Vortex and Time Rift

[mr. peasant]

You're right, Nicol. The abilities have been distributed to match each race's basic concept. Terrans are glass cannons; therefore, it's important for them to end fights as quickly and decisively as possible rather than draw them out. Ergo, big, direct damage is key. The Protoss while numerically inferior, can just about out-punch everything else out there. Hence, their abilities focus on dividing up the enemies and dealing with the threats bit by bit. The Zerg are all about numbers. Their abilities focus on exaggerating it as much as possible and (probably) making use of those numbers (e.g. trading Banelings).

[ArcherofAiur]

Thats not the issue (Nicol just twisted around the word theme). No one ever complained about overlap between hunter seeker and Nukes.

[Aldrius]

Terran spells tend to be about blowing things up: doing damage directly. Even EMP hurts shields as a secondary effect. Protoss spells tend to be about removing units from battle or limiting their maneuverability. Zerg spells don't have a general theme yet.

Numbers. Zerg spells are about increasing your own troop numbers. Summoning units, taking control of enemy units, whatever. And dehabilitation of enemy units as well.

Protoss I'd say is about manipulating the battlefield in different ways.

Uh... anyway, I wouldn't say anything overlaps between Temporal Rift, Vortex or Phase Shift. They all do different things, and are on very different units. Anyway, from the looks of things, Temporal Rift slows down the attack, spellcasting and movement speed of all units caught in it's effect. That doesn't really overlap with Vortex other than them both being area control spells.

[Nicol Bolas]

Thats not the issue (Nicol just twisted around the word theme). No one ever complained about overlap between hunter seeker and Nukes.

That just goes to show my point. The argument about the overlap between Phase Shift and Vortex is just as valid as the argument about overlap between HSM and Nukes. They both do single-shot damage over an area, and they're both avoidable.

If you think that Phase Shift overlaps unnecessarily with Vortex, then you must also conclude that HSM overlaps similarly with Nukes. Otherwise you're just cherry picking PS and Vortex for some other reason not explained.

Anyway, from the looks of things, Temporal Rift slows down the attack, spellcasting and movement speed of all units caught in it's effect. That doesn't really overlap with Vortex other than them both being area control spells.

If that's what it does, then you wouldn't really use them in the same situations. TR is best for units that you want to continue to shoot at; it's an area debuff. TR combos well with Psi Storm (assuming Psi Storm's effects are not hampered by TR). Vortex is more about removing units from combat; you want to deal with fewer enemy units right now.

Both of them combo reasonably well with Force Field, to force enemy units into the location of interest.

[Jconant]

Protoss having 4 different CC abilities isn't really an issue since they each do something unique and they compliment each other; there is a lot of uses for them in the offense and defense. Despite the game not having been released yet, some people have illustrated through discussion and blizzcon matches how creativity can go a long way...

...For example example,shield the pathways to your mineral line to protect probes (buy time for your ms to teleport in if its not at home base)...and if the enemy somehow gets around that and have detection to breech MS' cloaking, drop a vortex to retreat your probes.

The aoe slowdwould be a good way to intervene an incoming nuke. Sure, it doesn't interupt it, but maybe buy enough time to kill the ghost before it drops. (especially if a medivac is healing it- the slowdown would reduce the healing/second no?). In combination of shields, protoss could make a sound retreat without being overrun.

The mothership video was an excellent display of how to use the CC to decimate an army AND prevent the opposing force from doing anything about it. (I noticed that the second vortex sucked in some air units, including one corruptor and hydralisks, so the vortexes were casted for different purposes: one was to trap the army for a prepared colossi/ psi storm attack, the other to protect the mothership from zerg anti air)

As displayed in a 1v1 match, disruptors planted shields to prevent zerg army from running away. It gave marching zealots and colossi enough time to get in range and decimate them.

[Gt2slurp]

You can probably transit to cloak you entire expo, and if the enemy got detection you vortex your own probe (it don't do any damage beside targeted unit?) the time you army come in.

[KneeofJustice]

I cant wait to watch a TvP game where someone thinks they are so badass with their army supported by their awesome mothership...

And then it gets EMP'd.

Suddenly, it cannot teleport away, it has 100 less shields, it cannot use any abilities and all cloaked units are revealed for 5 seconds so you know exactly whats coming. All it can do is flee painfully slowly and attack. And no one at blizzard thinks that this isnt a very real possibility? That your 400m/400g unique mothership gets reduced to nothing in less time than it takes to tell? I mean, ghosts are expensive up front, but their spells dont need research and, lets face it, MS is at the top of the tech tree and EMP should be a common sight against toss, especially that late in the game.

No one else is worried by this?

Last I heard, Temporal Rift (Time Bomb) does:

There isn't Time Bomb ability any more in the current game and High Templar has Temporal Rift ability.
Temporal Rift creates a distortion field at the target location. Ground units caught inside of this field have their movement speed, attack speed, and ability cast times slowed by half. And it lasts 30 seconds.

http://www.worldofraids.com/wow-blue...ts-lasers.html

Yes its referring to the old HT ability, but if they just moved it back to the MS, having movement, attack rate and ability cast times cut in half is pretty darned powerful.

[Norfindel]

I cant wait to watch a TvP game where someone thinks they are so badass with their army supported by their awesome mothership...

And then it gets EMP'd.

Well, that's the problem with putting all the eggs into the same basket. Specially when the eggs are spellcasters, and there's an instantaneous energy-wiping ability from a cloaked unit.

Wormhole should be timeout-based.

I think that the Arbiter was much better. It died much quicker than a Mothership, and it's attack was useless, but you could build more than one, and it would be able to do nearly the same than a Mothership, and even more (Recall !!!). Not to mention, that while pretty slow, it had acceptable speed.

.

[Aldrius]

Suddenly, it cannot teleport away, it has 100 less shields, it cannot use any abilities and all cloaked units are revealed for 5 seconds so you know exactly whats coming. All it can do is flee painfully slowly and attack. And no one at blizzard thinks that this isnt a very real possibility?

It's a possibility, but ghosts are ground units, it's gonna be kinda hard to sneak up on the mothership and cast that spell if she's surrounded by her army. It'll be cloaked, and there will likely be observers nearby.

Plus even with 100 less shields, she's not defenseless, and her energy will recharge quickly enough.

Part of the units purpose is that she's not a one-protoss army, she needs support and defense, she will easily be overwhelmed by enemy numbers.

[n00bonicPlague]

Judging from the recent video, I can tell that Time Bomb (or whatever) slows unit movement, as the Ultralisk under it ran extra slow. However, I don't know if it still has any effect on projectiles. I'm thinking that its function/purpose is similar to the Corsair's Disruption Web.

And speaking of Phase Shift, I'm still pretty pissed that, last we heard, you can't use it on your own units.