Why Protoss sucked before the Airtoss patch and why they don't currently

General Discussion
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Before the airtoss patch you could watch almost any professional match and protoss players would regularly lose control of parts of their army. I can’t tell you the amount of times I cringed in despair as the best protoss players in the world lost random disruptors / high templars because they went a different direction than the rest of the army. But why is that, because the optimal protoss army required as many units casting spells as possible.

You had:
Oracles for stasis traps/revelation
High Templars for storm
High Templars + Warp Prism to protect HTs from long range units that nullified them (Ghosts, Infestors).
Sentries for Forcefields / guardian shield.
Disruptors for AoE.
Warp Prism for reinforcements.
Stalkers for large aggressive blink forwards/backwards but also the optimal 1-3 blink backs to prolong their life in battle.
Phoenix Gravitron for tanks/cyclones/immortals (not used often but has been used to great effect).

To wield the best army you had to make use of all/most of these units.

In comparison zergs have:
Lurkers burrow a single use ability before or at the start of a fight.
Infestors.
Vipers.
Right clicking banelings past marauders/tanks/thors/archons/immortals.
Ravager Biles.
Queen Healing.

But none of these units were ever all required to be an effective zerg army, I think at best you need half?

Now compare that to bio for terran:
Marines/Marauders need to press stim, all together which is the vast bulk of the terran army.
Tanks to siege, a single use ability before or at the start of the fight.
Liberates to siege, a single use ability before or at the start of the fight.
Widow Mines to burrow, a single use ability before or at the start of the fight.
Ravens for armor reduction.
Ghosts for EMP/Snipe.

Simply put the protoss army required more individual moving parts than any other which regularly meant the protoss armies would just fall apart after a split second of diverted attention and once they lost the key component of their army the rest of the army would fall behind.

This also fails to take into account that stalkers are one of the most apm intensive units in the game as to “optimally” play them you need to be blinking them back individually something that only Alphastar was able to do.

What all of this means is that Protoss were left with cheesey all ins the majority of the time, the APM demand of a late game protoss army vs zerg and terran was ridiculously disgusting.

Protoss sucked before because their armies required higher degrees of micro than any other army. Which is Blizzards fault, Blizzard gave Protoss Colossus but that just resulted in massive A move armies so they nerfed the hell out of them and gave Protoss Disruptors instead which are literal clunky AoE deathballs that require babysitting to the nth degree.

So if you want to fix protoss give them an AoE that isn’t countered by a single unit but also doesn’t require tons of micro either. A mix between Collosus and Disruptors.

Edit: I want to add that when referring to APM/Micro demands for PvZ or PvT I’m purely talking about the spell casting portion and not the splitting of marines/lings/etc.

5 Likes
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Old range coloss maybe fine

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I think there’s some back and forth arguments to be made about this. On one hand, if you have skytoss + only disruptors or high templar, it is PRETTY easy to control. And I actually laugh when pros just a-move their disruptors into death in many cases (when they aren’t dealing with a micro intensive army overall). On the other hand, it is VERY hard to work with disruptor/high templar/skytoss (carrier/tempest). I think any Zerg that whines about how easy it is for Protoss at this stage of the game is 100% unjustified - Protoss end game army is just as hard to control as Zerg end game.

This is what makes end game Terran the easiest to work with. Most of your units are just sieged up before a fight, so when the fight actually happens, you don’t have as much to micro as your other opponents.

I’m going to assume this is meant for the late game (neither end game nor mid game)

This is funny because it’s not true. Stalkers DO take a lot of APM, no doubt. Bio takes much more attention. Roach ravager ling also requires a good amount of attention against stalkers too. For bio in particular, when you are in the process of stutter stepping, you can’t do anything behind it except maybe squeeze out a few scvs or try to sneak in an upgrade or two. That’s because it requires nonstop clicking. For stalkers, it’s either blink blink blink or blink shoot blink shoot, and you can do a lot of other things while doing that.

Mostly true, there was a reason why there was a common saying for Protoss to not let Zergs “get there” - because Protoss late game was weak and Zerg late game was at its peak. Therefore, the only chance Protoss had of winning against Zerg was to allin. Then they nerfed allins and Protoss was flat out screwed against Zerg for a time. Currently, Zergs are in the process of knowing what defeat is against Protoss, but at least the game is ACTUALLY balanced now in that regard. I wouldn’t say it was an APM issue at the time necessarily, rather, Terran and Zerg were just flat out stronger than Protoss. I.e., the game was imbalanced 100%.

You should be careful with saying this because it’s not true in every case.

Absolutely this, terrible design choices all around.

This is a good idea, but the problem is, what IS the solution here? It’s actually extremely hard to decide. Do they make a new unit? Do they use an old one (reaver, dark archon)? Or, can they consider doing something like buff colossus a good amount to remove disruptors? It’s a difficult choice.

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I agree with a lot of the stuff here. I do indeed agree that too many people regard protoss as requiring little micro, this is obviously false, Terran players need to learn that splitting and stutter stepping is not the only way to micro, protoss has the most intense spellcasting by far out of the three races as they often need to handle several spellcaster in one army.

Protoss did suck before, and stuff like colossus from WoL was just silly. But so are disruptors. But indeed the tables have turned, and now the pressure is on the Zerg and Terran to finish off the protoss early before they get to their superior late game. I think major design changes are no longer a possiblity, (I am convinced after blizzcon that SC2 is effectively abandoned by Blizz), but small changes will bring the game back to balance, I continue to think that a revert on the feedback range is all that is needed for Toss to come back to balance in PvZ.

Can’t say for TvP, don’t play the match up.

2 Likes
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Another problem for me seems, watching top players, that the disruptor seems actually near uselless against for example Clem. I know its his insane skill, how he splits, and kudos to him, but the fact remains that the Protoss can do nothing better to counter this, the disruptor just becomes uselles. Disruptor just feels to me to gimmicky, to random

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True, that’s why the Dual-Mode Disruptor should be reinstated.

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Blockquote I think there’s some back and forth arguments to be made about this. On one hand, if you have skytoss + only disruptors or high templar, it is PRETTY easy to control. And I actually laugh when pros just a-move their disruptors into death in many cases (when they aren’t dealing with a micro intensive army overall). On the other hand, it is VERY hard to work with disruptor/high templar/skytoss (carrier/tempest). I think any Zerg that whines about how easy it is for Protoss at this stage of the game is 100% unjustified - Protoss end game army is just as hard to control as Zerg end game.

I agree with this, in most cases for late game Protoss would completely drop sentries from their armies and use oracles only for revelation, relying on High Templar and/or Disruptors to do the rest of the job. But this was never good enough to win games but adding more spell casters to the mix wasn’t working either, it was just too much demand.

Blockquote I’m going to assume this is meant for the late game (neither end game nor mid game)

Absolutely talking end game, Protoss mid game is/was weak for various reasons but Protoss end game was just abysmal.

Blockquote This is funny because it’s not true. Stalkers DO take a lot of APM, no doubt. Bio takes much more attention. Roach ravager ling also requires a good amount of attention against stalkers too. For bio in particular, when you are in the process of stutter stepping, you can’t do anything behind it except maybe squeeze out a few scvs or try to sneak in an upgrade or two. That’s because it requires nonstop clicking. For stalkers, it’s either blink blink blink or blink shoot blink shoot, and you can do a lot of other things while doing that.

For spell casting stalkers absolutely do require the highest degree of APM. I’m not saying Terran micro of marines / marauders isn’t breathtakingly amazing against banelings / disruptors but they aren’t casting spells to do it.

Blockquote You should be careful with saying this because it’s not true in every case.

Wehn I say this I’m purely referring to the spell casting portion of Protoss.

Blockquote This is a good idea, but the problem is, what IS the solution here? It’s actually extremely hard to decide. Do they make a new unit? Do they use an old one (reaver, dark archon)? Or, can they consider doing something like buff colossus a good amount to remove disruptors? It’s a difficult choice.

I’m not sure to be honest, an idea I was playing with was giving Immortals a Robotics Bay upgrade that allows them to do a thor weapon switch, allowing their weapons to switch from heavy hitting single target against armored, to an aoe attack against light. The aoe wouldn’t need to be particularly strong or huge to be useful, but just something for the protoss to use that doesn’t require an insane amount of micro to use, essentially a buffer. High Templars/Disruptors/Colossus would still have their place as big aoe damage dealers but missing a disruptor shot shouldn’t be the end, nor should your high templars getting EMP’d once be the end.

1 Like
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I keep seeing the title of your thread and instead of seeing Airtoss, I’m seeing it as Artosis for some reason.

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IF you’re talking about pure spellcasting of course stalkers take the most APM… However, you’re completely neglecting any other ways that the other two races use more APM than blink stalkers, which is mind boggling. The game wasn’t designed for you to mass stalkers like Terran masses bio. They are meant to fall off after a certain point - or be used more in a more supporting sense and not as a main fighter. I’m not a fan of people downplaying Protoss micro, but this is a pointless argument in every sense.

Now I am wondering, why are we going to isolate one case while neglecting other aspects of the other two races. Why are we going to talk purely about storm/disruptor shots while completely disregarding the fact that Z/T also has to split/dodge these skills - which mind you, takes more effort than one spell click.

Micro is WAY more than just spell casting. To downplay it completely by going purely in terms of spell casting is ridiculous. It is universally agreed upon that Protoss has the easiest micro overall in most stages of the game because of all these other factors that you are choosing to leave out of discussion.

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He has a point with his post. Protoss reliable dps-units were nerffed over and over and over to a point that their only way of trading effectively is through AOE.
That’s why battles with protoss have this flavor where Protoss is totally crushed or the extreme opposite when Protoss totally crushes his opponents.
It’s enough to miss Disruptor’s shots or to lose HT for causing a protoss meltdown.

4 Likes
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Reavers.

It all comes down to Protoss missing the Reaver, the thing that actually made Protoss payable in BW, because without Reaver-Shuttle, Protoss is too slow to compete.

Disruptors are another silly “micro-intensive” unit they added to not add Reavers, just like Swarm Hosts were to the Lurker, in HotS.

Zerg needed the Lurker, because SH just cannot be balanced, it was always either OP or trash.
Same scenario with Protoss and Reaver.

Blizzard should have stopped being stubborn, and just make Starcraft 2 into Brood War+, with all the same or similar units (like how Brood Lords are basically Guardians with Spawn Broodlings incorporated in their attack), with a few more extra options.

2 Likes
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Now Reavers having the speed like Queens off-creep (maybe even slower) would require a Shuttle/Prism in order to follow the army.
Personally i would prefer to drop Disruptor&Colossus in exchange for the Reaver (with a reduction to the Prism cost).
If protoss would bring 5-6 Reavers into battle, 3 Prisms would be required to perform the transport task.

It will have the added bonus to be a mineral dump (Scarabs cost minerals) and the Protoss would have less possibility to abuse Zealot-runbys.

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No doubt he has a point with his post, Protoss relies on AOE to trade better against the other races. I’m still not a fan of how difficult he is saying Protoss micro is. While Protoss has more moving pieces over time, it isn’t until the very late/end game that it becomes as difficult or more difficult for Protoss than the other races.

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I agree with you, to develop it further: having more components (moving pieces) it also mean that there are more points of failure.
That is translated in a more fragile composition that has more probability to fail.

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The reason why I’m not making a case for which race is toughest in micro is because it’ll just turn into a pissing contest. Protoss units cannot split like marines/marauders or lings/banes/roaches can, every protoss unit bar Oracles and Voidrays are slow af. Those banelings coming at you? Better wait until theyre dead before sending in your zealots. Terran has widow mines? Better hope your zealots make it to the marines before the widow mines go off. My argument is purely centered around the fact that protoss units from a spellcasting perspective require a lot more micro than the other races. And yes it is focused more on the end of the mid game transitioning into late game where you see protoss juggling a ton of different spellcasters to keep up.

Like if you look at it this way in an “ideal” scenario:

Protoss would have stasis traps set up behind their army.
Protoss would cast guardian shield right before/start of the engagement.
Protoss would cast Disruptors right as the armies engaged.
Protoss would cast Forcefield to trap units into the disruptors AoE.
Protoss would cast stasis traps during the battle to help take units out of the fight / create an indestructible forcefield.
Protoss would drop High Templars out of their Warp Prism to then cast storm/feedback.

Like its not possible to do all of that in the opening 2-3 seconds of a fight. But if protoss players were capable of that their armies would fight in a true sense of the word of Quality vs Quantity (compared to the other races).

Instead what happens is:
Protoss fires off disruptor shots / storm.

If Protoss does significant damage without losing key units (high templars, disruptors) they can continue to push with reinforcements via warp prism.

But what usually happens is the disruptors miss / are succesfuly micro’d against and/or the High Templars get EMP’d and the fight is over. The protoss player doesn’t have sentries for emergency force fields, they don’t have stasis traps to fall back on or to pop during a fight they don’t have the APM for it, they just die.

Another big issue is that barring High Templars / Dark Templars (in the absence of detection) is that gateway units suck. They’re just utter trash and in late game compositions stalkers function as weak AA to protect Colossus or to snipe broodlords and Zealots function as pure meatshields / runbys. Sentries are a good unit but because they are yet another spell caster that require micro they just don’t exist.

Of course we know why this is, because the ability to nullify the defenders advantage by warping units wherever the fight is happening is huge. Its gamebreaking and to make it not OP as all hell, the units have to suck.

Blizzard through their own incompetence has made Protoss into a gimmick race, the entire concept of SC2 Protoss are one trick units with no general purpose units.

And thats why Voids / Airtoss is “OP”, because for once Protoss has a general purpose unit. Voidrays can be used against Air, they can be used against Ground, they can be used in early game compositions and late game compositions, they can harass, they can defend, they can ****ing move around the map at a speed thats not a snails pace.

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Terran micro require a way higher skill to execute than Protoss micro.

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Case in point. Zzzzz

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I’m going to stop you right there. SC2 is an extremely complicated game. You couldn’t possibly watch or play enough games to understand how even one strategy plays out on one map in all possible scenarios. Now consider the fact that there are hundreds of strategies and many maps and thousands of players each with a different set of strategies and a different way of doing those strategies. It gets worse. The composition of strategies is always changing, as players mix up their play to counter what they most commonly face (and what they most commonly face changes as a product of how each player changes how they play).

The way to look at the balance of SC2 is to look at an aggregate of all these outcomes, which is known as a win-rate. You’re thinking of maybe a dozen games you can remember in your recent memory. In reality you’re going to need 10k+ games to get a ROUGH estimate of balance / game design and it’s just not possible to do that without an aggregate.

Protoss has been ahead in win-rates in GM for over a year and a half. Thus it is factually false to claim that Protoss underperformed in the past 1.5 years. The buffs to the shield battery / void / etc came out of left field and took a slightly overpowered race and buffed it through the roof which completely broke the balance of the game.

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Instead we get derpruptors. Derping away. Always getting dicked by d1ckruptors.

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Are you talking about storm?