Post the replay or the trolling will continue
Storm is Not used until lategame in pro Games tho. Its too much of an investment and too Bad Overall when you simply can use archons instead.
Not in the slightest: The Terran tech tree makes it easy to open straight into mech (been that way since Starcraft I); and the main limiting factor on Terranâs army composition is how many of each structure they make rather than the time it takes to get to a specific unit. There is nothing to force Terran to make a second Barracks.
At most, Terran might need a few Marines to help defend until they have enough Factories and Starports to produce the units they need; but that ends very early. Depending on the opponentâs opener, Terran might not need to make any Marines at all, since getting a mech army started takes less time than getting up the Stimpacks and Medivacs that Marines and Marauders rely on for a large chunk of their power.
Protoss and Zerg are each designed very differently.
Zerg takes a long time to tech up, so while you can completely stop making low-tier units (Banelings, Zerglings, Roaches) in favor of compositions like âinfestor/viper/corruptor/broodâ, you need units to survive to that point first.
Protoss has a number of issues that make it difficult to move off of Gateway units into something like Robo-Stargate:
- The Protoss tech-tree takes longer to build up to the Robo, Stargate, or Templar units; and requires more investment in those branching tech paths. During that time, Protoss will usually need multiple Gateways.
- Each tech branch has one or more gaps (lack of splash, lack of effective anti-air, etc); so Protoss needs the Gateway to cover those gaps for longer. In contrast, opening double-factory or 1/1/1 into more Factories/Starports is fairly safe.
- Protoss does not have an effective Mineral dump outside of the Gateway, so unless they can trade hyper-efficiently with high gas units and turrets, they are forced to rely on Gateway units as a supplement during their build-up.
- The build times of Robo and Stargate units are adjusted for Chronoboost, so the production capacity is quite a bit lower when trying to produce from multiple Robos or Stargates at a time. Assuming all of the other conditions are met, Protoss may need to build more Robos and Stargates to match the production of the other factions. The build-time difference on Immortals and Colossus in particular may be as high as 11 seconds if there was no Chronoboost.
You actually can fight almost anything with that army, depending on your control and the ratios of the units.
The main problems you will run into are:
- That there is no mineral dump unless you plan to mass turrets/Queens; which is an option.
- The composition has few options to harass or respond quickly to harassment. Mech has the choice of Hellions, Banshees, Cyclones, or just leaving Tanks/Mines/Liberators, etc on defense. Zergâs best option for cleanup is usually Zerglings.
- The time that it takes to get to hive for the units in question. During that time you need Hatch or Lair units. In contrast, Terran can start a mech transition once their second building is finished; which isnât that far off from the point where Protoss gets Cybernetic units and Zerg gets a choice of Banelings or Roaches. Again, Terran can get to mech with only a few Marines, and sometimes none at all. Itâs been happening since Starcraft I.
You can include specific mech units (Widow Mines, Vikings); depending on the match-up; but most of the tech-tree remains unavailable unless the units are strong enough that mech becomes an option. If mech is an option, Terran can choose to avoid sinking most of their resources into Bio altogether; it has been that way since SC1; where that was the standard in TvT and TvP, match-ups and an option in TvZ.
Because they were too weak in the areas where they were buffed. That was the case even without an extreme counter like HS Immortals.
Stim has the same power as it always did. The research time change only helps Bio get its strength faster.
Ghosts were buffed significantly, which should tell you something about how they were before that.
Marines trade close to even against Immortals on equal supply, then there is splash to consider on top of that. Bio usually relies on avoiding sustained combat with Protoss until the splash units are weakened, wasted, or killed; which usually is not feasible alongside slower mech units like Tanks and Thors because it requires a very mobile army.
EMP has never been sufficient to balance out Immortals against Tanks/Thors because of the movement mechanics on each side which make it way easier for Protoss to decide when the engagement happens. If EMP lands, Protoss retreats and gets their shields back before engaging.
All of that is still ignoring the point though. Hardened Shields itself was far too powerful and needed a nerf.
To give you a Zerg equivalent. Letâs say Hardened Shields was back, but all Zerg ranged and splash units get a similar damage reduction to what Thors, Hellbats, and Tanks get:
- Roach, Ravager, Locust, and Hydralisk damage is capped at 4.
- Lurker damage gets reduced to 6.
- Immortals get to be faster than all of the above units.
- Banelings still get to deal 9 because that puts them about on par with Hellbats.
- Any unit not mentioned is capped to 10 damage.
Have fun with that!
Hardened Shields was removed because (like many of the mechanics and that were introduced in WOL that were removed later), it scaled to ridiculous absurdity in some situations and had little to no effect on others.
The ability couldnât be balanced for its extreme without being useless in the general case. If Hardened Shields was properly balanced against heavy hitters like Tanks and Liberators, the damage threshold would be so high that it wouldnât even apply to Zerg (maybe it would take 5 damage or so from Ultralisks).
You cannot properly balance a mechanic that scales to absurd degrees. Either the mechanic will be nearly worthless such that it isnât worth having, or it will be so absurd in some circumstances that it actively makes the game worse. Replacing Hardened Shields with Barrier was a simple solution to that, and one that has been much better for the game overall.
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no race should be invincible to cheese or rushes or early game harass, yet protoss is, therefore its bad game design.
That is false. Shield Batteries do not make Protoss immune to rushes or early-game harassment. If they were that powerful, the problem could be easily fixed by nerfing the shield batteries instead of removing them.
What Shield Batteries do is make Protoss better at defending than attacking (that is how most RTS factions work because of travel distance and other factors); despite their ability to warp-in Gateway units.
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I saw a shield battery yesterday that was very powerful. Blocking with units and I could not even do a single lick of damage with lings and roaches early on. Toss walled off and set up a fortress at the natural in a 1v1 on a map that had good defense. Pretty much lost the game at the moment I made a few units, couldnât even harass to the point where I could even the game out and come back. Toss had his 2 bases secured and unless i immediately took 7 bases and got lucky, there was no way I could win. I scouted and saw he was taking the natural early and put just a little bit of pressure but at that point it was too late.
just uninstall the game, thats what I did. The game is a mess and they wont fix anything.
Iâll stick around for a little bit longer, I do have better stuff I should be doing for sure. I do think the ranking system is messed up due to free accounts. Iâm sure thereâs a ton of people that just keep creating accounts until they get the rank they want. Iâm in silver now, playing tons of games, and I used to be division 1 plat back in the day of WOL. Seems bronze is the new gold though, every now and then I get placed vs. a bronze who has like diamond level skill. Guess I should be happy with silver for now. Re-learning how I play trying to macro as much as I can and hold on so sometimes I lose games I could have won early on, but Iâm having fun I guess?
yep, in pvps toss can just easily defend anything early on because of SBs. Honestly they are worst than photon overcharge. My suggestion would fix everything while keeping them at what they were intended for (or at least should of been intended for), helping toss defend third and fourth+ bases. Delaying them to Twilight Council will fix everything. They have plenty of stuff to help them defend early game.
They were never intended to make the race invincible early game but here we are
You mean the completely different game whose bio viability was much lower due to lower health marines, lack of marauders, and no healing transports?
And when each of those mech structures cost 100g in addition to the 150m for rax, it is and should be a huge impediment on opening mech.
Unless you want to win like is done in the vast majority of pro games.
Just because they were buffed against other units doesnât mean they wouldnât see increased play in the match-up, so long as they are accompanied by units to counter their counter, who also got buffed.
And should also tell you whether hardened shields would truly make tanks/thors extinct in the current game. Even with hardened shields gone, terran is still going bio in tvp and including ghosts in every game that goes late.
Unless you position tanks to threaten protoss bases or to protect your bio as they pressure like is commonly done with 2 base terran all-ins. Those splash units like colossus and ht are still countered by mech units like viking and tank.
That is balanced by the fact that your stimmed bio can chase them down, while your ghosts regen energy or increase in number.
And alongside such comparisons, let us ask:
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Do those units enjoy the same range advantages as the tank with untargetable projectiles?
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Have equal versatility to thors?
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Are mineral only splash like hellbats?
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Does zerg have access to ranged units with as high dps as marines who are completely unaffected by HS?
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Is zerg able to completely nullify HS by draining the immortalâs shield with an aoe spell?
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Does their burrow unit do spell damage, bypassing HS, and has bonus vs shields?
And let us also take your justifications for going only mech applied to protoss, if terran is forced to make a few marines can you not say the same about zealots/adepts? Can protoss then go into say double robo disruptor, dumping minerals into mass cannons and turtling until they reach skytoss immortal disruptor like terran turtles with turrets, tanks, and pf before reaching tank thor lib? Or does protoss actually have to make more gateways and use their t1 units to survive until then?
Expecting the protoss to just never chrono is absurd, even in the early game where you would have the most incentive to use that on probes, pro-tosses are still investing that energy into their first tech unit(s), even their first gateway, and the later the game goes the more plentiful such energy becomes. I seriously doubt that toss would invest more into their tech facilities, absent gateway units, than a meching terran. That aside, terran also needs add-ons for their production facilities and occupies 1 worker per during construction. If anything protoss has more viability going âturtle mechâ than terran if only their production constraints were concerned.
And if mech units cover every role then how come pros are fielding more ghosts into those comps the later the game goes, what role does the ghost serve if every role is covered by mech? And does the ghost not have the ability to completely nullify HS?
Wanting pure mech to be viable is the same as a protoss expecting to be able to go skytoss disruptor without ht. So when you claim HS immortals render 1/3 of terran tech tree unviable, what you really mean is it forces terrans to use the 1/3 of their tech tree that mech players would like to neglect.
Just because going only mech units isnât viable doesnât mean an opposing mechanic is bad design, especially when your justification of such an expectation is the design in sc1, a game balanced in large part by maps, selection constraints, and pathing.
sc1 design was being applied to sc2, as you asserted here
here
and here
whose design philosophy would actually support the inclusion of mechanics that are overpowered in some respects but balanced in the context of other mechanics given to opposing races, like emp.
When you say you want pure mech to be viable like in sc1, it seems you ignore factors that make such design justifiable. One factor is the increased micro requirements it had. Vultures for instance are much more apm intensive than hellions, and their spider mines couldnât hit air like widow mines. Both vultures and goliaths had expectations to kite, something actively discouraged in hellionâs high damage point and thorâs immobility. Even tanks were seen more often kiting in their tank mode than sc2.
And as previously mentioned bioâs viability in sc2 is on a completely different level than sc1, all of these are solid reasons why mech in sc2 does not and should not have the same viability as in sc1.
Furthermore, hardened shield immortals didnât even counter tanks as hard as many current interactions that still exist in the game. Blue flame hellbats destroy more than double their supply in lings in any number greater than 1, yet do you see zerg demanding reworks to hellbats or are they simply expected to use other units to either supplement their lings or replace them altogether? Similarly, archons beat double the supply of mutas in any scenario, colossi beat double their supply in marines in any number besides 2 and 3 without any micro. Every atg unit is a counter against units that canât shoot up, as are gta vs ata. You draw the line at immortal vs tank when this game has a plethora of interactions where only 1 unit can hit the other and there exists other interactions that are much more severe? What is the difference there, that you can make other units to counter their counter or use a difference comp entirely, and the same cannot apply to tank vs immortal, right? Because terran players should just be allowed to play a game where they pretend marines and ghosts donât exist!
For reference, double the supply of tanks in either mode will win handedly vs HS immortals in any scale (tank mode will lose in max supply but siege mode opposite).
Hardend shield wasnt OP. EMP counters it hard. So did hydras and fungal growth.
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And those matter why? The tech-tree itself lends itself to opening mech. The viability of other options isnât a barrier to that.
No it isnât.
The Factories and Starports produces larger, more supply-heavy units, so one Factory or Starport has roughly equivalent production to 2 Barracks. Mech also saves gas on not needing Medivacs or not needing as many, so combat units make up a larger percentage of the supply.
Bio has more mobility that is easier to work around, but mech is still viable against Protoss. The latter was not the case in WOL or HOTS.
All-ins only, when Protoss is struggling to field splash damage units alongside units like Immortals. Outside of all-ins or pre-stim blink Stalker defense, Siege Tanks were unusable while Hardened Shields existed.
Unless you can actually survive by turtling with cannons and walls, you will always need a Mineral dump to fill out your forces.
Terran has the choice of Widow Mines or Hellions/Hellbats from the Factory as their mineral dumps, and those units are fairly good at handling the ground units that Siege Tanks and Thors are less efficient against. Protoss doesnât have an equivalent from the Robotics Facility, so Protoss players are stuck on Gateway units (Zealots/Adepts) to fill out their forces.
The closest equivalent Protoss has for those âfew Marines into mechâ would be switching from Zealots (same tech as Marines) into Adepts (same tech as Hellions, Widow Mines, Marauders, etc), but that still relies on the Gateway. In order for Protoss to get off of Gateway production, the Robotics Facility would need a mineral-dump combat unit.
Iâm not expecting Protoss to ânever use Chronoâ, merely pointing out that they require it to match the production capacity of Factories and Starports. Protoss would need to use about one Chronoboost per unit that they produce for Robo production to match Factory production. This is doable with enough expansions, but it would be difficult to pull off in the early and mid-game.
Neither of those is an issue. The worker construction does slow the Terran economy a little bit, but Terran is still producing units faster with those add-ons.
Simply put, mechâs other options to counter casters usually involve focusing them down or zoning them out with Vikings, Liberators, Tanks, etc before they can cast or repeat cast. Ghosts are a versatile alternative that doesnât require much production capacity, doesnât require weapon/armor upgrades or Medivacs to be effective, and is more capable of splitting off from the army to explicitly hunt casters.
Terran is also more capable of affording a squad of Ghosts late in the game, when they have the firepower that they need.
It is not sufficient to balance Hardened Shields out because of the extreme power of the ability and the mobility advantage that Protoss has over those units. The amount of damage that Hardened Shields absorbs at the start of combat is typically more than enough to swing the outcome, and when you land EMP on the Immortals before combat you donât have the leeway to punish Protoss for itâas you yourself pointed out, the only way to try to punish it is to leave much of the army behind as you chase with only a fraction of your units.
All wrong for reasons I have already pointed out.
- The Terran tech-tree makes it easy to open mech very early on.
- Terran actually has mineral dumps and support units from the factory that function better alongside Tanks/Thors than Marines/Marauders do.
- The factory and Starport have a plethora of options to deal with every possible army composition that currently exists, etc.
The main Starcraft 1 comparison that I made is in regards to the Terran tech-tree, which is actually more streamlined in StarCraft 2, and provides more options on each branch.
Yes they did. Immortals could take several times more damage because of hardened shields; and they are already extremely efficient against Tanks/Thors without it.
Blue Flame Hellbats are significantly slower than Zerglings (about half the speed) with short range. That mobility advantage enables Zerg to kill or soften up the Hellbats with other units before engaging with the Zerglings, and it enables harassing Zerglings to circumvent or avoid the Hellbats.
In short, the Zerglingâs mobility advantage over the Hellbats keeps them viable by granting the Zerg player most of the control over how the engagement plays out. That is pretty much the opposite of the Tank/Thor case where the Immortal and most other Protoss units have the mobility advantage to decide how the engagement plays out. Tanks really donât have a way to play around hardened shield Immortals, so the hard-counter is excessive.
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Those changes matter because bio is designed to be viable in sc2 while mech is not, if they wanted mech to have the same viability they would have copy pasted vultures and goliaths to complete the trifecta comp with tank. The viability of other options is and should be a barrier to viability when those other options are more skill expressive.
Terran being able to skip their tier 1 in bw was a design flaw that was rightfully fixed in sc2 where the terran tech tree is designed to inhibit the scalability in producing high tech units through high costs to establish their tier 2+ production facilities and having inflexible production cycles compared to protoss and zerg. Terran should not have 2 equally viable styles, one of which was buffed to be viable in sc2 and is fast paced + mechanically and micro intensive while the other takes a fraction of the skill it did in bw whose playstyle is essentially tower defense in sc2, and these stylesâ skill requirements is rightfully mirrored in their viability.
Yes it is, thatâs why terran doesnât open mech vs protoss where they play from an eco disadvantage because they canât afford to spend that much money and time on production just to turtle from behind, and instead will play some type of 1/1/1 harass opening into bio or just straight up bio so they can force favourable trades. Itâs also why they constantly die to roach aggression when they try to open bc hellion vs zerg because itâs only viable when they metagame speedlings, or even to 3 base lbm floods because they have like 3 tech units out and 1500 resources tied up in tech lab factories. Whether mech holds aggro in sc2 in incredibly binary compared to bw which is dependent on control, like bio in sc2.
Each factory or starport may have higher production capabilities than a rax but they still have higher upfront cost which is very relevant when talking about viability of openings. You will also rarely want as many reactor based units as you would with marines whose versatility and cost efficiency is top tier in sc2. While mech does not need as many medivacs throughout the game, they do often have to match or exceed the initial gas costs of bio through their opening starport units, whether that be viking to hunt overlords, medivac to drop hellions or mines, liberator for harass, or even fusion core + bc. Combined with the gas costs of the production facilities, armories, and reliance on tech lab units, mechâs opening gas costs will easily exceed that of bio which is primarily concerned with having enough for stim and combat shields and the opening 2 medivacs. Mech does have more supply efficiency, but whether they can reach such a stage on equal footing is a different matter that is justifiably restricted by the upfront costs to such a playstyle.
The latter is still not the case in lotv at the pro level, but the presence of ghosts has increased which would be a direct counter to hardened shields.
Siege tanks were just objectively weak in hots, thatâs why they received +15hp and 20dmg vs armoured even though their hard counters in blinding cloud and hardened shields were also heavily nerfed.
HS immortal would hard counter tank, so what? Even that counter relationship is less one sided than many interactions that still exist in the game, hell you could argue blinding cloud still counters tank harder than HS post-nerf, which begs the question what was so special about HS that caused it to be removed when ghost counters both?
They can just mass their more versatile static d for mineral dumps like they did in void meta, and what happened to such a playstyle btw?
In other words mech cannot sufficiently counter casters without ghosts.
Terran is also more capable of affording tier 1 production facilities and units in the early game than going only t2+.
You do have the ability to punish so long as the majority of your army isnât in slow mech units, but instead mobile high dps bio, and you can take fights without a few of your tanks because emp has taken off half the effective hp of the protoss army, not just nullify HS.
I just donât buy that emp canât counter HS enough to allow tanks to be viable when it is sufficient to counter blinding cloud while not even affecting the rest of the zerg army.
No, it makes it very easy to open variations of 1/1/1, but notice how they will transition into bio with support from the existing factory/starport instead of going only factory/starport units. I wonder why the vast majority of pro terrans will choose to play that way for over 10 years if mech is equally viable.
In certain situations, but many of the mech units overlap in roles or fail to adequately cover for the otherâs weaknesses. Mines and hellions are less versatile than marines and lack dps vs structures. You cannot pressure a base with mine/hellbat and supporting tanks the same way you can with marines, it would be easier to replace tanks with mines than marines with hellbats. Hellbats do support thors well as anti-light splash but are still less microable than marines, who also allow thors to be useful aa without being massed. In addition, bioâs focus on dps better compliments slow attacking units like tanks and mines, and their medivacs help circumvent the thor and tankâs immobility. More often than not mech units in sc2 are better supported by bio than other mech units, at least until you get to lategame where production capabilities are equalized and you have less incentive to pressure.
Just because a tech tree has more options does not mean thatâs why a style is or should be viable. Marine/marauder is the core that covers dps/anti-armour while medivac circumvents the sustain issues from stim and factory support fills in splash. This is a well rounded composition not due to terran being able to make reapers and cyclones, but because they combined the medic and dropship and gave them an anti-armour option with a passive that capitalizes on the mobility and fluidity of the comp.
In bw the vulture, tank, and goliath was the trifecta equivalent to mmm, but in sc2 the hellion became a more specialized vulture while their spider mines became a different unit altogether that also overlaps with the thor, tank, and hellion. The widow mine became useful in bio which is fast paced and forces mistakes from the opponent, but is less useful for mech because it is scarcer and costlier than spider mines. The thor is more difficult to mass and less microable than the goliath, making it synergize better as support for bio instead of fulfilling the aa role by itself for mech like the goliath. Even though mech has more options in sc2, those options do not fill the weaknesses other mech units have as well as their bw counterparts.
Aside from being able to transform to hellions, mobility is not the only factor relevant to whether a hard counter should exist, as the phoenix is allowed to have range, mobility, and bonus damage advantages over the muta. Tanks have range and splash advantage over immortals and terran has sufficient counters vs HS to permit such an interaction to exist, whether tanks can outmaneuver them or not.
Protoss doesnât have a definitive mobility advantage when you play bio, thatâs why blink aggression stops when you get stim.
Tanks can play against immortals by focus firing other units, using emp prior, or bodyblocking with other units or structures to stop immortals from reaching them. HS immortals would significantly increase the viability of ground toss vs lurkers while having low impact to tvp where ghosts are already prevalent. Considerations for such an ability should be whether opposing races have sufficient counterplay, not the viability of a style from bw.
Vultures and Siege Tanks relied heavily on Brood Warâs bad pathing and their higher speed to be effective. Adding Vultures would not make mech viable; in fact, the Hellbat morph needed to be added specifically because Mech needed a tougher and more powerful anti-light buffer unit.
The Goliathâs role can be filled by both Vikings and Thors.
If Terranâs ability to skip âTier 1â was a âdesign flawâ, Terranâs tech-tree would have been reworked to delay the Factory behind other buildings, and the Factory could not have anywhere near the range of units that it does. Weakening units to the point of uselessness is not a fix for an âissueâ caused by how the tech-tree is designed.
Not so.
And even after those buffs, Tanks are not a powerful enough unit to justify a hard-counter on the level of hardened shields.
Blinding Cloud can be mitigated by splitting and waited out using a Hellbat screen. Neither requires the Tanks to chase down the opponent. The Vipers can also be zoned out or killed by Vikings or Ghosts.
Yes it can. Mech can focus down casters with Siege Tanks, Vikings, Thors, Liberators, etc depending on the caster.
Ghosts are not a requirement.
A reactored factory costs 350 resources. A reactored Barracks costs 250 resources. Considering the amount of production you are getting, the Factory is the better value.
Terran can use Banshees, Cyclones, and Hellions for harassment.
Blinding Cloud has a weaker effect and more counter-play.
Splitting works very well against it, buffer units like Hellbats and Widow Mines can basically ignore it and hold off until the Tanks are free, the Vipers can be picked off as they try to approach, etc.
Each Hardened Shields Immortal can essentially tank 13 shots from the current Siege Tank, which is far more damage than Blinding Clouds usually block.
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