The PvZ Problem - Sentry/Ravager

General Discussion
1

Introduction

So, much as I love seeing the patch notes coming up, I feel like this does absolutely nothing to address the PvZ early game issue that is the Ravager/Sentry interaction. Just a reminder, for almost the entirety of HotS and WoL, the Sentry was THE unit that Protoss’ early game was centered around - particularly in PvZ.

The issue in LotV is the Ravager. The Ravager basically takes this interaction and tosses it out the window, as, for all intents and purposes, it invalidates the Sentry as a defensive unit.

Now, before anything is said about why it was put into the game, I understand why the Ravager was put into the game. At the start of LotV, Immortal Sentry all-ins were prevalent against Zerg, and hyper-oppressive. You effectively had to blind-counter them as Zerg and hope that you didn’t die to it (and even then, it wasn’t a sure thing), or straight up die if they didn’t do the Immortal Sentry push. Being sealed out of your main base was a whole 'nother issue as well - again, particularly for Zerg at the time.

The Problem

However, as mentioned previously, the Ravager not only fixes this solitary issue, but also effectively means that Protoss has very little in the way of defensive tech when they want to go into ground-tech such as colossus or disruptors.

The shield-battery only somewhat fixed this issue, as it means that Protoss units can fight a little bit longer, but between the Ravager’s Corrosive Bile allowing it the ability to pick off shield-batteries from long range, and Protoss basically not having a way to limit or mitigate the amount of units they fight at any one time against Zerg without Forcefield, Ground-toss vs Zerg effectively becomes a non-factor in the majority of games.

It’s part of the reason (in addition to the original Void-Ray buffs) that Skytoss has become so prevalent. Because Zerg has very little AA early on, Voids and Oracles can survive long enough to actually have a chance at defending more than just a ling-runby.

Now, I’m going to be honest - I don’t have a great fix for this, because on the one hand, sentries have the potential to be super oppressive. On the other hand, Ravager’s Corrosive bile basically invalidates the Sentry and subsequently what little defense ground-toss has. It’s an egregious oversight that has gone on for far to long and needs to be rectified.

A potential Solution

If I had to suggest a fix - and this is my preferred change - Corrosive bile should take 2-3 hits on a forcefield to break them. This could be shown fairly easily on the forcefield with a change in colouration for each hit to tell you how many are left as well.

Alternatively, Corrosive Bile could make use of that “corrosive” aspect of the name, and eat away at the forcefield over time - instead of breaking the Forcefield, it could instead reduce the duration of the forcefield by a set amount, or a percentage time. This would be a little more complicated to set up, I think, but is also a viable alternative.

Why these changes though? Because it encourages skill and accuracy on both sides - Landing multiple corrosive biles on a single forcefield is a waste of biles and time that your army could potentially be diving in on the opponent. On the other hand, having overlapping forcefields means that Corrosive Biles can hit multiple Forcefields to break a defense more easily, which encourages accurate forcefield placement to avoid having to many broken at once.

Importantly, it also encourages decision making from both the Protoss and the Zerg players. On the Protoss side, they get to partition off Zerg units to engage more effectively, but risk limiting the space they can dodge Corrosive Biles when defending. On the Zerg side, they have to decide whether they drop Biles on the forcefields, or try and hit Protoss units with the Biles. Each is situationally dependent for both players as well, meaning there’s no real one size fits all solution.

TLDR:

Ravager’s interaction with the sentry causes problems defensively and makes players lean further into skytoss than they already do by invalidating ground-toss.

Proposed change:

Forcefields should take 2-3 hits from bile to break.
Alternatively
Forcefields have their duration reduced by an amount or percentage when hit with bile.

Overlapping forcefields makes biles more effective in both changes and promotes accuracy and good decision making from both Zerg players and Protoss players.

What do you guys think? How would you change this interaction, if at all?

5 Likes
2

Very much a step in the right direction if anything. Seems like you’ve grown. Take my like

3

The problem is that when the protoss retreats the sentry dies because it is very slow. With the same speed of the stalkers or a little more it will allow constant confrontations and a more dynamic game similar to tvz. We have to do everything possible to try to eliminate the all or nothing in the pvz

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not sure, but hope to get graphical feedback from the forcefield.
On the other hand, Ravager are design to counter forcefield.

possibly in the next round on the PTR server. In the worst case you can still work on times like: length of forcefield, faster corrosive bile projectiles etc…

5

It requiring two hits would be interesting, as then the Force Field can turn yellow, say, after one hit.

I have one question… what’s your thought on a +25 energy upgrade for Sentries? Granted it would probably have to be on the Cybernetics Core where it would compete with Warp Gate research.

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I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to it. What do you think the effects in game would be? The Sentry doesn’t exactly do all that much right now. Better scouting, MAYBE more forcefields? how much energy do they start with right now, 75 or 50?

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They start with 50. At 75 energy, they would be able to cast Guardian Shield the moment they warped in, and save up for another Force Field faster… and maybe open up some cheeky hallucination play. It’s another of my upgrades in my extension mod: [Extension Mod] All the Protoss upgrades! - I’m not certain how much it would harm an Immortal-Sentry all in because of the timing and competing with Warp Gate (although you could get a second Cybernetics Core).

8

Eh, with the ravager as it currently is, the immortal sentry all in is nearly irrelevant IMO. Not a bad idea though.

1 Like
9

I don’t know if you read my post “why do people think balance is an excuse for bad design” I came at an issue similar to this from the Zerg perspective.

Shield batteries are balanced but they invalidate any form of Zerg aggression in the early parts of the game outside of throwing literally everything at your opponent. However the ravager as you have mentioned removes the sentry as a useful unit both defensively and offensively, and so the culminated effect of that is Protoss building 800 batteries and going skytoss and Zergs spamming the roach/ravager button making themselves impervious to attack. These situations balance out but they make for very boring games.

The issue is that the ravager, shield battery, and sentry would all have to be rethought to fix this particular problem. The only way to remedy this problem is to massively nerf both the ravager against Protoss specifically, make the sentry viable however not as insane as it used to be (perhaps giving zerg a unit with a massive tag earlier in the game to use as a counter for offensive sentry play), and possibly adding a mid game Protoss unit that prevents Zerg from just being able to max on Roach Ravager but also means that Zerg can out position Protoss because instead of building tons of batteries the Protoss is building units. This would make interesting fights for the Protoss to secure the third base.

The issue really is the beginning stages of mid game ZVP where the game essentially slows to a snails pace until the late game. The issue is bigger than one unit’s interaction with another. It’s related to how Blizzard took the design of the whole Protoss race.

1 Like