Protoss buff/change ideas

General Discussion
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Recently I got this idea which might be bad but I wanted to share it regardless and get thoughts about it if possible. Please even if you hate the idea be constructive about it.

So first I’d like to note that I do this on the premise that Protoss isn’t performing best right now and as always is reliant on aoe units doing insane damage or wacky timings.

Stalkers are in general useful units especially in the early and midgame but as the game progresses they get more and more awkward in the compositions even though sometimes you can’t really skip on them. They simply melt against a lot of options from both other races.
Just like zerglings get upgrades that make them progressively better in the game (speed, glans on top of default upgrades), maybe same could be done with the stalker.
From this stems my idea for upgrade which could prolong the ability of stalker to take skirmishes on the map and fit into later game better. The upgrade simply could increase stalker base health by [amount that makes sense] which I guess could be somewhere around 60 in order to survive one more hit from tanks/libs.

There are two ways to go about putting upgrade like this somewhere. Either it could simply be available in the fleet beacon or alternatively (simmilarly to zerg morph abilities but in different way) it could be placed in the twilight council and the player could decide weather to commit into blink stalkers which would make new upgrade unavailable or go for beefy stalkers with less movement options. The latter option could be problematic from the scouting perspective and blink is such a good ability it might not even be worth it but it’s a proposal for proposal sake.

Maybe with change like that being available the insanity of aoe dps on unit like disruptor would need downtuning which I think could be good promoting more economical play rather than getting big hits with dancing death ball.

Thoughts?

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I’ve considered fleet beacon upgrades for stalkers (but not to increase their health - to increase their anti-air damage)

But Ultimately I think think this would be broken and locking huge buffs down the tech tree is more like a band aid than anything, anyway.

The fact of the matter is that the stalker is a phenomenal unit in the early game and an excellent unit in the midgame. It does everything it’s designed to do very well and has the highest skill cap in the game in terms of micro. Because of such attributes you don’t want a situation that would make them oppressive.

For example if you give it a fleet beacon upgrade, PvT would likely end up becoming stalker heavy comps into fast carriers and there is no composition a Terran player can safely transition into to beat it.

There is also still the fact that they can be warped in. In the late game scenario if high tech 200/200 armies trade out there is no reason Protoss should be able to almost instantly remax on mini immortals that can shoot air units. That’s just broken lol.

Protoss needs a way to fight ghost mech, ghost liberator, mass BC. Traditionally the answer has been skytoss but that has received an avalanche of nerfs over the last two or so years while thors ghosts and bcs all got buffs lol. Protoss has no problems taking on the Zerg lategame comps, now that Zerg lategame has been nerfed into oblivion. The balance team is destroying the game by first nerfing Protoss lategame into the dust, and Now doing the same to zerg…all while simultaneously consistently buffing the Terran lategame.

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What protoss need is a caster that help their Air fleet, and I am not talking about MS because that thing is garbage.
Stalker is fine with what they are. It just that Protoss need their late game to be on par with other late game army.

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But Stalkers do scale better as the game goes on, as they do gain +2 dmg/upgrade vs armored, while those same armored targets will only gain +1 armor/upgrade. So in lategame, stalkers actually are stronger vs BCs than they were at 0-0 for example, and same at 3-3 vs BLs in conjunction with blink. And that while retaining T1 production time.

As for being competitive in lategame, all tier 1 units certainly lose in efficiency against massed T3 compositions. But that’s why lategame is lategame in the first place, if you had to take risks to transition towards more T3 units without it being rewarding… well no one would do it. And we’d stay T1T2 all game long.

There’s also some misconception about T1 units such as marines. Marines, like lings and zealots, can be useful all game long. But… not at the same extent. Marines can be the core of your army in early and midgame… But any player who will tell you that you’ll beat a LBH → corruptor BL ultralisk lategame with just marines… does not have experience of that situation. You don’t want marines to beat that ; thought that doesn’t mean they can’t be useful at the other side of the map or once the bulk of the other army has been cleared.

It’s about the same for stalkers.

Now, sure cracklings are a somewhat extreme example of lategame scaling but… well, I’m not sure buffing already strong cracklings was the best decision DK ever made ; so it’s not a reference of good design to me.

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Yeah sure…

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Thanks for responses so far.

Wel thors can hold their own against carriers in defense but I kind of get your point getting out of bio up to thors in situation like that with constant stalker danger would be indeed tough. This could be mitigated by further changes though.

Yeah I was thinking about this too. The warp in time nerf helps a little bit sadly it’s still an issue especially with mobile warp prism flying pylon around. Especially since Terran units are so incredibly slow and the bigger the map the more that advantage would shine. This feels frustrating because this is why trying to make Protoss less reliant on big heavy units in one clump was always such an impossible task. Maybe the time of offensive warps need to end and allow only for warping near the nexuses?

Was it? I mean sure infestors ate big nerfs time ago without much compensation which is a shame but I’m not sure if I would call changes to banelings late game. I’d be happy with less insane banelings and buffing underused lategame units or changing how they work for Zerg (units like infestor/broodlord/ultra/lurker).

Well I might be looking too much back but those comps didn’t exist or were no good in previous starcraft2 iterations and beginning of lotv. HT feedback was basically standard response to ghost bio. The buffs finally made mech viable in the game because in the old times basically going mass immortal zealot broke any mech line (tanks received buff too along the timeline).
I would say carriers still do quite ok against everything that isn’t thors being defensive or mass bc or mass viking. I would be ok with leaving antiair on Terran ground units/turrets but changing something about the air ball.
Both bc and viking damage output to air is insane and maybe could be nerfed without touching the ground mech. Maybe making bcs unable to shoot air whatsoever except for yamato and lowering viking output a bit could do the trick.

I think changes on the side of Protoss (making air more powerful) would make it impossible to win with bio in lategame scenarios. Transitioning into mech for support takes way too much time (time of building factory + tech lab + thor build time + walk to destination) and just committing on top of the production wins the game. Maybe exception would be changes to tempest because it sure looks quite useless except for sniping libs and being clunky.

Well in Terrans case the ‘Tier 2-3’ units feel more like support for upgraded marine/marauder or some harass tools. Against ultras you would mix more marauders in optionally build some ghosts but marauders are what? 1.5 tier? Maybe you could call it T2 with medivac. They get progressively better as they get more T2-3 support in from medivacs, tanks, libs, ghosts. Pure T3 compositions can exist basically only on the mech side (mass bc, mass thor lib) and it feels like players commit into them from the get go usually. So it’s either T1.5+support all game long or rush into T3 and see what happens. I’d same the same is true for Protoss for most games except transitioning is a little bit faster because no add-ons and can use chrono to speed things up both on units and upgrades end.
Zerg only fits the theme of building composition slowly getting to higher and higher tiers and changing it up. Still the potential of crackling for counter pushes especially with that movement and attack speed is quite insane whole game but maybe that’s indeed not good example.

Not against that but against any T3 flyers that’s basically your only option on bio that can be produced in a reasonable amount of time.

Just wanted to throw these in. I am kinda convinced now that maybe stalker buff isn’t way to go. In case of air I think either nerfing air to air damage from terran to require ground support or taking a look at tempest would be best. Zerg would be whole another topic.

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Thors annihilate Carriers.

The problem would be carriers + buffed stalkers that have been banked up + support. There would be no safe transition.

The warp in dynamic is critical to protoss functioning as a race.

You cant just nerf it without giving massive compensations everywhere else. Nerfing warp ins for the sake of a random fleet beacon stalker buff is convoluted and causes more problems than it solves.

The infested terran was THE equalizer zerg heavily leaned on late game. It was the pillar that allowed the Zerg lategame to evenc ontend, design wise. It’s gone, and not only that, the second most important unit, the BL, was massively nerfed as well.

Banelings have nothing to do with anything and are actually a pretty underwhelming unit.

The fact of the matter is that without ITs the zerg cannot compete , design wise, with protoss and terran lategames unless you give massive buffs to the Zerg units in general and that would break other aspects of the game.

Balance team just needs to own up to their mistake and give the IT back.

I’m not sure if you know, but Thors, BCs, and Ghosts were DRAMATICALLY buffed. While Protoss lategame units were significantly nerfed.

This means that in today’s game, Terran lategame with those super units cannot be contended with.

The HT was specifically nerfed so that the ghost-HT balance tilts heavily towards ghosts. the Feedback nerf was huge. Ghosts of course got a super EMP upgrade in the form of enhanced shockwaves.

Mech is more than viable - it’s so strong now that Protoss cant even fight it head on. Zerg really has no way of beating it.

Carriers are complete garbage vs Terran. It’s not just thors that destroy them. Marines, widow mines, vikings…you name it. In fact the primary reason carriers lost graviton catapult was because the balance team wanted marines to be more effective against them.

BCs are the most broken unit in the game they definitely need a nerf (a real nerf not some joke 1 second vulnerability on TJ) but I doubt it will happen since.

Vikings aren’t going to get nerfed either lol

If you don’t want to make skytoss more powerful then you might as well say that Protoss shouldn’t have a lategame.

The protoss and Zerg lategame were nerfed hard and now have no way of contending with a Terran lategame composition.

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Theoretically you can blink micro every stalker individually in the early game and trade absurdly efficiency.

That is the power of blink on a ranged unit like the stalker

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HAHAHAHAHAHA! Ever hear of the “Marine?”

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That’s just an overpowered unit.

Only terran players like to pretend it’s “good design” when their basic units beats almost everything in the game.

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Marines are a one hell of a good unit, but you’re really trying to make the argument they’re better than the Charge Zealot? The Speed ling? Sure, but the Zealot? Out of your mind.

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Marines? You mean those units that don’t have blink nor rechargeable shields, and that Protoss players kill with stalker micro all the time?

Sorry to bruise your ego, but but the stalker micro ceiling is higher than the marine’s

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[quote=“BerserkSword-1662, post:12, topic:11513”]
Marines? You mean those units that don’t have blink nor rechargeable shields[quote]
They have med support and are tiny and FAR harder to control than blink Stalkers.

Lift in med before they’re about to die.
Split vs Storm
Split vs Bane
Target Fire tiny units (Banes) in succession before they hit your marines
Split vs Fungal
Split vs Disruptor
Unload in pattern vs Protoss units

I’m not saying Stalker is the easiest unit to control, but it’s not even the most difficult PROTOSS unit to control (Warp Prism juggle). Terran micro is just on a different level.

People who think otherwise have either zero understanding of the game (you), or a blatant bias against Terran for being the hardest race (Batz).

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[quote=“llllllllllll-12402, post:13, topic:11513, full:true”]

Rofl Terran is the least micro intensive race in the game. Stop being so insecure.

Bio in general requires micro but it’s straight forward and bio is easy to control (stim bio moves very fluidly) and has the safety net of things like medivacs and tanks. Zerg and Protoss are more micro intensive. Use your brain - everything you wrote about bio applies to zerg for example except there is no medivac or tank/liberator/mine cover fire to mitigate mistakes.

My point regarding stalkers is that they are the SINGLE unit with the highest micro potential. It’s pretty obvious to anyone with a brain. You can watch alpha start beat mana’s mass immortals with mass stalkers if you don’t believe me. Or just watch parting take a dump on Maru with stalker micro

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Every single thing you mentioned above there can also be relevant for stalkers. Good stalker sentry / stalker disruptor control has as much room for skillful micro as MMM.

Other races have less DPS density and can’t retreat to a tankline if they flub a defensive engagement, so you they don’t get this ‘OMG SICK SPLITS MARU WINS NOW’ effect nearly as often. As a result, some select Terran players get this weird idea that only their race has crazy potential for control.

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Yeah. And so you keep saying, but I don’t believe you’re stupid. I think you know better than that, you just hate Terran. Literally everyone knows that Terran is by far the most micro intensive race. I’ll even go so far as to say that’s the only thing difficult about it (in TVZ and TVP, TVT micro is the least of your concerns).

Yeah, good luck selling that, lol. Go find one reputable guy to say this and I’ll eat my shirt. The idea of Protoss micro being even on the same plane as Terran is just retarded.

Again, stop trying to prove to everyone you’re a moron. I don’t buy it.

Except that it doesn’t, try again.

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I guess Bourne means every…Terran.
Give me a break.

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I like the premises but there are ways to help Stalkers without touching Disruptor that if not a buff (Dual-Mode usage) at least should be left alone.
Stalker and all Protoss GtA need help in scaling. It can be implemented in a gradual fashion by attaching the Cyber Air weapons with GtA attacks.
All GtA (Stalker Archon Sentry) will gain a +1 attack vs Air for each Cyber Air Weapon upgrade.
The Cyber +3 is a very late and expensive upgrade and 95% of PvX don’t even go to that level…

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In what match up exactly?.

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LOL

I can’t even.

The zealot isn’t a bad unit, easily the worst out of those three though.

easily

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