i have seen this topic going around for a while and i am very interested to know why people think this.
first of all, i just want to say if your entire army regularly gets laced in lack of shields, that is 100% your fault and its because you move your entire army in one huge ball(or your terran opponent has allot of ghosts, in that case it isnt your fault but it is a huge investment for terran.)
“but i cant split because emp is instant” ok this is going to sound crazy but what if i told you… you could split before the emp is cast… before. not during. i know i know its very hard you actually have to do some micro but. if you set up a concave or put your army in ideal fighting position it will significantly reduce the impact of emp.
also on most units the shields take up less than half of the total hit points, additionally good protoss players dont get shield upgrades so the shields dont stop much anyways.
final thoughts
emp: reduces shield and energy
storm/disruptors: obliterates entire army.
im not sure if that was sarcasm but that is actually correct it is not ideal to split during the fight because the marines arent shooting, thats why terran players like to pre split.
splitting during the fight looks really cool but actually isnt optimal
It’s a serious and a sarcastic answer. You are asking P to do things while not wanting to do that things yourself. And as you say, splitting looks cool but its not optimal for P, their units are big and clump at the moment they attack something, and they need to be together for maximum efficiency.
not true at all, optimally you would have a concave/ surround.
units like stalkers and zealots get clumped up and allot of them arent able to shoot during the fight because of how big they are or melee units. so if you move your army in a ball half of your units actually arent shooting.
Yes, but even on that concave, you can get EMP, your units are fat, a line of emps can erase the shields on the same way as if they are clumped, instead of spamming emp on a circular way, you do it on a linear way, that assuming a really fine concave, because a simple backward movement can end with the toss army clumped again if the path is narrow.
true but it would take allot more emps to reduce all of the shields on the army. and thats a big investment of ghosts. im not saying it doesnt pay off but its not free.
Splitting isn’t viable for the protoss army. It has nothing to do with player skill but rather just the army design. The army is designed to function as a deathball essentially and is made up of slow, specialized parts. The loss of any of those specialized parts makes the entire army highly dysfunctional. The best example is colossus in the early game right? Why do Raven builds works? Because for that 10 seconds where the colossus are not part of the army, the army is garbage. The protoss army is a conglomerate of specialists where the loss of any of those parts makes the whole thing kinda fall apart.
This is not true of Terran. Terran armies don’t have any particularly key units and are fairly homogeneous in makeup. In addition the parts are fast.
Look at pros. They are playing for money and they can’t /don’t split. The army isnt designed that way.
If you see parting play, on situations where a Terran would split, parting uses forcefields. That’s how the army is designed. Deathball that stays together.
Imagine you split your army, then your zealots attack two seconds earlier than the rest of the army and die without being able to be a meatshield, imagine you split and your stalkers gets picked by stimmed units and do nothing because stalkers needs to be grouped, splitting archons?, they need to be near zealots, you can’t leave them roam alone…If you split your T army, you can fight, all your units are ranged, you can get tank shots even if you are just moving a small amount of bio in front of your army, you can snipe units, something you can’t do as P.
No EMP, is overpowered, but Protoss trades and kills you in mid game and with blink dts hinder your economy. It will be 6 nexi vs 3-4 cc, even if you lose one fight u instant remax and u spam ruptors, so you have still a chance… That’s why emp rarely matters in this matchup… You are already too behind, or you die and he just trades… Also lib/emp takes 10 times more skill than to right click your army to different position and kite with blink, or what not… And terran will be defending, protoss can run around next to terran bases and force resige and wear terran down. It takes so much effort to track protoss armny and resiege each time he threats to attack - tactically!!!
Siege tanks, ravens, ghosts, liberators, vikings. Idk man, the marine can definitely shoot both air and ground but losing any of these units can be just as bad for terran as losing a colossus is for protoss
Unless we are talking about a concave that spans the entire map itself. You need about 3 EMPs (with upgrade) MAXIMUM, to coat the VAST majority of engagement scenarios. Thats not exactly a massive commitment.
Now I don’t say EMP is op. I think it is a very good spell. It is just as devastating to a toss army as storm is to a terran army and storm is infinitely easier to dodge than EMP is, (disruptors are a laughing stock compared to EMP). You can apply the same exact logic you just applied to EMP to countering storm, and add onto it the fact that you can back units out of it before taking full damage.
You have no idea what you are talking about as usual. EMP is OP. But games end in mid game, so it doesn’t matter… Not always, what about prism-templar drop, you won’t be able to emp all perfectly, because your ghosts may be behind bio, or on another side, than where tos is dropping templars…