PTR Patch 1.3.0

[Genopath]

Am I the only excited about that FG buff? lol

[RamiZ]

Stalkers with Blink are definitely more mobile than Terran army especially if there are some kind of cliffs on the way to the expo...
But no arguing about who is more mobile, Protoss got the worse mobility out of them all, but you were able to defend expo with 2-3 Cannons, and warping-in 2 HTs when enemy units approach. If I react when enemy units approach with Zerg or Terran, my expo will be destroyed before I am able to defend it(Planetary Fortress doesn't count, it is retarded as fuck... ).

[JackhammerIV]

The thing is if the opponent watches the attack on the expo they can kill the HTs really easily. They have very little life and take extra damage warping in. Even if you leave HTs there to defend if the toss doesn't catch the attack immediately then the HTs can be sniped quickly. Just drop down marines out of sight. Scan, stim in and kill the HT before it can do anything.

Planetaries+missile turrets+scvs to repair.....totally shut down so much aggression on that base. I wish blizzard would just give that kind of thing to each race.:P Hatcheries and nexus that can attack units.

[TheEconomist]

@hyde: Mauraders and Medievacs (among other things) weren't in SCBW. The rules have changed. If Khaydarin Amulet is removed then they need to do something to buff storms a bit.

[0mar]

why not just remove vortex from the game? it's literally the worst spell in the game now. yes, even worse than seeker missile. at least seeker missile has the chance to do some damage. vortex is a 1.5 second invulnerability buff for your enemy.

[Genopath]

why not just remove vortex from the game? it's literally the worst spell in the game now. yes, even worse than seeker missile. at least seeker missile has the chance to do some damage. vortex is a 1.5 second invulnerability buff for your enemy.

Invulnerability buff for your enemy and for your own units. It still has plenty of uses still. I'll trade it for Neural Parasite.

[spychi]

Am I the only Toss player that doesn't care about the amulet removal?
I mean it was useful when you had 150/150 to waste, but from my pov, I used that upgrade like 8 times?

[WhoamI]

I don't understand one thing. Will the damage of Fungal growth be dealt in those 4 seconds of stuns' duration or it will keep going even after the stun..?


P.S.
WOW! I can't believe you protoss guys are such qqers..

For too long u were laughing after almost every game u played against Zerg.
You can sit back and enjoy the fury of the swarm now.

[protoswarrior]

The following are my personal thoughts on the issue, but before I go into that here is what our beloved Terran badass, LiquidJinro had to say about this on TL.net:

I think this change is gonna be too big, P needs at least the old BW upgrade back (+50 mana, starts with 63 mana instead of 50).

With HTs starting at 50, its like you cant even warp them in in advance vs units in the middle of the map. Its a bit extreme that you can just warp them in as you spot the dropship unloading in your base, but they need something.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=196458

Ok, thinking rationally, let us see what this nerf does to High Templar usage.

FIRST ISSUE:

The reason to go high templar at all is to circumvent the weakness of the Colossus which is its mobility. With the Khaydarin Amulet, a High Templar can have 75 starting energy and storm, and their tactical usage has been shown so many times since Beta.

What did I mean by High Templar being more "mobile"? I mean to say that High Templar were warped in when a drop was spotted and although the HT's feedback wouldn't necessarily kill drops, it was one way to deal with them (against Terran). The amulet upgrade also allowed a Protoss player to effectively damage a drop, but High templar alone weren't enough, so additional units like stalkers and zealots were used to kill the drop.

Now, with the nerf, Protoss can no longer deal with mass infantry drops. Zealots and Stalkers alone are weak against marauders and stimmed marines. This is painfully obvious in early game when small pockets of infantry just devastate Protoss' gate units. Without sentries, and well placed forcefields, gate units just die to stimmed infantry. Add a medivac, and you need Colossus or psi-storm.

To pose the question, how does Protoss deal with stimmed infantry drops now?


SECOND ISSUE:

Ok, lets us now move on to late midgame Protoss against mass bio-balls and siege tanks. The reason why Protoss against Terran is (did I say "is"? - I meant "was") so fun to play is because of the very tight interaction between Protoss units and Terran units.

It is never a "Colossus pwnz lol" situation in a closely skilled match. It always comes down to who has better micro and foresight to position their units in the most tactically advantageous situation. The reason why storm was getting so much attention for so long was that Vikings counter colossi too hard. If Protoss went 2 base 2 robo Colossus with a 3rd being taken slightly later, then Terran has the infrastructure to mass produce vikings from 1-2 starports with reactors (that were already being used for medivacs anyways). Because of this, Protoss were migrating away from Colossus-centric builds to more Immortal/HT heavy ones with a lot of basic gate unit support like charge-zealots and blink-stalkers.

That when added to a couple of Colossi for additional damage in lategame made for a very strong/solid force to deal with any Terran not smart enough to transition out of bio by then, and that mix still was able to deal with mech on equal grounds. So what do I mean? I am saying that PvT was already balanced in the lategame.

The nerf to Psi storm (effectively) makes this lategame composition weaker to infantry timing-wise and encourages lategame bio-centric builds more that anything. Protoss is screwed from every angle. And, if Terran decides to get lategame ghosts for EMP, Protoss cannot rely purely on a gate army with some robo-unit support. They HAVE to get Colossi which are easily dealt with by a few vikings (5-6).

EMP combined with stimmed infantry and viking support makes Protoss underpowered in the lategame AND the early game now. Before the nerf I was fine with Protoss being weak to strong early infantry because it means Protoss has to be better at forcefielding and timing to beat Terran which made for a stronger lategame in favor of Protoss since it took more skill on the Protoss' end to deal with Terran.

You could attribute the above to "Terran is OP omfg" but that is not what I am saying. I am saying that Terran early infantry is strong, and for good reason. It naturally puts the onus on Protoss to play better than 1-a click or kiting micro. The latter being Terran's modus operandi, should encourage Terran to think about a stronger later game, but with time it only made a lot of Terrans passive in tech choices, unlike their Protoss counterparts who got creative with tech (after a long dry spell of losing Colossus wars).

Only recently, with the Squirtle vs Mvp game in the GSTL have we really seen a full switch of using tech that isn't concentrated on Colossus. Of course, a lot of it had to do with the map, but Mvp was still very active in his harassments. The only reason Mvp lost was because he threw away too many tanks at the onset of his mech transition. Had he kept them, he would have won for sure. Squirtle played well, & won fair and square.

Now imagine the same game between these two with the nerf: Squirtle would be at a severe handicap to deal with drops, and later on he would have lesser psi-storms to deal with the tanks and infantry which means his DPS is a lot smaller compared to Mvp's tank DPS that he is dishing out.


THIRD ISSUE:

The Blizzard balance team might be thinking that storm should be similar to SC1 storm usage, but the thing that they are forgetting is that SC2 is sooo much more fast-paced than Broodwar that it is not realistic to have such expectations. The damage output for cost is just too little. If they are nerfing High Templar like this, they need to nerf Ghosts equally. 1-2 Ghosts will negate the effect of 4-5 High Templar easily pre-patch, but now, Terran can LOL their way to victory by just using the same ghosts since in most scenarios, the ghosts won;t get fed-back in time to nullify EMP. So it (the interaction between HT and Ghost) is no longer micro-dependent as it used to be, thanks to this change.


CONCLUSION:

This nerf has 3 major effects on Protoss vs Terran:

a) Drop harassment countermeasure for protoss is deeply negated.

b) Less energy at the start of High Templar production means more waiting time, and thus less inclination to invest in High Templar as a mass gate unit to counter mass infantry in-lieu of Colossus tech. Why? Because HT will be doing more dying and less storming for 50min/150gas a pop.

c) Ghosts and EMP are now OP against Protoss simply because Protoss won't have enough Templar to feedback AND storm. Therefore, stimmed infantry will just roll the Protoss gate/Immortal army. The only answer would be Colossus since Void Rays and Carriers are useless in PvT lategame, and neither of the 2 air tech units do splash damage.


So, to sum it all up, this nerf to the Khaydarin Amulet is a bad move by Blizzard. It cripples Protoss' ability to deal with harassment and weakens their lategame considerably. And, considering the fragility of High Templar, having less storms out than pre-patch 1.3.0 PTR means that Protoss has no way out in lategame PvT when ghosts are out.


PS:

This change would also destroy any chance Protoss has at dealing with mass Mutalisk in PvZ...

[JackhammerIV]

@WhoamI
The fungal does the damage over the 4 secs. Meaning the DPS is technically doubled. Like the comments by pros i somewhat transcibed and posted here they said fungal has become a more damage spell and less an ensnare spell.

Plus the templar change doesn't really do much for PvZ. Few toss go templar vs zerg. I used to like 2 months ago. Currently most toss would be going air/colossi vs zerg. Hurts the immortal HT combo a lot but archons are still good in PvZ.

@protoswarrior
Nice points. Hopefully you can get them to understand the pov of toss with that logical and technical post. Better than my rage posts.:P

FIRST ISSUE:

Hidden Content:

The first issue now is dealt with like.....i would say 3-6 cannons and 3 stalkers at any expo far from your army. That way it completely scares off a single medivac drop but two medivacs dropping would be hard. Then need really good cannon placement or else the drop comes on the side with no cannons.

Basically Blizzard's thinking is like delay stim by 30 seconds so toss has more time to prepare but has to hold off a stim push with 2-4 more units. Then in the lategame delay each storm by 45 seconds so that a terran going MMM and Vikings into the late game isn't punished as much by toss teching up to storm.

Even leaving a templar at a base to collect energy is not a good idea as I noted before they get sniped so easily. It even happens now where the drop targets the templar and even pros can't always manage multiple bases and multiple drops. Gretorp said about toss has to proactively defend expos now but with toss having the least mobility it means leaving more units at expos meaning less army at the main battle. This is actually a slight buff to mothership. Mothership becomes more usefull for it's cloak and recall. But the time and cost to get up to it is high.

So overall if the terran/zerg is playing a harass style, and if there is no close 3rd base to take which can let a toss army quickly move to any base under attack (which considering the current map pool is.....none of them) so toss players will do more 2 base attacks and less reluctant to take a third. Toss wanting to safely expo far away would need a lot of gateways and good upgrades or making lots of phoenixes that patrol the map. I might just build phoenixes if i want to expo to just patrol the sides of the map to block drops.

CONCLUSION: Kill the drops before they unload with phoenixes actively patrolling way far from your expos. Or just don't take a third base. And considering the new maps and what the pros say....blizzard doesn't want terran or toss to fast expo or take a third.

SECOND ISSUE:

Hidden Content:

The double forge build becomes a lot more useful. Not going colossus till late. If terran tries to "lol you'll only make colossus" then all his vikings become useless. Then go colossus when you start 2-2 like liquidtyler said he was considering.

THIRD ISSUE:

Hidden Content:

The point i guess most people have with the HTs and why they think ghosts with EMP is fine even though it costs less resources and takes less time to make than HTs with storm is that: EMP can't kill units.

Like it doesn't matter that while storm does 80 damage spread out over 4 secs while EMP does 100 damage instantly is fine since EMP can't kill units. It can only do like up to 1000 shield damage instantly to a clumped up group of units. But since it can't kill anything then it should be fine in Blizzard's eyes.

Ghosts and EMP aren't OP versus protoss. But it just comes so much earlier than storm and does more damage. Sure it doesn't kill anything but considering stimmed infantry melt gateway units mixing in 1-2 ghosts for EMP can crush gateway armies.

EDIT: Well mutalisks can still be dealt with. Archons and blink stalkers with upgrades still good versus them.

@spychi
Well you like DT phoenix observer.:P So yeah you might be the only active posting toss on the forum who doesn't mind the amulet change