Protoss Design Flaws from RTS Balance view (long passage)

Since Protoss’s dominant performance over other 2 races, shown by the winrate on balnce report in aligulac websites (recently, before new PTR released), I want to share the below with you.

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I’ve long thought that a core of RTS games like StarCraft II is that mechanical/micro skill trades for raw power, and from that perspective Protoss’s design in SC2 can be considered a fairly big failure.

First, Terran and Zerg units both require you to spend resources and supply, queue the unit you want, and wait the production time — the new unit appears at the corresponding barracks/larva location. Protoss’s BG (warp‑in) units are “prebuilt” automatically: Cooling down process (of the warp‑in gate) doesn’t cost resources or supply up front; after the cooldown finishes you can immediately spend money and supply to spawn the unit anywhere there’s a power field. Once spawned, the cooldown starts again.

  • This production mechanic greatly simplifies the mechanical workload: Protoss players don’t need to constantly press to build army while fighting. The built‑in warp‑squad(hot-key W) effectively notifies you when a unit is “prepared” and ready to be spawned.
  • When defending multiple fronts you can also warp units in nearby even without scouting. When both players are at max supply it also adds extra rounds of warp cycles.

Second, mechanical skill increasing effectiveness is central to RTS — for example, an MM (marines/medivacs) “stab” then a-move vs pulling army and spreading to form good concave or doing advanced micro like sniping banelling, have clearly different power ceilings. Some Protoss unit designs lack that kind of mechanical depth — for example, zealot and Carriers — leaving little room for skillful micro. In other words, you can achieve very high effectiveness without much mechanical input; that’s why playing tough-man-styles(we CN name so, which means building many warp-gates, making mass zealot & stalkers and fast 4th base expansion) or turtling into carriers can still climb you to 4000+ ladder MMR. Protoss AOE also creates a large asymmetry in required actions: like firing a Disruptor ball and opponents’ spliting army to dodge it, are not the same level of micro effort, and similarly for storm.

Third, for static defense and multitasking, Protoss can simply spend money to build a web of static defenses(connon and batteries), and with Warp‑in and Recall mechanics their tolerance for defending multiple fronts is higher than the other two races. On the offensive multitask side, Protoss lacks large‑scale drop mechanics or wormhole(refer to nydus)‑style tricks that deliver huge army chunks into the enemy rear, but the Warp Prism can slip in without carrying units and spawn units inside from any angle, and it avoids the all‑in crash risk.

Overall I think Protoss’s design means most Protoss players can reach higher ranks with lower APM, less practice, and less raw mechanical talent. Playing Protoss long term makes it harder to improve the same way Terran or Zerg players do, because Protoss inherently requires less training in basic reaction and speed skills. For example, players like Maru, Clem, and Reynor can seamlessly pick up Protoss and perform well, whereas top Protoss players often can’t transfer to other races. This also makes balance very hard: nerf a mechanic and it becomes unplayable; buff it and it becomes a “crutch” or “wheelchair” style, leading to constant flip‑flopping in balance changes. Given Blizzard’s long-term neglection on this game business development, SC2 is already a dead game, and I don’t expect any revolutionary changes to fix it.
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The above is a player’s comments that I quoted. Welcome everyone’s discussion.

They created easy things on purpose. I remember the old balance guy saying that Carriers were placed in the game so that anyone could feel good. It makes sense if you’re playing with friends, but if you want a fair assessment of skill, stay far away.

Youre not wrong… warp ins are a definite advantage that enables less apm… so does having higher cost units… one race is always going to be easiest though… if we werent complaining about warp ins wed be complaining about zerg droning or tech switching instantly or something similar.

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yeah, but note that droning relies on intensive mechanical injection, and swift tech switching(STS) is not perfectly right cause zerg advanced unit has a long tech-line, and STS is not same thing like automatic warpgate cooldown that saves you apm to simplify your macro.

Obviously its not the same thing but its very similar. You could still produce like 12 ultralisks at once even without injecting while a terran would only be able to make 3 or 4 thors, why arent you complaining about that too? Are you aware of how crap protoss would be without warpgate?

Is this same desiign of stupid op bc are stim marines so any terran crying about unbalance ur created this.

Your race has been so broken from very start and u think blizzard was able to balance game they just modified game mechanic alter who wins.

All game nerfs on zerg is against one person not balance insight. Dont like dont play u supported this type of balance from day one.