Protoss is disgusting. Just pick the broken race and collect your free undeserved wins.
Got out micro’ed early by widow mine drop and lose a bunch of probes? No problem ! Just get a bunch of disruptors and collect your free win.
Wanting to stack quick wins with no skills? Use a variety of cheap, easy to execute rush that take no brain cells to use but require perfect decision making and micro from opponent to stop.
Wanna lay back and play single player until you gather the ultimate late game army? Just chill in your base with a bunch of shield batteries and be completely safe against everything until you get your a-move skill free army.
Protoss players statistically have the largest banks and this usually happens during timing attacks when the Protoss is too distracted to hit his warp-in timings. They are too busy doing forcefields or blink or whatever, so their bank goes really high. I remember watching Zest trying to hold a queen roach push while floating 1.5k aka the equivalent of 15 zealots if he had better spending skill. They basically added overcharge because Protoss players can’t micro and macro at the same time, and this makes up for that. The problem it creates is that they can hold a push for free. Once the push is held, they have a massive bank to instantly drop a new nexus and 500 cannons/batteries. It’s totally possible to hit a protoss, wipe out bases, then still lose because the shield battery overcharge is so insanely resource efficient that it basically pays for the bases that died.
Broken is probably too strong of a word. But from my own experience, and from what I can tell on various online forums, it’s generally agreed that protoss requires much lower APM on average at a given league bracket than zerg or terran.
But that alone doesnt really say anything, does it?
Obviously you need less actions if everything is much more expensive. When a protoss player plays offrace he will have an increased apm just like when zerg/terran play protoss they will have lower apm than usually.
But its true that the micro requirements are much different. With zerg and especially with terran the micro is much more mechanical. protoss micro is very ability focussed.
In general, I agree that the lower apm threshold doesn’t directly translate to “protoss OP”. I also don’t think protoss is significantly OP.
It stands to reason though that, on average, over a sample of many players, in high stress high APM situations, needing less apm to be effective can be an advantage. And it is possible that players who struggle with their personal APM limits, gravitate toward protoss for that very reason.
It would only mean anything if we can say that every action is equal. However this is not the case.
But because apm is not equal you cant say that they will have the same apm limit. As i stated before: a zerg will have less apm playing protoss than he would have playing zerg.
Imagine this: you build 100 lings and morph them into banes. You now generated tons and tons of actions while not actually doing anything because you hold 2 buttons (z for zergling and e for morph to baneling). This has nothing to do with personal apm limits or anything. The race mechanic simply will give you more apm even tho you basically did nothing else than produce some units.
Just as a related funny story, during the Atlanta masters a few days ago, they had some unofficial show matches using whacky rules variants. One variant was playing a game at 2x speed. Watching the game, the speed was insane (much higher than “faster” speed). Some of the commentators noted live on the stream that protoss has and advantage in this variation, due to the amove, less micro, nature of their basic units like zealots. Harstem (a toss GM) agreed when interviewed afterward.
If you assume the leagues should have the same average APM for each race, Protoss get something in the ballpark of +1,000 MMR. GM Protoss have a lower average APM than Masters-level zergs.
I said high stress high apm situations. Not group morphing existing units.
Note: I’m not saying what you just posted is wrong for morphing some units. I’m saying you and I are talking about two different situations, and you ignored the literal content of my post.
Also, See above, about comments during the show matches during Atlanta.
I’m not saying “protoss Players will have less apm in high Stress situations”. I am talking about the overall race design. And I’m not going to be baited into defending a strawman you made up that has nothing to do with anything I am posting. So you can stop repeatedly trying that now.
What I am saying, and many people agree, is that protoss (the race, not any individual players) requires less APM to be competitive at a given MMR. And this could be interpreted as an advantage in high apm situations.
I am Not trying anything. Im Just curious what you mean and think. Because misinterpreting apm and drawing wild conclusions is a very Common thing in this Community. We should be very careful about apm and there is a reason why actually no one really cares about apm.
This could be but there is No Data that would actually validate the Statement.
I Just tried to make it clear that apm is Not apm If you know what i mean. Like its about Race Design as you Said but that doesnt mean the protoss is really actually doing “less” only because the apm is lower.
I mean its Same for zerg with banelings. You Need more Micro against banes or zealots compared to using Them
What if I told you an undercover dev was looking at this form, and said if you guys keep up this attitude and he’s going to make sure they buff protoss even stronger.
APM requirements strongly correspond with the average supply count of the armies being produced. Mech for example is high supply and low APM. Bio is low supply and high APM. Ultralisks are low APM and high supply, and zerglings are high APM and low supply.
It makes sense that if you have to make more units, it takes more APM. If you have to position more units, it takes more APM. If you have to micro more units, it takes more APM. Here’s the kicker: If you are macroing more, positioning more, and microing more, doesn’t that mean you are just playing a harder version of the game? You have the same amount of time to do more, and that’s harder. To do more in the same time, you have to be a faster player. That means less time to think about what you need to do, and that means you are more error prone unless you offset with superior skill.
This is why Protoss has drastically lower APM for a given league. The game is much easier when you have fewer things to do, which allows slower players to compete at the same level as faster players. Protoss have fewer units, fewer bases, fewer buildings, and this makes Protoss much easier to play.
AlphaStar had human-like APM restrictions and it was strongest with Protoss and weakest with Zerg, which exactly how human performance is. In a real time video game, having fewer things to do is an enormous advantage.
Look, it’s fine if Protoss want to be that way. But, shouldn’t we talk about adding auto-injects to queens and auto-creep spread? Carrier auto-build interceptors for crying out loud. Shield batteries auto-heal. Shouldn’t the queen auto-transfuse? The way they’ve designed Protoss is just ridiculous. Many things that other races have to do manually the Protoss has done automatically. You don’t even have to hotkey your own warpgates for crying out loud.
Can I also say that it’s ridiculous that people actually deny any of this? Like, what the actual flip. How on Earth is it possible to have any understanding of the game at all and somehow not come to such an obvious conclusion. It’s like denying that 2+2=4 for crying out loud. Protoss is easier because all the hard tasks in the game are deliberately reduced for Protoss.
that was never like that on BW. You forgot to build them? Oh well, your fault.
I think they also cost less compared to BW and WoL.
“Skytoss” if you want to call it that, was more APM heavy in BW because you had to manually rebuild the interceptors because of that, and weaker air units skytoss in BW is not nearly as strong and ezmode as it is in sc2.
I think skytoss in sc2 can be fixed, or at least carriers if you had to manually rebuild the interceptors and/or they revert the cost back to 25.
One of the few Things that batzy Said that is actually correct. In that Case simply Holding down buttons generate a Ton of apm. You actually arent doing anything but still you generate much apm. Thats why the avg zerg apm is inflated and means Jack.
Like any protoss would Care If you do it manually. I mean ofc zerg Players will See a Lot of actions but personally i would Just say i Need to hold down a Button. Not a hard Thing to do.
I dont get this whining about Carrier at all. Carriers Like any Other t3 fighting unit is garbage Tier. If anything Carriers are the banelings for protoss. The ultimate weapon of Destruction If you simply got more Money than your Opponent. Whining about Carriers means you have lost the Match a Long Time ago.
There are two reasons why Zerg players complain about Carriers:
They don’t properly prepare for them.
Carriers need to be manually targeted in a lot of cases.
Zero. Dark Swarm completely prevented single-target ranged damage.
However, damage and crowd control spells were often more powerful in Brood War, so they balanced out.
Storm dealt more damage.
EMP was a full drain.
Plague dealt up to 250 damage or so, but it couldn’t kill.
Irradiate killed everything except Ultralisks and dealt AOE damage.
Stasis Field could directly disable armies.
Disruption Web completely prevented ground attackers from shooting.
Spider Mines had a very powerful burst and very large 50% and 25% damage radii.
Archons attacked about 50% faster, but they took full damage from all sources.
Basically, powerful spells like Dark Swarm were balanced because every faction had their own powerful stuff to counter it.
