What is the actual reason vipers need consume? No other spellcaster has a similar mechanic and vipers are probably one of the best casters in general. I really don’t understand the recent buff of preventing them from killing the structure. It makes no gameplay sense, since the point of a spellcaster is to manage the high value abilities without being spammable. If they can just regenerate their energy for relatively no tradeoff, they shouldnt be so powerful
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Vs Protoss consume ability is absolutely crucial because of HT’s feedback. Without consume zerg would literally had no way of dealing with protoss high ordnance units like colossi, archons, carriers etc.
Vs Terran viper is absurdly overpowered vs mech. In fact viper single handedly hard counters entire mech army - abduct key units, para-bomb vs vikings, libs, cloud vs clumped tanks, thors. If terran adds ghosts then their effectiveness is reduced to pretty much the same scenario as with HT’s feedback.
But i agree that overall viper is indeed probably along with high templar one of the two best spellcasters in the game.
So vipers get consume because they can be feedbacked? By that logic HTs should have the same kind of ability because of EMP. Zerg has plenty of ways to deal with protoss units. Colossus and archons? Have you heard of lurkers? They should have to actively protect them against counter play. I mean look how protoss players have to use warp prisms to protect HT vs terran as soon as ghosts come out.
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Viper has the longest tech path of all spell casters.
Zerg, at top lvl, is dependent on spellcast (viper) in the late game. A good example is the jokes when SoO loses because he doesn’t build spell casters.
Viper allows zerg to trade with toss/ terra. Because Zerg units are relatively limited.
consume allows an active game so it doesn’t become too passive.
Yep, pretty much it (along with EMP). Zerg late game relies mostly on efficient usage of vipers and without vipers/infestors the entire zerg army is rather easy to deal with.
Do not forget that HT can be warped in on-demand with 50 energy available out of the box, so you can immediately feedback viper or infestor.
Lurkers are pain in the butt for the protoss but good protoss should use phoenix to lift them and then blink underneath lurkers to snipe as many of them as possible (even if couple of stalkers will die in the process). I’ve seen it few times at pro level.
soO loses because he doesn’t build higher tier tech in the first place, let alone spell casters.
Disagree, personally.
Only if they don’t have hydras. If they have hydras that’s not feasible. You’re relying on disruptor shots at that point.
And Vipers start with 50 energy on demand too. Abduct is 75 energy. Roughly 30 seconds wait time to gain that extra 25 energy.
Infestors start with 75 energy since they don’t need their pathogen glands upgrade anymore.
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Abduct shouldn’t really work on Massive units.
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If they have Lurkers then they probably have hydras. So phoenixes are off the table. Abduct shouldn’t work on massive units since vipers aren’t massive.
The whole “Feedback” need always puts protoss on the defensive stance ever since it was nerfed to do half damage per unit energy drained. It should really be buffed to also restore HT energy 0.5 per energy drained as well.
Thematically, agreed but it’s not really a balance issue.
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The tradeoff is the rest of the army being underwhelming during lategame as Z has no ultimate T3 units because ultralisks are countered pretty easily and broodlords are kinda meh without support.
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God forbid the spellcaster have to wait to get its energy back after the opponent uses their own ability from a much slower ground-bound unit that also costs energy… It takes longer for Protoss to get the enrgy for feedback than it does for a viper to get the energy for any of its abilities, and the protoss player has an extremely short window to react with their Templar to use feedback to deny a spell, and it has no value whatsoever if they miss that window. It doesn’t even threaten killing the viper, and with the range of Abduct and Feedback being so close, Templar practically need to expose themselves to lurkers or broodlords just for the possibility of denying the viper spell (which is why it’s not a reliable or particularly practical answer even for the best Protoss players in the world).
Just 2-3 vipers being in play almost completely invalidates Protoss ground tech units because colossus are so expensive and abduct immediately shuts down disruptor novas, and since those tech units are required for Protoss to fight on the ground, it makes the window where ground Protoss is viable vs Zerg basically last until hive tech. And vipers are less supply intensive than the units they counter so effectively.
They’re also slow and fragile, so it’s relatively easy to stay out of their range, and for infestors, Fungal has more range than feedback in practice. Feedback is also single target and doesn’t kill its target (unless it’s an infestor with 180+ energy, a full 200 energy ghost, or a 160+ energy templar/sentry).
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Brood lords.
But the real problem is that Zerg spellcasters have such powerful utility in the late game that if Zerg did have non-spellcaster units on par with the T/P equivalents at that stage, they’d be practically unbeatable in the late game at the highest level. Zerg late game is balanced around the power of its spellcasters, and their lack of QoL updates like an auto-attack, like HT got at loTV launch, means that they’re difficult to use, which notably hurts players around the master level (There’s a notable swap in win rates between masters and GM, especially in PvZ, where the win rate flips from ~55% in Protoss favor in masters, to ~55% in Zerg favor in GM, based on the SC2replay stats last time I looked at them).
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Feedback is really a defensive spell unlike fungal which is why HTs should start at 75 energy. On that note, archons should also have a bonus against mechanical units and retain the storm ability and have leftover energy from the sum of the merging HTs energy, just not be able to regenerate its own energy.
As long as Warpgates and Warp Prisms exist, High Templar cannot start with 75 energy. Storm drops were blatantly overpowered when Khaydarin Amulet still existed.
Furthermore, Warpgate production is front-loaded, allowing Protoss to get their High Templar and Sentries significantly faster than other casters. High Templar and Sentries can generate a decent amount of energy during that time difference.
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Sentries specifically I’m not 100% sure that it would really be an issue if they could start with more energy; Templar being able to Storm off the bat with warp-in would be a significant issue though.
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Sentries should get an actual buff at this point. Forcefield just isn’t very relevant to the game anymore, so they could be given a lot more power elsewhere without it being a problem. I don’t think sentries having ~50% more hp and/or ~+2 damage on their tickle beam would be a problem at this point. Nowadays, their only reliable value is in hallucination scouting. The introduction of ravagers completely killed the old mass sentry all ins using forcefield to cut up Zerg armies.
HT could have more regen (an upgrade to double energy regen like medivacs got would be nice), but yeah, warp-in storms would be concerning if they had increased starting energy.
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Then it would be completely pointless. Viper was introduced in Heart of the swarm with its abduct ability solely to deal with high value targets.
Stupidest idea i’ve ever read. With this HT would literally have near infinite energy while completely nullifying opponent spellcaster. Given the fact that ghost EMP was heavily nerfed with the last two patches late game TvP would be unwinnable for the terran - not only HT can easily negate ghost usage but also they would have lots of energy for storms.
Sentries wouldn’t be problematic, but the fact that Sentries can be front-loaded through Warpgates does partially make up for the lack of a starting energy upgrade.
Its not “I can’t believe its not butter” front loaded. The LotV’s robo and stargate warp-ins are missing and is sorely needed to contend with terran and zerg production. Terrans ramp up production with reactors and Zerg and their queen quickly overwhelm the battlefield. On top of that Ravans and Vipers help those two take out high value targets like popping cheetohs.
Completely fine if they do but they have to be classed as massive units themselves. And the way you preach HTs should be able to storm outta the oven is hypocritical when widowmine drops require no skill at all but the Terrans get away with them regardless.
Completely fine if they do but they have to be classed as massive units themselves. And the way you preach HTs should be able to storm outta the oven is hypocritical when widowmine drops require no skill at all but the Terrans get away with them regardless.
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