How do you guys feel about this? "I want to clarify that this is not the reason why zerg was adjusted. While we pay close attention to feedback from pro players and it is extremely valuable, one of the great flaws in pro player feedback is that they are usually so heavily focused on the experience that they have playing one race that they may not be evenhanded in their feedback. Any alteration to StarCraft II balance is the result of a multi-pronged approach, including internal testing, statistical analysis of all leagues, modeling, player feedback (including shoutcasters, pro players, developers and of course, ladder players), etc. There's a lot that goes into these decisions and they aren't made lightly. Protoss are a prime example. Some players have been reporting that the race feels a little 'weak', and that matches our in-house experience. Conversely, protoss is performing pretty well on the ladder. From yet another perspective, protoss players did not make a good showing in GSL 2, for example. This is painting a complex picture, and we're approaching the situation cautiously. Any adjustments we plan for the future will be very carefully considered, and will not be the result of feedback from a single source." http://sea.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/89078926?page=9#170
Extremely hard to pull off 4 gate pushes are definitely too weak! I suggest a huge buff to zealots and a decrease in build time to stalkers.
I also have a general "feeling" that protoss are a little weak but I can find a hundred things to explain why I might be having this feeling, but not a single game experience where it felt like I lost to the other race due to my race being weaker. Whenever I lose it's because I mess up and make bad decisions. If I make bad decisions and my opponent makes even worse decisions and still manages to pull a tight win I don't know, but never felt like that happened. There are some areas where protoss feel "weak" compared to other races, and that's basic mechanics and not unit stats themselves. For example: 1 zealot takes 3 hits to kill an unupgraded marine while a marine takes 27 hits to kill a zealot. 1 zealot can kill 2 marines that are standing side by side and on hold position with relative ease. Take 2 microed marines against 1 zealot. Chances are the zealot will not manage to get 1 single hit off if the marine user micros well. Take it en mass. 20 chargelots vs 40 marines with stim+shields: There's high chances no marine dies if the fight is out in the open. If the marines are with their backs against a wall then it's a different story. Zerglings on the other hand are absurdly fast and do craploads of damage compared to their cost. They are faster than the zealots, do more damage of which only a tiny percentage can be overkill and are very effective in tanking damage due to low health{a zergling with 1 hp taking a shot from an immortal will save 50 points of damage from the roach behind it, effectively negating 48 points of an immortals potential damage which is more life than the zergling has when at max health}. Microing zealots is a lot tougher than microing marines or lings. To micro speedlings all you have to do is click behind the enemy army for a surround and then a-move inside the army. To micro marines, you have to just kite, but microing zealots(pulling away the wounded since units with lots of life are best kept alive, especially for shields to regen, isn't effective due to their slow speed{till it moves out of range it's probably dead}, plus doesn't make them able to fight again for the time it takes to get back in range. Zealots cannot surround due to lack of speed, and the only thing they have is being the "strongest" base unit of all that for some reason both loses to both others and has less uses. And while this gives off a strong feeling that protoss who are supposed to be the sturdiest race{carrying the "mighty protoss" background from sc1} feel like severely lacking in the very first tier. But when you get a good set of forcefields and trap that MM ball in and see your chargelots charge, you get overcompensated by getting a "omg they're so screwed!" feeling. in the end, you can't micro zealots to good results. or you can but in small scale fights like holding off a choke and moving back the wounded ones. in large scale you just a-move them. But how to make them more effective? Sentries! Sentries are cool not only because of FF and guardian shields but because they attack fast with low damage often killing off an enemy before a 16-damage zealot hit or an immortal attack gets wasted on a low life enemy. Thing about force fields though is this: You not only have to manage them good enough so that you cut off enough enemy units, but you have to manage their energy too so that you can have fields for t he follow-up fight as well. A terran making a multi-pronged attack against a protoss by sending 1-2 drops at 1-2 expos while attacking with his main army will cause devastating effects because the protoss player will need to focus hard on his main army, lest he loses it, but the terran can just a-move his 1-2 drops while still being in good control of his main army since sniping important targets doesn't take too much so he has plenty of actions available for stuff like PDDs and EMP. A protoss on the other hand will need to place good forcefields, use guardian shields, feedback, well-placed storms and micro important units(colossi/immortals) out of reach... Both are intensive but a toss player generally needs a little more to do. I generally feel comfortable against terran though despite all this qq. 2 days ago I played 3 matches against a platinum lvl terran friend of mine and won 2 while the 3rd resulted in a base trade which I lost due to a single banshee being able to kill zealots and buildings while zealots can't kill floating terran buildings It's a bit too complicated tbh, and I don't feel I can give a good answer to this. But personally I "feel" that the game is relatively well balanced while also "feeling" that protoss are a little weak while at the same time feeling quite comfortable against all races... Dunno, it's a little too contradictory for my taste >.<
In my experence, in Z V P matches, protoss are weakest in the early game and bloody dangrous in the late game. Colossus ripping apart ground armies, beamships in such large numbers that there no way you can kill them before a good number get fully charged and then theres observers.... invisable flying detectors can really ruin your day as zerg. The balancing factor of course is that it takes the protoss a fair bit longer than other races to get things moving and there units are by and large, slow as hell.
Tbh, Zerg are also extremely dangerous late-game... With all this time to spread creep cracklings can exterminate colossi and stalkers in seconds, and they're extremely cheap and easy to build while colossi are hard as hell to replenish. I don't think protoss are played to their full potential though and that seems a problem... There's lots of stuff a protoss player can do but they're mostly sticking to what they get used to which usually is :get 5 colossi and a few gateway units and push, perhaps with some other units like templars or stargate units for some flavour... Other than that I believe that stalkers are a little weak, tbh... Only gaining +1dmg per upgrade and +0 against armored does seem kinda sucky, imo, especially if you compare them to roaches or marauders which are both cheaper, do more damage per hit(16(+2) and 10(+1)+10(+1) vs armored). Though comparing units is generally wrong, but in this case I feel like it does reveal a little weakness...
OK, so like you said, you shouldn't compare unit-to-unit like that, because it's not correct. Stalkers can blink, for one thing. That's a difference that can be exploited in many cases, such as escaping from danger, blocking off escapes, avoiding force-field traps, moving past wall-offs, cannons, and bunkers quickly, and cliff-jumping, or even jumping over impassable terrain. Further, stalkers can hit air. Marauders and roaches can't. If I'm raiding a protoss base and one single void ray is produced and I have only roaches or marauders, I have to leave because that one ship will quickly fry my entire army, especially once it gets charged up. In general, I do find that marauders destroy stalkers in straight field battles, especially because it's easy to get stim and conc shell, and it's not as easy to get blink. But stalkers do things that roaches and marauders don't, so the comparison isn't so simple.
Exactly! It's also easy to not see a matter from many points of view too, as your post reavealed, lol Don't forget the blinking away of the weak ones... Oh well
I don't feel they are too weak. Rather, I feel that Protoss lacks creative openings right now. I'm sure there are plenty out there, but people are not using them. I see a majority of people opening with Zealot Stalker sentry, fast void, stalker colossus, stalker immortal. That's pretty much it. With only 4 major strategies being commonly used, Protoss opponents become predictable. I'm not saying other openings do not exist, I'm just saying that other's aren't being commonly used from what I've seen. Perhaps players haven't discovered them yet? Perhaps they don't feel like they can execute it? Lets look at some common Terran openings I've seen. - 2 Barracks Marine rush - 3 Barracks MMM - Marauder rush - 1 1 1 build (which opens a lot of tech paths listed below) - Thor Drop - Banshee Harass - Helion - Helion Reaper - Marine Tank - Tank drop (for maps like Lost Temple) - Even fast BC and Marines Even Zerg are starting to mix it up now (now starting to see players use) - Baneling Bust - Speedlings - the 7 at 5 roach build - Sen 1 Base muta - Roach ling - Crawler to Hydra - Speedling Muta - Mass speedlings/infestor to Tier 3 During Beta of SC2, I noticed Protoss harassed a lot. Blink, which could be used to harass is now only commonly used as a way to micro your stalkers away before they die during a battle. I've only played a few games where the Protoss actually used blink to be annoying. I've never seen experienced an actual Carrier rush (which is real), immortal drop, and colossus drop. I even feel that even pheonix harass is becoming less common against Zerg. WhiteRa and Kiwikaki make awesome use of early Warp Prisms, I hope other plays give that a try too. Anyway, that's how I feel. Not saying it's true, but thats what I feel the problem is. EDIT: Apparently, I can't count >_>. It's 4 not 3.
oh lord the most awesome strategy is definitaly stalkers and then DT drops at the main so even wall-off's wont work
Until recently, I thought Protoss were overpowered, seeing how 4 gate is so strong against zerg. The ladder statistics reflected that view perfectly. However, the poor performance of Protoss in the GSL suggests that they are actually underpowered. I don't have a GomTV account to watch the games, but of the other high level games that I can watch, I usually see Protoss players being overly passive. Storm drops are overall just as strong as in SC1, the reduced area of storm being balanced by being able to warp in a templar with 75 energy straight from the phase prism. Yet I've almost never seen storm drops in tournaments, while Terran happily drops everywhere and Zerg takes 4 defenseless bases. In PvT, even in tournaments I see Protoss struggling against marauder pressure, yet almost never do I see a counter by immortals or air. It's always either colossi or storm, both of which only somewhat effective against fast and tough marauders. Higher skilled Protoss players like Huk can get away with it, but not if they are going up against the best Terran players in the world. In PvZ, yeah I understand 4 gate is a semi-cheese strategy that only works up until 2000 points in diamond, but if no one is doing that, then where are the forge fast expands? And where are the phoenixes to harass overlords? Are high level Protoss players so afraid of baneling busts that they don't want to tech to anything but colossi? It just seems like even the best Protoss players aren't playing their race to their fullest potential. Blizzard will probably be buffing Protoss soon, but I personally hope that it's a very small buff, and to something that currently isn't used, like hallucination or phase prisms.
