What is the purpose of the tempest? Im not saying that it doesnt have one, I just want to know what it is. I’m a medium rated toss player (D2) but I almost have never used that unit, against BCs its useless due to the tactical jump, against toss it just trades quite well against the carrier (which I find better to take down using blink stalkers or void rays), I just find it someway useful against broodlords. As I said before I almost have not used it so maybe I’m skipping something important, thx for reading
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Good question, Protoss in 2000-6800MMR range have posed the same question and till now no one has any definitive answer.
Best explanation for not using them goes to Parting:
Why you do not build Tempests?
Parting: At what purpose? If i am losing they will not help me win the game. If wining, i don’t need them.
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I usually build them when I want to lose the game
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- Post in Protoss discussion, not in General discussion.
- Playa’s opinion is to never ever make Tempests. But he’s GM, we’re not. All units can pretty useful on our level - since we lack many skills, including correct decision making. Tempests can support us in situation when we have no idea of optimal solution.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/bmlpkz/tempest_illustration/
Tempests seem to be a good tool vs Brood Lords, a few can be useful in some scenarios vs BCs, but as you have realised, usually there is other, more flexible solution. Personally I never was in situation in late game vs Zerg, where I could afford making Tempests - I needed more Void Rays to deal with Corruptors and kill all anti-air, but I do not have vast experience.
Tempests has it’s value in proxy, as follow-up after Voids, but I suggest you not going this strategy.
It is a good unit vs Cyclones, if you can protect it by batteries and other units.
There is one thing Tempests are awesome at:
Breaking forests of turrets. If you have kind of stalemate situation, Tempests allow you to trade efficiently and get significant advantage. They can help you catch a few vikings/corruptors and safely destroy whole forests of missile turrets and spore crawlers.
I have one video example. There were a lot of missile turrets I cleaned before the video moment. I did exacly the same what I do in video. I come within my range, shoot and retreat. As you can see, a few Tempests allow me to trade greatly - kill a lot of units with little to no own loses.
As you see in the video, if I just a-moved my opponent I would win. However, I had no confidence in my troops and I wanted to play carefully, I was not fully aware about my advantage and did not want to throw the game. In this situation Tempests were just awesome.
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If Playa says not to make them, then he’s about 95 to 99% reliable, in which case you should never make them.
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Actually there was one time I made tempests to win the game
Terran was turtling hard behind siege tanks and was dumb enough to not have enough thors and/or vikings
Edit: but on second thought, carriers would have done the job just fine, and are better versus thors and vikings
Playa is right. Units are divided in General units (Stalker, Carrier, Archon), specialist units (HT, Disruptors, Sentries) and Niche units.
Niche units have a very narrow angle of utility where they excel but are quite weak or mediocre in anything else.
I challenge anybody here to place Tempest in any of those categories.
A 5 supply unit with no defined goal (outside of some cheese), that’s the Tempest.
Never. 20 characters
When cheesing
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Sounds fair to me 
Just don’t hold me accountable for the few times I lead you astray. I’m only human…
I’ve tried making tempests work more than anyone should want to admit to. For instance, when I started going carrier, disruptor vs Terran before anyone else… I was opening with a couple tempests.
Thinking being… that’s when tempests can be most cost efficient/valuable. One of Toss’ main weaknesses vs Terran is their units have far less range. Tank pushes. Libs zoning you out. Cyclones with the half court jumper, at 15 range.
That was really the only time the tempest seemed even remotely good, but then they nerfed the tempest’s AG range to 11. Now? Things have either gone wrong if you have a tempest or maybe it can make some sense to have tempests + stalkers vs BCs? But, even then… I’d rather just have carriers and stalkers. After all… BCs do straight up beat tempests… When the unit you’re supposed to counter, counters you… it really sums the unit up.
The only time I see tempests seem useful/good is when I watch EU Toss players. Showtime believes disruptor, tempest is the best comp in P vs P. It very well could be, but really… I don’t think you should allow games to go to sky toss vs sky toss. Something went wrong, and you’re just making games “random” at that point.
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Tempests do beat battlecruisers, just not before the BCs destroy your entire base with attack while moving while you spend your entire APM kiting for 2 minutes
As much as you pay for BCs, that ability was needed. 400/300/6 is so expensive it should just about win the game by itself.
Given how uncommon it is to face BCs, it’s hard to complain (Toss perspective). But, on the other hand… it’s not like anyone has ever cared about the 400/400 mothership at 8 supply, which also has the longest build time in the game.
Maybe I don’t really enjoy hero units, anyways, so it’s whatever, but the tempest is really a huge factor in the difficulties of P vs T macro. Ghosts being the biggest hard counter to a unit which was absolutely critical for HotS (high templar) and making tempests an auto lose unit has really taken away all options, for no reason… There’s only one way to skin that cat…
It is the protoss version of ultras.
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When cheesing or to disable liberator style in pvt. Sometimes they are made in pvp as a soft transition from stalker-disruptor.
Thank you all for the answers.
Yep sorry, I was used to the Spanish forums in which people just spoke sometimes in the general forum and the specific races forums were dead.
So it seems that, using observers, tempests can be useful against turtle terrans since they can outrange vikings and misile turrets while being protected by the main army… thx for the example.
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Tempests let you auto-win vs Zerg in the lategame and completely screw ghost-liberator builds as long as you don’t build too many.
Oh and of course Tempests are the ultimate PvP army
Terrans whined their range down. Again, anytime toss finds something that works, it will get whined out of the game. Now they are useless.
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Not exactly, Blizzard buffed the hell out of the Stalker since last time I played, even more than I asked them to do way back when. I also like how they added a basic ranged weapon to the Templar, which I also asked them to do, because Psionic Storm was nerfed so hard compared to Broodwar. It’s not very powerful, so 9 times out of 10 it won’t effect the game, just keeps them from getting killed by one or two stray zerglings is all.
Adepts need some kind of buff again. They cost 25 gas, so they should be strictly better than Zealots with micro. Nerf SCVS to 40 HP, same as other races workers, and let Adepts kill SCV in 2 hits. I would suggest a 1 base shields buff to Adepts, that way they’d be the only Protoss unit with a base shields. Then theyy’d kill Marines in 3 hits, and they’d take 1 less damage vs shields from marines, and they’d kill SCV in 2 hits.
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Terran Cry Force will not allow. They used to 2 hit scvs.
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