I would believe that the day terrans will be forced to transport Ghosts in Medevacs in order to make them remotely useful…
You can also split your HTs and protect them with other units.
That’s never going to happen:
- Ghosts have cloak; which allows them to move around the map with relatively safely. They are usually safer outside of a Medivac.
- Ghosts have similar durability to other Bio units, so they cannot be hard-countered out of existence outside of a situation where Bio comps are unplayable. Given Protoss’s numerous advantages over mech comps, that would mean the game is in a broken state and requires significant buffs to Terran and/or significant nerfs to Protoss to balance the match-up.
- Ghosts are far less likely to remain useful if they can be killed off that easily. Ghosts are more expensive than HT and much less devastating to Protoss than HT are to Terran; so the requirements for Ghosts to be useful in TvP are higher than they are for HT. Ghosts are typically avoided until Terran has a very strong economy or until the Protoss player starts massing HT for this reason.
LOL, let’s agree to disagree on everything here…
Sorry the only correct sentence in your post is:
I still find it hilarious how tank lines were 1 of 2 units that could actually beat warhounds. The irony.
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yes its perfectly reasonable to nerf a unit even though it breaks the asthetics of a race so your siege tank spam can kill everything protoss has on the ground. theres no reason tanks should go without a direct counter. but then again this isnt about countering tanks, this is about the asthetics of the protoss and how the hardened shield added to those asthetics, but god forbid theres something your tank spam cant obliterate.
talking about breaking tank lines, its definetly not possible for the wall of thors to stomp stomp and blow up all the tank spam anyway (even with braindead micro), dont really need warhounds.
plus, you dont need to worry about immortals breaking tanks thanks to emp, which wipes out all of their shields, rendering them useless against tanks with hardened shield. so dont act like hardened shield was the end of the world just because the 400 iq strat of making 50 million tanks could experience a few setbacks
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Tanks need to build up to a relatively large critical mass to kill units that way. It is rare for a Terran player to pull that off in TvP against a competent opponent; and even if that player manages it, he/she can usually be confined to his/her side of the map with multi-pronged aggression and constant Warp-Ins from the Protoss player.
Siege Tanks are too inflexible to respond to the movement and attacks by the Protoss army. They rely heavily on the Protoss player to engage into them; something that a competent Protoss player will simply avoid doing if the player aren’t backed into a corner or convinced that he/she has the advantage.
This is why Bio players completely drop Tanks from their arsenal after the Blink Stalker timing and the follow-up contain push ends.
Tanks have multiple direct counters. Those counters just cannot a-move into a critical mass of Siege Tanks, despite a wall of Hellbats and Thors in the way, like the Hardened Shields Immortal of WOL and HOTS could. Hardened Shields Immortals were absolutely broken.
Protoss can easily deal with Tanks using Chargelots, Archons, Blink micro, by gaining air superiority, or by using multi-pronged harassment to wear down and confine the Terran player. Immortals are not required for any of these tactics, and are completely optional.
I assume you are trying to use sarcasm here with the premise that “Thors can break Tank lines”. Otherwise this section of your post makes absolutely no sense to include.
That premise is wrong though. Thors lose very badly to Tanks, both before and after the Tanks reach critical mass.
You clearly never played this game during WOL or HOTS, or you wouldn’t be making such an idiotic statement.
Yes, EMP can remove the Immortal’s shields. No, this does not make Tanks viable against Protoss and especially not Hardened Shields Immortals in practice:
First of all, every HS Immortal must be deshielded before combat for mech to stand a chance. This is not feasible against multi-pronged harassment, flanks or in cases where the Protoss player simply splits Immortals before engaging. In each of those cases, the Terran player would need a disproportionately high number of Ghosts to be able to EMP every Immortal, a single missed Immortal would be unreasonably devastating, and the resulting army on the Terran side would be unreasonably expensive to build up and lack the combat power to be effective anyway.
Second, Protoss has full control to decide when and how to engage the Tanks. Siege Tanks cannot move in Siege mode and take a long time to push forward; giving Protoss plenty of time to respond to every movement and decide when and where to engage. This renders EMP ineffective because Terran cannot capitalize on its use:
- If EMP is used before the Immortals push into range or the Protoss army fully commits, then the Protoss player will simply back up and wait for the shields to recharge after taking minimal losses.
- If EMP is used after the Protoss player engages it is already too late. Hardened Shields has already absorbed a ridiculous amount of damage by that point, and the Protoss army can continue forward and overpower the mech army with ease.
The Hardened Shields Immortal was an unnecessary and completely unjustified counter to Siege Tanks. Tanks have never been and never will be strong enough against Protoss to justify a hard-counter on that scale.
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o come on, protoss players are expected to do the same sorts of impractical things to stop zerg air, clicking on every single zerg caster with feedback and having a large ammounts of high templar on a regular basis, you cant possibly tell me that hotkeying 5 ghosts and shooting emp at immortals is too much of a hassle, maybe imba at bronze league where players cant do anything but f2 but a bit more can be expected from higher league players such as yourself.
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Yea boy made 4 tank now it critcall for immortal wow
Not even close:
- HT are a unit that Protoss always wants to make against Zerg. Storm is powerful against Zerg almost regardless of composition, and Archons are almost always a good filler for the Protoss army. In contrast, mech armies typically do not want Ghosts because Ghosts perform significantly worse than mech’s other gas units (decreasing the army’s net strength).
- Ghosts cost significantly more than High Templar and slow down the Terran army’s build-up. In contrast, HT cost fewer minerals per supply than other Protoss units. This enables Protoss to shift production around to offset the gas costs, and to build-up their army faster when making HT than they could otherwise.
- Vipers and Infestors are support casters where massing them beyond a certain point only decreases the army’s strength. As a result, the number of Vipers is capped, and you don’t need to make very many HT to consistently feedback them. Immortals are a combat unit that Protoss has no reason to ever stop making (so Terran needs more and more Ghosts), and can easily split or use in multiple places to force more EMPs. Therefore, the number of Ghosts needed to consistently remove Hardened Shields is significantly higher than the number of HT needed to deal with Vipers.
- HS Immortals are more devastating counter to mech than Vipers are to Protoss units. Vipers are limited to picking off individual units, forcing air units to split, or forcing a portion of the Protoss army to move out of Blinding Clouds (while they can be covered by Storms, Forcefields, Disruptors, Zealots, or units outside of the cloud). HS Immortals will slaughter most mech units easily until Hardened Shields are removed.
Did you not read anything?
- The Protoss player will simply back off when you EMP units, and mech cannot advance quickly enough to punish it. So in most cases EMP is a complete waste. If Protoss has advanced far enough that they cannot back off, then Hardened Shields has already absorbed thousands of damage and flipped the fight.
- The number of Ghosts that mech needs to consistently EMP Immortals keeps growing. Protoss can simply split the Immortals, requiring a separate EMP for each one; and Protoss typically fights mech by attacking multiple places; making it more and more difficult for the Terran player to have Ghosts in place and consistently EMP Immortals in every fight
Hardened Shields made Immortals a disproportionately strong counter to mech that was never needed. Mech has never been strong enough against Protoss to justify such a counter.
I’m not the one assuming bronze league, death-ball versus death-ball battles. You are.
That is the only situation where all of the Immortals will be clumped close enough together for “5” Ghosts to EMP all of them.
That is the only situation where a Protoss player would be stupid enough to walk right into a Tank line directly after EMP was used on every single Immortal.
That is the only situation where the Protoss player won’t hit multiple places with attacks that include Immortals; thus requiring Terran to have Ghosts at each spot to EMP each and every Immortal before the engagement starts.
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Thanks for the thoughtful response. Interesting and good points about why it’s nicer to have Barrier activate before Shields take damage, and also that Barrier still comes back online faster than 100 shields regen, etc.
I am feeling a lot better about Barrier now, and am glad it has made Immortals/Gateway a bit stronger vs Zerg early and mid than in HotS. You also mentioned Zealot speed increase being as one of the most important buffs, along with of course WP micro. I didn’t think too much about Zealot speed but it makes sense it’s a big change as they can get more hits off and and force Zerg to back off more. These changes may not seem as huge as an entirely new unit that can be used in the early and mid game like the Ravager, but they definitely are significant and are what help Protoss enough to fight vs all of the buffs/units Zerg got in LotV in the mid game. (Though of course things still seem slightly Zerg skewed). I would have been baffled if Barrier was overall worse than HS in PvZ, because then it’d seem like Protoss barely got anything in return for all the stuff Zerg got for the MU.
This change to immortal skill, broke intended behavior of Immortal as Tank and brawler, after change Hard Shields which was absorbing damage above 10, now protoss ground armies could not push ahead on set up Siege Tanks like beore, and protoss started play late game only Air units, that was sad and me and my friend quit game, What gives absorb 100 damage 2s , nothing its less than 2 shoots of Siege Tank. immortal its not warp Gate uint that can be fast replaced, deserve as Brawler old Hard Shields. Please make Protoss ground army viable, not to micro intensive like adding disruptors, for most players not Pro Gods , Protoss its unplayable without clicking 100skills manually , and lose battles, void Rays should be pasive too. To Much micro intensive race, i understand why now its free to play ppl dont want pay for such crap now.