Make adepts do bonus damage to psionic. They’d still do bonus vs light. No upgrade needed.
Vs zerg:
Bonus to psionic would allow adepts to counter queens at all stages of the game increasing zerg’s risk in queen spamming. Even defensively that has a lot of value. Have you noticed how hard a time protoss has with nydus early game? It’s because several queens pop out and queens are a monstrous unit early game with no armor tag. None of the gateway units do bonus damage to them. You could mix in adepts to help fight them. Additionally, there’s possibilities to shade on top of infestors and snipe them, though this would be a much rarer use of psionic countering adepts.
Vs T
This wouldn’t affect T much at all which is a major concern when changing a core protoss unit. The only thing it’d really do is allow adepts to do bonus dmg to ghosts, which is a good thing. Gateway units don’t handle ghosts well and colossus no longer does good dmg to ghosts as they are not light units (they should be IMO but that’s fine).
Vs. P
Adepts could act as a soft counter to archons (which are psionic), which could be huge. For those that don’t know, pvp devolves into zealot/archon/immortal most games. Haivng a line of adepts to counter the archons could change that.
As questionable as queens are, that would be very broken in all-ins.
Adepts would never survive long enough to kill ghosts.
Adepts countering Archons is just really strange. Now giving DT’s a bonus vs Psionic would be very interesting and fit the assassination role of the unit.
How so? I’m not convinced this is the case. Zerg can just make roaches to stop adept play. Even mass speed lings would stop adepts to be honest. They’d be far more vulnerable to attacks when they ONLY have queens early game though, which is a good thing. Protoss needs more ways to threaten zerg early game.
Right now zerg do not fear any of the four gateway units in any combination early game due to queens. Protoss is forced to use immortals to do any real damage to zerg. Anti psionic adepts would change that.
I prefaced the vs T part with the fact that the change shouldn’t affect terrans much at all. If they did go up against ghosts at least they could pack a punch though.
Not sure what it being strange has to do with balance. Not even sure it’s strange- Adepts look like a psionic unit particularly with that protoss wheel thing on their back and it could very well fit the unit’s fantasy. Protoss having a counter to archons is a good thing. DTs would be a terrible counter to archons given that archons deal splash and for DTs to get in their face, theyt could die to the splash even w/o detection.
It may not work well but adepts would do fair better vs archons than zealots after getting psionic bonus damage. It would give them a place in pvp. They currently have no place in pvp.
For all those worried about zerg early game, they would do fine if they scout and make actual army. Hell, it could only be as much as it would take for adept to win 1v1 before upgrade.
Both T and P need a way to kill queens in early game. They can defend everything.
if there’s few enough units in the zerg base that you can warp prism and snipe queens, then you would be far better off using those shots against drones and ignoring the queens. It’s not like the adepts would delete the queens on attack, they stil have 175 HP and 1 armor each w/transfuse.
Furthermore, queens still have their immense 8 range AA. They can snipe the prism if protoss is trying to land adepts in front of queens or something silly like that. If they’re landing the adepts and then chasing the queens, then roaches and even groups of speedlings can easily thwart it.
They’re used in pvp all the time the way reapers are used all the time- at the very beginning to try to harass workers.
Light would be interesting and maybe it could work. I’d like to see them have an armored tag if anything. 175 HP w/1 base armor is an armored unit if I’ve ever seen one. They should be far more vulnerable to stalkers and immortals than they currently are. And T can just as easily make marauders to pound them. But that’s not the purpose of this thread. I want to focus on the adept here.
This change is not mutually exclusive w/attacking air. I support that change actually. A core unit that costs gas could do both. Adepts are overpriced currently for what they do.