Make Stalkers and Protoss ground stronger

General Discussion
1

Terran main here, and I think Stalkers are quite weak. In fact, when a Protoss goes stalker D-ball, I can usually win 90% of the time. On top of that, Stalkers have an extremely hard time against carrier, Brood lord, BCS. Yes you can use the “Well they are T2 units, so what?” But being the heart of the Protoss ground forces, I think something needs to change with some trade-off. Currently other than time and minerals, there’s no advantage Protoss ground has that would incentive them over going Golden Armada.

–Late game Sentry Upgrade
–AOE casted ability that Reduces the cooldown on Stalker attacks from 1.34 to 1.15 for 9 seconds
— Remains in the location casted, when stalkers break from the location or blink out of it, they lose the buff.
*** can Also be disrupted by Viper Abdut, reaper grenade, etc.

Now lets talk about how Protoss ground armies are folding to air armies since right now the only protoss units that effectively “shoot up” are the stalkers. I think Sentry needs a late game ability that either,
(1)
– Upgrade that changes Guardian Shield to a red shield that mitigates air attack damage by 4dps (which is 2 more than before) and ground defense to 3 dps

(2)
– Late game ability that Sentry casts on an Archon which increases its range of attack from 3 to 4 vs ground AND air
— The Archon will appear as a blood red vs the electric blue under these circumstances, and the ability would last for 8-9 seconds.

ONTO PROTOSS AIR:
-Void Ray: revert the price increase of the void ray back to 200/150 to make it more inline with a main unit rather than the build up to carrier

-Carrier:

Idea 1 - Big change, Make the carrier similar to the Swarm Host where there is a 10 second delay between the time the ships take to deploy but also

  • Add an upgrade to allow for 2 more interceptor ships (total of 10)

This makes the carrier an even stronger force to be reckoned with but also more situational, and not something you would really want to mass unless you were skilled enough to stagger the units between deployment times thus removing the delay.
Example: 12 carriers, deploy 6 and within 10 seconds, deploy the other 6, rinse and repeat. The fact here is the effort to manage vs the effort to counter becomes a bit more equal as opposed to the carrier being not a very fun unit to use, to play against, and especially to watch, and those carriers that are not deployed become fair game. The carrier attack wouldn’t be on autocast simply because a single viking could bait out an attack and then come back to kill during delay, so it would also require some strategic planning.

- Idea 2
Less of a drastic change,

  • Carrier now builds 5 interceptors instead of 8
    – Upgrade from Fleet Beacon to increase interceptors being built from 5 - 8
    – Upgrade takes 35 seconds to complete at 150/100

Thoughts/Comments/Critique?

2 Likes
2

Stalkers damage per shot was lowered, and fire rate increased, because they could 2 shot marines, making early aggression EXTREMELY STRONG against terran. Seeing that suggestion from a terran is even more weird.

Other changes are horrible. Weird sentry uprade, which is a nerf, because terran army consist of ground and air units. Archon which suppose to kill mutas from crazy range with crazy splash. Even weirder carrier upgrade. Horrible changes.

1 Like
3
  • Yes, but supply for Stalker was never changed for the above. It would be overpowered if supply remained the same.
  • I see your suggestion on Sentry upgrade not working well for Terran, I’ll edit
  • You see that as a Carrier Upgrade? How is that an upgrade?

—Edits Made

4

Your stalker suggestion is a massive nerf. The unit gets nerfed to 3 supply (50% increase) in exchange for only a 16% DPS increase.

In any case where Stalkers are limited by supply:

  • The group has 33% less survivability
  • The group has 22% less potential DPS.
5

It doesn’t matter if it is 3 supply or 4 supply. If stalkers have too much damage per shot, terran will not be able to survive the first 4 minutes of the game.

The carrier upgrade is:

  • Carrier now builds 5 interceptors instead of 8
    – Upgrade from Fleet Beacon to increase interceptors being built from 5 - 8
    – Upgrade takes 35 seconds to complete at 150/100
6

OK then talking both suggestions into account,

Late game Stalker upgrade that decreases delay between Stalker attacks from 1.34 to 1.15
supply limit remains at 2, or maybe even an AOE ability that increases stalker attack speed by these values for X amount of seconds

— ALL EDITS MADE, PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS

7

For a few years already, the balance changes are being done by pro players and not blizz. And I think, it is for the good. So you can post any changes, but sorry they will not be in the game.

8

thats fine, just wanting to get ideas and critique

9

Well, if you just want an opinion, going for mass stalkers against terrans is a really bad idea. Stalkers are absolutely hard countered by MMM. That’s why it felt as if they were weak. They can deal a lot of damage with a zealot meat shield and blink micro. But stalker aclick against MMM is guaranteed death and should be always avoided.

Stalkers do not have a problems with focusing bc, carriers or broodlords. The problem with broodlords is not the damage, it is broodlings, which block stalkers movement, while broods are flying away. It is better with carriers, because while they deal damage and fly away, their speed is still low and stalkers can fight very good against them.

10

MaxPax rolled over Buyn with Stalkers play, and so did Skillous with Heromarine.

Besides in PvP Blink opening is already stronger than alternatives and game is mostly about who micro Stalkers better.
We don’t want to have units other than Stalkers to become even less relevant.

If it is you or me playing than yes.

If it is one of the pros however than in their hands Stalkers look almost OP. Terran can barely survive under Blink pressure until Stim, Shields, +1 and Medivacs are out.

1 Like
11

If you check his profile, you will understand, that at that level there is no blink micro… That’s why I was speaking about aclick and that it is bad idea.

12

No, that’s a terrible idea. Terrans would straight up die to blink allins if stalkers were more powerful than they are. AlphaStar was beating Serral with disruptor stalker. The stalker is the last unit that needs buffs, period, end of story.

1 Like
13

I can put up a fight with MMM against carriers for instance, Stalkers cannot handle Carriers in the slightest. At the very least I think Protoss needs some incentive to make their ground forces at least equal to the air Armada. The only downside is cost of course, but the amount of minerals and gas you put into a Stalker army and equal amounts going to carrier army, the carrier army will always be better suited for all engagements. This is very evident in 2v2/3v3 games where they tend to last longer than 1v1. (Dont get hung up on the fact that I mentioned team games vs pro play, that’s not the point here), for starters, no mass of one unit should ever be advisable, except if its carrier, but mass stalkers vs mass carrier, there’s no competition. The leash-range of the carrier interceptor is too great to even blink micro from. The only solution is Stalker-Protoss ALSO going air. That’s horrible IMO… so if not Stalker, then WHAT does protoss ground forces offer that can counter carrier? Stalker is the only thing that can shoot up and deal decent damage.

14

What. Stalkers absolutely can beat carrier especially if you add on archons. The splash from archons kills the interceptors and the stalkers blink underneath and kill carriers. That’s assuming you let him get up his carrier count. You can’t transition to carriers if blink stalkers are putting on pressure because carriers are strong when massed. It’s too easy for stalkers to blink in and pick off carriers before they reach a critical mass. Even if you let him mass them, you just add in archons.

1 Like
15

Sometimes Batz can deliver sometimes adequate and this is one of those moments, stalkers can fight carriers, the main problem in 3vs3, 4vs4 would other ground armies which restrict your movements.

1 Like
16

most nonsensical balance suggestions in my many years of posting here

Did I understand correctly that you are suggesting that interceptors are deployed one by one, each taking 10 seconds?

The mere suggestion of a voidray buff should be a bannable offense imo. The fact that you would vouch for it as a TERRAN makes me think you picked the game up yesterday.

1 Like
17

He is either lying or started playing recently. Tempests and void rays were unfortunately a failed set of units overall, would much rather we got arbiters/scouts/corsairs
As a terran would much rather we buffed protoss ground and readjusted skytoss rather than buff skytoss again
Edit: not talking about stalkers btw, mostly adepts sentries and possibly archons/colossi?? Stalkers zealots ht dt and immortals are more than fine

1 Like
18

Just killed a bunch of libs with Tempests, and couple of games before killed cannon rusher with void-batteries.

You guys should really play the game before making suggestions. What you see in pro games is not what happens on the ladder, and what you SEE does not reflect what happens in mind of pro-players.

3 Likes
19

I didn’t say anything about pro games
I think the core mechanics of the void ray were faulty and tempests are an air version of the swarmhosts, both being an inverse of sorts to the siege tank
All units are long range but while siege tank has high cost per supply, is relatively immobile and has to commit to really make use of its range and sustained dps, tempests and sh are low committment guaranteed damage units that are supply heavy rather than resource heavy and suck at direct engagements

20

I play both T and P and I can tell you that this races are VERY different in how they are played.
Tempest role is to snipe down flying units from very high range, and it excels at this role. If you buff it somehow that would make Tempests broken.
Void Ray does a lot of damage in certain scenarios.

I’m actually not sure why Voids are not progamer meta in PvZ. Because what works really well in the ladder is opening with 1-2 Oracles and than building 5-6 Void Rays - to deny Zerg vision, cancel his bases and as a DPS against Roaches, while maxing on Chargelots and Archons and researching Storm (with eventual transition into ZIA+Storm after Voids are spent in a push).

I would guess that Voids are not used like that because of some Queen walk timings that progamers are good enough to exploit but that doesn’t make Void Ray a bad unit.

Archons and Colossus are already very strong, Adepts could be effetively at 2 places at once (imagine Zerg having to defend against that!) and Sentry pushes are not played these days because Ravagers can destroy FF easily and because Queens are too good vs Immortal push.

Later in the game you have mobile FF which is Archon, and large part of damage output of you army are Chargelots which don’t synergize with FF particularly well.

2 Likes