have time to kill the viper and pull the unit back. This would prevent the yoink = dead situation
My sentiment exactly. I think the abduct distance is really high. Fucking dragon fly yeets a giant city across half the map, so the corruptors who are already more mobile than the relevant protoss fliers have no risk destroying whatever is abducted. And also: I hate Zerg late game. Creep is a giant advantage in picking the best fight. "Not doing anything wrong" seems a little easier than "Doing something right."
I think that Carrier and Mothership are fine regarding damage output and role, but the could use some better abilities. Eg. they changed the Battlecruiser quite alot and now it is this powerful warship that you can use in pretty much every phase of the game. Why not make the carrier a little more versatile? My suggestions: Carrier are (in reality) powerful attack but also supportcraft. Why not introduce a "repair" ability like in the campaign. AoE-castable ability, Drones repair all friendly units within a radius, interceptors get converted to repairdrones for that time, so no dmg for that carrier, only one active ability in a certain radius at a time. Carrier uses shield to fuel the repairdrones. Mothership: remember the hardened shield ability of the immortal from WoL? Add this to the mothership alone or maybe even as an AoE-ability. Eg. for 3 sec all units under the cloaking field recieve a max of 10 dmg, if greater than 10 the damage is reduced to 10. This interrupts other AoE-abilites (do balance it vs the new carrier repair). The Mothership can't be abducted for 2 sec, but loses all it's shield after the ability ends".
Lowko just want to say congratulations for the 400k subs! Have been watching your content for a good five years and it just gets better and better. Thanks for the entertainment during these hard times.
@LowkoTV It's a good idea to buff Skytoss as what you said, there are no good plays from protoss and only rely on zerg making a mistake, meaning zerg is always in control. They could upgrade Skytoss like, making Interceptors not cost Minerals like Zerg's free units like locusts and broodlings, or making carriers or tempests do splash damage even a tiny bit could help them out a lot and avoid getting abducted one by one or parasitic bombed at. They could also buff the shields from certain spells that do damage since in it would make more sense for them to have this as terrans can repair and has medivacs while all zerg can regen however for toss, only shields regen and their life stays the same so it's pointless to keep a 1HP carrier since it'll be dead when the shield goes out therefor a waste of supply and time in building one. Mother ships are basically useless units which costs a lot and once abducted is instantly deleted, so I propose it should be replaced with arbiters instead as it's a better caster with those stasis spell skill or something like that and a better detector too. Observers should be supplyless and has a timed life warp in from Nexus as Terrans have unli scans if they have too many CCs and overlords can be a lot to make overseers and can be placed anywhere on the map on top of the creep tumors that give vision. With these few upgrades, I think we'll have a lot of good PVZ and PVT and most likely people will say it's IMBA but from a better standpoint, people learn to adapt to these changes and will probably find other things to exploit from a protoss ball.
I have an idea. Make carriers a little less hp, and can't move, but give them a more frequent tactical jump used to move around a limited area. This way, the carriers position themselves during battle, and utilize recall to nexus and mothership more. Additionally, give mothership a little more hp, and a guardian shield type ability exclusive for air units, that shares a cooldown with it's recall. This way, a mothership can put a skytoss in position, but also reward an army that's already in position. So, carriers can still be extremely powerful if positioned correctly, promote micro playstyle, and be vulnerable.
This would forbid a big carrier army though, since if you have to much supply caught in such slow units you'll suffer run by's all over the place or have them picked up one by one.
@@GBS4893 Well, I think that's a weakness already. Carriers aren't exactly fast. Protoss has great units to deter this. Additionally, with the new high templar buff + tempests, protoss has the tools to fend off spellcasters. Even if spell casters try to yank carriers away, the tactical jump can allow the carriers to regroup, and if the battle seems unfavorable, the guardian shield allows the group to be recalled with relative safety.
Only makes sense if you do one of the following in addition to that. A) reduce resource cost or build time of viper B) reduce energy cost of abduct C) increase range of abduct D) increase armor/health of viper
This has been brought up so many times before. Make abduct distance varies per unit size. Say, adbucting an oracle? Full distance. aducting a mothership? maybe pull it in just 2-3 range. So you need to chain more (use more energy and skill) to take down a more valuable, tide turning unit while also allow some counter play or reaction like recall, counter attack or whatever else.
Lowko. what do you think of some kind of Carrier "overload" ability? Like a "call to Tassadar", were Carriers basically turns into a tactical nuke, of sorts? It would have to require some kind of micro, such as you need to individually dedicate a Carrier to the upgrade, and once initiated you can't back out...
Aegis Protective Field : An ability (researched) for the mothership that blocks a spell cast at it every 30 seconds. You would basically need to abduct it twice with that. And if you fail, 30 seconds latter the protective field would be active once more.
What if abducts consume energy proportionate to the unit size they abduct, like extra 25 energy to abduct large units, normal for medium and minus 25 to abduct small units?
I wish carriers had a speed boost (kinda like medivac afterburner.) and had less health. would also be cool if intercepters had a speed/ attack speed bonus for a short time after using the carrier boost. this would hopefully have carriers reward more dynamic micro, especially in tandem with high templar.
I like the idea of making micro necessary for the golden armada (aka skytoss). Maybe some complicated synergy between carriers and the mothership like cloaking isn't a perfect circle, but projects ahead of the mothership (so you can't abduct her so easily in a straight up fight), but the cloaking doesn't extend much past her flanks and stern as much leaving her vulnerable to flanks and ambush. Or weakening carriers(or maaaybe they're already weak enough) , but give the mothership the ability to give targeted buffs - like if the mothership casts an ability similar to fungle (small aoe) then air units attacking enemies in that aoe get a buff. Call the ability 'rally' or 'executive advance order' because the mothership is acting like an in game commander/general
i mean micro is important, put two sky tosses against each other and the one that doesn't focus fire loses, that then introduces the idea of over killing having everything targeting one unit which introduces smaller unit group selecting along with focus firing, which takes a lot of apm
I insist in the same suggestion I did some videos ago: Malestorm ability. I think it would balance PvZ in pro level, without making toss turtle in the rest of the levels on the ladder. What's your thoughts on this idea Lowko? I would love to know what you think of it.
My first thought was along the lines of what you suggested with the Arbiter. Adding a support/caster type flying unit is one possible answer. Another is that Mothership move speed could maybe be buffed, so it's harder to catch out a player with good micro. But, really, all I want is Vortex back so we can make Archon Toilets.
Re: Carriers. I would actually like to see two paths for carriers. One would be basically the current path, keeping them as a slow, mass-damage unit. But it would be interesting to offer a speed upgrade, with the caveat that the carrier could not hold more than 5 interceptors. I think that would offer pro and non-pros alike the chance to use carriers as a part of a more mobile army, and would def. be more micro-focused. Re: mothership, i just think they shouldn't have detection ability. A small detail, but i think it would change things, and again, challenge the micro ability of the player. Also, Lowko, you are hands-down my fave caster. I haven't enjoyed following SC2 this much since i was watching Husky's casts. Keep it up!
@Lowko, you want an idea to balance the carriers? Interceptors eject the Carriers slower on attack move , a bit faster on targeted move, and they get an ability with around 10 sec CD to instantly eject all Interceptors at once. How about that? Would give them an ability, micro would pay off and a bit more strategic value.
So what if we changed the abduct mechanic for the mothership? The thing is a giant city and gets yeeted really far for what is essentially the tongue of a dragonfly on the viper's part. What if the size of the mothership was factored in and the mothership abduct range was ... idk 30% less, forcing the corruptors into a little more of a risk when trying to flip up the mothership?
Suggestion, as a protoss player: Carriers get a spell that allows them to rebuild all interceptors instantly for 200 energy\ Motherships increase energy generation for all units under them thanks for coming to my ted talk
That would make it too strong, if there are hydralisks destroying all the interceptors, boom they are back, hydralisks would become a useless unit against carriers
BEST suggestion for Mothership issue EVA: decrease the distance Mothership gets pulled by the abduction. One could reduce it to 70%(?). or 50%(?). I don't know what is a good amount, I guess it can be tested and re-adapted over time. Somehow this partly fits with the fact that the Mothership is very heavy. (oke, physically the viper should be the one actually being pulled by the mothership, but you know, how are bc being repaired from scv's staying on the ground afterall?? ). Thanks Lowko for the videos they are awesome!
I think the problem is how few resources are at each base, Late WoL, and HotS, being on 4-5 base income had a bigger meaning to it, and made taking/holding/losing bases more crucial. Zerg needs to significantly out-expand to get enough garbage units to throw into late-game Protoss now, and it reminds me of exactly the problems we had at the start of WoL when the maps had too few bases (and by extension, resources).
What about blocking abducts or making the way the abduct can move a unite less far if there is a sentry shield available underneath it? It would make sense, since it is a wide spread shield which blocks away stuff, zerg could easily just kill the sentry underneath it if necessary and than go on, but it would provide some protection against that kind of thing for protos. Or another option: Since the mothership is pretty heavy it would make sense to for instance make the abduct pulling in a way, that if you abduct the mothership, the viper will be pulled towards the mothership too for half the way and both meet in the middle?
My answer for how to make mothership+carrier actually good in pro-play. Do the same thing that Battlecruisers become playable at a high level: Give them an analog of the Tactical Jump. This gives them something to micro that will make them better in high elo, and gives them a decent answer to being abducted. It made Terran's able to actually play late game v. Zerg (well, it was a big help for that, other changes also helped).
So an idea I had is make it that carriers interceptors have a fuel mechanic. A manual deploy and recall. Something like if they aren't recalled in time they stop firing and return slower to carrier. Then increase the speed of the carrier if no interceptors are deployed then slow them down when they deploy them.
How about giving mothership blink or resurgence? That way they'll survive longer and can escape or the corruptors has to stay there for a while and be essentially vulnerable to storms?
Adding the immortal barrier to mother ships could help. But I did used to love those Arbiters and the stasis ability. Also, dark archon's could permanently steal a unit. Had so much fun combining those to recall drones and build up two races at once, lol.
Good day Lowko! Hope you and your family and country are doing alright in this Pandemic times. Thanks for the content. I think the Mothership needs a buff. Mothership: - Increase its default SHIELD ARMOR by "2" from "0." So the SHIELD's Hit Points takes the same amount of damage as its AIR ARMOR (Except for SHIELD BONUS DAMAGES). SPELLS: Time Warp: - Duration increased from default "7" seconds to "8" seconds. - Delay reworked. While being inside the delay radius, Time Warp now slows down enemy unit and structure Movement Speeds by 25-50%. After the delay, Time Warp slows down enemy unit and strcutures Movement Speed and Attack Speed by 50% for 8 seconds. (Delay reworked should help in making it more effective against fast air and fast ground units and being a better spell to a SINGLE UNIT AT A TIME UNIT) - Add some casting animation on Mothership slowing effect animation on affected Time Warp units and increase the height of Time Warp so it looks better and it looks like its hitting air units hahaha. I think I might suggest another Mothership changes to Blizzard and I may change or add more.
I know that may sound a bit dumb but... I feel like I you need to land like billion storms on corruptors to do anything, and even they are fast and its easy to dodge. So my suggestion is that storm deals like 1 or 2 dmg per second more, only to armored units. Cause if we take for example the Ultralisks storms aren't real efficient against them and it should stay that way, but the ultras are huge with much HP and it won't make it significant. Same for Thors and similar units. I think that this will be indirect nerf only to corruptors and not even that significant but making it require 2 to 3 storms to half corruptors, rather than 4 to 5. It may be very dumb suggestion but I don't see something else suffering this much from it, please correct me if I'm wrong. Amazing game Lowko, thanks for the video
Tier three tech for Protoss Fleet Beacon. They had it before... interceptors can stay outside of the carriers until they die. No leash distance. Once they deploy they can stay in that area. Or Tier three tech. AFTER you make a mothership you can turn your star gates into warp gate tech. It’s late game but you can then replenish as fast as Zerg.
I'm thinking that the Mothership needs something just to keep it more alive. Two ideas I have are A: When it's effected by CC, it gets a small ability like the Immortal Shields to reduce incoming damage, therefore give the ship a better chance of suriving and the Protoss saving it. Another idea was to give it a Reincarnate like ability. I was thinking that when it dies, it gets recalled to a base and instantly goes back to half health and stunned for a few seconds. Give that ability maybe a two minute cooldown or something, because while the ship doesn't die and waste your resources, it still gets removed from an engagement.
Carriets: 1. Reduce cool down of interceptors attack. They have the DPS of a probe. 2. Increase the launch range of carriers. 3. Add 20% chance of dealing pure damage by each interceptor.
well one could add a toggle ability to the mothership which immobilizes it and increases the cloaking field by 50%. this would allow one to micro a defense against abduct if he finds himself out of position, or he could not micro and just try and sit back a bit further in an engagement. another idea is to spawn the mothership with 4 phoenixes, which makes the mothership essentially free supply wise, though phoenix isn't very useful in late game.
I know that you said, dont make the Mothership unadoptable, but most of the time when I watch PvZ where the Toss go to air with Mothership, the Toss allways losses the mothership so fast and easy.. So.. what about something in betwine, like... - Motherships are big and heavy units so they will only be adopted 50% of the distance of other units. OR - Mother shipts are big and heavy units, so they can only be adopted if you use two vipers at the "same time" OR - When adopting motherships the vipers and mother ship will be pulled 50% towards each others and meet in the mittle. ( this will give the toss a bit of a trade if they manage to kill the vipers when they "lose" the mother ship. What do you think Lowko ?
One little thing that i think would be a cool addition to late game is to allow you to chrono boost carriers to make interceptors faster so that you don't end up in that situation where the fight happens and then you cant run and now your carriers cant fight either. I do also believe carriers shouldn't be able to be abducted but would be fine if they were given another spell that could make them more useful or at least something defensive so they don't just get abducted then one shot-ed the way they do now.
Suggestion, maybe carriers could sacrifice 6 interceptors and half shields to gain a temporary movement speed that exceeds corruptor speed while reducing the speed interreceptors are created for the duration of the boost to regain home advantage but only if recall is on cooldown. Idk food for thought and in forums I posted "Grow sc and sc2 with side interaction" not a balance idea but rather more instant gratification gameplay while waiting for games to load during main screen, food for thought
How about bringing back the staisis while recalling on a long cooldown but limiting the number of units so the other army has the advantage over the remaining smaller force?
Balance: I think the balance should impact a unit which is currently not used too often in Skytoss or doesn't exist, yet. Skytoss is pretty straight forward. Mainly Carriers, one Mothership, some High Templars and maybe some Archons. So there is only one Spellcaster involved. In general Protoss unit compositions are very limited. Furthermore this unit composition is very immobile. So Zerg and Terran can just jump on top of it, pretty easy. So balancing with either adding a spell or ability to an existing unit or creating a new unit, might help. This spell might be an instant, short-distance recall, a spell for zoning or something that punishes clumped up air units (like Storm having additional damage to air units) Furthermore the Mothership should get increased range of sight.
1. Reduce Spore Crawler move speed. 2. Let Carriers build a few reserve Interceptors slowly (after the normal slots are full), maybe at half speed. These get stored in the Carriers and can instantly replace dead Interceptors. Same cost. 3. (Optional) Interceptors detonate for small air AOE damage when they die. These changes prod both the Zerg and Protoss players to make moves (and errors). The slower spores prod the Toss to jockey for map position and gain some advantages there at the cost of exposing their army to abducts and engages. The reserve Interceptors allow the Toss player to sustain a fight against Infestors much better than they can currently. This prods the Zerg player to engage more often (and make errors). Basically the current issue seems like both sides of the fight can turtle really hard and then pull very small moves. If both sides were pushed slightly to make more moves and to make mistakes, then the scenarios would become more dynamic. I also agree on the Arbiter ideas -- and it could provide more interesting spell selection than just "LOL PSI STORM" -- but that would have larger ramifications to Toss as a whole.
Lowko's the type of guy to call a stargate a starport during a ZvZ
I like how we have either Stargate or starport in ZvZ
-Doug's the typ...- wait wrong channel.
Hahahaha :-)
And the type of guy to call a zerg queen Brenda
At least it's not yet a StarBay xD
35:00 Lowko calls it Mothership #74, when if fact it is only #5, meaning he was off by 69. Coincidence?
Nice
gg wp :D
Coincidence? I THINK NOT!
Lowko doing math like a bad ass Einstein. . . Yeah I’m going coincidence
N I c e
I do wonder how a viper can move a mobile city with it’s tongue
The same way bumblebees fly
the same way they can move battlecruisers in lore
this is not a tongue))))
It can be done. Ever see a KISS concert?
Hey if Dahaka can eat one I don't see y thats not possible :P
Hi Lowko! This has a good chance of reaching you because ya just uploaded it, and I just wanted to thank you for making the amazing content you do; it's carrying me through quarantine. Keep up the good work!
As soon as I heard Skytoss in PvZ, I was like.... We lost didn't we ?! And Mothership being useless as usual !!
Suggestion: You know how you like Scourge from SC? Nerf interceptor damage slightly and add a carrier toggle ability to turn interceptors into kamazee units. Skill is required because if you lose all your interceptors your carriers are just targets. The micro isn't with the unit's positioning as much as with which carriers are in kamikaze mode and which aren't. In lower levels of play this adds the chance for Protoss to make mistakes and lowers the skytoss attack move damage slightly to make it a less effective strategy. In higher levels of play this creates the opportunity for burst damage to overwhelm the zerg army at the cost of a long time to regain your carrier damage output. Furthermore if the balance isn't right you can then adjust the ability in a variety of ways(How much damage it does or cannot regenerate interceptors when in kamikaze mode as an examples.) to make it more fun.
Yea, as a Protoss player I think just having the ability to manually send out your interceptors to a targeted location would be rly nice.
It is interesting idea but carriers don't have huge strong units as counters, they have little and clumped up ones. If these kamikazes deal splash this will make a significant change cause of the count of the interceptors, how fast they fly and the damage, even if it's lowered.
That would be fun to have in the game, though I don't think it would be a long term fix, definitely adds something to the meta though. If blizzard keeps the mothership abductable, I would say that the mothership should boost health for the protoss units, so that it's more valuable. Or at make an upgrade that we have to buy to make it harder to abduct, somehow. Idk exaclty, but the mothership should have some boost to it.
seems like quicker-dying higher-dps interceptors would be nice but kamikaze seems out of flavour for protoss. Maybe a slight buff to interceptor damage and range and nerf to health would be good - gives carriers a lot more ability to "siege" armies from afar provided you target-fire and micro back (which would also make them simpler to micro alongside tempest because they're more in sync).
@@mastersonogashira1796 your idea is incredibly gamebreaking youre proposing turning carriers into tankier flying swarm hosts there would be no counterplay
I had 2 thoughts on changes to the carrier. First would be to add a fighting mode to it that would alter the interceptor AI, for example a defensive mode that has a closer radius of attack range for the interceptors and an attack mode where you can send out the interceptors like scouts. My second idea was to change up the interceptor strength by having an ability on the carrier that would transfer all of their shield values to the interceptors (split evenly among however many interceptors there are). That would make the interceptors stronger when they go in to attack the enemy's army, but would also weaken the carriers to counterattacks.
These are really good ideas!
Fantastic ideas
What if there’s a weight factor involved for the abducts, so that the heavier units (ie. Mothership/carriers) would be pulled less?
And smaller units would be ripped apart immediately(i.e marines and zealots)
@@МёртваяБелка well yes, but it a little bit of a waste to use it for a single marine
I feel like a simple counter is to make the viper ten times bigger. Making it easier to spot and target, while still keeping it insanely powerful.
Maybe tempests could have two modes of fire against air, like thors do. The one they have right now, and some sort of shorter range splash that only targets air. It might help against corruptors just clumping up to one shot ships, but would still preserve traditional weaknesses to hydras and neurals.
sounds awesome but it might be a bit OP as the zergs only counter to carriers is mass corruptor+ overseer+ viper clump and having a unit shred those units with splash and without much micro required is a bit too strong. A way to make that idea more balanced would be to make the splash attack a spell that has to target a unit and then splash around the target or make the firing mode short range so corruptors can pick them off from a distance
This could also encourage more zerg to use hydra versus skytoss, which seems to be something blizzard wants them to do
Nice idea. Though the same can be done with storm splash and archon attack splash.
Maybe the spell could be something similar to what Disruptor have, but a bit faster, but still something that is possible to micro against.
That might work, when you change it to an ability that needs to be activated. You might get an alternative to storm - weaker and only anti air - and brood lords killing your fragile Templar wouldn't be so devastating anymore.
I always watch your videos with my morning tea and breakfast. Thank you for making my mornings better ❤
Archons: die
Lowko: Why are there no archons?
Carriers
- reduce interceptor build time from 11 seconds to 9 seconds
adds a new ability that targets an enemy unit or building for 7 seconds with 9 cast range
- requires research, cost 100/100 80 seconds
- interceptor launches faster(from 4 seconds to 3 seconds for 8 interceptors to fully launch) and locks onto the targeted unit
- interceptor cannot target other units or return to carriers while ability is active unless the targeted unit dies
- interceptors remain active for the duration of the ability even when carrier is destroyed, however at the end of the ability the interceptors dies when there's no carrier to return to
This new ability allows carriers to launch interceptors slightly faster in head on engagement if ability is used(requires micro). It also provides a little more value for carriers to do some damage even after it dies, i.e from being caught in a bad position or being abducted(requires quick reaction and micro). It also can be used as a siege ability to release interceptors from a distance at a target while carrier move backwards. The risk however is if used poorly, the interceptors cannot return to the carrier for 7 seconds, if exposed and unsupported all 8 interceptors costing 120 minerals can be wiped out for free. It should allow for some interesting harassment play by flying the carriers into opponent base and use the ability on a target build and recalls the carriers home, interceptors will hit the targeted building for 7 seconds before flying all the way back home to the carriers. During that time interceptors are exposed and can be easily fungal or gun down by anti air. If opponent wants to catch the interceptors in the middle of the map, they have to guess or scout which location the carriers are recalled to to determine the interceptor's flight path back home.
------
Tempests
adds new ability for tempests to switch between siege or rapid mode
- requires research. cost 100/100 80 seconds
- ability takes 1 seconds to transform
- in rapid mode, tempest movement speed increased from 3.15 to 3.55
- in rapid mode, tempest range reduce from 14 to 10 air and 10 to 7 ground
- in rapid mode, tempest damage reduce from 30(+3) to 20(+2) air and 40(+4) to 30(+3) ground but shoots twice as fast.
While tempest is a good siege unit it actually has terrible dps for a 5 supply unit and has little value in head on engagement. For comparison carriers have more than 2x dps and BCs have more than 3x dps. Even vikings with way lesser supply cost do more dps than tempests. With rapid mode the dps of tempests will still be lower than carriers and BCs but it should provide some additional value if needed.
THose ideas feel great, but let's remember that in the late game armor is high, reducing carrier dps way more than a tempest's for example.
Like the concept on carriers however; (research required range = 3) consider air (only) laser barrage (see Colossus vs ground) that can be used if it has interceptors and as selected attack. This would give the carrier close quarters attack threat if abducted. Then remove time warp from Mothership and add Arbitor's stacis field with area effect. Energy cost to prevent both tactical recall and stacis being able to used in quick succession.
LITERALLY A BUNNCHA BUFFS LOL
Lol Carriers become Boordlord? Kappa
And Tempest become Pew Pew(starwars) unit's? LUL
But I like this idea still is kinda slightly overpower so you need suggest other race to balance up
I really just think interceptor should just be free and tempest should deal AoE damage. Both should be immune to neural parasite and abduct. It is so stupid to see abduct can kill expensive unit with hardly any effort
I think the problems with late game PvZ comes to the lack of tools protoss has. The only real spellcaster protoss has in the late game is the high templar. Sentries are pretty much useless at that point and there can only be one mothership, which only has a positional tool and then one spell that takes half of its maximum energy. Then the mothership, carriers, and high templar are all incredibly immobile.
One change that Astrea suggested in the Pylon Show that I think would help would be increasing the mothership's acceleration, since it currently takes quite a bit to get going, which is part of what makes it so vulnerable to abducts. This is generally a huge weakness of skytoss
Another change that actually existed until patch 3.8 is the Release Interceptors ability for carriers. What it used to do was immediately release all interceptors in the carrier to a target area, where they would stay (unable to return back to the carrier) for 43 seconds and the ability had a 29 second cooldown. When they removed this ability, they also reduced the cost of interceptors down to 5 minerals, and have since brought it up to 15 (it was at 25). I think that bringing this ability back in some form could help with the microability of skytoss. I think the old iteration definitely had some problems, so here's my proposed rework would have an increased cooldown of 80 seconds and a reduced duration of 30 seconds. I think also increasing the interceptor build time from 9 seconds to 10 seconds would make this a balanced ability. My initial thoughts with those numbers are that the cooldown for the ability matches up with the time to rebuild all eight interceptors (if the build time is increased to 10 seconds), so protoss players won't have the option of having as many interceptors potentially fighting from each carrier.
I don't think this ability is particularly strong, since it effectively sacrifices all the interceptors after the duration is complete, forcing them to be rebuilt and so the damage output increases only slightly. I think it would mostly be used a positional tool if the protoss army gets ambushed. Releasing all the interceptors from a group of carriers would provide a lot of burst damage, potentially buying enough time for a recall to regroup.
Some other changes that could accompany this are reducing the cost of interceptors to 10. If there are still concerns with the ability, then maybe making it so that carriers cannot rebuild interceptors that have been released with the ability. I'd be wary about that since it adds another half minute before the carries are at full strength again, which would probably be too much of a vulnerable period.
Apart from the lack of spellcasters and microability of skytoss armies, I think the other main weakness compared to terran and zerg is the lack of anti-air splash damage. The only splash damage protoss has against air is psionic storm and technically archons, though the radius of their splash is pretty minimal and it doesn't take much spreading to greatly reduce the effectiveness of archons.
In comparison, zerg has fungal growth and parasitic bomb, which also work really well together and though Lowko said that parasitic bomb just tickles skytoss, when paired with fungal growth it should only take two or three solid connections with both those spells to seriously weaken, if not kill, the skytoss army. Terran has Thors, EMP round, and liberators, as well as the anti-armour missile.. Thors will often be in high impact payload mode against skytoss to more quickly destroy carriers themselves (as well as tempests). EMP is one of the most powerful spells in the game. It has the same base radius as psi storm and can be upgraded to have a larger radius, it does its effect occurs instantly, unlike psi storm's tick based damage output, and it's total "damage" to each unit is higher than that of psi storm (100 shields vs 80 health). Yes, it doesn't do anything to health directly, but if used before the shields of a protoss army have already taken damage, then it will do a lot more damage than psi storm, and also greatly reduce the number of storms protoss will have available. Small numbers of liberators aren't much of a problem as their damage is pretty low, but because of the low speed and maneuverability of skytoss, a dozen or so liberators will tear through a skytoss army surprisingly quickly. All of this can then be compounded with the anti-armour missile which deals indirect splash damage that is incredibly powerful when paired with high attack speed units or other sources of splash damage.
Perhaps a change that would help with this would be giving the tempest some minor splash damage (perhaps a radius similar to that of the archon) on its anti-air attack. This way it would still maintain its primary role as an siege-anti-siege unit, while also adding a little bit to an area that protoss is lacking in.
Both these suggestions (new carrier ability and tempest splash damage) I believe are definitely not powerful enough to suddenly switch the balance in the favour of protoss, however, I will admit that I also wouldn't mind seeing protoss doing better in premiere tournaments. The last time there wasn't a zerg in the finals of a Blizzcon was 2012, only two of the Blizzcon finalists in legacy of the void weren't zerg (Stats' 2nd place in 2018 and Byun's 1st place in 2016), there has not been a protoss winner of the IEM world championship in Legacy of the Void (Polt 2016, TY 2017, Rogue 2018, soO 2019, Rogue 2020). Then in the GSL, only Zest in 2016 and Stats in 2017 have actually won a season. There have also only been two zerg wins, however both of those were far more recent (Dark and Rogue in 2019). I haven't been keeping up with the WCS circuit winners, but I believe that recently it's been mostly Reynor and Serral who have been winning. Last I remember a protoss doing well was when Neeb won 3 WCS circuit events in 2017. So I think that in the past couple years (so after 2017), the only major events won by a protoss player are Stats in the ASUS ROG 2019, Stats in the GSL Super Tournament 1 2018, Classic in the GSL Super Tournament 2 in 2018 and Super Tournament 1 in 2019.
Now I think it's also best to acknowledge that it is also possible that the zergs and terrans who are winning are just better players, and definitely some of the incredible results seen is due to the ridiculous skill of Maru, Rogue, Serral, Reynor, Dark, Innovation (to name a few), but I the fact that there aren't any protoss players with the same caliber of results or even perceived skill level. Stats was viewed as very strong in 2018, but has since dropped in terms of results. A lot of people have been talking about Zest recently, but his last win in a premiere event was in 2016. Apart from that, I think the best results from a protoss would be sOs's two Blizzcon wins and an IEM world championship win, though those were all in Heart of the Swarm. His greatest achievement in Legacy of the Void was winning IEM Taipei in 2016 and his second place to Classic in the second GSL Super Tournament of 2018. Also sOs falls into a weird place since his achievements were less due to having better control or any imbalance between the races and more due to outsmarting his opponents and winning with mind games and confusing builds.
What If mothership do More Splash damage or Time Warp gain More radious
@@dan0047 The mothership doesn't do splash damage and while increasing the radius of time warp would make it better for zoning, and perhaps increase the value that can be gained from psionic storm, most of the time you'll only have 1 time warp available.
I also don't think that changes to the mothership are the best way to go about solving the problem. I mentioned Astrea's suggestion because it's a really simple thing that would make things better, but it's not that significant. My main problem with trying to address the problem with the mothership is that it is already the biggest target (which it does need to be) and it'll just make fights even more centred around how long the mothership stays alive.
@@isaacsylee what about legacy of the void campaing carriers,
@@isaacsylee I read your long comment and find it quite interesting. I do not play the game but I like to think about it. It might sound ridiculous but what about giving carrier a blink ability ?
To me, carriers kind of suck because either they demolish everything or get demolished, there is no in between. They are bound to loose against an army able to perform pick off, a.k.a abduct as they are not mobile enough. In order to balance things out and make the carrier more microable unit, i'd reduce its health (I don't know how much, say a third) and give it a blink and a shield ability which would give an additionnal 50% shield to the carrier with a small active duration (2 seconds or so, not much).
The idea is to make the carrier more like a glass canon, give it more mobility for pick off situation and big fight. Just like stalker are able to win some fight thanks to blinking balancing the damage as much as possible across the units, carriers would be able to do the same. I don't know how it would match with the mothership mobility, didn't thought that far. I also don't know how this would interact with zerg army as it would force it out of creep (in the event zerg is defending a base) if the zerg wants to take the skytoss down, i'm guessing it will favors the skytoss.
It also leaves the protoss ground army on the trail of the carrier, giving the time for archon to perform potentially big shot on the corruptor. I haven't thought much of how it would play out against terran, I'll leave that to you guys.
And if it's just a real bad idea, no problem about it as long as you kindly give me the appropriate explanation :) Thanks.
@@dan0047 I haven't played the LotV campaign, but looking at the details on the carrier there, I don't think that would be enough. I'll readily admit that I would like to see some way for protoss to repair since they're the only race that has truly permanent damage, but adding that little bit of healing won't help that much as it's effective against smaller amounts of damage over time and not the sudden bursts of damage that come from a swarm of corruptors targeting down carriers and this extra sustainability can also be achieved by fighting near shield batteries. What's powerful about the zerg's main healing, transfuse, is that there's a certain amount of health that's instantly healed.
I do think motherships should be immune to abduct, but give vipers a different counter to them. Maybe an ability like revelation that only reveals invisible air units? Still counteracts the mothership but doesn't activate 400/400 meme.
give the mothership a spell that sends nearby carrier interceptors to a location to fight, extend the reach of carriers without making them powerful by themselves, while still costing resources for interceptors lost
I don't think he lost because the Mothership is bad. He lost because he kept making the same mistake. He was basically using one trick at the end and Scarlet adapted better (even though she made tactical mistakes).
It would also provide the tactical opportunity to fight the carriers where they are without their interceptors, that's very interesting !
rasmasyean exactly right in this case. He was using mothership like a tank instead of the carriers when it’s clearly the most vulnerable. Scarlet made several mistakes which gave him an edge but instead of pushing into enemy base to hurt them on multiple occasions (before the wall of spore crawlers) he just turtled and tried to wait out the resources.
viper is so tiny in comparison to mothership, yet it somehow manages to pull it)
Yes, everyone know that
Also big things like thors and siege tanks! You'd think the viper drags itself down instead.
Let's rewatch carbot's version of heart of the swarm's intro.
@@wanderhillen2435 how do they fit into medivacs thou? if u go down that path there is a lot thats nonsensical
@@SadunKal Original dropships, lorewise, are made to carry a siege tanks and squad of marines, medivacs retained the orignal design. Thor is a bit trickier one, but since it hangs down from Medivac... well, I think the math may add up in here
"Maxed out carrier is not that scary" was the most humbling phrase ever
Nice game! Cheers for the upload Lowko! Late game design ideas for Skytoss: Carriers get a burst production ability, speeding up interceptor build time for a few seconds. The trade off is that if you have 15 carriers all doing that at the same time, RIP economy. Motherships could have a FTL emergency jump, taking them back to the base they were built from almost immediately, and having it unusable whilst it repairs. Tempests could have a long CD pulsar missile strike ability that slows/damages units in a magnetic field at the point of interception, like combining psionic storm with the raven anti armour missile.
Solution: the bigger the target you're trying to abduct, the less distance it gets pulled. So for example, an immortal could be abducted all the way like it is now, but a carrier for example could only be pulled 3/4 the distance so that you would need 2 pulls? Mothership 1/2 distance?
that means though at pro level you won't be able to pull the enemy mothership unless your opponent makes a mistake. the only counter right now of zerg to the protoss ball is to get the mothership, and then they can pick off the carriers. but if the pull range is reduced, no way the pro zerg players can abduct the mothership of a pro protoss
@@N0noy1989 (disclaimer: i was a barely plat zerg a few years ago) I *think* you're misunderstanding, the cast range of Abduct would stay the same, just the distance moved would be smaller. So you'd need to abduct twice to get the same distance but once you get the first one the rest of your vipers are probably all in range now. I do think it might be considered not sufficiently intuitive a mechanic for them to make a change like that though. And of course, it might not really help much anyway since it'd just be an increase in Viper energy cost and a very small increase in the amount of time the mothership lives.
@Jermaine Beetstra, i got similar idea, but i still think you should give Zerg fraction something in return otherwise skytoss have passive defencive buff that require less micro and positioning then zerg vipers to counter it. My suggestion is to change both sides of engagement and 1) Make a different range for Air and ground abduct, based on realistic diagonal distance air abduct should be longer range. Something like +2 should be ok. 2) Massive units should travel 3/4 of the range that's practically almost old version but a little shorter, but abducting them makes viper itself move tovards the unit for missing 1/4.
This changes mostly affect interactions between valuable air units and vipers. Lower value air units are merely scouts for the time of Hive tech and it makes easier for zerg to get rid of them, but not for realy much because it still cost lots of energy that spent not on main fight. Larger units require practically viper sacrifice for such an abduct. It would be casted from longer range but total travel distance would be smaller and viper probably wouldn't survive engagement if distance between main forces was too far.
From zerg perspective it's important not only provide distance for abduct but also support viper or sacrifice it to destroy valuable unit. From opponents perspective it's important to react faster and at least take a trade if its considered efficient.
Thanks for the great cast Lowko! Since Carriers have no burst attack or escape capabilities like the BC, I'd like to see them have something. Seeing how they are vulnerable when units get on top of them, my suggestion - Give them a repulsion ability that pushes all enemy ground and air units around the Carrier out to 8 range. This will function as a crowd control ability forcing most units out of their own attack range while still being within the Carrier's attack range. This forces enemy units to get in close again while allowing the Carrier additional attacks from their Interceptors. This can be used offensively for attacking and kiting. Those with good micro can really benefit. This can also be used defensively to push units back while escaping. This can also be used to disrupt enemy lines and formations if the Carriers get on top of them. Another similar suggestion is instead of making the repulsion point from the Carrier itself, have the repulsion ability target a space instead.
It would have to have an absurd cooldown since you could have several carriers doing it per fight, but I like the idea
easy fix just nerf zerg then decrease cost now zerg is swarmmy again
Why did neither of them press the attack after wiping out the opposing force? I get that corrupters can't do much to ground, but I'm utterly confused by not attacking with carriers.
Im guessing the spores had something to do with it. And zerg can remax quickly so maybe the carriers wouldn't be able to get away in time
Creator should have continue pushing after his win at 31:50, it was his only hope as replenishment time is so different between those two races.
21:21 - Oh, I didn't know you can actually cast revelation on the neutral structures.
These are my thoughts
Microbial shroud:
-increases range of ground units inside by 2
-increases the attack speed of units inside by 50%
Carrier: Sun Beam: Fires a beam that does 10 damage (+15 vs Armored) with an attack speed of .5 for 15 seconds, Cooldown: 140 seconds
micorbial shroud should be replaced as it has very few uses
PvZ late game... I really wonder who's gonna win...
The answer depends on if it's in the ladder or in a pro game
@@cestlezooicimw I get where he is going. It is almost always zerg.
Neeb! Or Lilbow :)
Like Lowko said, only way Protoss will win is if other player makes some kind of mistake toss can capitalize on. Which is why they need some kind of revamping to equal playing field. Cuz at the moment a semi-shit Zerg/Terran playing can stomp most Protoss mid to late game. Which is why zealot/photon rushing is was the usual go-to
pro game zerg ladder protoss.
31:24 Creator actually target fired the infestors coming from the shades in the north before they could mass neural parasite.
When the video starts i always say:hello every one my names is lowko and welcome back to a professional match of starcraft 2.
My parents always ask me why I always said that😳
😳
Kappa
Solution for balance: the viper pulls “big targets” 1/4 of the distance. Zerg players would have to chain multiple pulls to get the same effect, giving the Protoss player a chance to throw out a psionic storm or recall.
Banelings can stand to be a little less tanky as well.
is that, that new famous lowko? the one with 400k subs?!?!?!
Could we bump that to 404? i wannna see a "subscribers not found" meme
@@BruceWayne-bo4fs hahaha speaking of memes.... dont you have crime to fight??
@@BruceWayne-bo4fs lol, just happened
Balance suggestion: Now here me out, make the interceptors on the carrier an activated ability that can be toggled on or off. When on the interceptors have to be activated. The activated interceptors "charge" and do extra damage to a single target (this could also be an upgrade in the fleet beacon) Lower ladder players would like it to be on auto-cast but if you pay attention to your fleet and have good micro you can do a little extra damage with carriers. Or carriers should have a "scout" feature. They send out one interceptor in a single direction max range about 10 that can be recalled. This gives only information at the potential price of 15 minerals. It gives the carrier extra value for high level players but doesn't really solve the a-move problem lower on the ladder. Yes I am a protoss main :)
It seems to me that the skytoss army doesn't have a lot of anti-air/ground specialization.
I agree. Zerg has way better anti-air. The corrupter is almighty. Not even the specialized anti-air fliers phoenixes can do jack.
@@zufallrap phoenixes doesn't seem to have a place in the late game. Mayde an upgrade? One that gives it another ability, since it is already a spellcaster? Make it like the Oracle, that can be usefull later
@@zufallrap That's straight up wrong. For example, corruptors loose their match up against void rays who can target anything but loose against hydras who in turn loose against most late game units. It's not the corruptor that is so mighty, it is it's combination with other units as vipers in this match.
This was so painful to watch. Creator has the game won when he kills the Zerg army (Minute 32) and then just sits back and lets Scarlet get back into the game. Completly passive with a huge army leaving the bases in the top right alone the entire game. Instead attacking the left side that is already mined out for 10 minutes. Of course, he doesnt know how much army the Zerg has but at least harass or pock a bit and not sit there with 10 Carriers and do nothing.
yeah, he can't know what she has, or is going to build with her larva bank and the spore crawlers make harassing with the remaining carriers a bit costly. Scarlet made the trade likely because she had the gas to replace her army, but loosing the 5 brood lords was really painful.
To add to Arni, The amount of huge static defense is very risky to engage upon. Lets say you decide to go after that, you lose interceptors (and money) and you are essentially exposed from flanks since you have to commit. Scarlett abduct you or uses infestors and turn it all around. Thats the real danger. Hes playing the attrition game. On top of not knowing Scarlet bank and larva count. Since Scarlett didnt gg, that in itself got him to reconsider.
At first I thought the same but there's little the protoss can do to finish the game there. Going for the mining bases while risking your own bases to a run by with zerlings? While the zerg can get to your main army in half the time the toss army gets there?
TL:DR protoss suck against zerg
Thanks for getting me through another work day Lowko you're the best!
I think the carrier should get a spell that burst creates more interceptors that would cost energy and the minerals needed for those interceptors. OR they could have a burst damage ability, similar in function to the battlecruiser, that would do damage to a single target. Both these I think would help carriers fight corrupters and help in a sustained battle against the spore crawler forest
But with massive quantities of carriers it will feel like you have to fight two armies at once or at least army and a half.
How about the Abduct is Nerfed in a way that massive units can't be pulled off to a that far distance as other units are like reducing the Abduct distance less
I think the very idea of having abduct is to give zergs some way to deal with massive units in deathball toss armies (colossus and tempests) and tanks and thors in terran armies. This is literally why the spell was introduced into the game. Without it, it would be more than useless. What would you abduct then, marines and stalkers?
@@inohope I meant, like if they Abduct carriers then they get abducted to max distance but mother ship, is just -400, -400 for protoss, so I think regarding mother ship it should be less
@@inohope or you know they can just be like the other races and use their units to fucking target the mass armies?
I love her caster and static defense usage, even the way she spreads the changelings, soo efficient! I was praying for her to add nydus swarm host/infestor hit squad during the match just for some icing on that cake.
Mothership blink! its already in the game technically, in the tal'darim version
Honestly yeah. Even if it's half the range of what it is in the campaign/co-op versions of the game. Just something to let it stutter step out at the last second before a viper gets in range.
And then you get rushed when mothership blinks on top of your base and recalls the whole army
Zealots have sweeping damage as they swung their blades instead of single unit damage, so they are harder to just swarm. (Edit)Another feature could be patrolling interceptors, where you can send your interceptors 1 at a time to patrol an area, this could be used to scout an area and defend the carrier, and since you can send 1 and leave the rest, you do can surround your carrier, however, when a carrier has patrolling interceptors, it is slower and is limited in distance it can move from away the interceptor, also, a patrolling interceptor can be in an attack move, or a passive move
Op af against mineral lines
Nicolas Sicard - Personne n'en parle fair enough, but it would be good against a Zerg all in, it could maybe work on only specific units, or is only the first swing after it stops moving
@@superhawk6403 Make the AOE Zealot slash only for charge upgrade. It's only on the first charge hit
Maybe a good idea would be to add a spell to the carriers. Perhaps 2 spells. One to buff shields and one to remove shields from the carrier to add attack speed or damage.
Since Lowko said don't say below: I will answer him with. You can still abduct individual carriers even if they are cloaked. You just have to keep some detection overseers nearby. Which you have anyway.
Just make the mothership unable to be abducted. It makes no sense that a small viper can abduct a huge mothership anyway... Heck it would be funny if the viper pulled itself to the mothership if it targeted abduct on it xD
Well, I've seen two vipers abduct one another. Probably in a Lowko vid. :D
I said it in the past, I will say it again:
Zerg late game army is boring.
It's always the same, wait on creep until the enemy comes to you and yoink the most expensive unit with the viper.
Repeat until the enemy makes an mistake.
It feels so much different than the aggressive early /mid game Zerg (at least watching wise)
As a change? Make the viper abduction slower, so the enemy unit doesn't get yeeted into the swarm, and you have time to kill the viper and pull the unit back. This would prevent the yoink = dead situation
My sentiment exactly. I think the abduct distance is really high. Fucking dragon fly yeets a giant city across half the map, so the corruptors who are already more mobile than the relevant protoss fliers have no risk destroying whatever is abducted.
And also: I hate Zerg late game. Creep is a giant advantage in picking the best fight. "Not doing anything wrong" seems a little easier than "Doing something right."
I think that Carrier and Mothership are fine regarding damage output and role, but the could use some better abilities.
Eg. they changed the Battlecruiser quite alot and now it is this powerful warship that you can use in pretty much every phase of the game. Why not make the carrier a little more versatile?
My suggestions: Carrier are (in reality) powerful attack but also supportcraft. Why not introduce a "repair" ability like in the campaign. AoE-castable ability, Drones repair all friendly units within a radius, interceptors get converted to repairdrones for that time, so no dmg for that carrier, only one active ability in a certain radius at a time. Carrier uses shield to fuel the repairdrones.
Mothership: remember the hardened shield ability of the immortal from WoL? Add this to the mothership alone or maybe even as an AoE-ability. Eg. for 3 sec all units under the cloaking field recieve a max of 10 dmg, if greater than 10 the damage is reduced to 10. This interrupts other AoE-abilites (do balance it vs the new carrier repair). The Mothership can't be abducted for 2 sec, but loses all it's shield after the ability ends".
I’m a Protoss player, I think the mothership needs to have more attacking, defense is okay, but not enough damage
It's a giant spell caster. It's a support unit. It's attack is not an issue.
It gets all your freakin army invisible, and you want it to also kick ass?
@Manannan anam mothership come online? What does that mean?
@@cestlezooicimw
It means she used to walk around in a Goliath
yes, give mother ships yamato cannon turrets, that would be fair. lol
Lowko just want to say congratulations for the 400k subs! Have been watching your content for a good five years and it just gets better and better. Thanks for the entertainment during these hard times.
Give mothership an ability that makes it immune to all damage for 3 seconds, long cool down, it would give a counter to abduct into instant snipe
@LowkoTV It's a good idea to buff Skytoss as what you said, there are no good plays from protoss and only rely on zerg making a mistake, meaning zerg is always in control. They could upgrade Skytoss like, making Interceptors not cost Minerals like Zerg's free units like locusts and broodlings, or making carriers or tempests do splash damage even a tiny bit could help them out a lot and avoid getting abducted one by one or parasitic bombed at. They could also buff the shields from certain spells that do damage since in it would make more sense for them to have this as terrans can repair and has medivacs while all zerg can regen however for toss, only shields regen and their life stays the same so it's pointless to keep a 1HP carrier since it'll be dead when the shield goes out therefor a waste of supply and time in building one. Mother ships are basically useless units which costs a lot and once abducted is instantly deleted, so I propose it should be replaced with arbiters instead as it's a better caster with those stasis spell skill or something like that and a better detector too. Observers should be supplyless and has a timed life warp in from Nexus as Terrans have unli scans if they have too many CCs and overlords can be a lot to make overseers and can be placed anywhere on the map on top of the creep tumors that give vision. With these few upgrades, I think we'll have a lot of good PVZ and PVT and most likely people will say it's IMBA but from a better standpoint, people learn to adapt to these changes and will probably find other things to exploit from a protoss ball.
I was JUST watching a Lowko video only to see this one just uploaded.
Day = Made
Are you suggesting a mothership core lowko??
I have an idea. Make carriers a little less hp, and can't move, but give them a more frequent tactical jump used to move around a limited area. This way, the carriers position themselves during battle, and utilize recall to nexus and mothership more. Additionally, give mothership a little more hp, and a guardian shield type ability exclusive for air units, that shares a cooldown with it's recall. This way, a mothership can put a skytoss in position, but also reward an army that's already in position. So, carriers can still be extremely powerful if positioned correctly, promote micro playstyle, and be vulnerable.
This would forbid a big carrier army though, since if you have to much supply caught in such slow units you'll suffer run by's all over the place or have them picked up one by one.
@@GBS4893 Well, I think that's a weakness already. Carriers aren't exactly fast. Protoss has great units to deter this.
Additionally, with the new high templar buff + tempests, protoss has the tools to fend off spellcasters. Even if spell casters try to yank carriers away, the tactical jump can allow the carriers to regroup, and if the battle seems unfavorable, the guardian shield allows the group to be recalled with relative safety.
While carries are just a-move units, the difference in decision-making with them changes between a diamond player and a pro-player
When a viper abducts a massive unit, both the abducted and abductor unit should be dragged midway. My 2c
Only makes sense if you do one of the following in addition to that.
A) reduce resource cost or build time of viper
B) reduce energy cost of abduct
C) increase range of abduct
D) increase armor/health of viper
It's lockdown. But thank God! There's Lowko!
Definition of happiness?
*Hellooooo everyone my name is Lowkooooooo*
And then he says that it's a game with scarlett
This has been brought up so many times before.
Make abduct distance varies per unit size.
Say, adbucting an oracle? Full distance.
aducting a mothership? maybe pull it in just 2-3 range. So you need to chain more (use more energy and skill) to take down a more valuable, tide turning unit while also allow some counter play or reaction like recall, counter attack or whatever else.
The title is a damn spoiler itself lol. Everyone knows skytoss loses to everything
Lowko. what do you think of some kind of Carrier "overload" ability? Like a "call to Tassadar", were Carriers basically turns into a tactical nuke, of sorts? It would have to require some kind of micro, such as you need to individually dedicate a Carrier to the upgrade, and once initiated you can't back out...
was expecting Reforged video but this is fine to.
Planning on posting the next Reforged video tomorrow!
Aegis Protective Field : An ability (researched) for the mothership that blocks a spell cast at it every 30 seconds. You would basically need to abduct it twice with that. And if you fail, 30 seconds latter the protective field would be active once more.
Suggestion for carrier micro Stationize: Increase attack range of carrier by 1 or 2 and decrease movementspeed by 100%
Carriers will be no threat to corruptors this way cause extra range will just give a few shots while no MS will make it awful
What if abducts consume energy proportionate to the unit size they abduct, like extra 25 energy to abduct large units, normal for medium and minus 25 to abduct small units?
That has got to be the best way to pick a video to cast. Good call.
Lowko your videos have got me to start playing starcraft and I gotta say I'm having a lot of fun :)
I wish carriers had a speed boost (kinda like medivac afterburner.) and had less health. would also be cool if intercepters had a speed/ attack speed bonus for a short time after using the carrier boost. this would hopefully have carriers reward more dynamic micro, especially in tandem with high templar.
Speed boost but they can't launch interceptors during it
@@Mandragara that just promotes turtling even more, which, as we saw, leads to the untimely demise of the protoss
I like the idea of making micro necessary for the golden armada (aka skytoss).
Maybe some complicated synergy between carriers and the mothership like cloaking isn't a perfect circle, but projects ahead of the mothership (so you can't abduct her so easily in a straight up fight), but the cloaking doesn't extend much past her flanks and stern as much leaving her vulnerable to flanks and ambush.
Or weakening carriers(or maaaybe they're already weak enough) , but give the mothership the ability to give targeted buffs - like if the mothership casts an ability similar to fungle (small aoe) then air units attacking enemies in that aoe get a buff. Call the ability 'rally' or 'executive advance order' because the mothership is acting like an in game commander/general
i mean micro is important, put two sky tosses against each other and the one that doesn't focus fire loses, that then introduces the idea of over killing having everything targeting one unit which introduces smaller unit group selecting along with focus firing, which takes a lot of apm
@@lordlegitgamingz I admit it was a half-baked idea. I'm still brainstorming
I insist in the same suggestion I did some videos ago: Malestorm ability. I think it would balance PvZ in pro level, without making toss turtle in the rest of the levels on the ladder. What's your thoughts on this idea Lowko? I would love to know what you think of it.
Is that me that doesn't understand the spell or is the spell op?
@@cestlezooicimw if you are unable to understand the main idea due to spell mistakes, then I guess spell is way too OP for you, my friend.
@@joseluisortegaochoa1587 an idea, due to a spell mistake, i don't understand this thing you said, what idea due to spell mistake?
what about just give protoss dark archon but everytime it mind controls a unit it loses half its shield
Carriers could blink like stalkers. More mobility. What if you could morph a hydra into a thing that spawns screetses(the old zerg intersepter)
Blinking carriers sound terrifying and I love it.
Why didnt he A-move after 31:40? Am I missing something? He got like 7 carriers left vs 12 corrupters, cant they beat that?
My first thought was along the lines of what you suggested with the Arbiter. Adding a support/caster type flying unit is one possible answer. Another is that Mothership move speed could maybe be buffed, so it's harder to catch out a player with good micro. But, really, all I want is Vortex back so we can make Archon Toilets.
1) It's SC2.
2) It's skytoss.
3) Scarlett!!
0) His name is Lowko!!!!
I hit the like button instantly.
I think the changeling spam is to keep the ovie energy low to prevent them from dying to feetbeak.
Re: Carriers. I would actually like to see two paths for carriers. One would be basically the current path, keeping them as a slow, mass-damage unit. But it would be interesting to offer a speed upgrade, with the caveat that the carrier could not hold more than 5 interceptors. I think that would offer pro and non-pros alike the chance to use carriers as a part of a more mobile army, and would def. be more micro-focused.
Re: mothership, i just think they shouldn't have detection ability. A small detail, but i think it would change things, and again, challenge the micro ability of the player.
Also, Lowko, you are hands-down my fave caster. I haven't enjoyed following SC2 this much since i was watching Husky's casts. Keep it up!
Bring back the Arbiter?? I'd love it, but i think with the pros, it would be imba af. ;)
@Lowko, you want an idea to balance the carriers?
Interceptors eject the Carriers slower on attack move , a bit faster on targeted move, and they get an ability with around 10 sec CD to instantly eject all Interceptors at once.
How about that?
Would give them an ability, micro would pay off and a bit more strategic value.
So what if we changed the abduct mechanic for the mothership? The thing is a giant city and gets yeeted really far for what is essentially the tongue of a dragonfly on the viper's part. What if the size of the mothership was factored in and the mothership abduct range was ... idk 30% less, forcing the corruptors into a little more of a risk when trying to flip up the mothership?
Suggestion, as a protoss player:
Carriers get a spell that allows them to rebuild all interceptors instantly for 200 energy\
Motherships increase energy generation for all units under them
thanks for coming to my ted talk
That would make it too strong, if there are hydralisks destroying all the interceptors, boom they are back, hydralisks would become a useless unit against carriers
BEST suggestion for Mothership issue EVA: decrease the distance Mothership gets pulled by the abduction.
One could reduce it to 70%(?). or 50%(?). I don't know what is a good amount, I guess it can be tested and re-adapted over time. Somehow this partly fits with the fact that the Mothership is very heavy.
(oke, physically the viper should be the one actually being pulled by the mothership, but you know, how are bc being repaired from scv's staying on the ground afterall?? ).
Thanks Lowko for the videos they are awesome!
I think the problem is how few resources are at each base, Late WoL, and HotS, being on 4-5 base income had a bigger meaning to it, and made taking/holding/losing bases more crucial. Zerg needs to significantly out-expand to get enough garbage units to throw into late-game Protoss now, and it reminds me of exactly the problems we had at the start of WoL when the maps had too few bases (and by extension, resources).
What about blocking abducts or making the way the abduct can move a unite less far if there is a sentry shield available underneath it?
It would make sense, since it is a wide spread shield which blocks away stuff, zerg could easily just kill the sentry underneath it if necessary and than go on, but it would provide some protection against that kind of thing for protos.
Or another option: Since the mothership is pretty heavy it would make sense to for instance make the abduct pulling in a way, that if you abduct the mothership, the viper will be pulled towards the mothership too for half the way and both meet in the middle?
My answer for how to make mothership+carrier actually good in pro-play. Do the same thing that Battlecruisers become playable at a high level: Give them an analog of the Tactical Jump. This gives them something to micro that will make them better in high elo, and gives them a decent answer to being abducted. It made Terran's able to actually play late game v. Zerg (well, it was a big help for that, other changes also helped).
Make parasitic bomb reveal cloak and don't allow abduct on mothership
So an idea I had is make it that carriers interceptors have a fuel mechanic. A manual deploy and recall. Something like if they aren't recalled in time they stop firing and return slower to carrier. Then increase the speed of the carrier if no interceptors are deployed then slow them down when they deploy them.
How about giving mothership blink or resurgence? That way they'll survive longer and can escape or the corruptors has to stay there for a while and be essentially vulnerable to storms?
Adding the immortal barrier to mother ships could help. But I did used to love those Arbiters and the stasis ability. Also, dark archon's could permanently steal a unit. Had so much fun combining those to recall drones and build up two races at once, lol.
Good day Lowko! Hope you and your family and country are doing alright in this Pandemic times. Thanks for the content.
I think the Mothership needs a buff.
Mothership:
- Increase its default SHIELD ARMOR by "2" from "0." So the SHIELD's Hit Points takes the same amount of damage as its AIR ARMOR (Except for SHIELD BONUS DAMAGES).
SPELLS:
Time Warp:
- Duration increased from default "7" seconds to "8" seconds.
- Delay reworked. While being inside the delay radius, Time Warp now slows down enemy unit and structure Movement Speeds by 25-50%. After the delay, Time Warp slows down enemy unit and strcutures Movement Speed and Attack Speed by 50% for 8 seconds. (Delay reworked should help in making it more effective against fast air and fast ground units and being a better spell to a SINGLE UNIT AT A TIME UNIT)
- Add some casting animation on Mothership slowing effect animation on affected Time Warp units and increase the height of Time Warp so it looks better and it looks like its hitting air units hahaha.
I think I might suggest another Mothership changes to Blizzard and I may change or add more.
14:02 "At the highest level of play-dough..."
I know that may sound a bit dumb but... I feel like I you need to land like billion storms on corruptors to do anything, and even they are fast and its easy to dodge. So my suggestion is that storm deals like 1 or 2 dmg per second more, only to armored units. Cause if we take for example the Ultralisks storms aren't real efficient against them and it should stay that way, but the ultras are huge with much HP and it won't make it significant. Same for Thors and similar units. I think that this will be indirect nerf only to corruptors and not even that significant but making it require 2 to 3 storms to half corruptors, rather than 4 to 5. It may be very dumb suggestion but I don't see something else suffering this much from it, please correct me if I'm wrong. Amazing game Lowko, thanks for the video
Tier three tech for Protoss Fleet Beacon. They had it before... interceptors can stay outside of the carriers until they die. No leash distance. Once they deploy they can stay in that area.
Or
Tier three tech. AFTER you make a mothership you can turn your star gates into warp gate tech. It’s late game but you can then replenish as fast as Zerg.
Where do you find your replay packs ?
I'm thinking that the Mothership needs something just to keep it more alive. Two ideas I have are A: When it's effected by CC, it gets a small ability like the Immortal Shields to reduce incoming damage, therefore give the ship a better chance of suriving and the Protoss saving it. Another idea was to give it a Reincarnate like ability. I was thinking that when it dies, it gets recalled to a base and instantly goes back to half health and stunned for a few seconds. Give that ability maybe a two minute cooldown or something, because while the ship doesn't die and waste your resources, it still gets removed from an engagement.
Carriets: 1. Reduce cool down of interceptors attack. They have the DPS of a probe. 2. Increase the launch range of carriers. 3. Add 20% chance of dealing pure damage by each interceptor.
well one could add a toggle ability to the mothership which immobilizes it and increases the cloaking field by 50%. this would allow one to micro a defense against abduct if he finds himself out of position, or he could not micro and just try and sit back a bit further in an engagement.
another idea is to spawn the mothership with 4 phoenixes, which makes the mothership essentially free supply wise, though phoenix isn't very useful in late game.
Hey Lowko, what do you think about making the abduct not pull the mothership as far as other units, like a colossal status?
@LowkoTV Do you know why canon pushing is not a thing? We see spore and missile turret pushes but not canons.
I know that you said, dont make the Mothership unadoptable, but most of the time when I watch PvZ where the Toss go to air with Mothership, the Toss allways losses the mothership so fast and easy..
So.. what about something in betwine, like...
- Motherships are big and heavy units so they will only be adopted 50% of the distance of other units.
OR
- Mother shipts are big and heavy units, so they can only be adopted if you use two vipers at the "same time"
OR
- When adopting motherships the vipers and mother ship will be pulled 50% towards each others and meet in the mittle.
( this will give the toss a bit of a trade if they manage to kill the vipers when they "lose" the mother ship.
What do you think Lowko ?
Thank you for your videos! Love your cast calls.
One little thing that i think would be a cool addition to late game is to allow you to chrono boost carriers to make interceptors faster so that you don't end up in that situation where the fight happens and then you cant run and now your carriers cant fight either. I do also believe carriers shouldn't be able to be abducted but would be fine if they were given another spell that could make them more useful or at least something defensive so they don't just get abducted then one shot-ed the way they do now.
Being able to chrono a carrier would be awesome.
Suggestion, maybe carriers could sacrifice 6 interceptors and half shields to gain a temporary movement speed that exceeds corruptor speed while reducing the speed interreceptors are created for the duration of the boost to regain home advantage but only if recall is on cooldown. Idk food for thought and in forums I posted "Grow sc and sc2 with side interaction" not a balance idea but rather more instant gratification gameplay while waiting for games to load during main screen, food for thought
How about bringing back the staisis while recalling on a long cooldown but limiting the number of units so the other army has the advantage over the remaining smaller force?
This is great: watch a Lowko stream and video in the morning/ afternoon, and then go watch Winter's stream to an ungodly hour.
Balance: I think the balance should impact a unit which is currently not used too often in Skytoss or doesn't exist, yet. Skytoss is pretty straight forward. Mainly Carriers, one Mothership, some High Templars and maybe some Archons. So there is only one Spellcaster involved.
In general Protoss unit compositions are very limited.
Furthermore this unit composition is very immobile. So Zerg and Terran can just jump on top of it, pretty easy.
So balancing with either adding a spell or ability to an existing unit or creating a new unit, might help. This spell might be an instant, short-distance recall, a spell for zoning or something that punishes clumped up air units (like Storm having additional damage to air units)
Furthermore the Mothership should get increased range of sight.
1. Reduce Spore Crawler move speed.
2. Let Carriers build a few reserve Interceptors slowly (after the normal slots are full), maybe at half speed. These get stored in the Carriers and can instantly replace dead Interceptors. Same cost.
3. (Optional) Interceptors detonate for small air AOE damage when they die.
These changes prod both the Zerg and Protoss players to make moves (and errors).
The slower spores prod the Toss to jockey for map position and gain some advantages there at the cost of exposing their army to abducts and engages.
The reserve Interceptors allow the Toss player to sustain a fight against Infestors much better than they can currently. This prods the Zerg player to engage more often (and make errors).
Basically the current issue seems like both sides of the fight can turtle really hard and then pull very small moves. If both sides were pushed slightly to make more moves and to make mistakes, then the scenarios would become more dynamic.
I also agree on the Arbiter ideas -- and it could provide more interesting spell selection than just "LOL PSI STORM" -- but that would have larger ramifications to Toss as a whole.