When the Adept was released, it was spoken of as a core unit. And this new unit type was something that people had been asking for, to PLEASE give protoss more core units to make them less about rushing tech.
What we got was a unit based around an ability of long range teleport (of sorts). Massive mobility which allowed it to harass well.
When I first saw this unit I groaned a little inside. Not because I thought harassment wasn’t meant to be part of the game, but because I knew that a unit strong enough to be a core army unit would be hard to balance when doubling as a mobile harassment unit.
This is the same issue as the reaper, essentially. The main issue with ever making the reaper part of the front line is that it’d become too strong as a cheese/all-in/harasser.
The reaper MIGHT be able to be fixed by having a late game upgrade… the adept is stranger in that it becomes such a more powerful harassment unit when it has it’s upgrade. The new ability only emphasising this. It actually will make the adept weaker in front on engagements.
I honestly don’t know how to fix any of this without removing the shade. How can a unit have high DPS and high mobility AND be tanky enough to be a front line fighter and somehow not be OP?
To be blunt, Protoss players were asking for a core unit, but the Adept was clearly designed as a harassment unit with the anti-light damage and shade. Those are not traits that a core unit would have.
That is not a true statement. There is no requirement that every Gateway unit must have a gimmick ability, just look at Archons.
Charge is a direct-combat ability. You may personally think of it as a gimmick because it is not consistent speed, but the fact is that the purpose of charge is to allow Zealots to close into combat faster or against units that otherwise outrun them.
Yes, because DTs are a harassment unit that was not strong enough for the job. They were given Blink to make them more effective at harassment, not necessarily as an in combat buff.
The Shade is clearly a harassment ability to allow Adepts to attack two places at once. That is one of the reasons why they are not designed to be very strong in direct combat; since a split army cannot be expected to fight “two full power armies”. If Adepts were really designed for combat, they would not be a 4-range unit with mediocre DPS against non-light units.
Charge basically allows Zealots to close in on compositions that can otherwise kite them to death or kill them very quickly from range.
It was a design choice to give them this ability instead of making them as fast as Hellions for example (which would be unreasonable). No reasonable speed buff will achieve the same effect. The design choice isn’t a bad one either, it allows Zealots to be useful against units that can kite them like Hellions or stimmed+concussive shell Marauders without preventing kiting altogether.
Good point, and no, it cant. The adepts design space is clearly for harassment and all in attacks.
I would love toss to have stronger gateway units but right now the race’s whole design is around having weak gateway units. Stuff like warp in, shield batteries, warp prisms will become OP if gateway units are stronger. Robo units are also designed to complement weak gateway units - if gateway units are strong then the combination with strong robo units will be too strong.
The ideal solution: nerf warp ins, nerf robo units and buff zealots and stalkers rather than adepts. A good way to incrementally work our way up to these changes is giving stalkers and zealots more benefits from upgrades. Protoss is weakest in the late game so theres wiggle room atm there to make gateway units an alternative to hi tech deathballs.
It was a entertainment choice. Have you noticed how so many things in SC2 are all about spectator sport viewing?.
Shade doesn’t allow Adepts to attack 2 places at once. It’s not Co-op Fenix where the shades do damage.
Also Adepts right now are the weakest gateway unit. They have less HP than both stalkers and Zealots, they also cannot attack air.
Which is absolutely stupid and doesn’t have to be that way at all. It’s easy fixable and they originally were a core unit but got nerfed into the ground.
An entertainment choice that makes a “strong” unit broken for harassment and a “weak” unit semi-decent at it. If Blizzard had any intention of making Adepts a direct combat unit, they would remove Shade and rework the Adept’s attack almost completely instead of making the Adept more dependent on it.
That is exactly what it does. You engage the enemy player’s army or base in one location while the shades move to another. You have until the last possible second to cancel the shade if the opponent reacts to the shade, and you let the shade go off if the opponent has not intercepted it.
The effect is that your army can choose to be in one of two places based on the opponent’s actions; and the opponent’s only real counter to that is to split their army to handle both places at once; since reacting to just the shade or just the Adepts will leave them exposed in the other place.
If Adepts were a strong combat unit, they could easily crush either half of the opponent’s force; or they could abuse the shade to bypass the opponent’s full force and destroy another part of that opponent’s base, all depending on the opponent’s reaction.
This mechanic is absolutely broken on a core unit, which is why Adepts were nerfed until they were the weakest Gateway unit as you just admitted.
A “core unit” cannot be balanced with a powerful harassment ability like shade. That would be like allowing Zerglings or Hydralisks to teleport to any location without Nydus Worms, or allowing Marines and Marauders to jump over chasms without Medivacs (the point being that both of those transit methods are separate units that can be sniped to strand the transported units).
There is no way that you can balance Adepts to actually be strong in combat and still have shade.
Little tweaks that keep Adepts in a weakened state might not break the game, but buffs that allow Adepts to go toe-to-toe with Bio, Roach/Hydra, Roach/Ravager, Zergling/Baneling, etc absolutely will.
That is because Adepts are currently in a weak state, not because of the way that shade works.
Blink is much more limited than shade as a harassment ability because it covers a much shorter distance and requires vision.
The Stalker is also very “weak” compared to upgraded Terran and Zerg units; and it is generally outperformed by other Protoss units (apart from the Adept) in direct combat.
Thing is, adept is already a good harassment unit, especially with glaives. Every time we buff it for combat, we start to make it an insane worker deleter.