Protoss Unplayable In Late Game 4v4 After Patch

General Discussion
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And don’t tell me the game is balanced for 1v1, if it’s broken in 4v4, with 3 other players trying to counter, it’s 4x as broken in 1v1.

There are points late game, where Protoss becomes ENTIRELY UNPLAYABLE, vs Terran, and since the patch, also vs Zerg.

This is game broken territory, this is don’t bother making units, there is no counter territory.

Corruptor Ultralisk, no counter.
Corruptor Broodlord Viper, no counter.
Hydralisk Infestor, no counter.
Thors, no counter.
10+ BC, no counter.
20+ mines (how is this even a thing), no counter.

Mines, still too high splash. And making it so u can’t decloak them by targeting the armories is a buff not a nerf, stop crowd sourcing your patches Blizzard.

Also the +1 creep distance is blocking allied neighboring expos on like half the maps, wtf were you thinking there, the creep is literally making non Zerg players forced out of neighboring allied expos, it’s like a child approved this patch. I knew that was going to happen the second I read it, where is the balance team? Did Microsoft fire them? Wtf is going on over there?

Also, Hydralisks, now rigged. There’s a bug that actually speed up the firing rate, Vikings too.

It’s one thing to need to switch units, it’s messed up to force mass stalkers, but it’s even more messed up when no combination of units at all can even approach an enemy army. I find myself staring at my base, with enough buildings and resources to re-max in two turns, trying to figure out what to build, for example when 12 Thors have just wiped out all 4 players armies, or when they have 20+ Corruptors and 10 Ultralisks, and noticing that whatever I build, I wont even get more than two shots off before it’s killed, or in the case of Thors, even in range.

It was bad enough when Terran was a total Trump Card, now Zerg is too?

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This is not how it works, though. Things can be broken in teams and fine in 1v1 and also vice-versa.

The situations you’re describing are about units that are hard to invest in large quantities of that have a massive crippling weakness.

I would sincerely hope that if a player gets a third of their maximum allotted supply in a unit that is both extremely slow to move and hard to mass like the Thor or Battlecruiser are, that they have the absurd battle potential to match that.

For example:

Sure, Corruptor / Ultralisk is the combination of about the best air-to-air and ground-to-ground, but Marauder, Roach, and Immortal each beat the Ultralisk, while the Viking and Void Ray do okay if you need a flying counter, while Cyclones, Hydralisks, and Stalkers are decent against both targets. And Ghosts destroy them both, and both Infestors and High Templar can really stop Corruptors in their tracks.

Adding Brood Lord / Viper instead is definitely why I’m fairly confused by the buffs the Brood Lord has received to its speed since my answer was wholly dependent on Broods being slow as sin - running around them with Marines, Zerglings, or Zealots and just razing structures to capitalize.

And Thors lose to small units - Zerglings, Marines, Marauders, Zealots - fairly handily. Yes, those are countered by Hellbats, but each race has an option for dealing with the combination - Viper/Infestor to pluck Thors, Disruptor/High Templar to delete Hellbats.

But I think part of it is that I just don’t play as much teams nor as seriously as you, so I don’t quite see the dramatic level of the problem you’re discussing.

Frankly, considering uncloaking the Widow Mine by sniping the Armory instead of building detection sounds like a terrible game plan in particularly team context because the Armory is much more likely to be nested in production / defense by chance, and since you’d have to barrel through multiple players’ bases to find them all you’d have to kill so much stuff.

It’s that most people don’t know the spacing restraints that plague 8p maps :\

I’m pretty sure the thing you’re talking about was on purpose, since them firing sooner (and thus being able to move sooner) was on purpose, though I agree it looks/sounds off.

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You’re telling me to counter corruptor combo with ground units, that can’t attack air, and would lose to the Ultralisks anyway…

Same with Thors, Zealots do not work on them, first of all forcing someone to switch to melee mid late game is hilarious and not a counter, but even if Immortals worked on them, same problem, forcing the Protoss player to have zero anti air, plus we are talking 12 Thors here, I could throw 36 fully upgraded Zealots at them and only kill 2 Thors… I know, I’ve tried… half of them get smoked before they even get in range, then the ranged stacked of the Thors behind it smoke the other half about 2-3 strikes in, there’s also another bug in the Thor vs ground firing rate, that causes them to fire twice per attack… each Thor arm vs ground seems to have it’s own separate attack cooldown…

As per Mines late game, yeah I used to barrel through and find the Armories because Mines priority target Observers for some reason, so when the Terran player is scanning the battle, your Observers get hit first… Which is also massively rigged and needs addressed in the Mines targeting priorities, to be Observers LAST… I can go into a battle with like 10 Observers vs a Terran with mines and lose ALL of them, just to them scanning once and not even targeting them… and they say Protoss is attack click, what a joke…

I know u didn’t just tell me to psi-storm Thors, they wouldn’t even get in casting range before getting vaporized… Even Archons vs Thors, can’t even get in range, same problem with Immortals, they have a range disadvantage so it doesn’t matter how many you use, you’re essentially throwing them away… Plus once again, telling a player to counter a ground unit that can kill air like nothing else in the game, with a ground unit that can’t even hit air, is insanity, not a counter…

The Hydralisks and Vikings was to help micro, it was only supposed to effect firing rate when moving between shots, but for some reason, and it’s really noticeable in the Hydras, they have an actual increase in firing rate/dps.

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Carriers beat thors if you have the interceptors released ahead of time and the maps make it ezpz for skytoss to abuse terrain.

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Thors auto lose to disruptors, tempests and void rays. BCs auto lose to void rays and shield batteries.

You are given the only thing in gaming that mathematically cannot lose AKA skytoss that manages to get to that point, and you’re complaining.

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Corruptor ultra loses to hydra/lurker very handily. Lurkers shred ultras.

LMAO. Zealots genuinely shred thors. Disruptors also work too. As do immortals. Protoss actually has the best counters in the game to mech, bar none.

Not a bug, that’s intentional. Thors have 2 attacks, but conversely armour applies to each of those attacks. Now, granted, armour isn’t a big deal to thors because they have high base attack, but it does make some difference.

They do not. This is just poor control on the Toss player’s behalf. Mines target the first unit that comes in range that they have vision of. They only change target if the first target leaves their targeting radius before they can fire, in which case they pick the unit with the highest targeting priority - almost every unit that isn’t the worker or the interceptor has a targeting priority of 20, including the observer. So it will pick a random unit instead. The only other reason they would change target is if the Terran manually targets the mine onto something else that was still in range.

That is a you problem, not a mine problem - even more now that mine splash doesn’t kill observers in one shot. It’s also likely that the Terran is focusing down observers too.

Psi storm on thors is meh, but that’s mostly because of the size of the thor, more than the inability to get in range. Thors also don’t out-range storms. Control your units. Everything you’ve said so far is genuinely a skill issue.

Archons are short range units. They’re not supposed to fight thors unless you don’t have any options. What Archons are good against is hellbats, which are the front-line for mech, because they’re Mechanical/Biological, allowing Archons to do bonus damage to hellbats.

Immortals however, are tanky enough and have enough range to get in range of thors and wreck thors because they do at base 50 damage to armoured units, and they have barrier to absorb damage.

What a stupid comment. You build the counter to the units that they’re building. Thors counter massive air. They’re armoured units, so you build anti-armour. You adapt to the composition your opponent is making, just as they adapt to your own. It’s a game of counters, not a game of who can mass more big slow units.

That’s not how either of those things work. What you’re likely seeing is the attack animation going off before the turn animation has finished. That doesn’t change the attack rate of the unit though, just it’s microability.

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I’m pretty sure he’s just trolling. There’s no way someone is having trouble with this as Protoss.

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LOL Lime says use void rays vs Thors
Skytoss loses to lots of stuff dude, you’re the one that doesn’t know what a counter is…

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Naw, Corruptor Ultralisk, no counter, not trolling. Try it, it’s completely wacked, had this tear through 3 protoss players in a 4v4 right before I made this post.

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Carriers do not beat Thors buddy, maybe if they stay weapons mode 1 and dont focus fire? Idk what kind of newbs ur playing but… neither do tempest, neither do immortals… nor zealots… anyone else got any bright ideas?

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Zealots dont shread Thors, maybe if there are like 4 Thors or less… Disruptors… are u joking? Immortals dont work much better than Collassas, which just get shredded… and there someone goes suggesting all units that can only attack ground again… smhgdmfh… Yeah, lemme max out on ground to ground and say it’s a counter… wtf?

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Disruptors outrange Thors by quite a lot, and they can hit multiple Thors (which are too slow to really avoid anything). You do need 3 shots to kill the Thors, but it ends up being a viable counter because of the other advantages.

Immortals can’t quite 1v1 Thors, but they have a lower supply cost, and they will win when you account for that.

Thors are ground units remember? It doesn’t matter that their counters can’t hit air. You build other units to counter the Terran air units.

Protoss in particular has no business complaining about mech. They have the easiest time dealing with it of any faction.

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13

wrong.
h ttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/VFJCnLIZNxA
90% of Protoss players use skytoss in team games and you wonder why Zerg and terran players are really good at dealing with it. lmao.

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They do not. The thor just has a silly high attack rate, and when its second attack gets interrupted by the target dying it snaps out of the animation instead of having to play the wind-down component.
You can observe this best with +3 attack against Zerglings. It’s really funny.

I have tested this and did not notice the effect you comment on. The DPS ~matched my calculations.

Thors actually destroy Tempests like nobody’s business.

What? If you’re struggling with Thors, a unit whose strengths lean on its anti-air, telling you to build ground units is reasonable.

Because you obviously aren’t supposed to build air units, and you already know how horribly Stalkers do into Thors if they’re not excellently micro’d.

Yeah; Colossus get ruined by Thors. But Immortals absolutely demolish Thors. 50 / 1.04 into 400 health, vs 30x2 / 0.91 into finally more consistently 400 vitals - but you can have many more Immortals in a fight because of how much smaller they are, and their lower gas cost makes it work out pretty nicely.

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15

Literally only need Void rays to counter this. Immortal Void Ray would absolutely wipe.

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There’s no time to switch to maxed out void rays… ppl don’t really pull back and let u remake ur units when they have ultralisks…

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No thats not, the ground units they are telling me to make, which I’d have to max out on to beat maxed Thors… are all units that CAN’T ATTACK AIR, AT ALL, in 4v4, someone’s gonna have air, now I have 0 AA… and in 1v1, throw in 5 BC’s and now ur telling me to go immortal vs BC…

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Bro just scout and counter, dont just be surprised and be like reeee this unit is op. The games i lose are the ones i dont scout enough.

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First, that is no problem in 1v1 whatsoever. The game is balanced for 1v1. It can’t really be balanced for modes like 4v4 because of the way some units and mechanics will scale.

A second thing to note about 2v2 and up is that you normally have to work with your teammates, because very few units scale in such a way that you can defeat multiple opponents with good armies. If you and your teammates are not compensating for each-other as needed, then you will lose to players that are.

Third, you don’t have to “max out” on one unit type if you are using Disruptors as either the counter or as a supplement to Immortals. 3 Disruptor shots will kill multiple Thors, and the Thors are too slow to really micro against it (especially in large numbers where they just won’t have the space). That frees you up to put some supply in other units as needed.

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This isn’t true. Fundamentally, for all unit pairs, a given unit is as or more supply efficient than the primary units they counter. When this isn’t true, the problem is fairly self-evident.

In 4v4, you can have someone else provide anti air! You can’t make an army that can beat all possible enemy armies. It is entirely reasonable to dedicate your whole army to countering just one enemy’s army. After all, each of you have three others!

This becomes more true the more supplies are invested in the opponent’s army that’s countered by your units of choice.

This is obviously not the case! Build enough units to counter the thing in question and then supplement with others.

If your opponent has built 80 supply of Thors and 30 supply of Battlecruisers, as Protoss, yeah, you’re kind of hosed, because the way the BC interacts with Stalkers and Void Rays sucks; but it’s still correct to build significant (60?) supply of Immortal/Disruptor and ~40 supply of Stalkers. Those are the units that are best in that circumstance, and they do in fact trade effectively against those targets.

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