The Future of Protoss

I wanted to start this thread to discuss how effective people think the protoss are and to talk about possible or needed buffs like the voidray buff Blizz mention in the QnA. I think that Toss air would get a great boost is the Voidray is made into a generalist unit and the terran mass maurauder strats would finally stop. As it is right now however Toss is in some rough shape Because they have been nerfed in every patch and only buffed in one. Now dont get me wrong all of the nerfs actually have a point. Like the warpgate nerf that stopped proxy war in rushes, The radius reduction for storm made HTs more of a support unit. The list goes on. Unfortunatly none of the areas that people think need a buff are left untouched by blizz. The archon for example Needs some work because as it stands now it is easily out numbered and dosnt deal the dps it needs to for its high cost of 100/300 not to mention you have to sacrifice two templar which are infinatly more usefull than the archon ever could be. I also think the zealot could use a buff vs the maurauder because I think its a bit rediculous to have to tech to air to effectivly counter a Tier 1.5 unit.

Protoss are pretty solid on the ground, but they are lacking with their air for sure.

My gripes
- No reliable counter to mass Marauder outside very early aggression with Immortals. Chargelots do alright but get eaten alive by cheap Hellion support.

- Limited DT usefulness due to insanely high gas for tech.

- Archons are too weak for their cost, although in concept they are good all around support for those choosing Gateway and Templar tech over Robo/Stargate. They can almost replace the Immortal's tanking, the Colossus' anti-light splash, the Phoenix's anti-Muta, and the Void Rays raw power at the same time. Almost.

- The Phoenix needs to lose its channeling of AG.

- The Carrier is still a luxury item.

- The Arbiter 2.0... I mean Mothership is a joke.

I kinda agree with DS(believe it :)) ,all he's points makes sense especially the DT's who are currently costly as hell,And i also note that their attack speed is slower than in sc1 ! I disagree about the carrier though,They can be microwed WAY easy than the useless battlecruisers or the giant ariber...Actually 2 carriers with micro saved the Littleone from a gameending or at least a very heavy hit on his tech buildings....And 2 others took out a whole expansion guarded by stalkers/cannons/sentries...

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Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid

Protoss are pretty solid on the ground, but they are lacking with their air for sure.

My gripes
- No reliable counter to mass Marauder outside very early aggression with Immortals. Chargelots do alright but get eaten alive by cheap Hellion support.

- Limited DT usefulness due to insanely high gas for tech.

- Archons are too weak for their cost, although in concept they are good all around support for those choosing Gateway and Templar tech over Robo/Stargate. They can almost replace the Immortal's tanking, the Colossus' anti-light splash, the Phoenix's anti-Muta, and the Void Rays raw power at the same time. Almost.

- The Phoenix needs to lose its channeling of AG.

- The Carrier is still a luxury item.

- The Arbiter 2.0... I mean Mothership is a joke.

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- Have you tried a combo of sentries and colossi? Force field to keep marauds from FFing your colossi, then melt them with your range 9 lasers of doom. if you have some marauders as well, the terran player will have to choose which to FF.
- DTs may be a bit expensive, but they are very effective if you catch a terran player off guard. their best use is for raiding expos when you know the terran player's army is somewhere else, since terrans are so damn slow when moving anywhere.
- I agree archons could use some love, but DB thinks that they're just a last-resort unit and are fine as is. *shrug*
- I'm still not sure where I stand on the Phoenix. Some pros can do some wicked things with a flight of them.
- Carrier - expensive, but by far the most useful of the three tier 3 units. A BC may be able to take one in a fight, but nobody builds BCs because they suck vs almost everything else cost-for-cost. Carriers deal huge amounts of damage, are quite mobile, and have crazy range against both ground and air.

Just a random comment: DemoSquid has a really productive post here. I know this is pretty much spam, but Kudos on that level :)

Thanks for the post guys. If archons are supposed to be last resort units they they should be stronger. As it stands right now zealots and sentries cna do a far better job than an archon for less. Toss air requires and generalits go to unit. Pheonix is anti light specialist and the void ray is and anti armor specialist. The problem with these units is that they are easily countered by marines, hydras and vikings. Which almost all terran and zerg strats consist of. The carrier is one of the few saving graces of toss air because they reward good micro. The mother ship can be taken advantage off and that to me is bad unit design. you couldnt take advantage of stasis field like you can vortex. The cloak is a double edged sword and often backfires because ut leaves the very vulnerable mother ship comlpetely exposed to Focus fire. I personally think it should have something akin to the immortals hardened shields but that just me.

DTs are a good unit and the reason why they are so expensive to get is to prevent rushing them because of the zerg detector change. Dts are hellaciously powerful though a few mixed in to your main force and they will own everything they come against. only porblem I have with them is how flimsy they are. you would think that a Teir 3 unit would last longer than a few seconds to focus fire. They do help alot against terrans because they have to waist energy on scans instead of mules and forces them to get ravens in the long run. Unfortunatly ravens are Imo the best spell caster in the game and it could cause alot of problems.

I think that +1 charge lots with sentry and either VR or collosi support could take care of any maurauder heavy army. If you have some really crazy micro and alot of gass you can throw in some Ht to feed back and storm too. Zealots are dangerous they just can catch anything. I also see alot of toss making big blob armies and I think that most players arnt using the massive mobility of the warp prism. Three prisms filled with immortals will wreak havoc on production facilities not to mention you can warp in more guys. I think that prism ambush tactics could be really good in getting the surround on a blob army like M3.

I think that if they want to make "units that are really powerfull on the ground, but have no anti-air", that units should be available when there ARE air units. I mean, it's a no-brainer, really. You want air to be the counters for some units, but that units are T1, when there are no air units? What kind of game design is that?

They got the Protoss almost right: the ground-only beasts are the Immortal and the Colossus, T2 and T3. In PvP, if one goes Robotics and the other Stargate, the Stargate guy can win, unless Stalkers make an appearance, which they're likely to do. You could send your own Stalkers, but will get eaten by the Immortals and Colossi.

The solution, i think, isn't in buffing the Void Ray. The Void Ray is a beast against heavy-hp units and buildings. The unit that needs an AtG attack is the Phoenix.

If the Void Ray is made good vs heavy targets and light targets on air and ground, you would only need to build Void Rays, which would be pretty much retarded gameplay.

I've been trying a lot of stuff vs Maurauder spam. Chargelots are essential, there's just no other way. HT are a viable choice to feedback any Ghosts and all Terran air support but Vikings, which Chargelots kill when they land anyway. But as I said earlier, the problem becomes damn Hellions. Thankfully you can pick them off with Stalkers usually.

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Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid

I've been trying a lot of stuff vs Maurauder spam. Chargelots are essential, there's just no other way. HT are a viable choice to feedback any Ghosts and all Terran air support but Vikings, which Chargelots kill when they land anyway. But as I said earlier, the problem becomes damn Hellions. Thankfully you can pick them off with Stalkers usually.

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I think the best thing you can do in that situation is to split up his army with FF. Pin as many raurders in with your lots and blink around to kill the hellions. or you can ff and split up the hellions and just massacar them. Hellions are only good agains lots because they can kite and the dmg bonus with the preigniter upgrade. Same goes with maurauders if you take away their ability to kite then you will most likely win the fight.

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Originally Posted by Norfindel

I think that if they want to make "units that are really powerfull on the ground, but have no anti-air", that units should be available when there ARE air units. I mean, it's a no-brainer, really. You want air to be the counters for some units, but that units are T1, when there are no air units? What kind of game design is that?

They got the Protoss almost right: the ground-only beasts are the Immortal and the Colossus, T2 and T3. In PvP, if one goes Robotics and the other Stargate, the Stargate guy can win, unless Stalkers make an appearance, which they're likely to do. You could send your own Stalkers, but will get eaten by the Immortals and Colossi.

The solution, i think, isn't in buffing the Void Ray. The Void Ray is a beast against heavy-hp units and buildings. The unit that needs an AtG attack is the Phoenix.

If the Void Ray is made good vs heavy targets and light targets on air and ground, you would only need to build Void Rays, which would be pretty much retarded gameplay.

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you bring up a good point. The carrier is the only unit that has any chance against ground units but its to expensive to tech to right away. There needs to be a change somewhere along the line though because toss air cant deal with light ground and armored air.

for what its worth, I had a guy use the mothership vs me afew days ago (me as terran) and it actually did quite well.. It was a pain in the A to kill, lemme tell you that =/ he almost stole the game from me even tho I was ahead, but thankfully he didnt focus fire my vikings and I managed to take it out then imbauraders finished his units off..

I think protoss is strong. They have good air, but maybe phoenix could get some kinda spell like Overload back, but just not as strong. The issue is vs lots of light air units, like vikings or mutas, they attack too slow and just get overwhelmed.

The rest of protoss, just seems people dont use their spells well enough right now. Once people figure it out, they will be much stronger. Tip; Hallucination.

one of the things that make Toss a bit difficult is the way their tech tree is. Terrans and zergs have to tech up in a straight line where as toss has three different branches to choose from and making the wrong choice could be fatal. Thats what makes it hard to tech switch as toss. you invest all your money into robo tech and the zerg switches to muta now you have to stop using robo and get 3-4 stargates to match his production. ou build air units zerg switches to hydras and steamrolls your army. Terrans can do this too only they have to move a few buildings around. Zerg and terran will get all of there units where as toss is stuck with one maybe two of the three branches of the tree and cant affort the other or a large amount of units because he had to tech switch.

From what I've played, I've found Phoenixes to be excellent counter to lot of my Marauder problems. Thing is, that they cost a lot when you need to tech to Immortals or w/e at the same time...

8-12+ phoenixes really cause an havoc when you just spam that ability, including taking out marauder armies :> But I rarely get to that point without having an army of something knocking to my front door.

Could bring some interesting choices if phonixes would be just a little bit cheaper, or faster to build. Or have somekind of special upgrade.

Anyway, just a thought ~

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Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid

- Archons are too weak for their cost, although in concept they are good all around support for those choosing Gateway and Templar tech over Robo/Stargate. They can almost replace the Immortal's tanking, the Colossus' anti-light splash, the Phoenix's anti-Muta, and the Void Rays raw power at the same time. Almost.
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Just wanted to share that Archons are pretty weak for their cost, but that's because they're not supposed to be produced until the two HT that it's made of have cast Storm and ran out of Energy. :p

They are fairly resilient when morphing in, and if both of you have few troops by that point,, it can provide a game-ending punch.

I think that the only time getting Archons (for the unit and not as something to get once your HTs run out of Energy) is against mass Muta, and even then, it can be situational.

Buff archon damage and AoE and i think we will all be happy

dont overbuff, but they need a modest dmg and AE boost and they wont suck

I think the archon would benifit from splash or a chain lightning attack. Another thing that I noticed is that alot of Toss units are expensive but not powerful. The Viking is cheap and powerful but its Toss equivilant the pheonix is quite weak but even more expensive.

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Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid

Protoss are pretty solid on the ground, but they are lacking with their air for sure.

My gripes
- No reliable counter to mass Marauder outside very early aggression with Immortals. Chargelots do alright but get eaten alive by cheap Hellion support.

- Limited DT usefulness due to insanely high gas for tech.

- Archons are too weak for their cost, although in concept they are good all around support for those choosing Gateway and Templar tech over Robo/Stargate. They can almost replace the Immortal's tanking, the Colossus' anti-light splash, the Phoenix's anti-Muta, and the Void Rays raw power at the same time. Almost.

- The Phoenix needs to lose its channeling of AG.

- The Carrier is still a luxury item.

- The Arbiter 2.0... I mean Mothership is a joke.

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What if Blizz made DTs counter marauders?
What if DTs get charge as well?
And i dunno.. loose the light unit designation when undetected?

The way I see it...

Protoss Air isn't perfect.

Terran Mech isn't perfect.

Zerg lacks active abilities.

These are what I like to call character flaws.

Each race is suppose to have flaws and strengths. That's the point of this game, right?

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Originally Posted by Asfastasican

Each race is suppose to have flaws and strengths. That's the point of this game, right?

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NO.

Each race is meant to have weaknesses and strengths. There is a HUGE difference between a weakness and a flaw.

A "weakness" is something like low HP. To counteract a high damage output. This creates the classic "glass cannon unit." A "weakness" is a lack of active abilities, in tradeoff for the the strength of high numbers like with Zerg.

A "flaw" is where a unit with low HP also has low damage. The unit is not worth its cost.

That's the situation for Protoss air, Terran mech, and half of the zerg force. They are not worth their cost often enough.

Mech is actually really viable but because of the super op maurauder there is no need to go mech. Tanks shoot really fast and have siege mode thors can one shot an immortal with the 250mm strike cannon and the immortal is one of the biggest excuses that terrans have for not going mech. The hellion is really good at flanking kiting and base raiding and they counter hydras in large groups. The maurauder is cheap counters armored units, has a slow that counters melee units and prevents and effective retreat, have almost as much hp as a siege tank and beinfit from stim and medivacs. THe benifits of using maurauders far out weights the risks.

I dont think that a race should have a weakness but a strategy should. Protoss should not be weak to air like it is now but an immortal push should be. If a strategy like mass muta or viking/banshee beats most toss players then that is bad there should be an effective counter to that but there isnt. Any smart zerg will with tech switch or just continue to pump mutas at the sight of a pheonix and the pheonix can't deal with either. That is a weakness the unit has that directly affects the race that shouldnt be there. The pheonix should dominate mutas not be like the Muta and the marine in sc1.

Toss air needs a buff imo as Terrain vikings, not only counter all toss air, but can be massed up so fast. And Zerg has hydras and corrupters to deal with all air, but in T1 they are defenseless.

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Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid

Protoss are pretty solid on the ground, but they are lacking with their air for sure.

My gripes
- No reliable counter to mass Marauder outside very early aggression with Immortals. Chargelots do alright but get eaten alive by cheap Hellion support.

- Limited DT usefulness due to insanely high gas for tech.

- Archons are too weak for their cost, although in concept they are good all around support for those choosing Gateway and Templar tech over Robo/Stargate. They can almost replace the Immortal's tanking, the Colossus' anti-light splash, the Phoenix's anti-Muta, and the Void Rays raw power at the same time. Almost.

- The Phoenix needs to lose its channeling of AG.

- The Carrier is still a luxury item.

- The Arbiter 2.0... I mean Mothership is a joke.

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I agree. I'd also like to point out that void rays are usually used for a cheese tactic and aren't use in a mix army situation or anything else for that matter. The unit is good but doesn't make up for Protoss air.
Carriers are such a luxury item! Of course, even much more so than the battlecruisers because the Terrans have a solid air line up and are going to build Starports for useful air units so it's not a risky progression and it makes sense.
Arbiters would make a lot of sense to help fix the situation. Take the Mothership out of the Neuxs and make the Stargate have arbiters to make them more useful. But does arbiter still have as much of a role in the game still? Might be better to create a totally new unit.

can archons move while morphing?

The arbiter did what it did well because of its size and speed. Its was small enough to aviod focus fire and fast enough to escape if needed. it also had stasis field which the enemy couldnt take advantage of like they can with vortex. The mother ship dosnt work with the arbiters abilities. Blizz needs to either give it its own set unique set of abilities or give us back the arbiter.

What bugs me is that alot of Toss players are forced to go robo to counter the maurauder/roach spams and it makes Protoss feel very defensive and reactionairy. Whens the last time ouside of a PvP that you heard some one complain about a Toss having map control.

Another thing that bugs me is that the strats against zerg are either a heavy robo push or a VR rush which is considered cheese. Zealots are pretty much useless against everything until they have charge and thats really dissapointing that a unit needs a teir two upgrade to be effective at all.

I also noticed that the maurrauder is actually stepping on the toes of other units. It is mostly used to kite lots but thats what hellions and reapers are supposed to do. It has almost as much health as a tank for less cash so its stepping on the role of the tank.

I also read that alot of terrans are afraid of the immortal and I just have to say that it can only take ten attacks before the shield goes down. Not to mention that there are ways around the shield, Thor 250mm cannon, emp, yamato, nuke, Hunter missle or you can blow through it with reapers, marines, mass maurauders, tanks, banshees, thors and BCs just to name a few.

mass psionic storm dem bitches

I think Blizz might be a little to attached to some units. Namely the thor and mauruader to want to change them. I wish I could ask them why they keep a clearly overpowered unit in the game without fixing it.

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Originally Posted by whitefire

I think Blizz might be a little to attached to some units. Namely the thor and mauruader to want to change them. I wish I could ask them why they keep a clearly overpowered unit in the game without fixing it.

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they so awesome though

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Originally Posted by InpuBot

they so awesome though

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I hate the maurauder. I hate its slow I hate its stats. I hate it. It dose way to many things for a T1.5 unit. The thor on the other hand actually has a nice means of dealing with immortals and is easily countered.. Back to my rauder rant. There is no cost effective way to kill them. they can tank storms, slaughter stalkers, Kite Zealots ect. They are way to effective But Blizz fails to see this. They nerf the roach and the Immortal but they unnerf the mauruader. How is that balanced? Its a unit that counters its counters. Its Dps is way to high and its slow actually prefents some Zealots from charging. I think its a giant load of bull that you have to tech to air to kill them effectivly and even if yo do that there will always be trigger happy marines just itching to shoot your VRs down. I hate terrans. First it was lockdown now its maurauders. Can they get any more annoying?

What Blizz needs to do is remove the bonus to armored, or make it much lower. Make the Marauder a damn support unit for your Marines. Keep the slow, keep the high HP. But make Marines needed to dish out the real DPS instead with the Marauder providing minor support vs armored. This would greatly help to improve Terran mech as well.

The marauder stats are way to good. it needs a health decrease and a damage decrease. Something like 90hp and 8+8 vs armored. As it stands now the marauder is taking the role of the tank. An over all zealot speed increase would help to aliviate this problem too. zealots are too slow and charge is too expensive.

Zealots are not too slow... and charge is certainly not too expensive.

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What Blizz needs to do is remove the bonus to armored, or make it much lower. Make the Marauder a damn support unit for your Marines. Keep the slow, keep the high HP. But make Marines needed to dish out the real DPS instead with the Marauder providing minor support vs armored.

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That would defeat the whole purpose. The Marauder is intended as an anti-armored unit AND a support unit. Like the Siege Tank has siege mode and tank mode. That's the whole theme of the terrans, two units in one.

The problem is they're too good against zealots and zerglings. Making marauders doesn't eat into your anti-light DPS enough. They have a snare, that's sufficient for making them a bit more generalist IMO.

Something like 8 + 12 rather than 10 + 10 would make sense to me. And maybe not have armor. That's one of the things that makes them so resilient to zergling and zealot attacks.

Stalkers might start countering them then, though.

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Originally Posted by Aldrius

Zealots are not too slow... and charge is certainly not too expensive.



That would defeat the whole purpose. The Marauder is intended as an anti-armored unit AND a support unit. Like the Siege Tank has siege mode and tank mode. That's the whole theme of the terrans, two units in one.

The problem is they're too good against zealots and zerglings. Making marauders doesn't eat into your anti-light DPS enough. They have a snare, that's sufficient for making them a bit more generalist IMO.

Something like 8 + 12 rather than 10 + 10 would make sense to me. And maybe not have armor. That's one of the things that makes them so resilient to zergling and zealot attacks.

Stalkers might start countering them then, though.

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Its the slow that makes them way to effective against light units. most light units have low health and are fast. The zealot is the exception to this being slower than workers and having a total of 150hp. Zerglings are effective because they are dirt cheap super fast and easily massed. That means that the marauders arnt very effective against them. On the other hand you have the zealot, slow, powerful, and pretty expensive. These atributes make them nothing but rauder fodder with out charge and even then charge only puts them on even ground. If the marauder whas a Toss unit it would have probable been beaten to death by the nerf bat already. Terrans have always been and are always going to be lacking in the mobility department. its just their nature yet they get buffed because they are slow. Medivacs are dropships so a unit most if not all terrans are going to get gives them all the mobility they are going to need. In the early game terrans dont need to move around much thats why they have bunkers to protect your infantry. Yet because people fail to use these two very useful tools they get buffed. Talk about fair. Terrans can salvage their bunkers so you have return on investment and Zerg can move their defenses yet the Toss cant do anythign will cannons. Ya they do it all, GtA, GtG, detection but its still immobile and flimsy.

the counter to marauders is air units,

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Originally Posted by InpuBot

the counter to marauders is air units,

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So Terran can effectively counter Immortals and Roaches at tier 1 with M&M,
And Zerg can decently counter Immortals and Marauders at tier 1 with Zerglings

But Protoss has to spend tons of gas on Sentries and wait till tier 2 to barely counter Roaches and Marauders?

Exactly what part of that sounds fair or balanced to you?

That's not even true... Stalkers beat Roaches pretty well now with even a little micro.

And Zerglings don't counter Marauders that well either.

Granted Marauders being countered by air units is kinda ridiculous... =| Immortals don't even do that well against them once their shields are down.

Alot of units can kite zealots. and not just the units that counter them. all ranged units can kite them. Kiting zerglings inst as effective because they will either run away or surround their attackers. zealots cant run and can only get a surround with charge. The added mobility of most units make them very hard to use and for a T1 unit thats not good. As far as roach vs stalker is conserned. The roach dose more damage to the stalker than vice versa so in a straight up fight stalkers will lose. Zealot stalker arnt as an effective combo as marine/marauder or zergling/roach because zealots are too easy to take advantage of and stalkers dont do as much damage as Rauders or roaches.

Yes, yes, Zerg and Terran are unstoppable, Protoss sucks.

What else is new?

Stalkers outrange AND outrun Roaches. So if EVERYTHING can out kite Zealots, then Stalkers can most certainly do that to Roaches. Particularly with sentries.

Besides that, Hydralisks cannot kite Zealots. Not unless they're on the creep. Marines are too slow and the second a zealot actually reaches them, a few quick slices and they're dead.

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The added mobility of most units make them very hard to use and for a T1 unit thats not good.

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Mobility hasn't stopped people from complaining about the Roach. And wouldn't you know it, the Zealot is faster, deals better DPS and has more health than the roach.

The zealot is sufficiently powerful, the Marauder is just way too tough AND has a powerful special ability AND deals tons of DPS even to non-armored targets.

I never said zealots are weak I just said they are slow and yes marauders are really tough. Im saying that either the zealot needs to be at the level of the marauder or the marauder needs to be at the level of the zealot. Its supposed to be a support unit but rauders are taking the placke of marines as a standard unit. Blizz brought this imbalance to light when they nerfed marines and reactors and now they arnt fixing it. as for ZvP as long as you can prevent mutas you will most likely win. I feel though that alot of toss units got the short end of the stick. Some of them simply dont do enough damage or die too quickly. The high price is there but the overwhelming firepower isnt in most cases.

dunno about zerg,but ALL Terran units are countered by either Feedback OR psi-storm.....Maybe except sieged tanks-but those are crushed by Immortals,As for marauders they are designed to be tough...And without stim and medivacs they aren't that effective...And if anyone thinks marauders should have decreased life to support those marines...Then what's the point in making them,when a single psi-storm will wipe all your M&M,and a couple of feedbacks tooks out your healing capabilities??? As for the Air Force of Terran-DS's only positive thing he has said about protoss is right -4 of 5 units are neutralized by the feedback,-Banshees are most of the time halved in hp or instantly killed if you aren't carefull,medivacs become only dropships with half hp,Ravens are only detectors or killed instantly,and battlecruisers loose lots of hp and their only ability that maked them a bit usefull....

thts why scvs can repair them, i wonder why i don't see a lot of terran players committing to repair their mech units though -3-