Since noone reads the damn description of the video and just about every negative comment in here is about Toss being weak against Terran, I'll once again reiterate it here: This video has nothing to do with balance, I simply dislike these 3 arguments that are getting repeated all over the shop. (Imo these actually hurt constructive balance discussions) I'm not saying Protoss is not too weak against Terran, nor am i talking about the powerlevel or Toss. This has nothing to do with the 3 points i'm talking about, the only time i mentioned balance is when i said Protoss is not too weak against Zerg! If you think Protoss is too weak and needs help, that doesn't contradict anything I say during the video. PS: Love you all, thx for all the comments and great discussion. I am trying my best to read them all, but I've never had that many before!
@@LamboSC2 We understand. A famous lad might love his fanbase but it gets too busy and there's so much to do ;). I'm sure most of us just appreciate the sheer will to listen to the community and, specially, the will to tackle common misconceptions, which I think is essential in our current world inside and outside of SC2, but sometimes might be difficult for experts like yourself because, you know, it's so obvious once you get a grasp of it but, sadly, that's not always the case for most people so, as a fan who would love to see a higher level of balance discussion, I hugely appreciate that you took the time to address these nonsensical arguments eventhough they might be obvious nonsense for some of us. I'm hoping you'll take us further deep into the balance discussion from a more educated and accurate point of view in the near future. Keep up the good work and thanks for reading :).
Hey lambo! Real question. 4.3k zerg here. I think that it is as important to balance at the ladder level as it is at the pro level. Have discussions been had about lowering the skill floor and what that might look like? Just feels like masters league is just swamped with toss and it gets old really fast playing against toss every game and they all do the same strats.
what trigger me: 1. toss is the easiest race to get to master/gm 2. highest lvl Protoss players are to stupid to win a tournement the last 5 years - sure they make some mistakes, but the other races too- still toss never won in top8 or god once win a big tournement lol
Yes lambo we need more Video from you especially education and how to beat, i Miss them so much, but your masterclass lambo is also fine and very good to watch, weiter so!
SC2 is way more popular to watch then to play, I think it's very comparable to the speedrunning scene in that way. The big problem that arises from that is that many people who are vocal about balance don't even play the game and just parrot things they've heard somewhere else.
Honestly this is what I hope someone like Lambo would discuss. People are talking about things they have absolute no idea about by just being incited by others. Just like real life politics.
@@polarised2720 SC2 is politics at this moment. Carries resounding resemblances to culture wars, all the way down to outrageous misinformation to own the other side and over the top emotionality.
It would greatly help if people just ignored everything on reddit. The SC2 subreddit is 99% americans who are maximum platinum rank and most of them dont play the game at all. We'd need to have more activity on the team liquid forums and have some integration so people can show their ranks in game and we know not to listen to the silver players. Dont know if it has anything like that. But reddit for sure is the wrong place to be.
@TheSuperappelflap 90%+ plain don’t play. Some people reply to posts “why nobody makes bc in tvp” by “because templars feedback them”. They simply love talking about things they have no idea about. Not just Reddit, I’m confident TH-cam is no different.
I think part of what creates this impression is that protoss is extremely fragile in so many ways. Get a couple early stalkers killed by concussive, leave a wall unit on stop command instead of hold position, miss a force field by 1 tile, the game usually ends within a minute. Each race has similar issues, but they usually take longer to finish off, which gives more wiggle room to bring it back. I'd be curious to see the data, but if we counted the times that casters said 'this player is behind' and then count how many times they turn it around and win, my bet would be that terran has the highest % comeback, and protoss the lowest.
@@keilahmartin8936 I don't think this is necessarily true either, but it's maybe nearer to reality than its simplistic counterpart, which is outright nonsense. This one, in my not that expert opinion, might at least enter in the realm of "debatable" issues. Although I think it might be quite a stretch since I was tired of watching Clem losing for not getting up a depot or not spotting a Nydus perfectly in time until he corrected that and got to world champion. Also, having your queens out of position just for a single beat and you're dead as a zerg at the highest levels, not even room for wiggling either so I think we can also find situations where this is true for other races, we saw this with Serral vs. Clem at the EWC. I reckon the debate might be on the side of "maybe there are 2-5 more situations which are equally unforgiving for Protoss" (the 2-5 part is referencing a meme, but you get the point ;)).
"when behind, dark shrine" is one of the most iconic phrases in sc2 and illustrates that protoss has always had a lot of comeback potential. You can also comeback with 1 big disruptor ball hit, with an air transition that isnt scouted in time, you can take a big fight, remax on zealot archon on the enemy side of the map with warpgates, and steamroll your opponent before he has a chance to remax. Or just yolo a warp prism into the enemy main and warp in 12 zealots. Every race can lose the game by making mistakes in the early game. As Terran if you go for gas first and a widow mine drop and it does no damage the game is pretty much over. As zerg if you make a lot of lings early and try to attack and it does nothing, you will likely lose. Same with going for early stalkers. You invest gas and production time into a harassment unit that needs to do some damage, kill units or workers, to make up for the opportunity cost. You could just make an adept to scout instead and focus more on spending minerals chrono boosting probes and getting a fast 3rd nexus. Also, yes, you can lose by missing a force field or not closing your wall, just like terran can lose a game by not raising the depot in the wall or zerg can lose against hellions or adepts by not blocking the entrance to the base with queens or an emergency evo chamber. That is not unique to protoss. It just happens more often to protoss players because they arent as consistent at doing those things correctly.
@@TheSuperappelflap I can't remember the last time I saw "when behind, dark shrine" actually win a game. Maybe it works in silver league, similar to how mass void rays was a meme. Protoss has the worst comeback potential of the three races. Terran has mules, Zerg can mass drone and easy tech switch. Protoss is heavily based in momentum. Lose your tech units and you're almost definitely screwed, because the base units of protoss just don't hold up on their own well at all. I've seen so few Protoss comebacks. It's far more common for the old players to upset Protoss instead of Protoss sneaking out a surprising win.
Regarding running out of control groups: Theres a Hotkey for selecting ur Hero unit. Works great in Coop. Mothership is a hero unit. Would be awesome to be able to select the Mothership through the hero hotkey.
Sometime I feel that the community needs a way to be regularly informed about the state of the meta by the pros. It would calm down the wildest takes. Because time and time again we saw that the loudest don't know anything.
Thanks for this video! I agree and always felt that Protoss was really hard to play at the highest level, perhaps the hardest. There's so many different units/abilities to control, and their movement speed/accel are all so varied, and losing any 1 important part of your army can lead to it crumbling to multiple things which you also need to be constantly aware of and ready for. Seeing someone like Reynor play PvZ vs Serral (and win) while controlling 2 armies well was really cool to see. There is definitely a lot of potential in playing Protoss, it's just so difficult to control everything perfectly and consistently. But someone with really good mechanics and multi-tasking and speed could unlock Protoss's power. Couple that with a strong solid game sense and macro game and defense, and also potentially having a wide range of trick builds or all-ins and cheeses, and you have 1 nasty Protoss. We've never seen a Protoss who can do it all! For example the old example Artosis uses, if you were to merge the macro/defensive play of the old Stats with sOs's big brain strategies or Parting's all-ins and amazing micro. You would get a scary good Protoss. Now imagine if they also had the mechanics/speed of someone like Reynor or Clem? There are a couple other design reasons that make them very fragile. For example, the classic "Protoss has no door" and how hard they can get wrekt by cracklings. And losing workers to harass leads to game ending damage forcing them to all-in much more easily than worker harass does for Terran or Zerg. And as mentioned in the video, the number of hotkeys you ideally need to effectively control your lategame army. You lose your 1 Oracle and you fukt up. You make 2 to be safe, well now you have 3 less supply for another unit. Of course there are players who deal well with these things too - Showtime deals well with zergling runbys because he has very well thought out sim-cities with gates/cannons/batteries and isn't susceptible to zerglings the way many other Protosses like Creator, Classic, herO are.
I hear your point about skill expression. My followup question is whether the opportunities for skill expression for Protoss can yield the same kind of results as other races. It's not just about making fewer mistakes... what does a god-tier play from Protoss look like? It's harder for me to think of examples, so that's why this explanation holds some weight for me. Maybe I'm wrong. Ultimately I think we're just looking for answers to the disparity between ladder and premier tournament results. Great video. I especially appreciated the part about game-losing mistakes. Very insightful.
Sure thing, thank you for your question, here's an example: If you watch how Maxpax executes his 4 gate blink it is different from all the other protosses, he can not only blink in while microing back every hurt stalker with his prism, but he can also split off stalkers or the prism to multitask. I haven't seen anyone outmultitask terrans like he does while they're trying to defend 2 bases, but maxpax can micro at 2 different locations like no other Protoss can. Whenever i ask Terran pros what they think of 4 gate blink, they tell me that it's fine unless it's maxpax playing it. Then it feels almost impossible to defend on some maps. We saw something similar before Parting went to the military, he was the best micro player ever imo, and he also had a deadly 4 gate blink where it looked completely different from other protosses and i would say that qualifies as god tier. As I said in the Video, i don't think there's a real disparity between Ladder and Tournament results. This is I believe where alot of the discussions (not only from the Protoss players, but also the Terrans or the Zergs that always claim Protoss is imba in the GM ladder) go wrong and get confusing :D
@@LamboSC2 Great example, thanks for taking the time. MaxPax is definitely the player that gives me the most hope. My impression of a disparity started with an assumption that Protoss was underpowered (based on premier tournaments and popular casts), only to discover that if anything they are overperforming on ladder. This makes it hard to argue for straight buffs to Protoss. But fans are eager to see a Protoss champion. Do you think the impression of underperformance in premier tournaments is an illusion or a statistical fluke? Or is it simply a shortage of god-tier Protoss talent?
How to explain that protoss have won only 14 major tournaments since 2017? Isn't that year when they seriously nerfed them? Another question is variety, which you did not explain at all. Terran can attack in so many ways. Protoss can't. Attack terran with slow zealots? Hope for blink stalker rush, maybe the opponent does not know? We have so little to work with in terms of expressing and creativity. Another question is that terrans units they use the most to win games are cheaper. Bloody hell, Lambo... Terran can lose 20 worker and recover with mules. Rushing Zerg is very difficult while all the other races have a variety of way they can rush protoss. In my opinion maxpax is the best micro player out there. I watched a game between him and Harstem vs Clem. Both trying to stop Clem tank push using force fields. They knew where and when Clem was coming and the units he had yet Maxpax could not stop him. The time before blink there is opening. And if Maxpax knows what is coming but can't stop it time and again we have a problem. Protoss don't have one super cheap unit like the ghost that can win games. Collosi costs a fortune while marines and medivac don't. Protoss loses collosi early and we they are done. U lose a medivac and you'll have one with 5 Marines in a minute. Cheaper too
@@accidentaltherapist6597losing disruptors = losing the game other races just instantly remax to 200/200 or delete your entire army with 2 ghosts with EMP lol
god tier protoss play is casting storms and disruptor balls to kill / force the enemy army to split while microing your colossi to keep them alive and shooting at the enemy units in range, not shooting at buildings or just standing around afk like they end up doing most of the time when protoss players use their 3 fingers to press 1 A and left click with their single control group that their entire army is on. and in the meantime micro stalkers and use feedback to snipe spellcasters and expensive air units and use oracle to reveal the enemy army movements and maybe have some tempest as well or the mothership with its abilities.
Protoss has the best attack move army with those death balls, but story changes when skills and spells comes into play which is crucial as level of play goes up. The amount of hotkeys and target skills you needed to activate to achieve a similar effects of that the opposing race is a big factor. These can be considered like overhead APM overhead tax. Example siege vs siege, tanks/lurkers only need to siegemode/burrow with benefits of longer range and burrow while disruptors needs to do a skillshot and Colossus needs to engage. EMP vs Feedback. AoE vs Single target skill. Ground Mobility. Marines and Hydras only need to activate stim/frenzy with the ability also giving the benefit of quick retreat/disengage. Most Zerg has passive speed updrades. Blink, Shade and Charge is a commitment, once you blink/charge/shade in, you are in or out. Energy regen. Viper: Consume. Multiple vipers to any nearby structure, Medivacs: +100% regen. Research. Passive. Energy Overcharge. Single target skill activited from the Nexus. 100 energy per minute of active play. This should get unlockable charges from tech structures(+1 cit adun and +1 from fleet beacon) EMP vs Storm vs Fungal. Fair? Nope, Ghost have cloak, Infestor have burrow move. Both can operate by themselves while H Templar is slow and needs Warp prism or army support. Automated turrets vs Pulsar for worker harrass. Turrets deployable fire and forget. Pulsar toggled skill, Oracle commits. List goes on.. Protoss does have to gamble more. But then I'm just plat Zerg lol.
There are a lot of points there that explain why toss is so tough at highest levels. As soon as those abilities are used, you know with 100% certainty what you need to do (fight or retreat until cool downs are back up). With other races you can threaten engagements and back out immediately if things go south/they were prepared. With toss you just lose if they were prepared because you have no escape tool.
Great video! I agree very strongly with the first two points; and in general with the dismissal of the kind of "design-based" arguments that often get the most cache on TL or Reddit. The only thing I'll say in the defense of some of these arguments is that I think that there were periods in SC2's history where the "gambling Protoss" thing was more real--though I think more because Protoss had a lot of strong rushes and strong micro players than because it was strictly impossible to play macro. But it hasn't been at all true since LotV and it's odd that it still gets brought up. The "skill ceiling" thing is as you point out mostly nonsense, though I do think that it brings up an interesting point about balance; namely, that we can't really balance around "infinite skill" but only around the regularly humanly achievable level of skill among the actual existing top of players, which will naturally shift over time. You seem to take the third argument more seriously, merely saying that it's "overblown," which I would agree. I would say there's validity to the idea that Protoss' "power unit" model can make them sometimes punishing, but also that those design concerns are overstated and it's quite possible to compensate for them with balance and that actual problems have always been based more around specific strats and interactions. You acknowledge as valid the really strong sticking-point areas for Protoss pros that have existed in the past--Raven pushes vs Colossus and widow-mine drops. I would even more agree that PvZ is not the problem and hasn't been the problem for Protoss probably since the Infestor was nerfed. Given all that, though, I'd be curious what you think is actually responsible for the underperformance of Protoss over the past few years. Not just the perception but the data I've seen across many different things seems very consistent that this has been one of the worst periods of statistical imbalance the scene has ever seen--not just Protoss not winning Premier tournaments (which is still notable but more variable) but not even getting into finals and being underrepresented in top 8s, etc. Protoss being overrepresented at lower pro levels and GM seems easy to explain with it being easier to play a minimal level; but what then is the countervailing explanation for Protoss underperforming at the very highest level?
@@SnobbinsFilms I could make an entire video on why i think Protoss is underperforming. I think it's a complex problem and there are many different factors coming into play to the point where I can't answer it swiftly in the youtube comment section.
Great video. Id like to know ur thoughts on the balance patch when it releases. There are very few pro zerg players who make yt videos, so any content is much appreciated.
In my opinion, a key issue for Protoss is the lack of synergy between their units. Protoss units are individually powerful, but the Protoss army doesn’t scale as well as other races when increasing the complexity of the army composition by adding different units. One example of this is the Zealot-Stalker duo. The Stalker, on the one hand, relies on its ranged burst damage to deal damage and then uses its mobility with Blink to fall back and regenerate shields. The Zealot, on the other hand, is designed to charge directly into enemy lines to deal damage. In contrast, Zerg has units like the Zergling and Baneling that synergize naturally. Both are melee units that aim to get on top of the enemy. Zerglings thrive when enemy units are split, maximizing their surface area, while Banelings force these splits due to their area-of-effect damage.
Zealots are good with stalkers. When fighting marauders they don't take the bonus dmg because they aren't armored therefor allowing the stalkers to get way more dps off. Zealots are also super strong when coupled with immortals and archons tanking for the stronger backline. The zealots cost minerals only and the archons cost basically only gas. If you were going to argue this point you'd need a way better example because the other races have much easier anti synergy examples. Medivacs don't heal mech units no synergy. I can't go ling hydra because they are both light units and get melted by colossus or helions.
Personally I think Protoss lacks a true siege unit, one that generates threat value just sitting there. Every unit needs to be micro'd around to get value, while Tanks and Lurkers, you can ignore to a certain extent once put into position. It takes a bit of pressure off the player's hockey limit.
The issue is lots of people f2 zlot stalker combo which is dumb. I use zlot hotkey 4 with sentry Stalker and collo hot key 1 with 2 for blink. Zlots and stalkers should never be clumped up with attack move. For example. Attack with stalkers, terran stims. Back off and charge in with lots and blink to the side with stalkers.
I agree with the PS and I would like another video about what you talked about there. Also, I always read the descriptions but keep in mind most people don't so you might want to put that in a pinned comment as well so everyone reads it xd. Edit: ok, just finished the video and saw that you told it in the end. Hoping to watch that one in the future. See you at HSC XXVI if you are going :). Kindly, A fan from Panama
I really like the vid very insightful. I have some questions and suggestions about specific mechanics of the game. I would love your opinion about it: - What do you think about games when Terran lifts every building and you cannot win because you don't have the spire? For Zerg building the spire takes a lot of time. I think when the Terran has no building on the ground, it should lose. It is one of the losing conditions (losing all your buildings), and they can get away with it. - What about ghost emp making the protoss units visible again (observers and dark templars)? I think Terran can always get away with no detection or has too many options to exploit to get it (scans, ravens, turret, and emp). - The new way of not getting supply blocks by using the command center and the new patch allow to repair the new depot. I think Terran has a free pass to not get supply blocks, being safe all game, and not losing productions at the end game. But I know they cannot tele-transport as a Protoss or Zerg so what is your take on that?. - There is one thing that protos lacks in my mind. That is the ability to completely destroy a mineral line fast (maybe Storm and Prism can help) and the ability to continue mining "fast" after an attack on their probes. So if a Zerg loses a lot of drones but survives a committed push can probe up fast and a Terran can mule, but what does a Protoss can do? I am not an expert and have those concerns, if you can enlight me, please :)
Probably a little late for this, but I'd like some insight on what you think about the maps and the map pool. What do you think about the 6 new maps? They seem to have a relatively wide range from 9 bases close to each other to just 6 bases being very spread apart. How the map splits in the lategame and how that favours which race. Why are so many finalists from the TLMC getting omitted in favour of maps that did not make the top 16 in the contest? Why are all 3 old maps that got rotated in on the same note of big and macro friendly to the point that mech players are celebrating? Why not bring in maps that historically were good for Zerg or Protoss? Would you prefer it if the maps were changed in different intervals to the balance changes, so the map pool's impact on balance can be separated more distinctly? Btw, I though your view on the skill ceiling based on your own experiences with Archon mode was pretty insightful. Your average SC2 scrub doesn't really get to see that perspective and can only deduce the high level balance from the tournament results.
In my opinion, balancing race based on the top 5 players and major tournament wins isn't a good idea, the sample size is just too small. I wish the patch focus would be 80% on creating interactive game play and 20% on balance. We see so much creativity and exciting game play when changes are made. I will accept that it may create imbalance until it gets figured out, or requires a patch.
the main issue with this is that the top 5 players (and more) have to make their living off of this video game, so if patches aren't designed around balance, and they mess up some of the win rates in certain matchups or what have you, it becomes really hard to make money and survive as players of affected races, which really does make it evident as to why the game is balanced around the pros, and rightfully so.
Nice vid with some colder and hotter takes! Actually a little motivation speech in the end with the game ending mistakes. I always chatch myself ranting about the opponent winning while making so many mistakes but yea my mistakes were worse. I would rly like to hear ur thoughts on the patchnotes cus of your great understanding of the game. I didnt hear of many other zergs talking about the patchnotes besides sortof so a little zerg perspective would also be noice.
Im not very good at sc2, and play all races about equal. I do the best with terran by far. When i play protoss it seems alot more difficult due to being so much more expensive and time consuming to transition to counter or to better/different tech than terran and zerg. I think that's why protoss rely on cheese and playing the same builds. Protoss can't just immediately decide to change things up midgame like terran and especially zerg can. Just one man's opinion though
This and also, both zerg and terran have very powerful siege units which allows for a good defensive play and defend while transitioning to the lategame, zerg even have creep spread which is risky to dive in too fast, the only defensive unit I can think of for protoss is disruptor and that's getting a nerf as well to the point it gives more damage to your own units than enemy units lol. If you think about it that's probably part of the reason professional tvz almost always goes to lategame where the map is divided and every base is being mined while pvz or pvt ends on the midgame much more often.
@@chloesmith4065 Yes, especially at lower levels like mine. I cannot blink micro stalkers like MaxPax, herO etc. Zealots just die. Adepts are useless. Sentries cost wayyyy to much gas, and are always at the front, then die. Archons just pop. DTs get slaughtered. HT can get EMP'd. Yet, Marine Marauder keep coming with impunity.
You can change it up mid game, if you have a big fight and lose a bunch of tech units you can remax on zealot archon in 20 seconds if you have enough gateways and then take out several enemy bases before they get a chance to remax. Even zerg while they can make a lot of units at the same time, those units still have to walk from the base they spawn at to the fight while your army is warped in on the enemy side of the map. Every time people complain about things protoss cant do they ignore several of the race advantages that protoss does get.
Thanks for the video! Please make one with patch changes analysis. If you can, could you please include your opinion on how Stalker/Queen/Shield Battery will affect cannon contain builds in ZvP? Seems like a huge buff to these kinds of builds (build with 2 gateway Stalkers in particular should be insanely good after the change) and I'm not sure anyone on the balance group really cares about these builds because they are used in pro matches very rarely.
I am a pure cannon rusher, it is a straight buff for 2gate pvz cannon rush, it still will not be a build I consider to be legitimately good for several reasons. One, hatchery creep buff, plus the map pool both make it rather difficult to get the setup, and offensive batteries still start with half energy. It might be in what I would consider to be a playable state for protoss, unlike where it was at before this upcoming patch
This. The by far best P player, the 4th best player in the world doesnt even play these tournaments, of course that will reduce P winrate in them. One day I hope we can see him dominate!
I think MaxPax came around and really changed the game for Protoss, he proved that it is possible for Protoss to succeed at the highest level. He really pioneered a bunch of tactics which are not quite commonplace, but he still does it the best, like the way he micros, the way he does runbys etc. All of this pretty much proves the points Lambo makes, that there is still a lot of room for improvement.
a few things zerg and protoss players have to do that terrans don't. build detection protect workers gain map control build top tier units control multiple spellcasters control groups set up fights/surrounds build counters to the enemy units stay up a base scout manually target their skills have cooldowns
very cool how in ZvT lategame, T just siege up liberator and tanks and only has to micro ghosts, and Z has to control vipers and infestors+ Hydra lurker or ling bane I'm convinced orbitals should take 1 supply or scan should cost minerals or have a cooldown
@@chloesmith4065 I think for sure scan should be shorter, espectially the detection window. I think mules should cost a supply, and max 1 mule per orbital.
Don't you ever get tired of your anti-terran dogma? Literally almost everything you listed are done by Terran players, almost as if they're core mechanics shared by all 3 races.
Nice Video, I Always Like to hear your opinion on Stuff Like that. I have a question: If there where a player of each race who would each be able to consistently play their race perfectly. Which player do you think would beat which other player? Or in other words: Played to perfection, which race would be the strongest?
I personally think Protoss is fine against Zerg, but maybe I'm blinded because i'm enjoy my PvZ games all the time, no matter if I lose or win. Btw I'm just a Dia2 toss enjoyer who loves the DT-rush into Archon-bomb 😇
I always wondered why I'd never seen archon mode of Protoss vs Reynor and just archon Terran. That's honestly fascinating that Protoss was better in that scenario
The thing is, you get rewarded so much more for demonstrating high skill with terran and zerg. Yeah toss can pick off a unit or two and take slightly better engagements if they play flawlessly but thats not as good as being amazing with marrines or having insane late game and creep spread with zerg.
@Taunt61 that's my point. Skill cap might be just as high but you don't get rewarded as much as a terran would fir playing insanely good and you get punished harder for playing bad.
Nice to see you again! Reynor focus is League of Legends, Elazer plays Stormgate, Serral? already thought zerg is so bad that every top player changes the game or leaves. only SHIN represents Zerg. I agree with you. for me ZvP is currently the match up that I sometimes just leave, I'd rather play ZvZ than ZvP. because it's so one sided. I would like to hear your thoughts on the patch, or rather I was waiting for your analysis. There is nothing for zerg where i say awesome. short hope for bl, but immediately removed. The only thing interesting is the terran turtle nerfs. But for PvZ turtle, not sure with sb buff.
I agree with your points. I don’t think protoss has to gamble to win, but that there are a smaller range of viable builds that aren’t significant gambles or coin flips due to nerfs over the years. This is what people are complaining about I think, particularly in the PvT matchup. As far as mistakes being too costly I think that perception came from the patches with the old widow mine or +2 banelings able to one shot probes. Another example is like when a prism with high templar is picked off and then it’s gg. Now perhaps you could say this is just a large mistake but the other races don’t really have these instances where losing one unit costs you the entire game. You could maybe argue losing a raven or viper could have a significant impact but it still wouldn’t end the game. Protoss is so reliant on their tech units, splash and spell casters because their core units don’t scale as well as the other races (there’s no equivalent of adrenal glands or, to a lesser degree, something like medivac energy). But these tech units have continued to be nerfed (immortal, disruptor) without compensating buffs to the basic units. People see these patterns and, rightly or wrongly, attribute it to why protoss cannot win premiere tournaments. I agree that protoss can play better though and there is more skill expression to be had. Let me ask you, do you think protoss players just aren’t as good at the game as the other races’ top players? Personally, I miss watching players like sOs, Zest and Parting, although I still think they would be unlikely to win a premiere tournament in the game’s current state.
Interesting video, I agree with all the points, with one "nitpick" if you can call it that: when people talk about Protoss doing better on ladder, I feel they're almost always talking about overrepresentation rather the performance of pros compared to their tournament performances. Of course this representation more a product of the race being easier to play at a Masters/low-mid GM level than any advantage given by the ladder environment. The issue I think is that Protoss has been doing poorly in major/premier tournaments (at least by the metric of winning them or at least making top 4) for a long time while ALSO being overrepresented at the top of the ladder, which is where the high-floor-low-skill-ceiling narrative probably came from. And most changes that would make Protoss stronger at the absolute top (like top-16/top-8 players) would also worsen the ladder situation so it is tricky. I feel like the balance council kinda agreed on this because of the way they reworked the disruptor and the replacement of battery overcharge. But from the commnunity's perspective, those are still overall nerfs even if only slight, and again they're nerfs to the race that has struggled to win or even reach top 4 in major/premier tournaments, plus they came with an immortal nerf and some terran buffs (at least in the first iteration of the PTR). I think PvZ has been fine for a long time, but TvP looked very bad until the last patch. It's better now, probably pretty close to balanced. Even so, I feel so hopeless watching the tournaments. As soon as it reaches the quarterfinals, it's like I don't want to watch because I'm certain that whatever Protoss (usually herO or Classic) I'm rooting for is going to lose, usually in a one-sided series. So what's the point if it's hopeless from the start? But the overall numbers say it shouldn't feel that hopeless. But it does, and that feeling has been validated so many times now. I'm rambling now, but once again, I enjoyed the video, and if you care to make one about the next patch once it is released I'd certainly love to watch it
Honestly I don't even think the overrepresentation is because protoss are easy just so much as they aren't annoying. Zerg are actually the race that has the best league distribution by zerg player percentage. That is the fewest % of total zerg are in bronze and silver compared to the others. I forget the exact stats but it was something liek a bottom 5% protoss/terran would be bronze while a bottom 5% zerg would be gold. Zerg also however has the fewest total players playing it. The reason for this isn't really that one is harder than the other, it's more that Zerg is just annoying to play. Injecting and creep spread isn't super difficult, it's just time consuming and tedious. Most people just prefer not to deal with that. But what it does give Zerg is a good APM sink that allows top players to always be doing something. That's pretty much what protoss needs at the higher levels, some kind of extra thing higher level players can use their APM on. Terrans have stutter stepping and generally responsive units. Protoss have issues with this because their units don't benefit from spam clicking, in fact it largely makes them worse. You'll cancel zealot charges, get your units missing attacks (since they don't fire instantly) and so forth. Really I feel the key is to make protoss late game units more agile in general. The biggest offenders for Protoss are the carriers/tempests and archons, which in late game battles just don't have many ways to benefit from micro. Just from watching skytoss it's hard to say if you're watching a top protoss like Her0 or some generic high masters/grandmaster player on ladder, because Her0 can't do a hell of a lot more with carriers than a diamond player can.
This presses these questions once again: Is SC2 punishing small mistakes too hard? Is doing eco damage sometimes too easy? Is the combat too fragile? Should there be more potential to have longer fights, and not lose half of the army to splash when not looking for a sec or splitting not well enough? Would it make SC2 more enjoyable for a lot of people if it was less like that? I think so. The emphasis on macro is also too big. The game would still be hard enough, but maybe even lower level players could then focus on strategy more.
Maybe the game should be less focused on having tons of APM sinks and focus more on actual strategy. You know, because its an RTS game. Let me right click on the marine icon in a barracks so it just auto produces marines. Add buttons to put units in formations or split them, so I dont need to choose between being able to play Terran at masters level and having permanent wrist injury for the rest of my life, or not having both of those 2 things. etc.
The perspective of Pro players doing the same on the ladder as they do in tournaments is interesting. I usually see people use that argument to talk about amature GM/master players. Like oooh EU GM is X percent toss, so any positive changes for toss would increase that percentage to a scarier number. But it wouldn't help, say Stats, who does the same on ladder as he does in tournaments. So your perspective reinforces the latter part of this, but I also wonder if it applies somewhat to the amatures. If a change won't do much to help pro player performance, how much can it do for the rank 175 EU protoss? Seems like unless the change is truly insane, then there should be some correlation, but I really dont know
One worker can set up a whole base including static defense in no time. A lot of splashdamage that is very easy to handle (Collossus and storm). Instant reinforcements with warpgate. That is a few i can think of directly :) When i tried protoss for a month, i got to a higher mmr than i did 10 years with zerg :D IF it wasn't for PvP, i would have switched races, but i like the little bugs :D
@@ledrash6079 I'm a d3 protoss main but when I casually play zerg I can get into masters though. I think one of the problems is what he talks about in the video. As terran or zerg you just press 3 and Q then make units. As toss you have to wait for warp off cd, move camera to pylon, turbo out units (that can be destroyed while being made) and then you are dealing with every unit having an ability in some way needing to be micro'd (stalkers, storm, rupters, prism, etc.) Imagine loading a medivac, unloading a medivac, stimming, or nydus, lurker, then siege and wiping out a mineral line while protoss doesn't have anything like that in their inventory.
@@spenserroxsox FYI d3 is like 3k mmr while masters being like 4.5k. It’s a huger gap than bronze vs d3, and the bug is after playing the placement matches you can possibly get master 3 no matter how it went. Plenty of people posting on Reddit that they got to masters while they have like 2k mmr.
I'm masters 2 on Zerg and Protoss, and masters 3 on Terran pretty much every season, all 3 races within 300~ mmr of each other at any given time, and by far my biggest complaint, and has been for a long time is that Zerg late game just feels way too fucking hard. To play a proper late game with Terran you just need to keep some units sieged in key spots, and rapid fire snipe/emp with ghosts and you'll fair well, with protoss you just move around with skytoss and storm the enemy's army, and maybe shoot some disrupter balls. But controlling vipers and infestors to even stand a shot against a protoss deathball or a thor ghost deathball feels nigh impossible at my level, and brood lords feel fucking useless. Outside of that, no complaints.
one tip to get more out of zerg in the late game is to abuse nydus harder. throw down nyduses in multiple spots on the map at the same time, outside enemy bases, in enemy bases, in corners of the map, and attack in lots of different spots with cracklings, maybe a few lurkers to burrow, a couple ravagers to bile down defenses. if you put everything in one ball and the enemy puts everything in one ball you cant use your units speed to outmaneuver, but if you can send small harassment forces in lots of spots and just run back into the nydus if the enemy army shows up, then you can use your advantage. and if they split up too much you can deathball up and push one position before the enemy can ball up.
Then what is the reason in your eyes why Protoss is underperforming regarding premier tournament wins? What would be for you the most promising play style a protoss should play to maximize his chance to win such a tournament? Similar to Serral with Zerg? Regarding Skill Ceiling: The skill ceiling can be limited by different factors: number of casters, number of usable control groups, how important is attention and how punishing is the lack of attention. I think the point of skill ceiling in late game is much more complex than you make it out to be. If a Protoss doesn't micro 10 zealots is this comparable to a Zerg not micro 40 cracklings? I don't think so. Because if both players notice at the same time, the Zerg can flee because of the unit speed. Zealots can't. Atleast Zerg can save more ressources. And if the Protoss race is designed in a way that it is harder to reach the ceiling than with the other two races, this is a problem. Don't you think your 1v2 example is also a problem? Because if Protoss would be played to its fullest potential it is impossible to beat. Doesn't this mean it has to be made (artificially) overly complicated now to limit Protoss players? Also, where are all three races in your opinion in regards to their own realistic skill ceiling? (Because to me it feels like you imply that Zergs and Terrans are just a step ahead and have their own race more figured out than Toss)
@Lambo People just hate that protoss doesn't feel powerful. Their units are supposed to be these epic super-advanced powerful psionic guys, and they feel like paper (especially against terran). People don't really care about balance, especially not at the top level, they care about the power fantasy. Protoss is supposed to be super strong and tanky, zerg is swarmy, terran opportunistic. To be frank, sc2 races are diametrically opposite to what they should feel like. Zerg uses the most spellcasters and is not really swarmy at all (should have 4-5 lings per egg, 2-3 hydras and be hard to micro, that kind of thing), protoss feels like paper (they do good damage) and sentries just SUCK (model and everything). Terran feels mostly fine but the fact that its tankier than toss feels SO bad and not "normal".
Im not convinced that Protoss isnt the most punishing race for mistakes.Two reasons: 1 - Protoss rely on few power units, if they loose them, its mostly over. The same cant be said for Zerg of Terran, their armies power is much more distributed evenly among units. The number of times i have seen in pro games Protoss wining then loosing dusruptors/collosus and dying to counterattack is big. On other hand if Zerg/ Terran loose armies they seem to able to come back more easily (i didnt say alwys, just easier) because Zerg can build so many units at once and Terran can hold a lot with planetaries/tanks, until they have an army again. 2- Economy. You say you loose 5 drones to oracle and the game is over, but when i watch pro games i dont see this. In fact i see an opposite picture : unless the oracle kills 3-4 drones, the protoss seems behind. Again the zerg seem to be able to come back from economic losses much easier, because they can produce mass drones. Sure their army will suffer, but often they can drone up, weather 1-2 minutes and be equal. Same for Terrans with mules and very hard to crack defenses, or just flying away with command centers. Protoss got chrono which helps but it doesnt seem equally good for economy
1. That is true, but also, the whole concept of getting "protossed" exists. Where protoss wins the fight, then just 1A and wins. 2. I think it takes some time before zerg even gets ahead if protoss expands quickly. With chronoboost, doesnt protoss get workers out quicker than zerg (since the queen needs a spawning pool and then needs to spawn, then needs time before the larvae pop)? Although say a runby happens, zealots kill all drones, in the midgame, yes, its very quick for zerg to make 16 new, but it still costs 16 larvae. Here it is not as fast for protoss to remake 16 probes after a runby, but with 3-4 nexuses, it goes quite quick, especially if used with chrono boost.
Thank you for taking your time to write out your thoughts. 1. I am mainly coming from a ZvP Standpoint, in which Protoss oftentimes loses tech units in macro games without instantly losing the game to zerg whatsoever, they also can get bailed out by recall from bad positioning cause zerg units don't kill immortal/archon intime for example. I have definitely seen Protoss players overstep with Colossus against Terran and get killed often enough, it usually is easier for Terran to disengage in that matchup since they have the quicker units, which leads to less "ah damn i lose now" moments, but i've seen plenty of game winning disruptors aswell. I think context matters alot, and I cannot talk with confidence about PvT, but i think we can agree to disagree about this in the PvZ Matchup :) 2. If you can show me a single game where one of the top Protosses is behind after killing 5 Drones with the very first oracle like i said in the video, I would really love to see it. With an unreal amount of ZvPs played and watched on this patch, i have yet to see that happen. Usually in this scenario Zerg equalises on drones much later than usual at the 60 or so mark and is set way behind compared to where they usually would be. Very often it straight up snowballs cause you can't afford drone production + the usual amount of queens + spores due to the mineral deficit you're working with so you end up losing more drones as an immediate result. Most of the time when herO or maxpax have an earlygame like that they make a forward gate and mass blinkstalkers as a finishing move since you don't get the critical mass of zerglings to combat this.
@@LamboSC2 I think PvZ is pretty balanced and maybe even Protoss favored. It's PvT that has real problems, results aside where Protoss hasn't won a LAN bo5 or bo7 against Terran in over 2 years, there are major issues with regards to how Protoss can instantly lose the game as soon as they try to move out across the map. Terran has the benefit of being everywhere on the map while Protoss can only be in maybe 2 places and a psuedo 3rd with a warp prism warp-in. The combination of medivacs and slow protoss units makes macro PvT extremely punishing. Maybe with the upcoming cyclone change phoenix openers can come back into the meta introducing a fast Protoss unit that can keep drops out, but the problem remains that it feels really bad to ever move out across the map with a large amount of colossus or immortals without feeling like you'll lose them anytime you get into a fight.
@@stefanfrank7426 If i am not allowed to think and have an opinion based on watching pro plays and my own ladder, then whats the point. I might be wrong, but thats my opinion.
Mules and instant supply drop gives terran way more chances than protoss or zerg. I'm honestly dumbfounded both of those abilities are still in the game. Especially when they are both for the same race
@sebastienguanzon4978 supply drop is used alot... even many pro gamers use it pretty consistently if they get supply blocked. I would even argue it's better than mules because its a huge jump in supply instantly and only costs energy
@@Moeron86 Terran will only ever use supply drop if they screw up or lose buildings. MULEs give 225 minerals and a depot only costs 100. You lose 125 minerals if you use a supply drop. That's absolutely massive in a pro game (or any game really). I'm not saying that MULEs are balanced, but they're Terran's macro mechanic, like larva or chrono boosts. The other races get more workers.
@@unrighteous8745 I wouldn't say "lose" 125 minerals although I understand how you mean. Actually they get 100 minerals for free, since their supply is increasing, but the minerals is still there in the mineral fields, they lose no minerals, just have a slightly lower income for a short bit which might not affect especially much (since they aren't using the ability in the early game, but when they have 3+ cc anyway).
intresting video, I do agree with pretty much everything you said, protoss isn't to weak or easy, but what has to be acknowledged is that protoss still consistently performs much worse then terran or zerg, and I'm not really talking about recent tournaments, or that protoss hasn't won a premier topurnament in idk how long. Protoss has been doing bad at the highest level for pretty much the entireity of lotv. If you look at the biggest tournaments in lotv, the big 3-4-500k tournaments like blizzcon, kato, gamers8/ewc etc. protoss just doesn't win those for like 7-8 years, and doesn't get many 2nd places either. Probably the main reason for that is simply that the top tosses are just isn't as good, stats and zest at their peak are just not as good as serral or maru. But it still sucks that teh biggest most hyped and exciting tournaments in sc2 just simply are never won by a protoss. Unfortunately there isn't really a fix to it, balance doesn't really matter in that regard, since there have been many different patches in lotv and protoss does bad in all of them. But it does explain why so many people keep crying about protoss being to weak or easy or gimicky or low skill ceiling, people are just frustrated that protoss always does a lot worse then terran or zerg
Ah yes, a 20:40 minute video telling us you're the problem with the sc2 balance council without telling me you're the problem with the sc2 balance council. "Protoss players are losing because they make mistakes" - Players like Dark top 8 every tournament accidentally building 2 infestation pits and lurker dens... move commanding through armies...
Lategame pvz is in a very annoying state where protoss cannot take an outright fight and must always snipe from a distance with tempests while zerg tries to abduct a unit here and there. It's not viewer friendly.
So, if,and I agree that protoss army is very hard to control, to many units that have to use their skill in the right positions. Maybe balance focus should be on making protoss units easier to control or dumber so they don't require so many control groups. Maybe even making some units have passive skills that buff others, or boost defense, like guardian shield. But no need to active it manually,maybe also adjust movement speed of units so the army moves in a better way. Because a protoss army have to be very complex, compared to Zerg and Terran.
Especially with Energy Recharge, Protoss now have a lot more flexibility in the early to mid game. I don't think we've seen peak Protoss yet either, but this patch should lead to more skill expression no question.
IMO Protoss you a basically have to make almost every unit. every game Zerg on the other hand have 2 paths pummel over an over with mass units so ling/bane hydra roch just send in over and over and wear down the enemy slowly, or Like protoss build a bit of everything and make a death ball. The former is easier Watch TVZ and Terrans will stay on MMM + ghost tanks for most of the game, Protoss to counter will bring out almost every unit which become in inevitable deathball
What I see on tournaments is just protoss can t get direct fights vs terran, also terran has much easier opportunity to deal dmg, any bio drops after 2- 2 upgrades are not possible to defend with just zelots. kill workers does make pressure, while protoss has to pay attention to defend also other bases, so in most games protoss stay on 4 bases trying to get ball colosus disruptor and get big timing push that is how protoss win vs terran. From my observation about balance: protoss cant tech up to carriers, can t use solid ground army bcs is getting countered by ghost/bio liberators, it s almost impossible to get map control as protoss, can t trade vs bio (you can a lot of time see that bio mass is trying to trigger zelot charge on them so they get slowed and easly killed, if protoss loose in mid game like 2 colosuss game is just over, storm are overall hard to use. Also you managed to say that on highest lvl we have maxpax and clem: from stats clem has 72% wr vs maxpax. I m not pro but for my opinion protoss in t vs z is too depended on high aoe units who arent that hard to counter (templar,disruptor,colosus)
The fundamental issue is that it isnt possible to balance at multiple levels and balance is very different at each of the many levels. I hate losing to someone who does the same braindead cheese every game and would be 1k mmr lower without it. This isnt a problem at pro play because that build would be known after 1 game. Give me the same luxury in plat. Show my opponent's last 3 build orders vs my race on the loading screen. Balance for the top 50 players and find non-balance methods of addressing lower level issues (people smurfing by quitting many games is another huge issue in plat)
if you consistently lose games against cheese builds that are popular at your skill level, then you are simply playing too greedy and should invest more into scouting, expand slower and make more units. especially if you perceive the enemy players skill level to be much lower than yours.
So im curious why you dont see protoss try hard, (controlling oracles and high templar in seperate control groups all game) is it just because they never "had" too? Like my race is easy thats why I play it, I dont want to do stupid try hard stuff. I think there has to be a correlation between cheese and protoss considering how extremely rare it is for them to win tourney's I think Zest in katowice should of won, but rogue got to see serral play zest first and then just did what serral did that worked and zests "cheese" (of really well thought out crisp attack timings) no one could stop that whole tourney until the "cheese" got figured out and then rogue wins. Without a well thought out "cheese" protoss almost never go on crazy win streaks. It can't just be because they are all lazy right? Protoss has flash without substance, and they are very snowbally the only consistent build that they have is colossus and that is hard countered by vipers and vikings. (the V-V's) I think without those counters protoss would be very strong, but it feels like everything protoss has thats "strong" has a direct very hard counter. Carriers? absolutely shit on by corrupters. colossus? waste of space if you cant end the game before hive. zealots? just one spine crawler in a choke with a lurker. high templar? ultras/banes (i like the bane templar interaction though I think its good) arcons? short range little losers (but very powerful at certain times) immortals? nerfs. like constant nerfs. So i don't know, maybe you are right they are just bad and lazy, but i feel like something has to be off. Do other races have such direct hard counters?
To me its not really a question if its an issue with being limba or not, the issues mainly comes down to just how the game rolls. The mistakes a Terran or Zerg can make can be a bit higher than what a Protoss can make early or mid game. I would rather they fix that so that the game was a bit more balance in terms of back and forth game play were all races meet more towards the end vs one having a edge in one section of the game over the other. Currently, a Terran does a drop, it can pretty much win a game at times, and that seems very unfun to see and watch when compare to a drop from a zerg or protoss player in terms of over all damage. For me, I see a protoss player build colsi and then pretty much shut down by a single air unit such as the viking is just bad design for how many they can make follow by up with how cheap they are and combo against other units. Where is the back and forth of them having to fight that out? Phoenix I would think would be the counter to them, but they are way lower damage and range making them really only a scouting unit in comparison. Stalkers are the answer, but they are already busy fighting everything else the other two races are throwing at them. Idk, just seems like the balance was mix during design when really they should've tried to match it for both ends of the candle stick. Aka, open the game up a bit more for protoss players to do more "stuff" like in the new balance patch by allowing them to get some extra spells off in the early game or add in units for everyone that can explore and expand in even more new ways. I am a zerg player, and to be frank, I didnt have too much trouble beating other protoss players. It was mainly Terran and other Zerg players I had issues with only because I knew what units really hurt the Protoss players the most and at what times.
With all due respect you’re not a Protoss main-you’re a Zerg. Try playing a bunch of PvT as a Protoss in late game and you’ll understand the frustration Protoss players have. We can literally kill a full bio Terran army and Terran can easily bounce back from that because they have massive unit to supply advantage versus Protoss. Meaning they can stick with low tier 1 units and keep up with if not totally beat tier 2 and 3 units from Protoss. The ONLY thing Protoss had to even the playing field is the disruptor-which even THAT got nerfed recently. If you watch the recent Clem vs Maxpax games MP hitting all those marauders with a disrupter hit and having them still live, then to heal up and end up winning the game was just frustrating to watch. That wasn’t a mistake that’s an imbalance-since even when Maxpax was beating Clem in supply Clem could effortlessly keep up late in the game whereas if maxpax’s army goes down we’re stuck on gateway units that hold no chance against tier 1 upgraded bio units from Terran. It’s not just a common misconception it’s a repeated observation from thousands of viewers..and it’s not for anyone particularly the balance council to dismiss time and time again. Open to feedback below!
First of, this video has nothing to do with the balance patch, i'm talking about current gameplay where disruptors one shot marauders. Secondly i am not talking about Protoss not being too weak in tvp, i simply think there are 3 statements that i hear all over the shop, 2 of which are most certainly wrong and the last one i feel is overblown. If you think the powerlevel of Protoss is too low against Terran, that is a fine take and doesn't contradict anything i said in my video. I do not think Protoss is weak against Zerg, that's the only balance statement i made during the video. I know i'm a Zerg player, that's why i'm not making any claims for the PvT matchup. I offraced a decent amount with both races up to 6.2k mmr throughout the last year, and I still don't feel anywhere close to confident enough in my understanding of the matchup, where i would ever claim the matchup is fine or imbalanced.
@ Ok agreed 👍 I also don’t feel Protoss is underpowered versus Zerg in some cases can be quite powerful depending on the micro and other factors. Thanks for your reply
The main problem for me is that starcraft needs to be fun for people to continue watching it. If the best strategy for terran is to just turtle and build ghosts, each game feels similar, so it is unfun to watch
Protoss winrates early game are below average, especially around the 3-6 minute mark, which is the time of harassment or all ins. This gives the impression of a hurdle Protoss players must climb over before they gain an advantage, and by the time the mid game hits and the advantage swings back towards Protoss favour (at around 10+ minutes), early game performance can be as determining a factor in the outcome of the game. But Protoss does have the advantage from 10 minutes onwards, and that's probably to do with warpgate. Warp gate allows Protoss to reinforce outside their enemy base, it allows them to warp in units to flank, and it allows them to warp in reinforcements at a safe location away from enemy forces or immediately close to the fight as per requirement. Other races reinforcements have to move from their production buildings along the most efficient path to where they were ordered, so if you have 8 marines produced at the same time, they will likely bump and push each other until a line is formed (depending on the length of their journey) causing them to trickle in less efficiently, whereas Protoss can summon a cluster of units together. There is substantially more nuance to this, like how there is a higher volume of Protoss players in general which can warp statistics, but warp gate should account for a large portion of Protoss advantage at the 10+ minute mark.
I am not so sure about that. Would like to view your sources :) Cannonrushes or zealot all ins kill more zergs than 12 pool would. Protoss has, imho, a much easier way to cheese out another player than for example zerg has.
@ledrash6079 It's true that Zergs win the most in the first 5min then Terrans from 5min to 10min, on the ladder from Bronze to Diamond (source is sc2pulse nephest). The zerg winrate has to just be Ling floods. The Terran one is partly tank pushes but also many other things (marauders, cloak banshee) The problem with all pros commentary on these issues is that the masses opinions are not based on GM games. Solution: show the opponent's last 3 build orders vs your race in the loading screen (this simulates pro level play where they can study previous games)
When people are saying that protoss are good on ladder they rather refer to overall representation of race in GM, not particular pro players. Not awhile ago around 45% of GM players were tosses .
The root issue with the "single mistake" for protoss is actually the mule. The mule is too easy to use and too good. No other race can lose 10 workers and then have their mineral rate _increase_
I want to give you some take from a diamond player. I am a diamond 1 player on both EU and NA, so kind of a true diamond player here. If you play against protoss in diamond you will be surprised by how bad they are with reacting to what they scout as well as playing from behind. Zerg and Terran players are a lot better in this regard. Is it possible that by playing protoss, you somehow reached a certain level where your skill doesn't belong and results in being worse than your opponent.
So here is the real problem. Yes the risk thing is true. But the bigger problem is over building stalkers and disruptors. You can crush the ladder with disruptors (I'm assuming) but you can't win tournaments with them, so their practice is actually negative practice. The other massively overused unit is stalkers. They are early-window unit only. Their value is mobility, and individual blinks. But you can't do that at 200 supply. When they don't build stalkers and disruptors, they win. Stalkers in the late game, are only good for blinking away and leaving your good units to get surrounded and die. Terran does by far the least to get the best results. Zerg gets good money results, but they are using everything their race offers, and even getting more out of ultras than terrans do out of BCs.
Zergs don't overbuild anything, other than a few too many banelings in the early game. Terran is by far the easiest to play. They do the least, they have infinite comeback mechanics to make up for all their gaffes. They win so many games on very low tech. It's true that protoss has to dance carefully the entire game and one slip up and they lose a massively more expensive army to stimmed bio.
I think lambo is underestimating how hard zerg is. Harder than protoss. It's just better players pick zerg. Lesser players are intimidated by zerg, or fail in zerg. Although protoss is close, and harder than terran.
@@sakesaurus TY. The problem is unlike roaches, protoss will often keep building stalkers into the late game. Not tru for terran though, their units all remain useful.
protoss players for the level they can play at in terms of micro and macro are absolutely abysmal with disruptors, they literally throw them out with no pressure and get dodged, or they throw them with the army and blink away again with no pressure and leave the disruptors to get sniped. if they used them like a good blitz crank player did in league of legends, i guarantee you protoss would the most op race. but they seeem to not grasp the concept, ive seen pro matches where the protoss could be using them with the pressure from stalker collosus they get scared pull back, shoot them useessly again.
To be honest, for me as a casual diamond player protoss feels extremelly difficult to play compared to terran and zerg. Zerg feels the easiest by far and terran feels also quite easy with a couple of solid build orders. Protoss need so much intense micro, that it completelly blows my mind how people pretend it is the easiest race to play. I would argue that protoss is the worst for beginners, as you have much fewer units and you need to pay close atention to every fight and all your mistakes are punished much harder.
Protoss is a strange one. On one hand I think protoss skill expression is lower than the other races but on the other I think it is potentially much higher. No matter the skill level we are limited to having two eyes, two hands and 10fingers. I think in the hands of AI with unlimited apm and multitasking toss is the strongest race.
Maybe "race balance" is a myth. Everyone can pick any race, if protoss was too weak it wouldn't even exist at the highest level. Balance in SC2 is wild. You don't have the simple cavalry/archer/spearmen triangle of power, and the 3 factions play very differently macrowise. Imbalance manifests itself in unit composition or abusive strategies. For example, the wings of liberty fungal was imbalanced because, given enough resources, you could almost instantly destroy an entire army and the opponent couldn't even react. That's not fun for the opponent as there is no counter. Sure, it's a Zerg unit, but if we needed a nerf for this ability, it was to make the game more enjoyable, not to balance tournament statistics. If the race has indeed a lower general MMR, it only means that at the top level, it's more difficult to win consistantly, but given the matchmaking system, a 4800 protoss is the same in terms of challenge as a 4800 Terran, no matter the level of skill required.
This was such a convincing and well thought out counter argument. This lack of substance in your comment is the same reason protoss doesn't win tournaments. Just lazy.
The elephant in the room is as protoss it's so incredibly hard to defend your third the game becomes stupid. If your oracle dies, you're gone, if your warp prism dies your timing attack is gone. if you stay back and turtle you die. I like how if my opponent makes a bunch of hydras that are good against my flying units I die so easy if I don't make the same flying units. One way to correct the balance of the game is the chrono boost, make it a little more expensive but way more powerful. As of right now the game forces you to chrono boost everything like an idiot, I wish it was as good as mule. If my opponent kills my Third Nexus it takes so long for it to rebuild it's not fun. Should I chrono this upgrade? Or Chrono probes? Let the player choose! Give options to the player! As of right now 3/3 Marines and 2/2 hydras feels impossible, because my upgrades take twelve hours to complete AND I have to saturate an impossible to defend third.
I am speaking specifically about Pro Play and not about your games, third bases are not hard to defend in PvZ whatsoever. You can lose an oracle and the third base is still fine, it happens all the time. Also obviously a timing attack is over if your warpprism dies, why does that feel unfair to you? It's like saying my entire taxi timing is dead cause i lost the queendrop that is my only antiair against the oracles.
Some thoughts and questions to muse over. 1. You say that protoss performance on ladder and in tournaments are the same. Citing that they are common in GM but at the very top you see Maru/Serral. Tournaments have the same distribution of plenty of protoss up untill RO8 (roughly) and then, at the very top, we see Maru/Serral etc. The argument that you're trying to counter here says the exact same thing. What you've described here is the issue people are complaining about. "The reason protoss performs well on ladder and really bad later on in the tournaments is because it's a gambly race". The part about them doing well on ladder is simply reffering to the quantity of toss in GM, and the part about doing really bad in tournaments is about the lack of 1st placings in major tournaments. Both of these parts are true, you even presented it in your video. The community argument is then trying to explain why this distribution is true by stating that protoss is a "gambly race". Do you have a different explanation for this distrubution? Try to tackle the topic of "gambly race". The way I see it a gambly race could be because of two reasons. Either the race can't hold their own in standard matches aka they are overall weaker in a "fair" fight against the other races. Or the "gambly" strategies that the race has access to are stronger than the other races "gambly" strategies, leaving the toss to lean into these strategies more often. The first explanation would naturally mean that protoss standard strength should be buffed in order to stop the "gambly" playstyle. The second explanation would mean that protoss "gambly" strats should be nerfed to force them to play more traditional standard styles. Which one do you believe is more true? Can you think of a different explanation to why a race would rely heavily on gambling relative to the other races? 2. HerO and maxpax, as well as many protoss players on the ladder, play replayable, pre-planned builds/playstyles (standard). This is a claim that you make in the video and I agree, but again, this isn't a response to the broader community complaint. HerO and Maxpax, as well as many protoss players on the ladder are, in fact, not winning tournaments. HerO and Maxpax are the best players the protoss race has right now and they cannot make it past the best players of the other races, whilst playing standard. A reasonable conclussion to this would be that, in order to win a finals against a serral or a clem, the protoss player would have to rely on a gamble. There are other conclusions to draw though, such as HerO and Maxpax just not beeing skilled enough, the current map pool is simply bad for toss, or that toss is simply a weaker race than the other two. What conclusion do you draw from this? How come the best protoss player can't beat the top terrans/zerg? 3. Protoss skill sealing. I don't really have much to add here. I agree that even the top players are not reaching the top potential of the game. However, to humour the argument. I have a feeling that people are particularily reffering to the maxed out late-game protoss army. Carriers and tempest have limited micro potential, and most of the skill of using them is army rotation and picking the right fights. The oracle controll can be greatly improved even at the top level but lets ask our selfs this, would perfect oracle controll really change the outcome of a game? At the end of the day it is JUST an oracle and revelation won't magically turn the tide of a fight. The rest of the toss army falls into seemingly pre-scripted behaviours, high templar/disruptors use feedback and storm/nova to ward of threats, zealots are sent on runbys when the enemy is distracted and any other units (stalker, archon, immortal) attack their prefered target when the fight begins. This is the algorithm that protoss players follow in the late game, and the pros have landed on this algorithm through years of improving and minmaxing as a community. For reference terran marines always have to split reactionary to what the enemy is doing. The ghost have to choose to fight, to run, to snipe or to EMP depending on the fight scenario. And the medivacs can, at any time, pick up any assortment of terran units and reposition them, escape with them, or fly them into the enemy base for an attack. Zerg players set up surrounds on their enemy, how you move you army to set up this surround is different in every game. Zerg spellcasters have a abilities that combo well. Fungal, para bomb, abduct, neural, blinding cloud, microshroud (lol). All these spells see use, in some games the vipers barely use blinding cloud in favour of abduct/parabomb, in some games neural is never even researched because all you need is fungal. The point is that these units have choices to make where as a high templar will always use storm and feedback the same way in every game. I want to be clear that I'm not talking about the difficutily or the amount of buttons one has to press. I'm talking about units that have maleable roles in an army and don't just function the same every fight, protoss seemingly have less of these types of units. Point number 3 was kinda written off the cuff, but I feel like when I play toss lategame the only thing that matters in stepping in and out with my air units and storming when the enemy tries to punish, whilst having my main army at the ready if the enemy collapses. I also play a lot of terran and whenever I get to the late game I feel like I'm way more free, ghost are fast and can move around with cloak to try to get a juicy EMP before a fight. Setting up my army for a fight is a fun puzzle, making sure the tanks and the libs play to the strength of the map. Sometimes I have drops ready to distract my oponent sometimes I have less bio and lean more into viking for air controll. It just feels like I have way more choices and decisions (wheather they be the correct or incorrect ones, their still mine to make).
To your first point, the correct option is to nerf the gambly playstyles and buff the traditional playstyles. People have been saying this for years. Nerf or change the highly volatile tactics protoss can use to get free wins if they work or get auto loss if they dont work. PTR patch is taking one step in the right direction by making the disruptor ball bigger and with less damage. It is now more consistently doing an amount of damage instead of being 100 or 0. Now if they just delete this unit from the multplayer game and replace it with the reaver from the LOTV campaign, it would be even more consistent. The same goes for warpgate and warp prisms, it promotes gambly plays. Try to proxy a pylon and a gateway and pray to RNG that your opponent doesnt scout it and you can cheese a quick win, or fly a warp prism into the enemy main base and hope it can warp in 12 zealots to kill tech or camp the production before it gets shot down. Youre literally just praying for a random chance that your opponent wont have units in position to stop you from getting the free win, and if they do, then you lose. The solution to this is to create a situation where its beneficial for protoss to not rely on the warpgate gimmick every game. I would say, when warpgate research is finished in the cyber core, dont automatically convert all gateways to warpgate. Instead, make the protoss player decide for himself, and make it a trade off. Lower the production time from gateways, and increase cooldown on warpgate a little bit, so you can either make units faster at home, or warp units in on the map at a slower rate, but have instant reinforcement. This would force protoss players to actually think about how to play the game instead of warping in mass zealots on the map with rapid fire on cooldown. Then you can maybe buff the gateway units stats a little bit to compensate for the loss of flexibility, and then protoss can actually fight on the map without being at a permanent disadvantage because their core army units are bad. Also warpin time from warp prisms should be longer, it shouldnt be possible to warp in 12 units from 1 prism in a few seconds. and this is one of the main reasons why gateway units have to have bad stats in order to balance the game. More tanky zealots and stalkers would be completely broken if you could mass warp then into your enemy's base from a single dropship that doesnt cost any gas, and this makes the gambly playstyle problem worse. Another gambling problem is that observers take robo build time, so you are punished for making them and have to gamble that your opponent wont snipe the few observers you can crank out. A suggestion I like is to add back the observatory building from brood war and make it possible to make observers from the nexus instead of from the robo bay. This would further reduce reliance of protoss on crossing their fingers and gambling on their low observer count to push out more robo units. 2. hero and maxpax both play very aggressive styles. aggressive playstyles by nature are more volatile than defensive styles. if a player like Stats or Rain was on top of the protoss ranking then we would see more consistency. But Stats isnt in the best shape right now, neither is Classic, and Rain retired from sc2 to play brood war. 3. this problem mostly comes down to the big protoss units costing too much supply for their power level. a maxed out protoss army is smaller and has less damage and hitpoints than a zerg or terran army with equal army supply. especially when you take into account emp in pvt. but its also in pvz. 4 zerglings cost the same supply as one zealot, have comparable hp, but, especially with adrenal upgrade, do way more damage. the only supply efficient unit protoss has is the high templar. that one punches above its weight class but is extremely vulnerable and everything else is supply inefficient. to address this the supply cost of units like tempests and colossus needs to be lower. which is slowly being done with tempest going from 5 to 4 supply, but for example disruptors were increased in supply some patches ago to reduce massing of that unit without reducing supply of other units to compensate.
Yeah, this skill ceiling is too low for Terrans. Siege up, press stim and go for it, whilst as toss you have to do a a multitude of things. Not to mention if you are ever out of position ONCE. your screwed. No let's be honest, your fucked.
Since noone reads the damn description of the video and just about every negative comment in here is about Toss being weak against Terran, I'll once again reiterate it here:
This video has nothing to do with balance, I simply dislike these 3 arguments that are getting repeated all over the shop. (Imo these actually hurt constructive balance discussions)
I'm not saying Protoss is not too weak against Terran, nor am i talking about the powerlevel or Toss. This has nothing to do with the 3 points i'm talking about, the only time i mentioned balance is when i said Protoss is not too weak against Zerg!
If you think Protoss is too weak and needs help, that doesn't contradict anything I say during the video.
PS: Love you all, thx for all the comments and great discussion. I am trying my best to read them all, but I've never had that many before!
@@LamboSC2 We understand. A famous lad might love his fanbase but it gets too busy and there's so much to do ;). I'm sure most of us just appreciate the sheer will to listen to the community and, specially, the will to tackle common misconceptions, which I think is essential in our current world inside and outside of SC2, but sometimes might be difficult for experts like yourself because, you know, it's so obvious once you get a grasp of it but, sadly, that's not always the case for most people so, as a fan who would love to see a higher level of balance discussion, I hugely appreciate that you took the time to address these nonsensical arguments eventhough they might be obvious nonsense for some of us.
I'm hoping you'll take us further deep into the balance discussion from a more educated and accurate point of view in the near future.
Keep up the good work and thanks for reading :).
Hey lambo! Real question. 4.3k zerg here. I think that it is as important to balance at the ladder level as it is at the pro level. Have discussions been had about lowering the skill floor and what that might look like? Just feels like masters league is just swamped with toss and it gets old really fast playing against toss every game and they all do the same strats.
what trigger me: 1. toss is the easiest race to get to master/gm 2. highest lvl Protoss players are to stupid to win a tournement the last 5 years - sure they make some mistakes, but the other races too- still toss never won in top8 or god once win a big tournement lol
For the record if your question is “should I make a video about X” my answer is always yes because more Lambo is always good
@@ProxyDysto you not only didnt watch the whole video, you didnt even read the comment you are responding too.
Yes lambo we need more Video from you especially education and how to beat, i Miss them so much, but your masterclass lambo is also fine and very good to watch, weiter so!
I saw a pro have a discussion video , I clicked. Wish more pro’s would do these kinds of videos
SC2 is way more popular to watch then to play, I think it's very comparable to the speedrunning scene in that way. The big problem that arises from that is that many people who are vocal about balance don't even play the game and just parrot things they've heard somewhere else.
Honestly this is what I hope someone like Lambo would discuss. People are talking about things they have absolute no idea about by just being incited by others. Just like real life politics.
@@polarised2720 SC2 is politics at this moment. Carries resounding resemblances to culture wars, all the way down to outrageous misinformation to own the other side and over the top emotionality.
It would greatly help if people just ignored everything on reddit. The SC2 subreddit is 99% americans who are maximum platinum rank and most of them dont play the game at all. We'd need to have more activity on the team liquid forums and have some integration so people can show their ranks in game and we know not to listen to the silver players. Dont know if it has anything like that. But reddit for sure is the wrong place to be.
@TheSuperappelflap 90%+ plain don’t play. Some people reply to posts “why nobody makes bc in tvp” by “because templars feedback them”. They simply love talking about things they have no idea about. Not just Reddit, I’m confident TH-cam is no different.
I think part of what creates this impression is that protoss is extremely fragile in so many ways. Get a couple early stalkers killed by concussive, leave a wall unit on stop command instead of hold position, miss a force field by 1 tile, the game usually ends within a minute.
Each race has similar issues, but they usually take longer to finish off, which gives more wiggle room to bring it back.
I'd be curious to see the data, but if we counted the times that casters said 'this player is behind' and then count how many times they turn it around and win, my bet would be that terran has the highest % comeback, and protoss the lowest.
@@keilahmartin8936 I don't think this is necessarily true either, but it's maybe nearer to reality than its simplistic counterpart, which is outright nonsense. This one, in my not that expert opinion, might at least enter in the realm of "debatable" issues. Although I think it might be quite a stretch since I was tired of watching Clem losing for not getting up a depot or not spotting a Nydus perfectly in time until he corrected that and got to world champion. Also, having your queens out of position just for a single beat and you're dead as a zerg at the highest levels, not even room for wiggling either so I think we can also find situations where this is true for other races, we saw this with Serral vs. Clem at the EWC. I reckon the debate might be on the side of "maybe there are 2-5 more situations which are equally unforgiving for Protoss" (the 2-5 part is referencing a meme, but you get the point ;)).
Nah, i think you're just rephrasing making mistakes as "being fragile"
"when behind, dark shrine" is one of the most iconic phrases in sc2 and illustrates that protoss has always had a lot of comeback potential. You can also comeback with 1 big disruptor ball hit, with an air transition that isnt scouted in time, you can take a big fight, remax on zealot archon on the enemy side of the map with warpgates, and steamroll your opponent before he has a chance to remax. Or just yolo a warp prism into the enemy main and warp in 12 zealots.
Every race can lose the game by making mistakes in the early game. As Terran if you go for gas first and a widow mine drop and it does no damage the game is pretty much over. As zerg if you make a lot of lings early and try to attack and it does nothing, you will likely lose. Same with going for early stalkers. You invest gas and production time into a harassment unit that needs to do some damage, kill units or workers, to make up for the opportunity cost. You could just make an adept to scout instead and focus more on spending minerals chrono boosting probes and getting a fast 3rd nexus.
Also, yes, you can lose by missing a force field or not closing your wall, just like terran can lose a game by not raising the depot in the wall or zerg can lose against hellions or adepts by not blocking the entrance to the base with queens or an emergency evo chamber.
That is not unique to protoss. It just happens more often to protoss players because they arent as consistent at doing those things correctly.
@@TheSuperappelflap I can't remember the last time I saw "when behind, dark shrine" actually win a game. Maybe it works in silver league, similar to how mass void rays was a meme. Protoss has the worst comeback potential of the three races. Terran has mules, Zerg can mass drone and easy tech switch. Protoss is heavily based in momentum. Lose your tech units and you're almost definitely screwed, because the base units of protoss just don't hold up on their own well at all.
I've seen so few Protoss comebacks. It's far more common for the old players to upset Protoss instead of Protoss sneaking out a surprising win.
@@taragnor What? Terran is pretty well known to be the momentum race.
Regarding running out of control groups:
Theres a Hotkey for selecting ur Hero unit. Works great in Coop. Mothership is a hero unit. Would be awesome to be able to select the Mothership through the hero hotkey.
I love these thoughtful breakdowns. I appreciate the insight as a diamond league player lol. Thanks lambo
Sometime I feel that the community needs a way to be regularly informed about the state of the meta by the pros. It would calm down the wildest takes. Because time and time again we saw that the loudest don't know anything.
Totally agreed
@@chantale9573 the loudest don’t even play the game. They just talk like talking politics and feel good about it.
Thanks for this video! I agree and always felt that Protoss was really hard to play at the highest level, perhaps the hardest.
There's so many different units/abilities to control, and their movement speed/accel are all so varied, and losing any 1 important part of your army can lead to it crumbling to multiple things which you also need to be constantly aware of and ready for.
Seeing someone like Reynor play PvZ vs Serral (and win) while controlling 2 armies well was really cool to see. There is definitely a lot of potential in playing Protoss, it's just so difficult to control everything perfectly and consistently. But someone with really good mechanics and multi-tasking and speed could unlock Protoss's power. Couple that with a strong solid game sense and macro game and defense, and also potentially having a wide range of trick builds or all-ins and cheeses, and you have 1 nasty Protoss. We've never seen a Protoss who can do it all!
For example the old example Artosis uses, if you were to merge the macro/defensive play of the old Stats with sOs's big brain strategies or Parting's all-ins and amazing micro. You would get a scary good Protoss. Now imagine if they also had the mechanics/speed of someone like Reynor or Clem?
There are a couple other design reasons that make them very fragile. For example, the classic "Protoss has no door" and how hard they can get wrekt by cracklings. And losing workers to harass leads to game ending damage forcing them to all-in much more easily than worker harass does for Terran or Zerg. And as mentioned in the video, the number of hotkeys you ideally need to effectively control your lategame army. You lose your 1 Oracle and you fukt up. You make 2 to be safe, well now you have 3 less supply for another unit. Of course there are players who deal well with these things too - Showtime deals well with zergling runbys because he has very well thought out sim-cities with gates/cannons/batteries and isn't susceptible to zerglings the way many other Protosses like Creator, Classic, herO are.
I hear your point about skill expression. My followup question is whether the opportunities for skill expression for Protoss can yield the same kind of results as other races. It's not just about making fewer mistakes... what does a god-tier play from Protoss look like? It's harder for me to think of examples, so that's why this explanation holds some weight for me. Maybe I'm wrong. Ultimately I think we're just looking for answers to the disparity between ladder and premier tournament results.
Great video. I especially appreciated the part about game-losing mistakes. Very insightful.
Sure thing, thank you for your question, here's an example:
If you watch how Maxpax executes his 4 gate blink it is different from all the other protosses, he can not only blink in while microing back every hurt stalker with his prism, but he can also split off stalkers or the prism to multitask. I haven't seen anyone outmultitask terrans like he does while they're trying to defend 2 bases, but maxpax can micro at 2 different locations like no other Protoss can. Whenever i ask Terran pros what they think of 4 gate blink, they tell me that it's fine unless it's maxpax playing it. Then it feels almost impossible to defend on some maps.
We saw something similar before Parting went to the military, he was the best micro player ever imo, and he also had a deadly 4 gate blink where it looked completely different from other protosses and i would say that qualifies as god tier.
As I said in the Video, i don't think there's a real disparity between Ladder and Tournament results. This is I believe where alot of the discussions (not only from the Protoss players, but also the Terrans or the Zergs that always claim Protoss is imba in the GM ladder) go wrong and get confusing :D
@@LamboSC2 Great example, thanks for taking the time. MaxPax is definitely the player that gives me the most hope.
My impression of a disparity started with an assumption that Protoss was underpowered (based on premier tournaments and popular casts), only to discover that if anything they are overperforming on ladder. This makes it hard to argue for straight buffs to Protoss. But fans are eager to see a Protoss champion.
Do you think the impression of underperformance in premier tournaments is an illusion or a statistical fluke? Or is it simply a shortage of god-tier Protoss talent?
How to explain that protoss have won only 14 major tournaments since 2017? Isn't that year when they seriously nerfed them? Another question is variety, which you did not explain at all. Terran can attack in so many ways. Protoss can't. Attack terran with slow zealots? Hope for blink stalker rush, maybe the opponent does not know? We have so little to work with in terms of expressing and creativity. Another question is that terrans units they use the most to win games are cheaper. Bloody hell, Lambo... Terran can lose 20 worker and recover with mules. Rushing Zerg is very difficult while all the other races have a variety of way they can rush protoss. In my opinion maxpax is the best micro player out there. I watched a game between him and Harstem vs Clem. Both trying to stop Clem tank push using force fields. They knew where and when Clem was coming and the units he had yet Maxpax could not stop him. The time before blink there is opening. And if Maxpax knows what is coming but can't stop it time and again we have a problem. Protoss don't have one super cheap unit like the ghost that can win games. Collosi costs a fortune while marines and medivac don't. Protoss loses collosi early and we they are done. U lose a medivac and you'll have one with 5 Marines in a minute. Cheaper too
@@accidentaltherapist6597losing disruptors = losing the game
other races just instantly remax to 200/200 or delete your entire army with 2 ghosts with EMP lol
god tier protoss play is casting storms and disruptor balls to kill / force the enemy army to split while microing your colossi to keep them alive and shooting at the enemy units in range, not shooting at buildings or just standing around afk like they end up doing most of the time when protoss players use their 3 fingers to press 1 A and left click with their single control group that their entire army is on.
and in the meantime micro stalkers and use feedback to snipe spellcasters and expensive air units and use oracle to reveal the enemy army movements and maybe have some tempest as well or the mothership with its abilities.
Yooo a new patch video would be amazing, but I’m curious about your thoughts on the maps in particular. Much thanks, cabal leader.
Love to see these videos from you! Thanks
Protoss has the best attack move army with those death balls, but story changes when skills and spells comes into play which is crucial as level of play goes up.
The amount of hotkeys and target skills you needed to activate to achieve a similar effects of that the opposing race is a big factor. These can be considered like overhead APM overhead tax.
Example
siege vs siege,
tanks/lurkers only need to siegemode/burrow with benefits of longer range and burrow while disruptors needs to do a skillshot and Colossus needs to engage.
EMP vs Feedback.
AoE vs Single target skill.
Ground Mobility.
Marines and Hydras only need to activate stim/frenzy with the ability also giving the benefit of quick retreat/disengage. Most Zerg has passive speed updrades.
Blink, Shade and Charge is a commitment, once you blink/charge/shade in, you are in or out.
Energy regen.
Viper: Consume. Multiple vipers to any nearby structure, Medivacs: +100% regen. Research. Passive.
Energy Overcharge. Single target skill activited from the Nexus. 100 energy per minute of active play. This should get unlockable charges from tech structures(+1 cit adun and +1 from fleet beacon)
EMP vs Storm vs Fungal. Fair? Nope, Ghost have cloak, Infestor have burrow move. Both can operate by themselves while H Templar is slow and needs Warp prism or army support.
Automated turrets vs Pulsar for worker harrass. Turrets deployable fire and forget. Pulsar toggled skill, Oracle commits.
List goes on..
Protoss does have to gamble more. But then I'm just plat Zerg lol.
There are a lot of points there that explain why toss is so tough at highest levels. As soon as those abilities are used, you know with 100% certainty what you need to do (fight or retreat until cool downs are back up). With other races you can threaten engagements and back out immediately if things go south/they were prepared. With toss you just lose if they were prepared because you have no escape tool.
@@ZatralTMF Recall not good enough? Honest question
Great video! I agree very strongly with the first two points; and in general with the dismissal of the kind of "design-based" arguments that often get the most cache on TL or Reddit. The only thing I'll say in the defense of some of these arguments is that I think that there were periods in SC2's history where the "gambling Protoss" thing was more real--though I think more because Protoss had a lot of strong rushes and strong micro players than because it was strictly impossible to play macro. But it hasn't been at all true since LotV and it's odd that it still gets brought up. The "skill ceiling" thing is as you point out mostly nonsense, though I do think that it brings up an interesting point about balance; namely, that we can't really balance around "infinite skill" but only around the regularly humanly achievable level of skill among the actual existing top of players, which will naturally shift over time.
You seem to take the third argument more seriously, merely saying that it's "overblown," which I would agree. I would say there's validity to the idea that Protoss' "power unit" model can make them sometimes punishing, but also that those design concerns are overstated and it's quite possible to compensate for them with balance and that actual problems have always been based more around specific strats and interactions. You acknowledge as valid the really strong sticking-point areas for Protoss pros that have existed in the past--Raven pushes vs Colossus and widow-mine drops. I would even more agree that PvZ is not the problem and hasn't been the problem for Protoss probably since the Infestor was nerfed.
Given all that, though, I'd be curious what you think is actually responsible for the underperformance of Protoss over the past few years. Not just the perception but the data I've seen across many different things seems very consistent that this has been one of the worst periods of statistical imbalance the scene has ever seen--not just Protoss not winning Premier tournaments (which is still notable but more variable) but not even getting into finals and being underrepresented in top 8s, etc. Protoss being overrepresented at lower pro levels and GM seems easy to explain with it being easier to play a minimal level; but what then is the countervailing explanation for Protoss underperforming at the very highest level?
@@SnobbinsFilms I could make an entire video on why i think Protoss is underperforming.
I think it's a complex problem and there are many different factors coming into play to the point where I can't answer it swiftly in the youtube comment section.
@@LamboSC2 Yes, please do!
Great video. Id like to know ur thoughts on the balance patch when it releases. There are very few pro zerg players who make yt videos, so any content is much appreciated.
In my opinion, a key issue for Protoss is the lack of synergy between their units. Protoss units are individually powerful, but the Protoss army doesn’t scale as well as other races when increasing the complexity of the army composition by adding different units.
One example of this is the Zealot-Stalker duo. The Stalker, on the one hand, relies on its ranged burst damage to deal damage and then uses its mobility with Blink to fall back and regenerate shields. The Zealot, on the other hand, is designed to charge directly into enemy lines to deal damage.
In contrast, Zerg has units like the Zergling and Baneling that synergize naturally. Both are melee units that aim to get on top of the enemy. Zerglings thrive when enemy units are split, maximizing their surface area, while Banelings force these splits due to their area-of-effect damage.
Zealots are good with stalkers. When fighting marauders they don't take the bonus dmg because they aren't armored therefor allowing the stalkers to get way more dps off. Zealots are also super strong when coupled with immortals and archons tanking for the stronger backline. The zealots cost minerals only and the archons cost basically only gas. If you were going to argue this point you'd need a way better example because the other races have much easier anti synergy examples.
Medivacs don't heal mech units no synergy.
I can't go ling hydra because they are both light units and get melted by colossus or helions.
you forgot where I storm my zealots lol
Personally I think Protoss lacks a true siege unit, one that generates threat value just sitting there. Every unit needs to be micro'd around to get value, while Tanks and Lurkers, you can ignore to a certain extent once put into position. It takes a bit of pressure off the player's hockey limit.
The issue is lots of people f2 zlot stalker combo which is dumb.
I use zlot hotkey 4 with sentry
Stalker and collo hot key 1 with 2 for blink.
Zlots and stalkers should never be clumped up with attack move.
For example. Attack with stalkers, terran stims. Back off and charge in with lots and blink to the side with stalkers.
Yo lambo I really like your videos returned to the game after years - stuck at diamond losing to 4 raxx rushes, any tip how to deal with that ?
I agree with the PS and I would like another video about what you talked about there. Also, I always read the descriptions but keep in mind most people don't so you might want to put that in a pinned comment as well so everyone reads it xd.
Edit: ok, just finished the video and saw that you told it in the end. Hoping to watch that one in the future. See you at HSC XXVI if you are going :).
Kindly,
A fan from Panama
Thank you, and you were 100% right i pinned a comment just now :D
I really like the vid very insightful. I have some questions and suggestions about specific mechanics of the game. I would love your opinion about it:
- What do you think about games when Terran lifts every building and you cannot win because you don't have the spire? For Zerg building the spire takes a lot of time. I think when the Terran has no building on the ground, it should lose. It is one of the losing conditions (losing all your buildings), and they can get away with it.
- What about ghost emp making the protoss units visible again (observers and dark templars)? I think Terran can always get away with no detection or has too many options to exploit to get it (scans, ravens, turret, and emp).
- The new way of not getting supply blocks by using the command center and the new patch allow to repair the new depot.
I think Terran has a free pass to not get supply blocks, being safe all game, and not losing productions at the end game. But I know they cannot tele-transport as a Protoss or Zerg so what is your take on that?.
- There is one thing that protos lacks in my mind. That is the ability to completely destroy a mineral line fast (maybe Storm and Prism can help) and the ability to continue mining "fast" after an attack on their probes. So if a Zerg loses a lot of drones but survives a committed push can probe up fast and a Terran can mule, but what does a Protoss can do?
I am not an expert and have those concerns, if you can enlight me, please :)
Probably a little late for this, but I'd like some insight on what you think about the maps and the map pool.
What do you think about the 6 new maps? They seem to have a relatively wide range from 9 bases close to each other to just 6 bases being very spread apart. How the map splits in the lategame and how that favours which race.
Why are so many finalists from the TLMC getting omitted in favour of maps that did not make the top 16 in the contest?
Why are all 3 old maps that got rotated in on the same note of big and macro friendly to the point that mech players are celebrating? Why not bring in maps that historically were good for Zerg or Protoss?
Would you prefer it if the maps were changed in different intervals to the balance changes, so the map pool's impact on balance can be separated more distinctly?
Btw, I though your view on the skill ceiling based on your own experiences with Archon mode was pretty insightful. Your average SC2 scrub doesn't really get to see that perspective and can only deduce the high level balance from the tournament results.
In my opinion, balancing race based on the top 5 players and major tournament wins isn't a good idea, the sample size is just too small. I wish the patch focus would be 80% on creating interactive game play and 20% on balance. We see so much creativity and exciting game play when changes are made. I will accept that it may create imbalance until it gets figured out, or requires a patch.
the main issue with this is that the top 5 players (and more) have to make their living off of this video game, so if patches aren't designed around balance, and they mess up some of the win rates in certain matchups or what have you, it becomes really hard to make money and survive as players of affected races, which really does make it evident as to why the game is balanced around the pros, and rightfully so.
Nice vid with some colder and hotter takes!
Actually a little motivation speech in the end with the game ending mistakes. I always chatch myself ranting about the opponent winning while making so many mistakes but yea my mistakes were worse.
I would rly like to hear ur thoughts on the patchnotes cus of your great understanding of the game. I didnt hear of many other zergs talking about the patchnotes besides sortof so a little zerg perspective would also be noice.
Right? Seems very Terran Protoss based.
The queen nerf hit my build order like a truck and no one else seemed to care x')
Im not very good at sc2, and play all races about equal. I do the best with terran by far. When i play protoss it seems alot more difficult due to being so much more expensive and time consuming to transition to counter or to better/different tech than terran and zerg. I think that's why protoss rely on cheese and playing the same builds. Protoss can't just immediately decide to change things up midgame like terran and especially zerg can.
Just one man's opinion though
The gas prices of Protoss units are absolutely ridiculous. Then terran makes t1 marines for 50 minerals and wipes your gas units away.
This and also, both zerg and terran have very powerful siege units which allows for a good defensive play and defend while transitioning to the lategame, zerg even have creep spread which is risky to dive in too fast, the only defensive unit I can think of for protoss is disruptor and that's getting a nerf as well to the point it gives more damage to your own units than enemy units lol. If you think about it that's probably part of the reason professional tvz almost always goes to lategame where the map is divided and every base is being mined while pvz or pvt ends on the midgame much more often.
@@JohnMelon-qg9tjThe power of stim + a-move is actually insane
@@chloesmith4065 Yes, especially at lower levels like mine. I cannot blink micro stalkers like MaxPax, herO etc. Zealots just die. Adepts are useless. Sentries cost wayyyy to much gas, and are always at the front, then die. Archons just pop. DTs get slaughtered. HT can get EMP'd. Yet, Marine Marauder keep coming with impunity.
You can change it up mid game, if you have a big fight and lose a bunch of tech units you can remax on zealot archon in 20 seconds if you have enough gateways and then take out several enemy bases before they get a chance to remax. Even zerg while they can make a lot of units at the same time, those units still have to walk from the base they spawn at to the fight while your army is warped in on the enemy side of the map.
Every time people complain about things protoss cant do they ignore several of the race advantages that protoss does get.
Thanks for the video! Please make one with patch changes analysis. If you can, could you please include your opinion on how Stalker/Queen/Shield Battery will affect cannon contain builds in ZvP? Seems like a huge buff to these kinds of builds (build with 2 gateway Stalkers in particular should be insanely good after the change) and I'm not sure anyone on the balance group really cares about these builds because they are used in pro matches very rarely.
I am a pure cannon rusher, it is a straight buff for 2gate pvz cannon rush, it still will not be a build I consider to be legitimately good for several reasons. One, hatchery creep buff, plus the map pool both make it rather difficult to get the setup, and offensive batteries still start with half energy. It might be in what I would consider to be a playable state for protoss, unlike where it was at before this upcoming patch
It also doesnt help that maxpax doesnt do offline, so the best protoss is never in any tournaments
This. The by far best P player, the 4th best player in the world doesnt even play these tournaments, of course that will reduce P winrate in them. One day I hope we can see him dominate!
He's also played in 20 or so premier online tournaments and won 0 so... I don't think it'd make a difference
I think MaxPax came around and really changed the game for Protoss, he proved that it is possible for Protoss to succeed at the highest level. He really pioneered a bunch of tactics which are not quite commonplace, but he still does it the best, like the way he micros, the way he does runbys etc. All of this pretty much proves the points Lambo makes, that there is still a lot of room for improvement.
Yes, that all sounds very reasonable, but it's more fun to be unreasonable. And yes of cause I want more Videos from you talking about Starcraft.
Please do a patch balance review i really always appreciate your input
Thank you for giving your honest view.
a few things zerg and protoss players have to do that terrans don't.
build detection
protect workers
gain map control
build top tier units
control multiple spellcasters
control groups
set up fights/surrounds
build counters to the enemy units
stay up a base
scout
manually target their skills
have cooldowns
The zerg remax mechanic is not a real thing that exists.
very cool how in ZvT lategame, T just siege up liberator and tanks and only has to micro ghosts, and Z has to control vipers and infestors+ Hydra lurker or ling bane
I'm convinced orbitals should take 1 supply or scan should cost minerals or have a cooldown
@@chloesmith4065 I think for sure scan should be shorter, espectially the detection window. I think mules should cost a supply, and max 1 mule per orbital.
Don't you ever get tired of your anti-terran dogma? Literally almost everything you listed are done by Terran players, almost as if they're core mechanics shared by all 3 races.
@@sebastienguanzon4978 All three races, except terran. It takes me just a few seconds.
Nice Video, I Always Like to hear your opinion on Stuff Like that. I have a question: If there where a player of each race who would each be able to consistently play their race perfectly. Which player do you think would beat which other player? Or in other words: Played to perfection, which race would be the strongest?
I like that mr robot camera angle
I personally think Protoss is fine against Zerg, but maybe I'm blinded because i'm enjoy my PvZ games all the time, no matter if I lose or win. Btw I'm just a Dia2 toss enjoyer who loves the DT-rush into Archon-bomb 😇
I'm with you brother, pvz has been decent on either side for a few patches. PvT has felt terrible for years.
"It's easy to get decent and that's the level required to get into tournaments"
Me in Diamond league...
I always wondered why I'd never seen archon mode of Protoss vs Reynor and just archon Terran. That's honestly fascinating that Protoss was better in that scenario
What do I want the most in a patch? Stronger cheeses from Terran and Zerg. (I play Protoss)
The thing is, you get rewarded so much more for demonstrating high skill with terran and zerg. Yeah toss can pick off a unit or two and take slightly better engagements if they play flawlessly but thats not as good as being amazing with marrines or having insane late game and creep spread with zerg.
that's exactly what he said is not true. Protoss skill ceiling is as high as other races', if not more so.
@Taunt61 that's my point. Skill cap might be just as high but you don't get rewarded as much as a terran would fir playing insanely good and you get punished harder for playing bad.
Nice to see you again!
Reynor focus is League of Legends, Elazer plays Stormgate, Serral? already thought zerg is so bad that every top player changes the game or leaves. only SHIN represents Zerg.
I agree with you. for me ZvP is currently the match up that I sometimes just leave, I'd rather play ZvZ than ZvP. because it's so one sided.
I would like to hear your thoughts on the patch, or rather I was waiting for your analysis. There is nothing for zerg where i say awesome. short hope for bl, but immediately removed. The only thing interesting is the terran turtle nerfs. But for PvZ turtle, not sure with sb buff.
Zerg players when they dont win every single tournament: "Fine, I'll just quit then!"
PLEASE DO THE VIDEO ABOUT THE FINAL PATCH WHEN IT COMES OUT, YOU ARE THE BEST!!!!!!
Great video, Lambo! And because of that I also think you should do a video about the new patch!
How many guitars do you have? You pretty good player?
Would love to see new patch video, I'm sure am not the only one
I would like a patchnote Video :)
I would love to hear your thoughts on the patch notes when they're final and sooner as well if you're interested.
I agree with your points. I don’t think protoss has to gamble to win, but that there are a smaller range of viable builds that aren’t significant gambles or coin flips due to nerfs over the years. This is what people are complaining about I think, particularly in the PvT matchup.
As far as mistakes being too costly I think that perception came from the patches with the old widow mine or +2 banelings able to one shot probes. Another example is like when a prism with high templar is picked off and then it’s gg. Now perhaps you could say this is just a large mistake but the other races don’t really have these instances where losing one unit costs you the entire game. You could maybe argue losing a raven or viper could have a significant impact but it still wouldn’t end the game.
Protoss is so reliant on their tech units, splash and spell casters because their core units don’t scale as well as the other races (there’s no equivalent of adrenal glands or, to a lesser degree, something like medivac energy). But these tech units have continued to be nerfed (immortal, disruptor) without compensating buffs to the basic units. People see these patterns and, rightly or wrongly, attribute it to why protoss cannot win premiere tournaments.
I agree that protoss can play better though and there is more skill expression to be had. Let me ask you, do you think protoss players just aren’t as good at the game as the other races’ top players? Personally, I miss watching players like sOs, Zest and Parting, although I still think they would be unlikely to win a premiere tournament in the game’s current state.
Interesting video, I agree with all the points, with one "nitpick" if you can call it that: when people talk about Protoss doing better on ladder, I feel they're almost always talking about overrepresentation rather the performance of pros compared to their tournament performances. Of course this representation more a product of the race being easier to play at a Masters/low-mid GM level than any advantage given by the ladder environment.
The issue I think is that Protoss has been doing poorly in major/premier tournaments (at least by the metric of winning them or at least making top 4) for a long time while ALSO being overrepresented at the top of the ladder, which is where the high-floor-low-skill-ceiling narrative probably came from. And most changes that would make Protoss stronger at the absolute top (like top-16/top-8 players) would also worsen the ladder situation so it is tricky.
I feel like the balance council kinda agreed on this because of the way they reworked the disruptor and the replacement of battery overcharge. But from the commnunity's perspective, those are still overall nerfs even if only slight, and again they're nerfs to the race that has struggled to win or even reach top 4 in major/premier tournaments, plus they came with an immortal nerf and some terran buffs (at least in the first iteration of the PTR).
I think PvZ has been fine for a long time, but TvP looked very bad until the last patch. It's better now, probably pretty close to balanced. Even so, I feel so hopeless watching the tournaments. As soon as it reaches the quarterfinals, it's like I don't want to watch because I'm certain that whatever Protoss (usually herO or Classic) I'm rooting for is going to lose, usually in a one-sided series. So what's the point if it's hopeless from the start? But the overall numbers say it shouldn't feel that hopeless. But it does, and that feeling has been validated so many times now.
I'm rambling now, but once again, I enjoyed the video, and if you care to make one about the next patch once it is released I'd certainly love to watch it
Honestly I don't even think the overrepresentation is because protoss are easy just so much as they aren't annoying. Zerg are actually the race that has the best league distribution by zerg player percentage. That is the fewest % of total zerg are in bronze and silver compared to the others. I forget the exact stats but it was something liek a bottom 5% protoss/terran would be bronze while a bottom 5% zerg would be gold. Zerg also however has the fewest total players playing it.
The reason for this isn't really that one is harder than the other, it's more that Zerg is just annoying to play. Injecting and creep spread isn't super difficult, it's just time consuming and tedious. Most people just prefer not to deal with that. But what it does give Zerg is a good APM sink that allows top players to always be doing something.
That's pretty much what protoss needs at the higher levels, some kind of extra thing higher level players can use their APM on. Terrans have stutter stepping and generally responsive units. Protoss have issues with this because their units don't benefit from spam clicking, in fact it largely makes them worse. You'll cancel zealot charges, get your units missing attacks (since they don't fire instantly) and so forth. Really I feel the key is to make protoss late game units more agile in general. The biggest offenders for Protoss are the carriers/tempests and archons, which in late game battles just don't have many ways to benefit from micro. Just from watching skytoss it's hard to say if you're watching a top protoss like Her0 or some generic high masters/grandmaster player on ladder, because Her0 can't do a hell of a lot more with carriers than a diamond player can.
This presses these questions once again: Is SC2 punishing small mistakes too hard? Is doing eco damage sometimes too easy? Is the combat too fragile? Should there be more potential to have longer fights, and not lose half of the army to splash when not looking for a sec or splitting not well enough? Would it make SC2 more enjoyable for a lot of people if it was less like that? I think so. The emphasis on macro is also too big. The game would still be hard enough, but maybe even lower level players could then focus on strategy more.
Maybe the game should be less focused on having tons of APM sinks and focus more on actual strategy. You know, because its an RTS game. Let me right click on the marine icon in a barracks so it just auto produces marines. Add buttons to put units in formations or split them, so I dont need to choose between being able to play Terran at masters level and having permanent wrist injury for the rest of my life, or not having both of those 2 things. etc.
Great video, I always enjoy watching your takes on the game :)
The perspective of Pro players doing the same on the ladder as they do in tournaments is interesting. I usually see people use that argument to talk about amature GM/master players. Like oooh EU GM is X percent toss, so any positive changes for toss would increase that percentage to a scarier number. But it wouldn't help, say Stats, who does the same on ladder as he does in tournaments. So your perspective reinforces the latter part of this, but I also wonder if it applies somewhat to the amatures. If a change won't do much to help pro player performance, how much can it do for the rank 175 EU protoss? Seems like unless the change is truly insane, then there should be some correlation, but I really dont know
People say: protoss has a low skill ceiling
But i feel like itd be super helpful if we could identify the exact reason why this is
One worker can set up a whole base including static defense in no time.
A lot of splashdamage that is very easy to handle (Collossus and storm).
Instant reinforcements with warpgate.
That is a few i can think of directly :) When i tried protoss for a month, i got to a higher mmr than i did 10 years with zerg :D
IF it wasn't for PvP, i would have switched races, but i like the little bugs :D
@@ledrash6079 I'm a d3 protoss main but when I casually play zerg I can get into masters though. I think one of the problems is what he talks about in the video. As terran or zerg you just press 3 and Q then make units. As toss you have to wait for warp off cd, move camera to pylon, turbo out units (that can be destroyed while being made) and then you are dealing with every unit having an ability in some way needing to be micro'd (stalkers, storm, rupters, prism, etc.) Imagine loading a medivac, unloading a medivac, stimming, or nydus, lurker, then siege and wiping out a mineral line while protoss doesn't have anything like that in their inventory.
@@spenserroxsox You get into masters likely due to the masters bug. Look at your Zerg mmr there will be an indicator for the real league.
@@spenserroxsox FYI d3 is like 3k mmr while masters being like 4.5k. It’s a huger gap than bronze vs d3, and the bug is after playing the placement matches you can possibly get master 3 no matter how it went. Plenty of people posting on Reddit that they got to masters while they have like 2k mmr.
@polarised2720 yes I mean i can get 4k mmr on zerg easy. I didn't get placed in masters with zerg. I placed diamond 3 and climbed there in a month.
I'm masters 2 on Zerg and Protoss, and masters 3 on Terran pretty much every season, all 3 races within 300~ mmr of each other at any given time, and by far my biggest complaint, and has been for a long time is that Zerg late game just feels way too fucking hard. To play a proper late game with Terran you just need to keep some units sieged in key spots, and rapid fire snipe/emp with ghosts and you'll fair well, with protoss you just move around with skytoss and storm the enemy's army, and maybe shoot some disrupter balls. But controlling vipers and infestors to even stand a shot against a protoss deathball or a thor ghost deathball feels nigh impossible at my level, and brood lords feel fucking useless. Outside of that, no complaints.
one tip to get more out of zerg in the late game is to abuse nydus harder. throw down nyduses in multiple spots on the map at the same time, outside enemy bases, in enemy bases, in corners of the map, and attack in lots of different spots with cracklings, maybe a few lurkers to burrow, a couple ravagers to bile down defenses. if you put everything in one ball and the enemy puts everything in one ball you cant use your units speed to outmaneuver, but if you can send small harassment forces in lots of spots and just run back into the nydus if the enemy army shows up, then you can use your advantage.
and if they split up too much you can deathball up and push one position before the enemy can ball up.
Thanks for the vod! Please make one on the patch note if and when you can
Then what is the reason in your eyes why Protoss is underperforming regarding premier tournament wins?
What would be for you the most promising play style a protoss should play to maximize his chance to win such a tournament? Similar to Serral with Zerg?
Regarding Skill Ceiling: The skill ceiling can be limited by different factors: number of casters, number of usable control groups, how important is attention and how punishing is the lack of attention. I think the point of skill ceiling in late game is much more complex than you make it out to be. If a Protoss doesn't micro 10 zealots is this comparable to a Zerg not micro 40 cracklings? I don't think so. Because if both players notice at the same time, the Zerg can flee because of the unit speed. Zealots can't. Atleast Zerg can save more ressources.
And if the Protoss race is designed in a way that it is harder to reach the ceiling than with the other two races, this is a problem. Don't you think your 1v2 example is also a problem? Because if Protoss would be played to its fullest potential it is impossible to beat. Doesn't this mean it has to be made (artificially) overly complicated now to limit Protoss players?
Also, where are all three races in your opinion in regards to their own realistic skill ceiling? (Because to me it feels like you imply that Zergs and Terrans are just a step ahead and have their own race more figured out than Toss)
@Lambo People just hate that protoss doesn't feel powerful. Their units are supposed to be these epic super-advanced powerful psionic guys, and they feel like paper (especially against terran).
People don't really care about balance, especially not at the top level, they care about the power fantasy. Protoss is supposed to be super strong and tanky, zerg is swarmy, terran opportunistic.
To be frank, sc2 races are diametrically opposite to what they should feel like. Zerg uses the most spellcasters and is not really swarmy at all (should have 4-5 lings per egg, 2-3 hydras and be hard to micro, that kind of thing), protoss feels like paper (they do good damage) and sentries just SUCK (model and everything). Terran feels mostly fine but the fact that its tankier than toss feels SO bad and not "normal".
Im not convinced that Protoss isnt the most punishing race for mistakes.Two reasons:
1 - Protoss rely on few power units, if they loose them, its mostly over. The same cant be said for Zerg of Terran, their armies power is much more distributed evenly among units. The number of times i have seen in pro games Protoss wining then loosing dusruptors/collosus and dying to counterattack is big. On other hand if Zerg/ Terran loose armies they seem to able to come back more easily (i didnt say alwys, just easier) because Zerg can build so many units at once and Terran can hold a lot with planetaries/tanks, until they have an army again.
2- Economy. You say you loose 5 drones to oracle and the game is over, but when i watch pro games i dont see this. In fact i see an opposite picture : unless the oracle kills 3-4 drones, the protoss seems behind. Again the zerg seem to be able to come back from economic losses much easier, because they can produce mass drones. Sure their army will suffer, but often they can drone up, weather 1-2 minutes and be equal. Same for Terrans with mules and very hard to crack defenses, or just flying away with command centers. Protoss got chrono which helps but it doesnt seem equally good for economy
1. That is true, but also, the whole concept of getting "protossed" exists. Where protoss wins the fight, then just 1A and wins.
2. I think it takes some time before zerg even gets ahead if protoss expands quickly. With chronoboost, doesnt protoss get workers out quicker than zerg (since the queen needs a spawning pool and then needs to spawn, then needs time before the larvae pop)?
Although say a runby happens, zealots kill all drones, in the midgame, yes, its very quick for zerg to make 16 new, but it still costs 16 larvae.
Here it is not as fast for protoss to remake 16 probes after a runby, but with 3-4 nexuses, it goes quite quick, especially if used with chrono boost.
Perhaps you can ask yourself why you disagree with the sentiment most pros hold. You should ask some protoss pros what they think about this.
Thank you for taking your time to write out your thoughts.
1. I am mainly coming from a ZvP Standpoint, in which Protoss oftentimes loses tech units in macro games without instantly losing the game to zerg whatsoever, they also can get bailed out by recall from bad positioning cause zerg units don't kill immortal/archon intime for example.
I have definitely seen Protoss players overstep with Colossus against Terran and get killed often enough, it usually is easier for Terran to disengage in that matchup since they have the quicker units, which leads to less "ah damn i lose now" moments, but i've seen plenty of game winning disruptors aswell. I think context matters alot, and I cannot talk with confidence about PvT, but i think we can agree to disagree about this in the PvZ Matchup :)
2. If you can show me a single game where one of the top Protosses is behind after killing 5 Drones with the very first oracle like i said in the video, I would really love to see it.
With an unreal amount of ZvPs played and watched on this patch, i have yet to see that happen. Usually in this scenario Zerg equalises on drones much later than usual at the 60 or so mark and is set way behind compared to where they usually would be. Very often it straight up snowballs cause you can't afford drone production + the usual amount of queens + spores due to the mineral deficit you're working with so you end up losing more drones as an immediate result.
Most of the time when herO or maxpax have an earlygame like that they make a forward gate and mass blinkstalkers as a finishing move since you don't get the critical mass of zerglings to combat this.
@@LamboSC2 I think PvZ is pretty balanced and maybe even Protoss favored.
It's PvT that has real problems, results aside where Protoss hasn't won a LAN bo5 or bo7 against Terran in over 2 years, there are major issues with regards to how Protoss can instantly lose the game as soon as they try to move out across the map. Terran has the benefit of being everywhere on the map while Protoss can only be in maybe 2 places and a psuedo 3rd with a warp prism warp-in. The combination of medivacs and slow protoss units makes macro PvT extremely punishing. Maybe with the upcoming cyclone change phoenix openers can come back into the meta introducing a fast Protoss unit that can keep drops out, but the problem remains that it feels really bad to ever move out across the map with a large amount of colossus or immortals without feeling like you'll lose them anytime you get into a fight.
@@stefanfrank7426 If i am not allowed to think and have an opinion based on watching pro plays and my own ladder, then whats the point. I might be wrong, but thats my opinion.
Not at all fair to say that terran is even closer to as fragile as toss.
Mules and instant supply drop gives terran way more chances than protoss or zerg. I'm honestly dumbfounded both of those abilities are still in the game. Especially when they are both for the same race
I mean no one uses instant supply.
@sebastienguanzon4978 supply drop is used alot... even many pro gamers use it pretty consistently if they get supply blocked. I would even argue it's better than mules because its a huge jump in supply instantly and only costs energy
@@Moeron86 Terran will only ever use supply drop if they screw up or lose buildings. MULEs give 225 minerals and a depot only costs 100. You lose 125 minerals if you use a supply drop. That's absolutely massive in a pro game (or any game really).
I'm not saying that MULEs are balanced, but they're Terran's macro mechanic, like larva or chrono boosts. The other races get more workers.
@@unrighteous8745 I wouldn't say "lose" 125 minerals although I understand how you mean.
Actually they get 100 minerals for free, since their supply is increasing, but the minerals is still there in the mineral fields, they lose no minerals, just have a slightly lower income for a short bit which might not affect especially much (since they aren't using the ability in the early game, but when they have 3+ cc anyway).
Supply drop is not the reason why Clem is winning tournaments lol
intresting video, I do agree with pretty much everything you said, protoss isn't to weak or easy, but what has to be acknowledged is that protoss still consistently performs much worse then terran or zerg, and I'm not really talking about recent tournaments, or that protoss hasn't won a premier topurnament in idk how long. Protoss has been doing bad at the highest level for pretty much the entireity of lotv. If you look at the biggest tournaments in lotv, the big 3-4-500k tournaments like blizzcon, kato, gamers8/ewc etc. protoss just doesn't win those for like 7-8 years, and doesn't get many 2nd places either. Probably the main reason for that is simply that the top tosses are just isn't as good, stats and zest at their peak are just not as good as serral or maru. But it still sucks that teh biggest most hyped and exciting tournaments in sc2 just simply are never won by a protoss. Unfortunately there isn't really a fix to it, balance doesn't really matter in that regard, since there have been many different patches in lotv and protoss does bad in all of them. But it does explain why so many people keep crying about protoss being to weak or easy or gimicky or low skill ceiling, people are just frustrated that protoss always does a lot worse then terran or zerg
Ah yes, a 20:40 minute video telling us you're the problem with the sc2 balance council without telling me you're the problem with the sc2 balance council.
"Protoss players are losing because they make mistakes" - Players like Dark top 8 every tournament accidentally building 2 infestation pits and lurker dens... move commanding through armies...
Protoss units are more expensive and weaker supply for supply with longer build times and weak late game upgrades.
More of this talk plz, very insightful!
Thanks for the video Lambo
Lategame pvz is in a very annoying state where protoss cannot take an outright fight and must always snipe from a distance with tempests while zerg tries to abduct a unit here and there. It's not viewer friendly.
We all know you will flame the patch for nerfing Zerg again. I want to hear he flame
what's the latest update??
please do the patch notes!
So, if,and I agree that protoss army is very hard to control, to many units that have to use their skill in the right positions.
Maybe balance focus should be on making protoss units easier to control or dumber so they don't require so many control groups. Maybe even making some units have passive skills that buff others, or boost defense, like guardian shield. But no need to active it manually,maybe also adjust movement speed of units so the army moves in a better way. Because a protoss army have to be very complex, compared to Zerg and Terran.
Especially with Energy Recharge, Protoss now have a lot more flexibility in the early to mid game. I don't think we've seen peak Protoss yet either, but this patch should lead to more skill expression no question.
I completely agree! For a diamond pleb as myself, i would not use that ability often enough, but for pros, it seem awesome! :)
@ledrash6079 Even if you only use it once on your first sentry so you can scout with a hallucinated phoenix, that's a complete gamechanger!
So basically, easier to get decent, but also higher ceiling ?
IMO
Protoss you a basically have to make almost every unit. every game
Zerg on the other hand have 2 paths pummel over an over with mass units so ling/bane hydra roch just send in over and over and wear down the enemy slowly, or Like protoss build a bit of everything and make a death ball. The former is easier
Watch TVZ and Terrans will stay on MMM + ghost tanks for most of the game, Protoss to counter will bring out almost every unit which become in inevitable deathball
What I see on tournaments is just protoss can t get direct fights vs terran, also terran has much easier opportunity to deal dmg, any bio drops after 2- 2 upgrades are not possible to defend with just zelots. kill workers does make pressure, while protoss has to pay attention to defend also other bases, so in most games protoss stay on 4 bases trying to get ball colosus disruptor and get big timing push that is how protoss win vs terran.
From my observation about balance: protoss cant tech up to carriers, can t use solid ground army bcs is getting countered by ghost/bio liberators, it s almost impossible to get map control as protoss, can t trade vs bio (you can a lot of time see that bio mass is trying to trigger zelot charge on them so they get slowed and easly killed, if protoss loose in mid game like 2 colosuss game is just over, storm are overall hard to use.
Also you managed to say that on highest lvl we have maxpax and clem: from stats clem has 72% wr vs maxpax.
I m not pro but for my opinion protoss in t vs z is too depended on high aoe units who arent that hard to counter (templar,disruptor,colosus)
against zerg feels everything right :D
about the win rate it s form open caps when they play every weak
If only Protoss had some sort of spellcaster unit that counters medivacs and bio units. Hmmmm
even in master elo high templars are hidden in prism to not get emp xD so you just get 3 viking and spam emp on prism in the fights
Balance patch thoughts video when?
The fundamental issue is that it isnt possible to balance at multiple levels and balance is very different at each of the many levels.
I hate losing to someone who does the same braindead cheese every game and would be 1k mmr lower without it. This isnt a problem at pro play because that build would be known after 1 game. Give me the same luxury in plat. Show my opponent's last 3 build orders vs my race on the loading screen. Balance for the top 50 players and find non-balance methods of addressing lower level issues (people smurfing by quitting many games is another huge issue in plat)
if you consistently lose games against cheese builds that are popular at your skill level, then you are simply playing too greedy and should invest more into scouting, expand slower and make more units. especially if you perceive the enemy players skill level to be much lower than yours.
So im curious why you dont see protoss try hard, (controlling oracles and high templar in seperate control groups all game) is it just because they never "had" too? Like my race is easy thats why I play it, I dont want to do stupid try hard stuff.
I think there has to be a correlation between cheese and protoss considering how extremely rare it is for them to win tourney's I think Zest in katowice should of won, but rogue got to see serral play zest first and then just did what serral did that worked and zests "cheese" (of really well thought out crisp attack timings) no one could stop that whole tourney until the "cheese" got figured out and then rogue wins.
Without a well thought out "cheese" protoss almost never go on crazy win streaks. It can't just be because they are all lazy right?
Protoss has flash without substance, and they are very snowbally the only consistent build that they have is colossus and that is hard countered by vipers and vikings. (the V-V's) I think without those counters protoss would be very strong, but it feels like everything protoss has thats "strong" has a direct very hard counter. Carriers? absolutely shit on by corrupters. colossus? waste of space if you cant end the game before hive. zealots? just one spine crawler in a choke with a lurker. high templar? ultras/banes (i like the bane templar interaction though I think its good) arcons? short range little losers (but very powerful at certain times) immortals? nerfs. like constant nerfs.
So i don't know, maybe you are right they are just bad and lazy, but i feel like something has to be off. Do other races have such direct hard counters?
To me its not really a question if its an issue with being limba or not, the issues mainly comes down to just how the game rolls. The mistakes a Terran or Zerg can make can be a bit higher than what a Protoss can make early or mid game. I would rather they fix that so that the game was a bit more balance in terms of back and forth game play were all races meet more towards the end vs one having a edge in one section of the game over the other. Currently, a Terran does a drop, it can pretty much win a game at times, and that seems very unfun to see and watch when compare to a drop from a zerg or protoss player in terms of over all damage. For me, I see a protoss player build colsi and then pretty much shut down by a single air unit such as the viking is just bad design for how many they can make follow by up with how cheap they are and combo against other units. Where is the back and forth of them having to fight that out? Phoenix I would think would be the counter to them, but they are way lower damage and range making them really only a scouting unit in comparison. Stalkers are the answer, but they are already busy fighting everything else the other two races are throwing at them. Idk, just seems like the balance was mix during design when really they should've tried to match it for both ends of the candle stick. Aka, open the game up a bit more for protoss players to do more "stuff" like in the new balance patch by allowing them to get some extra spells off in the early game or add in units for everyone that can explore and expand in even more new ways. I am a zerg player, and to be frank, I didnt have too much trouble beating other protoss players. It was mainly Terran and other Zerg players I had issues with only because I knew what units really hurt the Protoss players the most and at what times.
TLDR: git gud
With all due respect you’re not a Protoss main-you’re a Zerg. Try playing a bunch of PvT as a Protoss in late game and you’ll understand the frustration Protoss players have. We can literally kill a full bio Terran army and Terran can easily bounce back from that because they have massive unit to supply advantage versus Protoss. Meaning they can stick with low tier 1 units and keep up with if not totally beat tier 2 and 3 units from Protoss. The ONLY thing Protoss had to even the playing field is the disruptor-which even THAT got nerfed recently. If you watch the recent Clem vs Maxpax games MP hitting all those marauders with a disrupter hit and having them still live, then to heal up and end up winning the game was just frustrating to watch. That wasn’t a mistake that’s an imbalance-since even when Maxpax was beating Clem in supply Clem could effortlessly keep up late in the game whereas if maxpax’s army goes down we’re stuck on gateway units that hold no chance against tier 1 upgraded bio units from Terran. It’s not just a common misconception it’s a repeated observation from thousands of viewers..and it’s not for anyone particularly the balance council to dismiss time and time again. Open to feedback below!
First of, this video has nothing to do with the balance patch, i'm talking about current gameplay where disruptors one shot marauders. Secondly i am not talking about Protoss not being too weak in tvp, i simply think there are 3 statements that i hear all over the shop, 2 of which are most certainly wrong and the last one i feel is overblown. If you think the powerlevel of Protoss is too low against Terran, that is a fine take and doesn't contradict anything i said in my video. I do not think Protoss is weak against Zerg, that's the only balance statement i made during the video.
I know i'm a Zerg player, that's why i'm not making any claims for the PvT matchup.
I offraced a decent amount with both races up to 6.2k mmr throughout the last year, and I still don't feel anywhere close to confident enough in my understanding of the matchup, where i would ever claim the matchup is fine or imbalanced.
@ Ok agreed 👍 I also don’t feel Protoss is underpowered versus Zerg in some cases can be quite powerful depending on the micro and other factors. Thanks for your reply
The main problem for me is that starcraft needs to be fun for people to continue watching it.
If the best strategy for terran is to just turtle and build ghosts, each game feels similar, so it is unfun to watch
Protoss winrates early game are below average, especially around the 3-6 minute mark, which is the time of harassment or all ins. This gives the impression of a hurdle Protoss players must climb over before they gain an advantage, and by the time the mid game hits and the advantage swings back towards Protoss favour (at around 10+ minutes), early game performance can be as determining a factor in the outcome of the game. But Protoss does have the advantage from 10 minutes onwards, and that's probably to do with warpgate. Warp gate allows Protoss to reinforce outside their enemy base, it allows them to warp in units to flank, and it allows them to warp in reinforcements at a safe location away from enemy forces or immediately close to the fight as per requirement.
Other races reinforcements have to move from their production buildings along the most efficient path to where they were ordered, so if you have 8 marines produced at the same time, they will likely bump and push each other until a line is formed (depending on the length of their journey) causing them to trickle in less efficiently, whereas Protoss can summon a cluster of units together.
There is substantially more nuance to this, like how there is a higher volume of Protoss players in general which can warp statistics, but warp gate should account for a large portion of Protoss advantage at the 10+ minute mark.
I am not so sure about that. Would like to view your sources :)
Cannonrushes or zealot all ins kill more zergs than 12 pool would.
Protoss has, imho, a much easier way to cheese out another player than for example zerg has.
@ledrash6079 It's true that Zergs win the most in the first 5min then Terrans from 5min to 10min, on the ladder from Bronze to Diamond (source is sc2pulse nephest). The zerg winrate has to just be Ling floods. The Terran one is partly tank pushes but also many other things (marauders, cloak banshee)
The problem with all pros commentary on these issues is that the masses opinions are not based on GM games.
Solution: show the opponent's last 3 build orders vs your race in the loading screen (this simulates pro level play where they can study previous games)
When people are saying that protoss are good on ladder they rather refer to overall representation of race in GM, not particular pro players. Not awhile ago around 45% of GM players were tosses .
The root issue with the "single mistake" for protoss is actually the mule. The mule is too easy to use and too good. No other race can lose 10 workers and then have their mineral rate _increase_
I want to give you some take from a diamond player. I am a diamond 1 player on both EU and NA, so kind of a true diamond player here.
If you play against protoss in diamond you will be surprised by how bad they are with reacting to what they scout as well as playing from behind. Zerg and Terran players are a lot better in this regard. Is it possible that by playing protoss, you somehow reached a certain level where your skill doesn't belong and results in being worse than your opponent.
Lambo didnt even touch pvt which is the real problem with balance.
same as in chess, not all blunders are equal.
So here is the real problem. Yes the risk thing is true. But the bigger problem is over building stalkers and disruptors. You can crush the ladder with disruptors (I'm assuming) but you can't win tournaments with them, so their practice is actually negative practice. The other massively overused unit is stalkers. They are early-window unit only. Their value is mobility, and individual blinks. But you can't do that at 200 supply. When they don't build stalkers and disruptors, they win. Stalkers in the late game, are only good for blinking away and leaving your good units to get surrounded and die. Terran does by far the least to get the best results. Zerg gets good money results, but they are using everything their race offers, and even getting more out of ultras than terrans do out of BCs.
Zergs don't overbuild anything, other than a few too many banelings in the early game. Terran is by far the easiest to play. They do the least, they have infinite comeback mechanics to make up for all their gaffes. They win so many games on very low tech. It's true that protoss has to dance carefully the entire game and one slip up and they lose a massively more expensive army to stimmed bio.
I think lambo is underestimating how hard zerg is. Harder than protoss. It's just better players pick zerg. Lesser players are intimidated by zerg, or fail in zerg. Although protoss is close, and harder than terran.
So is roach-ravager as zerg and those terran all-ins
It's just how the game is, you wanna rank up, you play all-ins
@@AntiDoctor-cx2jdlambo is a pro zerg, so it's not realistic he's underestimated how hard zerg is
@@sakesaurus TY. The problem is unlike roaches, protoss will often keep building stalkers into the late game. Not tru for terran though, their units all remain useful.
Trying to use logical reasoning to people who rely on emotional reasoning is inherently a waste of time.
protoss players for the level they can play at in terms of micro and macro are absolutely abysmal with disruptors, they literally throw them out with no pressure and get dodged, or they throw them with the army and blink away again with no pressure and leave the disruptors to get sniped.
if they used them like a good blitz crank player did in league of legends, i guarantee you protoss would the most op race. but they seeem to not grasp the concept, ive seen pro matches where the protoss could be using them with the pressure from stalker collosus they get scared pull back, shoot them useessly again.
But Protoss makes the structures that shoot my things in my base :'(
yes, I agree with everything you say. Protoss is not weak against zerg. But it is definitely weak against terran :/
To be honest, for me as a casual diamond player protoss feels extremelly difficult to play compared to terran and zerg. Zerg feels the easiest by far and terran feels also quite easy with a couple of solid build orders. Protoss need so much intense micro, that it completelly blows my mind how people pretend it is the easiest race to play. I would argue that protoss is the worst for beginners, as you have much fewer units and you need to pay close atention to every fight and all your mistakes are punished much harder.
Protoss is a strange one.
On one hand I think protoss skill expression is lower than the other races but on the other I think it is potentially much higher.
No matter the skill level we are limited to having two eyes, two hands and 10fingers.
I think in the hands of AI with unlimited apm and multitasking toss is the strongest race.
Sure, AI can win building only adepts
Lambo is so incredibly hot.
Maybe "race balance" is a myth. Everyone can pick any race, if protoss was too weak it wouldn't even exist at the highest level.
Balance in SC2 is wild. You don't have the simple cavalry/archer/spearmen triangle of power, and the 3 factions play very differently macrowise.
Imbalance manifests itself in unit composition or abusive strategies. For example, the wings of liberty fungal was imbalanced because, given enough resources, you could almost instantly destroy an entire army and the opponent couldn't even react. That's not fun for the opponent as there is no counter.
Sure, it's a Zerg unit, but if we needed a nerf for this ability, it was to make the game more enjoyable, not to balance tournament statistics.
If the race has indeed a lower general MMR, it only means that at the top level, it's more difficult to win consistantly, but given the matchmaking system, a 4800 protoss is the same in terms of challenge as a 4800 Terran, no matter the level of skill required.
Nice video 😄 ty
Zerg cabal on his finest.
This was such a convincing and well thought out counter argument. This lack of substance in your comment is the same reason protoss doesn't win tournaments. Just lazy.
Yes dude. Protoss skill cap is way way too low!!!
The elephant in the room is as protoss it's so incredibly hard to defend your third the game becomes stupid. If your oracle dies, you're gone, if your warp prism dies your timing attack is gone. if you stay back and turtle you die. I like how if my opponent makes a bunch of hydras that are good against my flying units I die so easy if I don't make the same flying units.
One way to correct the balance of the game is the chrono boost, make it a little more expensive but way more powerful. As of right now the game forces you to chrono boost everything like an idiot, I wish it was as good as mule. If my opponent kills my Third Nexus it takes so long for it to rebuild it's not fun. Should I chrono this upgrade? Or Chrono probes? Let the player choose! Give options to the player! As of right now 3/3 Marines and 2/2 hydras feels impossible, because my upgrades take twelve hours to complete AND I have to saturate an impossible to defend third.
I am speaking specifically about Pro Play and not about your games, third bases are not hard to defend in PvZ whatsoever.
You can lose an oracle and the third base is still fine, it happens all the time.
Also obviously a timing attack is over if your warpprism dies, why does that feel unfair to you?
It's like saying my entire taxi timing is dead cause i lost the queendrop that is my only antiair against the oracles.
Some thoughts and questions to muse over.
1. You say that protoss performance on ladder and in tournaments are the same. Citing that they are common in GM but at the very top you see Maru/Serral.
Tournaments have the same distribution of plenty of protoss up untill RO8 (roughly) and then, at the very top, we see Maru/Serral etc.
The argument that you're trying to counter here says the exact same thing. What you've described here is the issue people are complaining about. "The reason protoss performs well on ladder and really bad later on in the tournaments is because it's a gambly race". The part about them doing well on ladder is simply reffering to the quantity of toss in GM, and the part about doing really bad in tournaments is about the lack of 1st placings in major tournaments. Both of these parts are true, you even presented it in your video. The community argument is then trying to explain why this distribution is true by stating that protoss is a "gambly race". Do you have a different explanation for this distrubution?
Try to tackle the topic of "gambly race". The way I see it a gambly race could be because of two reasons. Either the race can't hold their own in standard matches aka they are overall weaker in a "fair" fight against the other races. Or the "gambly" strategies that the race has access to are stronger than the other races "gambly" strategies, leaving the toss to lean into these strategies more often. The first explanation would naturally mean that protoss standard strength should be buffed in order to stop the "gambly" playstyle. The second explanation would mean that protoss "gambly" strats should be nerfed to force them to play more traditional standard styles. Which one do you believe is more true? Can you think of a different explanation to why a race would rely heavily on gambling relative to the other races?
2. HerO and maxpax, as well as many protoss players on the ladder, play replayable, pre-planned builds/playstyles (standard). This is a claim that you make in the video and I agree, but again, this isn't a response to the broader community complaint. HerO and Maxpax, as well as many protoss players on the ladder are, in fact, not winning tournaments. HerO and Maxpax are the best players the protoss race has right now and they cannot make it past the best players of the other races, whilst playing standard. A reasonable conclussion to this would be that, in order to win a finals against a serral or a clem, the protoss player would have to rely on a gamble. There are other conclusions to draw though, such as HerO and Maxpax just not beeing skilled enough, the current map pool is simply bad for toss, or that toss is simply a weaker race than the other two. What conclusion do you draw from this? How come the best protoss player can't beat the top terrans/zerg?
3. Protoss skill sealing. I don't really have much to add here. I agree that even the top players are not reaching the top potential of the game. However, to humour the argument. I have a feeling that people are particularily reffering to the maxed out late-game protoss army. Carriers and tempest have limited micro potential, and most of the skill of using them is army rotation and picking the right fights. The oracle controll can be greatly improved even at the top level but lets ask our selfs this, would perfect oracle controll really change the outcome of a game? At the end of the day it is JUST an oracle and revelation won't magically turn the tide of a fight. The rest of the toss army falls into seemingly pre-scripted behaviours, high templar/disruptors use feedback and storm/nova to ward of threats, zealots are sent on runbys when the enemy is distracted and any other units (stalker, archon, immortal) attack their prefered target when the fight begins. This is the algorithm that protoss players follow in the late game, and the pros have landed on this algorithm through years of improving and minmaxing as a community.
For reference terran marines always have to split reactionary to what the enemy is doing. The ghost have to choose to fight, to run, to snipe or to EMP depending on the fight scenario. And the medivacs can, at any time, pick up any assortment of terran units and reposition them, escape with them, or fly them into the enemy base for an attack.
Zerg players set up surrounds on their enemy, how you move you army to set up this surround is different in every game. Zerg spellcasters have a abilities that combo well. Fungal, para bomb, abduct, neural, blinding cloud, microshroud (lol). All these spells see use, in some games the vipers barely use blinding cloud in favour of abduct/parabomb, in some games neural is never even researched because all you need is fungal.
The point is that these units have choices to make where as a high templar will always use storm and feedback the same way in every game.
I want to be clear that I'm not talking about the difficutily or the amount of buttons one has to press. I'm talking about units that have maleable roles in an army and don't just function the same every fight, protoss seemingly have less of these types of units.
Point number 3 was kinda written off the cuff, but I feel like when I play toss lategame the only thing that matters in stepping in and out with my air units and storming when the enemy tries to punish, whilst having my main army at the ready if the enemy collapses.
I also play a lot of terran and whenever I get to the late game I feel like I'm way more free, ghost are fast and can move around with cloak to try to get a juicy EMP before a fight. Setting up my army for a fight is a fun puzzle, making sure the tanks and the libs play to the strength of the map. Sometimes I have drops ready to distract my oponent sometimes I have less bio and lean more into viking for air controll. It just feels like I have way more choices and decisions (wheather they be the correct or incorrect ones, their still mine to make).
To your first point, the correct option is to nerf the gambly playstyles and buff the traditional playstyles. People have been saying this for years. Nerf or change the highly volatile tactics protoss can use to get free wins if they work or get auto loss if they dont work. PTR patch is taking one step in the right direction by making the disruptor ball bigger and with less damage. It is now more consistently doing an amount of damage instead of being 100 or 0.
Now if they just delete this unit from the multplayer game and replace it with the reaver from the LOTV campaign, it would be even more consistent.
The same goes for warpgate and warp prisms, it promotes gambly plays. Try to proxy a pylon and a gateway and pray to RNG that your opponent doesnt scout it and you can cheese a quick win, or fly a warp prism into the enemy main base and hope it can warp in 12 zealots to kill tech or camp the production before it gets shot down. Youre literally just praying for a random chance that your opponent wont have units in position to stop you from getting the free win, and if they do, then you lose.
The solution to this is to create a situation where its beneficial for protoss to not rely on the warpgate gimmick every game. I would say, when warpgate research is finished in the cyber core, dont automatically convert all gateways to warpgate. Instead, make the protoss player decide for himself, and make it a trade off. Lower the production time from gateways, and increase cooldown on warpgate a little bit, so you can either make units faster at home, or warp units in on the map at a slower rate, but have instant reinforcement. This would force protoss players to actually think about how to play the game instead of warping in mass zealots on the map with rapid fire on cooldown.
Then you can maybe buff the gateway units stats a little bit to compensate for the loss of flexibility, and then protoss can actually fight on the map without being at a permanent disadvantage because their core army units are bad.
Also warpin time from warp prisms should be longer, it shouldnt be possible to warp in 12 units from 1 prism in a few seconds. and this is one of the main reasons why gateway units have to have bad stats in order to balance the game. More tanky zealots and stalkers would be completely broken if you could mass warp then into your enemy's base from a single dropship that doesnt cost any gas, and this makes the gambly playstyle problem worse.
Another gambling problem is that observers take robo build time, so you are punished for making them and have to gamble that your opponent wont snipe the few observers you can crank out. A suggestion I like is to add back the observatory building from brood war and make it possible to make observers from the nexus instead of from the robo bay. This would further reduce reliance of protoss on crossing their fingers and gambling on their low observer count to push out more robo units.
2. hero and maxpax both play very aggressive styles. aggressive playstyles by nature are more volatile than defensive styles. if a player like Stats or Rain was on top of the protoss ranking then we would see more consistency. But Stats isnt in the best shape right now, neither is Classic, and Rain retired from sc2 to play brood war.
3. this problem mostly comes down to the big protoss units costing too much supply for their power level. a maxed out protoss army is smaller and has less damage and hitpoints than a zerg or terran army with equal army supply. especially when you take into account emp in pvt. but its also in pvz. 4 zerglings cost the same supply as one zealot, have comparable hp, but, especially with adrenal upgrade, do way more damage.
the only supply efficient unit protoss has is the high templar. that one punches above its weight class but is extremely vulnerable and everything else is supply inefficient.
to address this the supply cost of units like tempests and colossus needs to be lower. which is slowly being done with tempest going from 5 to 4 supply, but for example disruptors were increased in supply some patches ago to reduce massing of that unit without reducing supply of other units to compensate.
Yeah, this skill ceiling is too low for Terrans. Siege up, press stim and go for it, whilst as toss you have to do a a multitude of things. Not to mention if you are ever out of position ONCE. your screwed. No let's be honest, your fucked.
no other army packs a punch like protoss. i´ve lost 15k army to like 6 archons 2 colosos and some storm