The Brood Lord Infestor meta story - th-cam.com/video/KbtDFgEO7pM/w-d-xo.html WORST Swarm Host meta - th-cam.com/video/8HuZMZZ40XY/w-d-xo.html Timecodes: 00:00 A small story 00:18 What is skytoss 01:07 How did it become so strong 04:40 Carrier domination in LotV 06:34 Void Ray domination in LotV 09:33 Current state of the game and new patch
As a toss player I think that the current design of the Toss race is not realy possible to get balances for all stages of the game. The reason is the current warp-in mechanic in it's current form. The warp-in mechanic allows for instant delivery of reinforcements to an attack, negating the logistical advantage of a defender. So to not have one base all ins of Protoss too powerfull, the units built from Gates have to be weak for their costs. This creates the problem that Protoss can't use these units to properly defend when attacked in early game as they are cost inefficent. There have been billions of solutions to come by...this problem. Mothership, core, Nexus Overcharge, Pylon overcharge, Shield battery, Super shield battery.... So the first sollution would have been to make units build instead of warped-in to cost less. While Warp-ins will cost a warp-in fee on top of the regular costs. Then the carrier...it needs to be out of the game. It's too easy to controll and the damages scales to fast with the upgrades...multiple intercepters each with dual guns...
I always find it funny when wipers yoink mamaships. The thought of a cityship several kilometres in diameter being towed by something 10,000x smaller is quite funny.
I feel like they should have just lowered them to the ground instead of pulling, keep viper as a caster, introduce new unit to bring the air units down
What always fascinated me is what you also confirmed: Below Grandmaster Skytoss is so A-move whereas in Professional starcraft, it almost looks like Zerg can deal fairly well with it. Even though these games often end in a drawish situation and become 30+ minutes long because nobody is risking the fight.
It happens this way because Zerg is better at conquering bases and mining them fast, so we usually end up with one or two extra bases of resources in all late game MUs. It is not an easy task, but pros are pros, so even the little advantages can make all the difference. I honestly feel like the only way to solve this issue will be making Sky Zerg less effective. Corruptors are easily the most cost efficient unit Zerg has (apart from spellcasters) and imo it shouldn't be this way. If they nerf their HP while buffing the build time I think it would line up better with Zerg essence and make it less winnable for Zergs in ultra late game, because at this point Zergs start trading with too much efficiency while still mining more if players are at the same high skill level.
also makes me hopeful to see that while most players seem to complain about zerg being buffed the top pros actually see the patch as a net gain for protoss, it seems like the patch is doing exactly what it was supposed to do... and it's suuper fascinating to see a strategy that is simultaneously too strong for 99.9% of the playerbase be so easily outplayed by a single digit number of people that protoss make up the majority of GM league yet still don't win tournaments
@@quantinum2141 I feel that nerfing corruptors is too much. It's not the most cost efficient Zerg anti-air, it's basically their only real choice. Queens can't really attack. Mutas are harassment units, not army. Hydras are made of paper. Nerfing Corruptors would give Zerg basically no choice.
@@isaacsteele7986 Viper nerf mostly as I understand, it doesn't matter for 99.9% of all protoss players but for the top pros it may give them the edge they need, we'll see
@@lancelindlelee7256 Ok, but lets compare corruptors to ground zerg. Lings don't trade well, roaches don't trade well, hidras, ultras and even ravagers, usually don't trade well. The only cost efficient attacking unit Zerg has on ground is the siege Lurker and the Brood lord which is basicly a siege unit as well. why should corruptors trade so well against all air? That is the problem I have with them, with simple focus fire they get a ton of value that isn't caracteristic of Zerg units. I don't want to trash them, because you are right, they are the only late option vs air, but it shouldn't be as effective as is. for example, I don't think they should be that good against Voidrays, they should be countered harder by voids, but no, they can poke voids to death. hidras, queen and specially parasitc bomb should be the ideal answer to voids and they usually are, but with corruptors they just evaporate. You see what I mean? i think Zerg shouldn't ever be cost efficiente if it is not abusing spells every fight. If HP is too much, maybe nerf their range. They are already pretty fast, so it would only make poking harder and so less efficnet overall.
I mean back in the day, even with a Zerg roach-ravager all-in, the Protoss would already have some voidrays and shield batteries to defend. So the all-in required massing Queens as well (which got nerfed).
I think Corruptors became a lot stronger against skytoss now. Previously you had to focus fire Carriers one by one which made a lot of attacks go to waste on each kill, now you can let corruptors do their work on their own, without wasting attacks on interceptors or thin air.
@@uniguy4647 hydras did get buffed, and I imagine with infestors they would be really good but hydras are made out of paper and skytoss has infinity dps. Especially with storm.
@@mintcrystalsanimatio exactly, it makes no sense for a guy with a machine gun could take out a ship that size. Terran is supposed to be the underdog that can hardly take a direct engagement, but from a game perspective, all 3 need to be somewhat balanced.
Something I think Lowko has mentioned which would be a welcome change is if they made Carriers have more micro-ability. It would probably take an entire rework to the unit but in my opinion this is the Carriers biggest weakness. As a diamond player, I hate playing carriers because you cannot micro them and it's just not fun (even though I win more when I get them). Making them more micro-able would make them less OP in the lower leagues and have more potential to be effective for great control players like hero and Parting.
The other major is vipers. Vipers specifically is why top level players can dominate skytoss but lower level players, who can't control them + the army as well, struggle. Remove abduction and rebalance skytoss down, and it'd be far healthier
Air units such as the carrier and mutalisk need to have had their microability from BW from the very start of the game. Why they didn't retain all that was beyond me.
my big issue with Skytoss is they’re predominantly general purpose combat units, outside of maybe Phoenixes. No real aerial late game mana spellcaster outside Mothership, which is very prone to being sniped. Carrier has a lack of interesting micro tricks.
Most people don't realise the real problem and the real reason airtoss is pure cancer. It is the design of the carrier(and all capital ships in sc2), carriers scale insanely well with higher numbers because of the way they deal damage. While pretty much all units that counter them, like corruptors, vikings don't scale well at all. This means the units is useless in low numbers and insanely op in high numbers. And because of this it is impossible to balance it well, The unit is either too weak and useless or too powerful. It also limits your army composition by a lot, it is literally never a good choice to just put some carriers into your normal protoss army, you either only make them or you don't make them at all. In comparison other late game units like tempests and colossi for example don't have this problem, neither of them scale exponentially and both reach diminishing return once you have enough of them. This means you have a much more diverse army compostion, that also requires much more skill and are far more fun to play and watch, and you don't wanna insantly uninstall when you play against it. Both bcs and broodlords have the same problem, they are just weaker then carriers. I know it is really hard to design and balance capital ships, but blizz really messed it up with sc2 imo.
The only reason they scale disproportionately is the interceptor messing with units targeting. But this should be mostly fixed now, as long as you don't camp your units outside the rage where they can actually attack the carrier.
@@Leonhart_93 nope, that was my entire point. The problem isn't the interceptors, it is the fact that interceptors deal low damage very quickly, this means 3 carriers don't do any significant damage, but 15 carriers evaporate everything that comes close to them. They never stop scaling with higher and higher numbers, corruptors which supposed to counter them don't scale infinitely, cause once they have enough to one shot a carrier they don't deal more damage even if you have more of them
@@Leonhart_93 can you not read? Yes 15 carriers do 5x the damage of 3 carriers. But 45 corruptors don't do 5 times the damage of 15 corruptors, because they gonna overkill a lot. I don't think it is hard to understand. Just think about it for a sec. Why do marines scale far better then stalkers with higher numbers. Partially cause they are smaller, but mainly cause they deal low damage very quickly, while stalkers hit (kinda) hard and slow, so they overkill, when you have a lot of them. Marines and carriers don't have such problems
I think we are back to P relying timing attacks, getting figured out and dying. The patch seems to just be anti-P, best thing they got was templar speed which is long overdue, straight nerf to disruptors and huge nerf to carriers(no APM spent on targetting anymore). Z and T got buffs to EMP radius, Broods, Ultra and things that help them smash P. Its like oh no Z has to build 2 more vipers to get more pulls, that's 3 less roaches or corruptors. T has across the board buffs opening heaps of new strats for Banshee, Raven, Cyclone and Libs but sensor tower has 3 less range... big whoop.
EMP got nerfed in late game, where the Carriers are being used the most. Banshee and Cyclone "buff" mean nothing in PvT, you not gonna see BattleMech and mass Banshee in that matchup, not a CHANCE. Libs buff is nice but Raven isnt really a buff, because no Terran making 3-4 Ravens in PvT neither, especially if Protoss going for early Phoenix build.
I would like to see khaydarin amulet back for HT. Since warp in time was nerfed and that was one of the main issue it could allow end game toss to be a bit stronger without going overboard. Or/and increase range/damage of feedback. That would affect mostly pro play, since in lower leagues noone is using HT aniway.
@@tigera6 Yes but honnestly i don't think TvP late game is that relevant. The fact that ghost can easily counter toss army and HT when they get out is more important than them being weaker in late game, where you can generally afford more ghost anyways.
I'm excited to see the new patch on Katowice for sure. I think Air armies, especially toss, is just inherently difficult to balance in sc2, opposed to BW, because of how the armies clump up. And even if you balance them, for me the playing experience in such games is just overall bad. Watching pro players struggle is fun though, as long as not every game goes into super late game.
my biggest problem (as a very casual player) is early proxy Stargate spawning tempests, which have a very long range and it's very hard for terrans to defend (same for zerg probably).
My (bad) ideas on how to fix PvZ. 1. Redesign the Carrier to have a clear niche instead of just being a frontline fighting unit. Tempest, for example, has a clear role as siege bombardment/anti massive. Voidrays while massable are also very fragile. So maybe the Carrier could take on a more lategame harassment role just make a few to fly around and kill bases, then run away. 2. Shift some of the Carrier's power into the Archon. Essentially, the same principle that was used with transferring some of the power of power of the WoL/HotS Colossus with the Disruptor. Possibly just letting it gain +2shield armor per shield upgrade, to more radical ideas like giving it a new ability that you need to buy at the Templar Archives. 3. Nerf the Lurker. No unit should be allowed to have such high dmg, aoe, decent bulk, be fast, and be invisible. You can nerf the HP or something so that well 1 placed Disruptor shot can kill them perhaps. Or on the deeper end make it so they are only rooted like how the old SH work so you no longer need detection unless the Z actually gets the burrow upgrade. The less Lurkers exist the less Skytoss.
@Ian Whitchurch Observers are the worse choice of detector vs Lurkers. Oracles are basically mandatory now if you ever want to fight Lurkers on the ground.
Yeah lurkers are crazy OP against toss. It's really one reason they need to go air to discourage their use. The problem isn't detecting the lurkers so much as beating them. They've got a 10 range anti-armor AoE attack, meaning they outrange everything protoss has on the ground except disruptors and disruptors require constant micro and take 2 hits to take out a single lurker.
One of the problem is that in latest meta lurkers is too strong, and if zerg go to them early enough as protoss you have no choice but to go skytoss because enough lurkers can't be beaten by ground.
So you're saying you're forced to make a unit to counter another? You know that's why we HAVE TO make Viper and Corruptor against Carriers. Counter to both are High Templars because Feedback and Storm. Tempest also works well because of the Range. Against Lurkers you usually use mobile armies because they always have to burrow for attacking or are literally useless. So semi-static defense that needs vision to attack I can think of multiple ways to counter that. The same way you counter Siege Tanks and any Contain just that you need vision which you can get with Observers if you snipe Overseers first. If the Lurker Count is so high that not any amount of ground army can defeat them (which I don't think is possible btw especially for Protoss) then it means their army is so immobile that you can break the Siege just by attacking the enemy base. If he needs to defend and has too many Lurkers burrowed out in the field he's kinda fucked without Serral APM.
i think the problem with protoss is that it has some basic advantages that lag behind in higher level games, while terran and zerg both have some advantages that require more skill to exploit (creep and overlord give you vision everywhere, and terran economy is broken, for instance). That doesn t mean protoss is easier as people say, in fact, the higher you go, the harder it gets, it s just that some of its advantages are more apparent.
Yes, lots of low skill ways to win. Void ray all in, dt drop, cannon rush, blink stalker, chargelots, skytoss. All pretty low skill. Holding a void ray all in requires 2 hands but to execute one takes only 1 hand.
@@peterhardie4151 Let's not forget cannon+battery contain into proxy void ray+tempest. One of the most disgustingly easy cheeses to pull off and one of the hardest to fight off lower on the ladder (it still has a lot of success up until low diamond or so)
@@peterhardie4151 well it isn't like terran doesn't have some build orders that can get them a really easy win against toss, while requring little to no skill. 3 rax, widow mine drops, hellion drops, tank pushes, and many more less cummon but still oppressive builds like proxy ghosts and 1 base mass cyclone. All of these require far more skil to defend then to execute, which is true to all cheeses and all ins in the game. Also void ray all ins suck nowadays if you can't defend that that is a you problem for sure.
@@norberthiz9318 no one is getting to masters on the back of hellion drops or widow mine drops without decent mechanics and game understanding. protoss can get to masters with one build i think.
@@peterhardie4151 You can get masters with quite literally anything, you can just cheese or 2 base all in every game to masters easy, and those are far easier to do then defend. I'm not a tvt expert, but you could do a 2 base tank push every single game to masters in all 3 matchups. You could also play mech in 2 matchups easily all the way to realatievly high gm. And playing airtoss is a style not a build order, you can turtle to airtoss in every matchup theroatically, but it is gonna be very different builds, against zerg you can take a 4th base with 3 oracles and a couple of gateway units, you absolutely can't do that against terran because you are gonna die to 16 marines.
Idk what the solution would be, but playing as a casual is horrible and not worth it with mass void rays. Catering to the top players makes sense from a business standpoint, but it really sucks when there aren't solutions to mass void ray that don't require more out of a casual player than mass void ray itself requires. Take two players of equal (low) skill and the mass void ray player is pretty much guaranteed to win. There is no GIT GUD, because both suck and haven't gotten better in years of playing. The answers are infestors and vipers for zerg, or BC yamato/raven disabling missile for terran? So high micro skill units vs low micro skill units (void rays)? This is an insurmountable wall for low skill players and is the reason SC2 is trending down. Once a new game comes along with competitive play that doesn't essentially rule out low skilled players who quit before they "git gud", SC2 will die out. Casuals are a necessity and that will never change. Who knows how many casuals quit when they could have improved because of this problem? Who knows how many Serral's just decided to play another game? Also, Serral etc aren't getting any younger. They will eventually have to move on as well. You have to remember, SC2 is a video game and video games are a business. Without casual players boosting sales, what company will invest the money into the RTS genre?
As a Zerg I was so happy when all the Protoss players started mimicking Hero’s gateway style and every game wasn’t just trying to kill the Protoss before they got carriers out. If I ever saw more than 2 carriers on the field it was pretty much always GG for me. I’m glad they seemed to figure out a way to make carriers beatable for scrubs like me :3
I'm personally still thinking that all air units should have longer build time and more supply cost. Air units ignore map features. That's their greatest strength. Except for liberator and muta only units that do air AoE are ground units. On paper this is brilliant rock-paper-scissors design, but problem has always been ability to stop the air-composition from snowballing out of control. In principle, hard-counters like mass-hydra-corruptor or mass-viking-marine should counter non-HT-supported skytoss. The trouble usually comes from the fact that if carrier count grows beyond a certain point, counter-play effectiveness falls off a cliff. We'll see how the interceptor attack priority changes the game, obviously. Based on my limited experience so far, vikings and corruptors absolutely demolish carriers provided you have a sufficient count. It is honestly a massive improvement. Protoss can still improve their odds by focus-firinng, making engagements more skill-based. It's obviously completely my preference, but even given the carrier change I would still love a general nerf to air. Moments where a composition or tech switch grinds the game to a halt should be avoided. Carrier-based skytoss compositions just happen to be the worst offenders of this. I don't know anybody who enjoys playing against mass-BC either, for that matter.
I'm not a competitive player but from an entertainment standpoint late game skytoss is entertaining to watch and hilarious when it gets shut down by a few well placed abducts and fungals. While it does need nerfs, I hope it's stays a solid comp in the long run.
I agree, for professional games Skytoss doesn't seem too strong. I most often play team games on the ladder though and as soon as a protoss goes for Skytoss it's basically over. You can't punish them like in 1v1 because their team mates are protecting them.
As a Zerg D2, what I love playing against skytoss is Ultra/hidra/infestor. You just a-move and fart on the ultras. If the Skytoss player plays as braindead as you, the carriers will be tickling the ultras while the hidras farm them and the Ultras melt archons or templars. It is pretty great to force Toss to do the thing they fear the most: micro carriers lol.
I think that Protoss' balance issues ultimately come from their core design (big surprise). Warpgate, allowing near-instant essential unit production anywhere on the map, requires that those units be less effective than the other races’ counterparts. Turns out that negating defenders’ advantage drastically changes the balance of an RTS. Since their core units can’t compete in any straight up fight, Protoss only has two options: big cheese, or tech up fast as hell. Obviously, balance patches lean away from cheese and more towards macro, so now they need to give Protoss the defensive tools to survive the early game, as well as some tech-based mid and late game punches to the rest of their army. It results in this gamestate where the urgency is forced on the opponent to interrupt the Protoss’ comfortable cycle, where the Protoss suffers less risk than the opponent. But of course, the nature of Starcraft is that it’s always better to be on the offensive, and that’s the real challenge curve. Lower skilled players struggle to pressure Protoss enough to make a difference, while at the pro level, Protoss win rates struggle unless they have some recent patch exploit. I don’t have any idea how to fix this. I’d like to see some way to make Warpgate less effective while improving gateway units’ effectiveness (aside from DT’s). Cooldown time wouldn’t have much of an effect cuz you’d still have a mass warp-in threat. Maybe there’s an avenue to explore where a Gateway still has effectiveness in terms of unit production, while a Warpgate is inefficient but has the harassment opportunity?
Warpgate just can't be changed at this point and making P core ground units actually strong would just result in oppressve all ins. At the same time it means P has to hold on for dear life the whole game until a Collosus or some other tech saves them from a light push. The game for P can just end so abruptly because their army strength doesn't scale neatly like T or Z, its fragile. You either have the exact right composition and supply or the army evaporates embarrassingly fast and cost inefficient. A lot of P suceess in SC2 has just been timings and straight Cheeses, we've never had a dominant macro P pro like T or Z. LotV worker changes ended that largely so the core strength of races is more obvious.
Overall I definitely agree with you. But I think that’s the advantage of a community run test realm. The community is ready to explore ways of making the Raven relevant (rightfully so). Why not try to legitimize the Gateway? I guess at the end of the day there will always be more issues, and the authority of RTS balance will never be found in the comments section of a youtube video.
@@chinogambino9375 I would add its very painfull to see bio destroying basses and defences in seconds. Drop ship is much more potent tool then warp gates. Its very common sight to lose zealots while fighting bio just because they are melee unit that charge to close quarters and the moment you want to disengage as protoss you lose all of them for 0 dmg :/ All the last victory games I saw for protoss players reqire cheese/harasse in the beggiing or you lose. Late game Zerg have 10 hatcheries that can build whatever unit you need. terrans have a ton of mules etc. I think there is a good balance overal in the game however. The thing that prottos lacks in end game is some kind of brain dead meachincs like creep/sensor towers/scans.
@@Bodesey The problem with changing the gateway was that it'd essentially massively change the entire racial identity if warp gates were altered. Making the Raven useful is a lot easier, because it's still a side unit Terran may or may not build. Gateways are a core element of protoss, it'd be like getting rid of Zerg's ability to build anything from Larva. The change is so drastic Blizzard would never make it unless it's for SC3.
This narrative is now 10 years old.. Protoss hate is stemming from brood war where on lower levels balance was truely bad. It's not even that much warpgate as the protoss is having more AoE which he is supposed to use in order to beat the others races. Needing AoE to clean Terran stimmed bio, (like the zerg, who need Baneling / Lurkers, i don't think a Z can do well with just Hydra / Roach / Zergling vs stim bio on equivalent upgrades) and to clean Zerg who is out-macroing P by nature. It's always P that is being targeted when really other races have imba mechanics too.
Its almost impossible to push back in direct confrontation. I recommend to target carrier 1 by 1, using abduct, whole group ( but small ) with fungal, and bother toss with nydus non stop
Or just pressuring the economy to prevent him from going skytoss. I managed to do it a couple of times with blink stalkers and zealot runbys. Vision and possition are key though.
Low mmr players have a hard time controlling multiple spell casters. In grandmaster, fungals + abducts (spell casters) make it incredibly hard for a purely carrier skytoss to a-move in.
Honestly you don't need multiple casters to stop pure carrier. Pure carrier is easy. Build mass corruptor, select all your corruptors and shift right click on each of the carriers. It gets tough when the carriers are escorted by templar/archon/void, but a pure carrier newb composition should be easy to wreck so long as the player has any kind of macro skills. As of the latest patch, you don't even need to do the shift right-click and can do a basic attack move.
@@ghosthamster6521 not really. You can have more Roaches before the Protoss can mass any Air Unit. The Voids or whatever will kill your base so slowly that you usually have enough time to attack their base with like 30 Roaches or more. He'll be forced to recall and he better does it quick. Never forget you only lose when all your buildings are destroyed. If you got more stuff just basetrade them. And I recommend buffing the Vikings with 1-2 Raven for the Anti-Armor Missile and then Vikings will win against Carriers.
You absolutely cannot "a move" corruptor vs carrier. You have to move them in on top of the carrier first before a move-otherwise they'll fight the interceptors.
what would you change if you could 2 The new viking damage point change is actually pretty neat. In combination with the interceptor attack priority, it allows vikings to "stutter step" capital ships like carriers much easier. I would argue zerg needs a similar "anti-carrier" corruptor move so that they arent so dependent on "vipers kill all support before you can engage". A "dive" skill so they can dart in and out, or a similar lowered damage point comes to mind. If you had those, you might even be able to nerf vipers harder.
The real balance issues are the fact the devs want to nerf players and forget about units, so they make a complete mess while targeting specific players who are dominating. They should just boost the carriers with bigger and better interceptors and force the Protoss to micro them individually, so they don't need to be massed and aren't a simple A-move army.
I like the idea of making carriers a moving building that produce interceptors, and the inteceptors have a timer of how long they can be out of the ship.
Look, I don't like massed void rays any more than the next guy, but it really feels like for all of SC2, anything strong protoss does is labelled toxic. Even back in Wings, I never saw the kind of hatred for the terran MMM ball that I for the protoss deathball, for example, even though it's basically the same thing.
Wings was hillarious, 2 radius EMP 100% shield dmg... T never builds them and still wins. On some maps you would have to chrono out a sentry and FF the ramp a second after because stimmed marines would already be running up it. Good times.
toss just feels so cheesy IMO. I used to play back in WOL. Forcefields that literally had no counter until late game so you would lose to an army that is half the size then you have cannon rushes, DT rushes, and Void rushes to name a few. MMM deathball was an army you could fight, toss felt like you were just trying to not lose the game because you don't have/lost your detection.
@@anubis520 Look, I'm happy to agree that cheese is cheese, but a) I feel like you're forgetting the sheer number of weird terran cheeses there were around that time (reapers, hellion run-bys, planetary fortress rushes, bunkers in your natural, banshee timings...), b) force fields were pretty much the only way protoss had any prayer of holding any attacks /before/ the late game, so I can't really agree about that one, and c), my actual point, if a protoss player just built a big army that you could fight, people would still get angry about it.
@@jarrakul I don't think you are getting my point, toss units use round about ways to inflict damage. While everything you described is annoying, toss does it in cheesier fashion. A bunker rush or PF rush pales in comparison to a cannon rush. A reaper and helions are annoying but it is nothing compared to getting force fielded indefinitely from your natural. Proxy barracks still have to be at a distance where as a single pylon can reinforce just outside the LOS of the battle without endangering your structures. But then you get to a maxed out army and your sentrys can just cut the army in half, fight 2 to 1 then kill the other half. As a zerg there was nothing I could do against these players. 3 Colossus would clear anything on the ground and blink made protect from air a breeze. A direct engagement was a death sentence. you had to go mutas and harrass, it was the only way to hope to win. Everything about toss is an ability to 2 for 1. And yes, it can require more micro but in a straight up engagement toss get the advantage. I am speaking from a zerg prospective, I can't speak for terran.
Totally agree. Seems like toss is the good looking sister of the family and the other 2 ugly sisters have agreed to cry imbalance anytime toss shows any strong strats. Think of all the disgusting zerg strats over the years, swarmhost nydus, roach rush with nydus hit like 3.30, proxy hatch spines, bane busts, 2base mass muta, infested marines, etc etc etc. Terran are the same, some super disgusting strats, BC are cancer, widow mines are cancer, ravens are ridiculous, MMM's ability to scale no matter the comp its against, invisible ghost, emp, snipe and nukes, lol..... Both races can spam 1 unit (marines, corruptors) and counter toss air very efficiently unless toss makes storm and archons which is insanely gas intensive, and can only be done off 5base eco. So toss stop making air army and start using ground more, alright time to nerf the disruptor and battery's...
what would you change if you could Carriers do not have a "purpose" in the game. They are meant to be an all around "kills everything unless hard countered" unit, and hence need next to zero micro. Meanwhile, Protoss can use all of their micro skills on other units, which is why the deathball is really so strong. The real core of what I think needs to change is to give a "purpose" to the carrier besides just being strong and killing everything. This means weakening them towards one composition / tactic, while possibly even buffing them towards others. For example: Carriers could make a liberation siege zone where their interceptors target. Takes time to switch targets, but within the zone you can even buff interceptors. Another example: Interceptors could be given a realistic amount of HP so that targetting and killing them is an actual viable strategy instead of just wasted DPS (it is always a waste of DPS to kill intercecptors, the only exception is with stimmed marines on an upgrade lead). In which case stalkers, hydras in good clumps can beat equal supply lategame skytoss, but only if they were packed for maximum value. In which case you can buff carrier range and nerf interceptor launch speed. Another example: interceptor reload time could be massively nerfed (just like swarm hosts) so that carrier attacks have to happen in waves and it's a bigger issue to lose your interceptors in between waves. But if they need to happen in waves they can release all their interceptors in one go, actually making their DPS stronger. The heart of the problem isn't that the carrier is so strong. The heart of the problem is that interceptor deployment is so adaptable. Like it literally doesn't matter how you control this unit beyond f2-amove below masters. It will eat storms, fungals, parasitic bombs, even anti-armor missiles and will still win the majority of the fights simply because of the zero micro needed for managing interceptor deployment. Mix one or 2 archons, templars, disruptors, collosi etcin the mix and you can melt any army that would have otherwise been good against the carriers but also needed micro.
Ehh, starcraft 1 scouts and wraiths weren't busted, tho wraith was hot garbage. I thin command and conquer 3 venom is a good example of an air unit that deals good damage against ground and air.
IMO you just *cannot* have a generalist unit that is also flying. That alone will always make it A-move good at worst. Void rays enjoy balance history of being either completely worthless or ridiculously broken. This is because void rays do basically everything, and they fly. They attack both air and ground, have decent base damage, and do bonus vs armor (and everything is armored). Carriers in effect kinda just behave like giant void rays, so they suffer from the same problem. The only way to fix these units is to come up with a more utilitarian way to use them and scrap the "just a damage dealer" mindset. Good examples being basically every other air unit in the game.
@@ixirion mutas are a special case because they SHOULD be good at harassment, it's just that they cost way too much for what you get out of them. Add onto that that they're actually the ONLY unit in the game that gets worse as upgrades get made, and it's pretty obvious why they're trash. Mutas are almost completely unchanged from brood war, meanwhile the game itself has changed drastically. BCs are in a really good spot right now tho, idk what you mean. Their primary goal is utility and harassment. Since theyre a T3 unit they have to be a bit oppressive, but if you get anti air early enough you'll be fine. BCs are only oppressive to the people that ignore them.
Voids are good against armored stuff, weak against light. Try void rays against stim marines or hydras and see how they do. They're not good against everything.
@@taragnor stim marines are good against literally everything in the game lol. Also you made my point for me. When you have to nitpick units that are good against this unit, this unit is a generalist. My point was that you cannot have a generalist that also flies, it will always be bad for the game.
@@CorwinTheOneAndOnly You said "My point was that you cannot have a generalist that also flies, it will always be bad for the game." Then you go into apologist mode for mutas and battlecruisers, saying they're okay, when they can clearly attack everything and fly as well. So apparently it's not "always" bad. Sounds like you just hate protoss.
ive been struggling with toss cheese many years but void ray buff finally defeated me since from then on every single XvP was either cheese (like void battery rush) or toss would be camping for 30 minutes behind cannons and batteries massing up 180 supply of sky. The fact that blizzard gave up on sc2 just after the patch and they left us with that meta to play with. It just was too much and i left.
I feel like SC2 has an overabundance of sky units in general (especially for protoss & terran) and sky units are all ranged and ignore (almost all) terrain and line of sight blockers, so they're a no-brainer. In Brood War there's much fewer sky units, most of the fighting is on the ground.
So, personal opinion. I think a lot of the problem is that there is a mismatch in design and goals. Let me explain, in general, each of the races have a different supposed focus. Zerg players are supposed to be focusing on macro, their queens are inputting larva, they're expanding creep, all that jazz. And in the early game most of their units are pretty much A-move. They're a swarm. As the game goes on, they transition to a bit more micro, as everyone does once their economy is up and running. Then let's look at the Terran. Terran are kinda in the middle of the micro/macro divide, but their big focus is on setting up positions. A lot of their most useful and powerful units are about taking and securing a position, so the Terran player can really just focus on microing their bio ball. But then there's Protoss. In theory, they look like they were designed to have the least focus on macro. 1 probe can build everything, Chrono Boost is the easiest most forgiving of the macro mechanics to use. But to make up for it, Toss units were powerful but needed a lot of micro. They have Zealots to be a bulwark, but after them all their other tier 1 units have spells of some kind. They even have the earliest dedicated caster unit with the Sentry (well... Zerg has Queens but they're again mostly meant to be a macro mechanic that can defend the base if necessary). On paper that all works. Even the units that don't have actual abilities like Immortals, Archons, and Colossus are so big, bulky, and in a way surprisingly fragile, that you need to micro them to protect them. Often with prism shenanigans. The thing is, Protoss, and especially air-Toss are really the only race in the game that doesn't get more micro intensive going into the late game. Zerg starts juggling casters. Terran does roughly the same thing they've done all game but with more things to pull off all at the same time. And here's Protoss late-game air that just A moves. You can't micro Carriers worth a damn. They're just a big bulbous thing that spits out a lot of little swarmy things. That's a Zerg unit. Protoss were supposed to be the micro-intensive ability juggling race. Where's the micro-intensive ability juggling? It's just not there. Fun Oracle shenanigans aside. And this I think is part of the reason it's stuck as it is. There's little skill expression in the units. So they have to be big and powerful. If they're big and powerful the lower skilled players will struggle against them. And they'll call it cheap, because it kinda is. The race with the easiest macro builds up to the easiest micro. It's lame. But on the other hand, because there's so little skill expression with these units when you do get to the point that you have enough skill to defeat them, well, there's not a whole lot the Protoss Air can do. It has a low skill floor and skill ceiling. Anyway, that's the thoughts of someone who loves the game, but who has 0 credentials and probably shouldn't be listened to. I'm not a game designer, nor a particularly good.
You have a point though. I always said in SC2 that T and Z are harder to play than P is right from the start. Terran needs to be on top of his production all the time and micro his units very well while dropping Mules etc, Zerg needs to macro, Creepspread and scout like crazy so he can react accordingly with weaker units and Protoss... yeah Protoss just kinda does whatever it wants. Warp in every few seconds, queue up some higher tech units every few seconds while boosting everything with Chronoboost that you want to have finished quicker. The thing is Terran and Zerg basically start the game on hard and expert while Protoss start on easy or normal. Stronger but more expensive units, not really micro intensive, one Probe builds everything, quick Warp Ins in an Energy Field, Air Units the go-to late game army, Recall, Shield Batteries, the best static defense etc. Protoss was the race when I first started the game that felt the most intuitive to me - everything makes sense without special things to consider like spending larvae and chose if workers or army, spreading creep or choosing addons for production facilities and positioning for tanks and stuff. This makes Protoss very easy to learn and very hard to master. A very bad Protoss can still win a lot of games in lower leagues because his army is stronger by default because of shields and if he just goes Skytoss. T or Z both have to use very advanced tactics to defeat a 200 supply Skytoss and most players in low leagues simply don't understand the game enough to do that. The fact that Protoss (or rather Skytoss) are dominating in low leagues but are very rarely winning tournaments tells us all we need to know. This is where you can feel that those players learned the game on easy / normal and need to climb a huge learning curve to become a thread in the high leagues. The fact that beginner Protoss dominate those leagues with a bad Skytoss Build Order while having like 25 workers the whole game is nuts. They don't need to scout, they don't need to harass, they don't need to macro or micro. Just build Carriers and Void Rays man. What we need is make Protoss a lot harder to play for noobs and buff their abilities in a way where actually good players can use them to their full potential. It can't be that Z and T either are forced to be so aggressive towards the P so he can't even tech up that high or have to bring triple the APM to the table the Protoss has to just to survive. My ZvP, TvP and PvP games are 90% the same for years: They will either Cannon rush and then tech up to Skytoss, or macro super greedy while teching up to Skytoss. I play against very little Ground Toss players and I'm thinking about letting them win everytime so we have less Skytoss noobs rampaging around in the ladder.
Aside all patches between buffs and nerfs, I still believe the spark that made Skytoss too accessible was the 12 miners change in LOTV. Almost everybody open 2 bases nowadays because of that, and that makes airtoss very viable early game. Even BC for Terran at some point.Yet, none talks how MUTA were killed from the meta since HOTS/LOTV, except for ZvZ.
@@d0k0night 1)Toss opens quite often Fenix early game, bye muta. 2) T can go whatever he likes. Widow mines, cyclones, Thors... God, even Raven with old patches were viable LOL
That's why multiplayer games (especially RTS games) should be balanced around the casual players with the pro-players adapting, and not the other way around. Making micro changes specifically for the pro-players only slightly manipulates the outcome of a single encounter (which gets either multiplied or divided based on the player's micro management level in the late game) with downright disastrous consiquenses for the casual level like buffing sky tos 5 times in a row while also massively nerfing Zerg player's only sole means of countering it. Making changes on casual level affects the game's paste as a whole which in turn entirely changes the pro-player matches making them way more entertaining to watch. Remember the 2 minute Zergling Rush in WoL? Remember Siege tank rush in WoL? Remember Barracks rush? Me neither, the game has evolved so much that this is simply unthinkable at this point. On the other hand remember how BS was the discovery of splitting marines AND stop-move-stop attacking? The mfrs quite literally had become Cyclones\Battlecruisers long before the “attacking while moving” mechanic was cool.
Just add a micro component to carriers... Hear me out... Each time the interceptors are released, they don't automatically target new targets once the initial target is dead, just fly around for the full duration until they return to the carrier. Only then do they automatically acquire the next target. That way at the very least you make skytoss shift+right click your every marine/hydra during a fight.
I stoped playing SC2 a few times because of frustration against skytoss. If some basic units like Stalker ou Hydra got some extra damage against massive units, would help A LOT. Harstem said carriers should be banned from the game (i totaly agree) kkkk
sktoss is practically impossible to beat in team games. because team games are collaborative, one member can take the brunt of aggression while the other can max out of void rays. There isnt a way to punish turtling toss behind an aggressive zerg or terran. I dont know how you could even balance 2v2 or 3v3 without hurting 1v1
Void rays are pretty easy to stop if you know they're coming. EMP+marines, psi-storm or viper/hydra. The big problem really is that people don't scout well in team games then get surprised when mass voids shows up.
maps... lets face it the maps suck so much ass. There is this one 3v3 map in the pool that is basically 2 circles connected by a bridge. How can you get anything aggressive done if there is literally one 1 attack angle.
The original concept for the Void Ray was to output more damage the longer it attacks a single target. However in WoL they would maintain its charge for a few seconds after destroying a target or given a new order. The original Void ray should’ve taken a long time to charge to full and RESET it’s charge when it attacks a new target. The ability to manually activate the full charge should reset when attacking a new target. Force the void Ray to commit to get the best value for the Protoss while also increasing the risk losing them. They shouldn’t be able to kite like they can.
@@MattSipka yeah, and they were useless a year ago when what you suggest were in place. there were zero reason to build voidrays until they got the decrease to both. Oracles did the harass much better by being faster and especially strong against workers not to mention granting detection in a stargate opener, Phoenixes were much better for harassment.
Yes, I liked that design. It meant that they did incredibly well vs high hp targets but were countered to many low hp targets. Seemed equally good and counterable. Not sure why they changed their mind right away on it.
@@Leonhart_93 because all that means is that a mass of them have diminishing returns. It punishes focus firing by constantly punishing good micro with damage resets, while anything other than thor tier in speed can just weave in and out to reset the damage. If you take OP's design, all you get is a worse tempest (if you can believe that to be possible) a flyer that can only get its damage against buildings and massive units while being shorter range.
Thanks for the video! I've always thought that hydras should be available at hatch tech. But the upgrades unavailable, until Lair. This would help in the lower leagues a lot with the void ray players. And I don't think pros play with unupgraded hydras anyways. Terran can make cyclone with a rax and factory tech lab. Toss can make a void ray with a gateway, cyber core and Stargate. It not really fair zerg has to get a pool, Lair, hydra den, and upgrades before they are good. Decent players can have void rays or cyclones by 3:30. Good zergs take about 6 or 7 min to get upgraded hydras. Just doesn't seem fair for anti air.
Got queen, no need for lair.. plus range advantage is huge for ground unit... Hydras also wasn't that good without the range upgrade... Con is low level players are bad at positioning OVs, creep spread and unwilling to spend on spores so queen can catch up with voidray... They're also bad at scouting with OVs to see the sign of mass voids
@Amru Shahril exactly my point then they can make 3-5 hydras easily defend and slowly learn those skills. What you just described takes much more skill and effort than making void rays, it would make the game more equal, and allow a lot more zergs to survive to the mid game. They also would not have to rely on queens for basically everything, which might be nice too.
@@hamburgers7817 Nah. hydra dps is too high for early game. It will be like bio with stim. Sadly as zerg you just have to git gud and spread creep and move OV and queens.
@Ixirion that's why i think it's unbalanced. Zerg has to use queen for everything and toss and terran have great anti air units in the early game. And it's not a big investment to make a rax or a gateway. Building a Lair to unlock AA is a big investment in the early game. Do you think all ins would be too powerful with unupgraded hydras? I just don't see how terran would have trouble holding with tanks and bunkers. Toss have super battery. I think they would be fine.
I wound up going mech as protoss. Stalkers as throw away/aa Immortals, and sentinels. Always getting +1 ground weapons first. Shit tons of gateways, and bases. And hitting as early as possible. Going against zero I would slightly change it to having some chargelots.
Hello. I am recently watching your video about SC2. I have an suggestion. In Legacy of the void, there is War Council that chooses three different units of each fraction. But there are four factions. What ability would be the fourth unit of each unused faction of each unit? I know there are Taldarin Zealots and Stalkers but no unique abilities. I wonder how they differentiate?
Something that is all too common in 4v4 matches on any level One guy sits in his base gets 3 3 3 carriers and a moves. And gg. UNLESS you have an answer like High impact load thors, Mass vikings with stutter step firing, Infester viper, Protoss just A moves while other races have difficulty handling mass carrier You take out 3 guys then the other guy just a moves carriers and it can become a base race to deal with them.
- 16 Liberator can win but can’t kill the base - Mines can be avoided easily just go another way - Bio is 50/50 also require more micro to win the fight - Mass Viking is stupidly hard to micro and very low fire rate - BC can be easily countered with tempest( if not the mothership BC is the most expensive unit in the game)
I just started playing and i chose protoss bc it seemed the most approachable. Haven’t made any air units in ladder bc i’m keeping it very simple for now. I think people are just going to be salty no matter what so idk how to make ppl happy. Unrelated but the creep nerfs were non existent according to most of the pros and the 1 tongue viper nerf is not very significant imo but what do I know
Micro is hard. Everyone hates cheese, everyone hates skytoss, and everyone hates losing their whole army to a single bit of aoe. unfortunately all protoss has is cheese, an op air deathball, and high damage aoe. The aoe is mostly fair to micro against but it is still really hard and when you are just starting out your opponents aren't going to like the game being hard.
@@kenners1993 so what? This ability is what saves them from being completely useless against a ground-based army opponent. They still suffer against any anti-air units, which makes any attempt at sniping buildings a very risky maneuver. After all, their DPS against buildings isn't that high. It looks scary when a lot of corruptors a focusing on one building. This number of corruptors will occupy a decent part of the overall army supply, which basically means "if Zerg can snipe your buildings fast, he has little anti-ground firepower" Oh, and one last thing - damaging a building is an ability with a cooldown. They are unable to destroy many buildings one after another. They take down one building - they need to GTFO ASAP. (Unlike many other units that can deal damage with regular attacks as long as they are alive)
skytoss wasn't really a broken strategy, it was basically protoss' only strategy against zerg, because they constantly buffed the hell out of zerg. The lurker alone makes an all ground army almost unthinkable in the late game. You need air to discourage lurkers because lurkers will destroy anything you have on the ground.
@@taragnor not if you know what you're doing. Z is getting nerfed all the time usually it's getting harder and harder for Z because every single counter they find out get's taken away so a Protoss can A-Move. Stop measuring everything on Serral or Reynor.
1: Bring HotS colossi back (or at least buff the unit). Groundtoss lategame just doesn't cut it against zerg and struggles vs terran. Colossi have to be covered, microed away from danger, and sometimes manually target enemy units as to not get distracted with some random depot. It's the one ground unit other than the stalker that requires some amount of skill. 2: Make carriers more micro-able. With the new threat priority change they're easier to fight against, now make them more skill-expressive. Give their interceptor launch more range so they can fight from further away, maybe make them slightly faster, but nerf their health considerably so they're worse in a pound-for-pound exchange. 3: Tempest is not very useful as part of skytoss because of its low AF dps, so it's almost exclusively an anti broodlord/liberator/battlecruiser unit, but even there it's still pretty bad. Make it cheaper/build faster so it's easier to get them to support ground armies. 4: Void Ray is pretty much useless at all stages. Honestly I don't even care, every time it becomes even remotely viable it leads to toxic strategies. Either rework it entirely or leave it to rot. 5: Warp Prism 12 chargelot warp-in in the main is very infuriating in ladder. Make the transition into phasing mode take a couple seconds longer and reduce the warp-in area so not that many units fit. It's still a threat, but there's more leeway to fight against it.
You ignored one of the most important reason behind Skytoss. Blizzard nerfed Protoss ground army while buffed VS tech units, it practically meant in order for Protoss to win late game, he or she had to use VS units.
That and lurkers. Now that most zerg learned to go for lurkers early enough, you're forced to transition to skytoss as you see them because if they mass them there is no way you can deal with them with ground army. There is no such unit forcing you to skytoss on terran race in my opinion.
@@ObeliskM No it does not work. If you have left over you Can use them, if z IS just transitioning and ONLY have ,2 you Can clean, but in a macro game it IS not viable
@@baptiste2863 yes but skytoss is just op vs terran anyway. the only issue is if you waste the money on a fleet beacon you easily get overrun before your first carriers get out if terran is playing active. Hence why it's a menace to low level terran and even high level turtle styles with tank liberator.
My point is actualy whine about ZvP. Zergs was always a terror in hands of the bests, so zergs is unstopably nerfed. As low lvl zerg i kinda suffered from this. Flexebility of zerg leaded to next sequence. Top gamers find a new strat -> strat is nerfed or entirely killed -> repeat. Meanwhile low lvl acually gets nothing. Through the sky toss rise i was an active player and witnessed a hell of a nerfs especially against sky. Hydralisks nerf was huge, queens got less range, on the point when only valid srat was just to all in against toss early, queen's heal was nerfed, and also mentioned vipers abduction nerf. Vipers btw is extreamly hard unit cause it flies before all army at sonic speed. But yes we got that stupid useless microbial shrouds, cause in the end sky toss need like 10 limit for 5 templars to storm out whole zergs hydra packf. Meanwhile air just goes on a-click. i may be wrong, so if you have on your mind what exactly zerg got to counter sky toss during that times please remind me. Looking forward for katowice cause of target priority changes
I genuinely don't get why the hell there haven't just been 2 regular eggs & 1 advanced egg per 2 regular eggs at hatcheries, lairs, hives... Being able to mass corruptours even if a Protoss massed 50 Phönixes without being scouted for whatever reason is ridiculous from the start. So instead having it so that you can choose your advanced eggs to build infestours, corruptours, ultralisks, etc. whilst regular ones can make mutas & hydras still would have made Zerg countre-potential finally on par with Protoss, but I get it would shift T. Vs. Z. It's just something that has been ridiculous from the start & should have been *morphed* so to speak into something more sustainable & balanced a long long time ago.
@@raydafuq3570 15 gateways take time to recharge it's not like you're in the co-operative mode & can have a unique tech to give your gateways 'Charges' to be used. You spend 0 resources to make a larva... *0*!
In lower leagues Skytoss is the default. Don't waste time or money scouting, or building ground units. Just bang out anti-air and thank me later. The other option is cannon rush, or Stalkers all in. But people mostly just tech rush air units. It's boring as hell and makes the game borderline unplayable. The only other sane option is to T1 rush early as possible to try and disrupt them.
As a retired casual player. My problem was in zvt. It wasn't a big deal in the first WoL. I felt it was a good backbone for a casual player. I migrated from scbw but was never any good. I just learned the strategies from watching. I understood how each unit worked in bw. Here's my problem. Terran got widow mines in HoS. I thought, this changes everything. So you're telling me blizzard. You couldn't of possibly worked in the vulture? One of the most iconic terran units in scbw history. Hold up. Wait just a minute. No? Oh. Ohhhh. Oh. You got a better idea? Wait. You introduced just the mine. Left out the vulture. Now you can move the burrow and unburrow the mine then hide it again. Fine, that's what mines do. They burrow and blow up. Wait. They don't blow up now? That's not all? So you're telling me they can shoot up now and still fight another day. Hmmm. My casual brain is still upset they got vastly upgraded in every way. Huh. Oh but its more of an impact missile that shoots in a radial effect within range and it can be repositioned at any time. Sounds a lot like a missile turret with legs that burrow and are invisible without detection. At what point was there anything that resembles a vulture. Actually yeah. It is like a vulture. Just get rid of the marine operator. Remove anything resembling a bike. Remove the vulture entirely. Keep the mine part. Give it dragoon legs that burrow like a zergling. Add radar for the missile defense to shoot air too. Ground units had it bad before. Let's destroy air units too. Fantastic idea. Blizzard ruined every fibre of the vulture. What even is this monstrosity. You can't possibly tell me that the widow mines has likeness to the vulture. It's a damn shame. Downright pathetic. Thus, retirement.
They tried to work Vultures in back during the WoL beta phase. Problem is, they just didn't work in SC2's engine and meta due to the vastly improved pathing, and the more smooth army control of SC2 made Spider Mines not be able to reach their target. 75 minerals for a stationary 1-time use mine (since, let's face it, the vulture as it was wouldn't be remotely viable in SC2 aside from the mine) that can be killed before detonation isn't worth it. The alternative would be to make Spider Mines invulnerable, but that would be broken. Spider mines just couldnt be balanced properly. That just left the bike, and the bike's role as a fast harassment and anti-light kiting unit was better served by the Hellion. At the time of WoL's release, they just didn't think Terran absolutely needed any replacement for the Mines with Vultures being out. And WMs weren't initially intended to fill the same function as the Vulture's Spider Mine anyway. The original concept was the Shredder, which was a high damage AoE death field, so they turned it into what it is now to make it a bit more fair and easy to deal with. And the main reason they were put in was because Terran bio required way more micro and babysitting than any comps they'd be going up against (especially against Muta/Ling/Bane) and it was harder to set up favorable engagements--Widow Mines were a band-aid for this, both forcing a bit more active attention on armies by Zerg and Protoss and giving a map control tool to set up more favorable engagements. They're not a one-time use unit because theyre factory-made with non-negligible supply cost (needed to keep there from being too many at once), unlike the baneling which can be massed much quicker and have a negligible individual supply cost
@@BroadwayRonMexico but why shoot up? That what urks me. I really like your points and they're true. I get the map control but It just feels cheap to a casual zerg. It just seems out of the realm of scbw days. That's my own fault. Blizzard worked on terran first in the meta-beta then worked the other races around the terran units. I remember that. Just seems funny they would insert a versatile mine into the comp then work the other races around it afterwards. My ground units get blasted by a mortar underground. Understandable. Then realistically. How does a mine that is underground with limited vision being buried. Shot an air unit outta space and decimates an army in one shot and severally damages anything in that airspace. Stop the cap
@@NooniiToons The reason was that Terrans at the time had very little that could deal with Mutas reliably. Sure, in a straight-up fight Marines could beat a stack of mutas, but the problem is, they're way less mobile. Thors had a weapon that was good against Mutas, but their mobility is even worse than bio's. Vikings don't counter Mutas very well, due to both speed and the lack of armored tag on mutas. And turrets can only hold off so many of them, and they're easy to fall back from or bypass for a unit as fast as Mutalisks. And Liberators weren't added yet since the need for an airborne siegebreaker for Terran (that was mass Ravens) wasn't realized until the HotS meta was well underway. Sure, WMs are stationary when active, but they do splash damage and can zone Mutas out of your worker lines
@@BroadwayRonMexico Mines burrow without research, outrun upgraded banes off-creep out of the gate, shoot (and splash) up, deal way more damage in a larger radius at a much larger range than melee, and don't self-terminate (it's a MINE FFS!)
@@NooniiToons If you know mines are there, you can sacrifice a 25 mineral, half supply zergling to force out the mine's attack and leave it very easy to sweep up. Also, they're not faster than speedlings (which you should be using with banes anyway), so if you catch them unburrowed, they shouldn't be outrunning you. Their radius is also a lot smaller than a hydra's attack range, so if comps with hydras are your thing, they shouldn't be an issue at all as long as you bring an overseer and don't just blindly move across the map. Mines aren't that difficult to deal with as Zerg, you just have to be a bit more mindful of your army's movement and not send clumped units into areas you know they're likely to be (like a clump of lings through chokepoints near your creep's edge or mutas into mineral lines). And making WMs one-time use would mean that to compensate, they'd either need to cost no supply and/or build way faster. Either way, that'd make them way more spammable. And as it is, they often don't survive long enough to make more than a single shot anyway. You really can't nerf Widow Mines any more than they already have been without causing significant exploitable holes in the bio playstyle. They're really the ONLY decently reliable option for a bio player to prevent Muta harass, for example (Thors are too much of a mech commitment, Liberators are usually tied up with the army, Turrets are completely static and don't do splash).
I like the past and present pro player videos are better. These have a lot of "wait, what?" misconceptions both from you and the reasonings given for different changes to the game throughout the years. At 4:52 in this video, you mention each race got new units vs skytoss, like viper. That's was a mistake by itself. AoE damage + AoE slow/root = extremely strong when used by a good player in any RTS and practically worthless when used by bad players, especially when it's made as a manual cast and not an auto attack. So then instead of fixing that problem, they decided to buff carriers to make them more usable against what's supposed to counter them, because it counters them too hard at the top level?... Instead of in the first place just making the zerg and terran units to counter air either stronger against air, or able to be produced earlier in the game? Or even delaying how long it takes for skytoss to be produced? There has been too little foresight and too much biased misconception by the people deciding on the changes, for many years. There's no simple way to fix a problem that's kept being made larger by the people put in charge of fixing it. So as you said, players have to either deal with it or not play. But this is also a problem of any video game that intends to continue with new patches consistently over a long period of time. Many times the people working on a game want to continue working on it, and a near-enough-to-perfect product doesn't need additional work. Kind of like tradeskills workers who leave problems unattended purposefully (or even make new problems purpsoefully) so they'll get paid again to come back out. "One of those mechanics that'll fix your water pump but leave you wondering if that isn't the most cleanly split timing belt a week later." Which is what most AAA video game companies do these days. A MOBA developer releases a new hero, everyone knows it will be OP, they get paid, they then get paid again to nerf the hero. The good part of the new balance team is that I severely doubt Activision is paying them to provide balance patches, and that they're doing the work out of genuine (if sometimes biased) willingness and passion, not job security. Less purposeful mistakes, means only genuine biased misconception mistakes are left to be made.
Terrans have easier time against the skytoss in the early/mid game. Zerg players are totally missing the hydras or scourges the SC1/BW edition: cheap and fast to obtain. Zerg have literally nothing that shoots at the air in the early/midgame except the queens, which are hard to use in attack. And that makes zerg players suffer agains skytoss cancer and terran flying building cheese, which loses a base trading for zerg.
well... one game i had a bunch of carriers with maybe 50 percent interceptors inside... my opponent had couple of marines... i couldnt stand a chance... i dont think that sc2 is balanced - but who am I, I was only platin
All that Zergs and Terrans building their crap units from dirt and scrap. Just being jealous of our Battleships made of gold. Void Ray, Carrier, Storm until end of all days!
![ประสบการณ์ จ้าง Developer ที่ผมจะไม่มีวันลืม [ภาค1]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bzivN4KDg-k/mqdefault.jpg)
The Brood Lord Infestor meta story - th-cam.com/video/KbtDFgEO7pM/w-d-xo.html
WORST Swarm Host meta - th-cam.com/video/8HuZMZZ40XY/w-d-xo.html
Timecodes:
00:00 A small story
00:18 What is skytoss
01:07 How did it become so strong
04:40 Carrier domination in LotV
06:34 Void Ray domination in LotV
09:33 Current state of the game and new patch
Can you please tell me what's the name of the song at the beginning of the video? I know for sure that it is not Darude - Sandstorm ;)
@@doctorjawline7608 Kirby dream land theme song
@@EsportsStoryteller THANKS!
As a toss player I think that the current design of the Toss race is not realy possible to get balances for all stages of the game.
The reason is the current warp-in mechanic in it's current form.
The warp-in mechanic allows for instant delivery of reinforcements to an attack, negating the logistical advantage of a defender.
So to not have one base all ins of Protoss too powerfull, the units built from Gates have to be weak for their costs.
This creates the problem that Protoss can't use these units to properly defend when attacked in early game as they are cost inefficent.
There have been billions of solutions to come by...this problem. Mothership, core, Nexus Overcharge, Pylon overcharge, Shield battery, Super shield battery....
So the first sollution would have been to make units build instead of warped-in to cost less. While Warp-ins will cost a warp-in fee on top of the regular costs.
Then the carrier...it needs to be out of the game. It's too easy to controll and the damages scales to fast with the upgrades...multiple intercepters each with dual guns...
I always find it funny when wipers yoink mamaships. The thought of a cityship several kilometres in diameter being towed by something 10,000x smaller is quite funny.
Yeah it's just absurd
i miss the days when the mothership would blackhole an entire 200 supply army. But im glad its not around so I can get a taste of my own medicine
I feel like they should have just lowered them to the ground instead of pulling, keep viper as a caster, introduce new unit to bring the air units down
@@Shadec1 OH YE4A, Just see this 1 day lol. Entire 200 sky toss die like 8 seconds just by freeelings on the ground.
Vipers should not be able to abduct massive-class units. But said unit should still be stunned briefly.
What always fascinated me is what you also confirmed: Below Grandmaster Skytoss is so A-move whereas in Professional starcraft, it almost looks like Zerg can deal fairly well with it. Even though these games often end in a drawish situation and become 30+ minutes long because nobody is risking the fight.
It happens this way because Zerg is better at conquering bases and mining them fast, so we usually end up with one or two extra bases of resources in all late game MUs. It is not an easy task, but pros are pros, so even the little advantages can make all the difference. I honestly feel like the only way to solve this issue will be making Sky Zerg less effective. Corruptors are easily the most cost efficient unit Zerg has (apart from spellcasters) and imo it shouldn't be this way. If they nerf their HP while buffing the build time I think it would line up better with Zerg essence and make it less winnable for Zergs in ultra late game, because at this point Zergs start trading with too much efficiency while still mining more if players are at the same high skill level.
also makes me hopeful to see that while most players seem to complain about zerg being buffed the top pros actually see the patch as a net gain for protoss, it seems like the patch is doing exactly what it was supposed to do... and it's suuper fascinating to see a strategy that is simultaneously too strong for 99.9% of the playerbase be so easily outplayed by a single digit number of people that protoss make up the majority of GM league yet still don't win tournaments
@@quantinum2141 I feel that nerfing corruptors is too much. It's not the most cost efficient Zerg anti-air, it's basically their only real choice. Queens can't really attack. Mutas are harassment units, not army. Hydras are made of paper. Nerfing Corruptors would give Zerg basically no choice.
@@isaacsteele7986 Viper nerf mostly as I understand, it doesn't matter for 99.9% of all protoss players but for the top pros it may give them the edge they need, we'll see
@@lancelindlelee7256 Ok, but lets compare corruptors to ground zerg. Lings don't trade well, roaches don't trade well, hidras, ultras and even ravagers, usually don't trade well. The only cost efficient attacking unit Zerg has on ground is the siege Lurker and the Brood lord which is basicly a siege unit as well. why should corruptors trade so well against all air? That is the problem I have with them, with simple focus fire they get a ton of value that isn't caracteristic of Zerg units. I don't want to trash them, because you are right, they are the only late option vs air, but it shouldn't be as effective as is. for example, I don't think they should be that good against Voidrays, they should be countered harder by voids, but no, they can poke voids to death. hidras, queen and specially parasitc bomb should be the ideal answer to voids and they usually are, but with corruptors they just evaporate. You see what I mean? i think Zerg shouldn't ever be cost efficiente if it is not abusing spells every fight. If HP is too much, maybe nerf their range. They are already pretty fast, so it would only make poking harder and so less efficnet overall.
Nothing makes Protoss players hate Protoss than Protoss players xD
Finally we can make GroundToss great again!
Immortals + Archons + Chargelots FTW
Me Terran. Me hotkey barracks and hold down A. Me Korean GM now. 😊
Hating skytoss is actually just hating yourself for not 2-base all-inning.
That's deep
Hating void rays is actually just hating yourself for going all-in instead of macroing
We like to play longer games too
I mean back in the day, even with a Zerg roach-ravager all-in, the Protoss would already have some voidrays and shield batteries to defend. So the all-in required massing Queens as well (which got nerfed).
Worst part is when u fail the 2base all in
I think Corruptors became a lot stronger against skytoss now. Previously you had to focus fire Carriers one by one which made a lot of attacks go to waste on each kill, now you can let corruptors do their work on their own, without wasting attacks on interceptors or thin air.
Yes but again on paper its look good but as for truth its not
Better use hydras
@@uniguy4647 don't hydras suck really bad against carriers? Like don't get me wrong I'm a bronze league caveman level player but still.
@@skeptic_lemon Man... If u don't believe me then just test at unit tester hydras better vs air if u use them together with infestors
@@uniguy4647 hydras did get buffed, and I imagine with infestors they would be really good but hydras are made out of paper and skytoss has infinity dps. Especially with storm.
What is sad for me is the concept of a mothership it is supposed to be as powerful or more powerful than a battlecruiser.
I think that s a gameplay vs lore problem.
@@leonardovegaolmedo5483 lorewise 1 voidray can destroy everything the terran has that is not a capital ship
@@mintcrystalsanimatio exactly, it makes no sense for a guy with a machine gun could take out a ship that size. Terran is supposed to be the underdog that can hardly take a direct engagement, but from a game perspective, all 3 need to be somewhat balanced.
The Mothership should be unabductable. And may be gain extra HP and Shield in exchange for higher cost?
@@manolgeorgiev9664 you can't change the hp for cost, the army would be too tanky. You could maybe do it for supply.
Bro, when you started playing the voidrays song, I swear I just saw my entire childhood flash before my eyes
It was beautiful... 😭😭😭😭
Yeah....
Something I think Lowko has mentioned which would be a welcome change is if they made Carriers have more micro-ability. It would probably take an entire rework to the unit but in my opinion this is the Carriers biggest weakness. As a diamond player, I hate playing carriers because you cannot micro them and it's just not fun (even though I win more when I get them). Making them more micro-able would make them less OP in the lower leagues and have more potential to be effective for great control players like hero and Parting.
The other major is vipers. Vipers specifically is why top level players can dominate skytoss but lower level players, who can't control them + the army as well, struggle. Remove abduction and rebalance skytoss down, and it'd be far healthier
Air units such as the carrier and mutalisk need to have had their microability from BW from the very start of the game. Why they didn't retain all that was beyond me.
my big issue with Skytoss is they’re predominantly general purpose combat units, outside of maybe Phoenixes. No real aerial late game mana spellcaster outside Mothership, which is very prone to being sniped. Carrier has a lack of interesting micro tricks.
Most people don't realise the real problem and the real reason airtoss is pure cancer. It is the design of the carrier(and all capital ships in sc2), carriers scale insanely well with higher numbers because of the way they deal damage. While pretty much all units that counter them, like corruptors, vikings don't scale well at all. This means the units is useless in low numbers and insanely op in high numbers. And because of this it is impossible to balance it well, The unit is either too weak and useless or too powerful. It also limits your army composition by a lot, it is literally never a good choice to just put some carriers into your normal protoss army, you either only make them or you don't make them at all.
In comparison other late game units like tempests and colossi for example don't have this problem, neither of them scale exponentially and both reach diminishing return once you have enough of them. This means you have a much more diverse army compostion, that also requires much more skill and are far more fun to play and watch, and you don't wanna insantly uninstall when you play against it.
Both bcs and broodlords have the same problem, they are just weaker then carriers. I know it is really hard to design and balance capital ships, but blizz really messed it up with sc2 imo.
Really good point!
The only reason they scale disproportionately is the interceptor messing with units targeting. But this should be mostly fixed now, as long as you don't camp your units outside the rage where they can actually attack the carrier.
@@Leonhart_93 nope, that was my entire point. The problem isn't the interceptors, it is the fact that interceptors deal low damage very quickly, this means 3 carriers don't do any significant damage, but 15 carriers evaporate everything that comes close to them. They never stop scaling with higher and higher numbers, corruptors which supposed to counter them don't scale infinitely, cause once they have enough to one shot a carrier they don't deal more damage even if you have more of them
@@norberthiz9318 But that's still linear scaling. 15 carriers do 5x more damage than 3 carriers. Like every other air unit, nothing different.
@@Leonhart_93 can you not read?
Yes 15 carriers do 5x the damage of 3 carriers. But 45 corruptors don't do 5 times the damage of 15 corruptors, because they gonna overkill a lot. I don't think it is hard to understand. Just think about it for a sec. Why do marines scale far better then stalkers with higher numbers. Partially cause they are smaller, but mainly cause they deal low damage very quickly, while stalkers hit (kinda) hard and slow, so they overkill, when you have a lot of them. Marines and carriers don't have such problems
naniwa: *basic micro with mistakes*
apollo: *losing his mind omg so good micro*
also love the intro :)
edit: pretty much the whole video. edits make it a joy to watch
engagement
I think we are back to P relying timing attacks, getting figured out and dying. The patch seems to just be anti-P, best thing they got was templar speed which is long overdue, straight nerf to disruptors and huge nerf to carriers(no APM spent on targetting anymore). Z and T got buffs to EMP radius, Broods, Ultra and things that help them smash P. Its like oh no Z has to build 2 more vipers to get more pulls, that's 3 less roaches or corruptors. T has across the board buffs opening heaps of new strats for Banshee, Raven, Cyclone and Libs but sensor tower has 3 less range... big whoop.
EMP got nerfed in late game, where the Carriers are being used the most. Banshee and Cyclone "buff" mean nothing in PvT, you not gonna see BattleMech and mass Banshee in that matchup, not a CHANCE. Libs buff is nice but Raven isnt really a buff, because no Terran making 3-4 Ravens in PvT neither, especially if Protoss going for early Phoenix build.
I would like to see khaydarin amulet back for HT. Since warp in time was nerfed and that was one of the main issue it could allow end game toss to be a bit stronger without going overboard. Or/and increase range/damage of feedback. That would affect mostly pro play, since in lower leagues noone is using HT aniway.
@@tigera6 Yes but honnestly i don't think TvP late game is that relevant. The fact that ghost can easily counter toss army and HT when they get out is more important than them being weaker in late game, where you can generally afford more ghost anyways.
QQ that's all I read.
I'm excited to see the new patch on Katowice for sure. I think Air armies, especially toss, is just inherently difficult to balance in sc2, opposed to BW, because of how the armies clump up. And even if you balance them, for me the playing experience in such games is just overall bad. Watching pro players struggle is fun though, as long as not every game goes into super late game.
my biggest problem (as a very casual player) is early proxy Stargate spawning tempests, which have a very long range and it's very hard for terrans to defend (same for zerg probably).
My (bad) ideas on how to fix PvZ.
1. Redesign the Carrier to have a clear niche instead of just being a frontline fighting unit. Tempest, for example, has a clear role as siege bombardment/anti massive. Voidrays while massable are also very fragile. So maybe the Carrier could take on a more lategame harassment role just make a few to fly around and kill bases, then run away.
2. Shift some of the Carrier's power into the Archon. Essentially, the same principle that was used with transferring some of the power of power of the WoL/HotS Colossus with the Disruptor. Possibly just letting it gain +2shield armor per shield upgrade, to more radical ideas like giving it a new ability that you need to buy at the Templar Archives.
3. Nerf the Lurker. No unit should be allowed to have such high dmg, aoe, decent bulk, be fast, and be invisible. You can nerf the HP or something so that well 1 placed Disruptor shot can kill them perhaps. Or on the deeper end make it so they are only rooted like how the old SH work so you no longer need detection unless the Z actually gets the burrow upgrade. The less Lurkers exist the less Skytoss.
Regarding 3, I have an idea. How about we give the Protoss an invisible flying detector unit !
@Ian Whitchurch Observers are the worse choice of detector vs Lurkers. Oracles are basically mandatory now if you ever want to fight Lurkers on the ground.
@@zeoncrystal Okay. So we'll give Protoss *two* flying detector units, against a unit that can't shoot up !
@Ian Whitchurch A unit that invalidates lategame ground play for Protoss and forces Carriers :D
Yeah lurkers are crazy OP against toss. It's really one reason they need to go air to discourage their use. The problem isn't detecting the lurkers so much as beating them. They've got a 10 range anti-armor AoE attack, meaning they outrange everything protoss has on the ground except disruptors and disruptors require constant micro and take 2 hits to take out a single lurker.
One of the problem is that in latest meta lurkers is too strong, and if zerg go to them early enough as protoss you have no choice but to go skytoss because enough lurkers can't be beaten by ground.
So you're saying you're forced to make a unit to counter another? You know that's why we HAVE TO make Viper and Corruptor against Carriers. Counter to both are High Templars because Feedback and Storm. Tempest also works well because of the Range.
Against Lurkers you usually use mobile armies because they always have to burrow for attacking or are literally useless. So semi-static defense that needs vision to attack I can think of multiple ways to counter that. The same way you counter Siege Tanks and any Contain just that you need vision which you can get with Observers if you snipe Overseers first.
If the Lurker Count is so high that not any amount of ground army can defeat them (which I don't think is possible btw especially for Protoss) then it means their army is so immobile that you can break the Siege just by attacking the enemy base. If he needs to defend and has too many Lurkers burrowed out in the field he's kinda fucked without Serral APM.
Technically speaking, Disrupturs can counter Lurkers pretty hard, and even Immortals to some extent.
That psystarcraft clip had me reeling down memory lane
i think the problem with protoss is that it has some basic advantages that lag behind in higher level games, while terran and zerg both have some advantages that require more skill to exploit (creep and overlord give you vision everywhere, and terran economy is broken, for instance). That doesn t mean protoss is easier as people say, in fact, the higher you go, the harder it gets, it s just that some of its advantages are more apparent.
Yes, lots of low skill ways to win. Void ray all in, dt drop, cannon rush, blink stalker, chargelots, skytoss. All pretty low skill. Holding a void ray all in requires 2 hands but to execute one takes only 1 hand.
@@peterhardie4151 Let's not forget cannon+battery contain into proxy void ray+tempest. One of the most disgustingly easy cheeses to pull off and one of the hardest to fight off lower on the ladder (it still has a lot of success up until low diamond or so)
@@peterhardie4151 well it isn't like terran doesn't have some build orders that can get them a really easy win against toss, while requring little to no skill. 3 rax, widow mine drops, hellion drops, tank pushes, and many more less cummon but still oppressive builds like proxy ghosts and 1 base mass cyclone. All of these require far more skil to defend then to execute, which is true to all cheeses and all ins in the game.
Also void ray all ins suck nowadays if you can't defend that that is a you problem for sure.
@@norberthiz9318 no one is getting to masters on the back of hellion drops or widow mine drops without decent mechanics and game understanding. protoss can get to masters with one build i think.
@@peterhardie4151 You can get masters with quite literally anything, you can just cheese or 2 base all in every game to masters easy, and those are far easier to do then defend. I'm not a tvt expert, but you could do a 2 base tank push every single game to masters in all 3 matchups. You could also play mech in 2 matchups easily all the way to realatievly high gm.
And playing airtoss is a style not a build order, you can turtle to airtoss in every matchup theroatically, but it is gonna be very different builds, against zerg you can take a 4th base with 3 oracles and a couple of gateway units, you absolutely can't do that against terran because you are gonna die to 16 marines.
Idk what the solution would be, but playing as a casual is horrible and not worth it with mass void rays. Catering to the top players makes sense from a business standpoint, but it really sucks when there aren't solutions to mass void ray that don't require more out of a casual player than mass void ray itself requires.
Take two players of equal (low) skill and the mass void ray player is pretty much guaranteed to win. There is no GIT GUD, because both suck and haven't gotten better in years of playing. The answers are infestors and vipers for zerg, or BC yamato/raven disabling missile for terran? So high micro skill units vs low micro skill units (void rays)? This is an insurmountable wall for low skill players and is the reason SC2 is trending down. Once a new game comes along with competitive play that doesn't essentially rule out low skilled players who quit before they "git gud", SC2 will die out.
Casuals are a necessity and that will never change. Who knows how many casuals quit when they could have improved because of this problem? Who knows how many Serral's just decided to play another game? Also, Serral etc aren't getting any younger. They will eventually have to move on as well. You have to remember, SC2 is a video game and video games are a business. Without casual players boosting sales, what company will invest the money into the RTS genre?
As a Zerg I was so happy when all the Protoss players started mimicking Hero’s gateway style and every game wasn’t just trying to kill the Protoss before they got carriers out. If I ever saw more than 2 carriers on the field it was pretty much always GG for me. I’m glad they seemed to figure out a way to make carriers beatable for scrubs like me :3
3:55 & 4:10 "legendary micro" dude is just pulling back dmged units. its the most basic of moves
Well yes, but the skill level has increased significantly in the last 5 years. Back in 2013 it was peak micro
Players back then are probably as good as high diamond players now
I'm personally still thinking that all air units should have longer build time and more supply cost.
Air units ignore map features. That's their greatest strength. Except for liberator and muta only units that do air AoE are ground units. On paper this is brilliant rock-paper-scissors design, but problem has always been ability to stop the air-composition from snowballing out of control. In principle, hard-counters like mass-hydra-corruptor or mass-viking-marine should counter non-HT-supported skytoss. The trouble usually comes from the fact that if carrier count grows beyond a certain point, counter-play effectiveness falls off a cliff.
We'll see how the interceptor attack priority changes the game, obviously. Based on my limited experience so far, vikings and corruptors absolutely demolish carriers provided you have a sufficient count. It is honestly a massive improvement. Protoss can still improve their odds by focus-firinng, making engagements more skill-based.
It's obviously completely my preference, but even given the carrier change I would still love a general nerf to air. Moments where a composition or tech switch grinds the game to a halt should be avoided. Carrier-based skytoss compositions just happen to be the worst offenders of this. I don't know anybody who enjoys playing against mass-BC either, for that matter.
I'm not a competitive player but from an entertainment standpoint late game skytoss is entertaining to watch and hilarious when it gets shut down by a few well placed abducts and fungals. While it does need nerfs, I hope it's stays a solid comp in the long run.
@austin heeebs I mean it needed the nerfs pointed out in the video, not that it needed nerfs right now. I guess I've stated it wrong.
BRO the void rays song. What a throwback
my opinion on it
skytoss is love skytoss is life skytoss is eternal
I agree, for professional games Skytoss doesn't seem too strong. I most often play team games on the ladder though and as soon as a protoss goes for Skytoss it's basically over. You can't punish them like in 1v1 because their team mates are protecting them.
As a Zerg D2, what I love playing against skytoss is Ultra/hidra/infestor. You just a-move and fart on the ultras. If the Skytoss player plays as braindead as you, the carriers will be tickling the ultras while the hidras farm them and the Ultras melt archons or templars. It is pretty great to force Toss to do the thing they fear the most: micro carriers lol.
It ain't called the Goldem Armada for nothing
Skytoss and widowmines are the reasons why many ppl quit.
I think that Protoss' balance issues ultimately come from their core design (big surprise). Warpgate, allowing near-instant essential unit production anywhere on the map, requires that those units be less effective than the other races’ counterparts. Turns out that negating defenders’ advantage drastically changes the balance of an RTS.
Since their core units can’t compete in any straight up fight, Protoss only has two options: big cheese, or tech up fast as hell. Obviously, balance patches lean away from cheese and more towards macro, so now they need to give Protoss the defensive tools to survive the early game, as well as some tech-based mid and late game punches to the rest of their army. It results in this gamestate where the urgency is forced on the opponent to interrupt the Protoss’ comfortable cycle, where the Protoss suffers less risk than the opponent.
But of course, the nature of Starcraft is that it’s always better to be on the offensive, and that’s the real challenge curve. Lower skilled players struggle to pressure Protoss enough to make a difference, while at the pro level, Protoss win rates struggle unless they have some recent patch exploit.
I don’t have any idea how to fix this. I’d like to see some way to make Warpgate less effective while improving gateway units’ effectiveness (aside from DT’s). Cooldown time wouldn’t have much of an effect cuz you’d still have a mass warp-in threat. Maybe there’s an avenue to explore where a Gateway still has effectiveness in terms of unit production, while a Warpgate is inefficient but has the harassment opportunity?
Warpgate just can't be changed at this point and making P core ground units actually strong would just result in oppressve all ins. At the same time it means P has to hold on for dear life the whole game until a Collosus or some other tech saves them from a light push. The game for P can just end so abruptly because their army strength doesn't scale neatly like T or Z, its fragile. You either have the exact right composition and supply or the army evaporates embarrassingly fast and cost inefficient.
A lot of P suceess in SC2 has just been timings and straight Cheeses, we've never had a dominant macro P pro like T or Z. LotV worker changes ended that largely so the core strength of races is more obvious.
Overall I definitely agree with you. But I think that’s the advantage of a community run test realm. The community is ready to explore ways of making the Raven relevant (rightfully so). Why not try to legitimize the Gateway? I guess at the end of the day there will always be more issues, and the authority of RTS balance will never be found in the comments section of a youtube video.
@@chinogambino9375 I would add its very painfull to see bio destroying basses and defences in seconds. Drop ship is much more potent tool then warp gates. Its very common sight to lose zealots while fighting bio just because they are melee unit that charge to close quarters and the moment you want to disengage as protoss you lose all of them for 0 dmg :/
All the last victory games I saw for protoss players reqire cheese/harasse in the beggiing or you lose. Late game Zerg have 10 hatcheries that can build whatever unit you need. terrans have a ton of mules etc.
I think there is a good balance overal in the game however.
The thing that prottos lacks in end game is some kind of brain dead meachincs like creep/sensor towers/scans.
@@Bodesey The problem with changing the gateway was that it'd essentially massively change the entire racial identity if warp gates were altered. Making the Raven useful is a lot easier, because it's still a side unit Terran may or may not build. Gateways are a core element of protoss, it'd be like getting rid of Zerg's ability to build anything from Larva. The change is so drastic Blizzard would never make it unless it's for SC3.
This narrative is now 10 years old.. Protoss hate is stemming from brood war where on lower levels balance was truely bad. It's not even that much warpgate as the protoss is having more AoE which he is supposed to use in order to beat the others races. Needing AoE to clean Terran stimmed bio, (like the zerg, who need Baneling / Lurkers, i don't think a Z can do well with just Hydra / Roach / Zergling vs stim bio on equivalent upgrades) and to clean Zerg who is out-macroing P by nature. It's always P that is being targeted when really other races have imba mechanics too.
Its almost impossible to push back in direct confrontation. I recommend to target carrier 1 by 1, using abduct, whole group ( but small ) with fungal, and bother toss with nydus non stop
Or just pressuring the economy to prevent him from going skytoss. I managed to do it a couple of times with blink stalkers and zealot runbys. Vision and possition are key though.
Low mmr players have a hard time controlling multiple spell casters. In grandmaster, fungals + abducts (spell casters) make it incredibly hard for a purely carrier skytoss to a-move in.
Honestly you don't need multiple casters to stop pure carrier. Pure carrier is easy. Build mass corruptor, select all your corruptors and shift right click on each of the carriers. It gets tough when the carriers are escorted by templar/archon/void, but a pure carrier newb composition should be easy to wreck so long as the player has any kind of macro skills. As of the latest patch, you don't even need to do the shift right-click and can do a basic attack move.
@@taragnor vikings still lose to the carriers and if you built any roaches at all from a straight to skytoss build you flat out lose.
@@ghosthamster6521 not really. You can have more Roaches before the Protoss can mass any Air Unit. The Voids or whatever will kill your base so slowly that you usually have enough time to attack their base with like 30 Roaches or more. He'll be forced to recall and he better does it quick. Never forget you only lose when all your buildings are destroyed. If you got more stuff just basetrade them.
And I recommend buffing the Vikings with 1-2 Raven for the Anti-Armor Missile and then Vikings will win against Carriers.
You can just defend with Queen spore and scout for carriers
Dont need to base trade
You absolutely cannot "a move" corruptor vs carrier. You have to move them in on top of the carrier first before a move-otherwise they'll fight the interceptors.
And that's the main problem, because carriers can a+move and will win with just a+move
Yeah but it's still much easier
what would you change if you could 2
The new viking damage point change is actually pretty neat. In combination with the interceptor attack priority, it allows vikings to "stutter step" capital ships like carriers much easier.
I would argue zerg needs a similar "anti-carrier" corruptor move so that they arent so dependent on "vipers kill all support before you can engage". A "dive" skill so they can dart in and out, or a similar lowered damage point comes to mind. If you had those, you might even be able to nerf vipers harder.
The real balance issues are the fact the devs want to nerf players and forget about units, so they make a complete mess while targeting specific players who are dominating. They should just boost the carriers with bigger and better interceptors and force the Protoss to micro them individually, so they don't need to be massed and aren't a simple A-move army.
I like the idea of making carriers a moving building that produce interceptors, and the inteceptors have a timer of how long they can be out of the ship.
Look, I don't like massed void rays any more than the next guy, but it really feels like for all of SC2, anything strong protoss does is labelled toxic. Even back in Wings, I never saw the kind of hatred for the terran MMM ball that I for the protoss deathball, for example, even though it's basically the same thing.
Wings was hillarious, 2 radius EMP 100% shield dmg... T never builds them and still wins. On some maps you would have to chrono out a sentry and FF the ramp a second after because stimmed marines would already be running up it. Good times.
toss just feels so cheesy IMO. I used to play back in WOL. Forcefields that literally had no counter until late game so you would lose to an army that is half the size then you have cannon rushes, DT rushes, and Void rushes to name a few. MMM deathball was an army you could fight, toss felt like you were just trying to not lose the game because you don't have/lost your detection.
@@anubis520 Look, I'm happy to agree that cheese is cheese, but a) I feel like you're forgetting the sheer number of weird terran cheeses there were around that time (reapers, hellion run-bys, planetary fortress rushes, bunkers in your natural, banshee timings...), b) force fields were pretty much the only way protoss had any prayer of holding any attacks /before/ the late game, so I can't really agree about that one, and c), my actual point, if a protoss player just built a big army that you could fight, people would still get angry about it.
@@jarrakul I don't think you are getting my point, toss units use round about ways to inflict damage. While everything you described is annoying, toss does it in cheesier fashion. A bunker rush or PF rush pales in comparison to a cannon rush. A reaper and helions are annoying but it is nothing compared to getting force fielded indefinitely from your natural. Proxy barracks still have to be at a distance where as a single pylon can reinforce just outside the LOS of the battle without endangering your structures. But then you get to a maxed out army and your sentrys can just cut the army in half, fight 2 to 1 then kill the other half. As a zerg there was nothing I could do against these players. 3 Colossus would clear anything on the ground and blink made protect from air a breeze. A direct engagement was a death sentence. you had to go mutas and harrass, it was the only way to hope to win. Everything about toss is an ability to 2 for 1. And yes, it can require more micro but in a straight up engagement toss get the advantage. I am speaking from a zerg prospective, I can't speak for terran.
Totally agree. Seems like toss is the good looking sister of the family and the other 2 ugly sisters have agreed to cry imbalance anytime toss shows any strong strats.
Think of all the disgusting zerg strats over the years, swarmhost nydus, roach rush with nydus hit like 3.30, proxy hatch spines, bane busts, 2base mass muta, infested marines, etc etc etc. Terran are the same, some super disgusting strats, BC are cancer, widow mines are cancer, ravens are ridiculous, MMM's ability to scale no matter the comp its against, invisible ghost, emp, snipe and nukes, lol.....
Both races can spam 1 unit (marines, corruptors) and counter toss air very efficiently unless toss makes storm and archons which is insanely gas intensive, and can only be done off 5base eco.
So toss stop making air army and start using ground more, alright time to nerf the disruptor and battery's...
Welp my first experience with sky tos I wanted to gouge my eyes out but cannon rushes are still the most annoying making me wanna throw my keyboard
There he was the legendary Psy Starcraft! What a blast from the past!
what would you change if you could
Carriers do not have a "purpose" in the game. They are meant to be an all around "kills everything unless hard countered" unit, and hence need next to zero micro. Meanwhile, Protoss can use all of their micro skills on other units, which is why the deathball is really so strong. The real core of what I think needs to change is to give a "purpose" to the carrier besides just being strong and killing everything. This means weakening them towards one composition / tactic, while possibly even buffing them towards others.
For example: Carriers could make a liberation siege zone where their interceptors target. Takes time to switch targets, but within the zone you can even buff interceptors.
Another example: Interceptors could be given a realistic amount of HP so that targetting and killing them is an actual viable strategy instead of just wasted DPS (it is always a waste of DPS to kill intercecptors, the only exception is with stimmed marines on an upgrade lead). In which case stalkers, hydras in good clumps can beat equal supply lategame skytoss, but only if they were packed for maximum value. In which case you can buff carrier range and nerf interceptor launch speed.
Another example: interceptor reload time could be massively nerfed (just like swarm hosts) so that carrier attacks have to happen in waves and it's a bigger issue to lose your interceptors in between waves. But if they need to happen in waves they can release all their interceptors in one go, actually making their DPS stronger.
The heart of the problem isn't that the carrier is so strong. The heart of the problem is that interceptor deployment is so adaptable. Like it literally doesn't matter how you control this unit beyond f2-amove below masters. It will eat storms, fungals, parasitic bombs, even anti-armor missiles and will still win the majority of the fights simply because of the zero micro needed for managing interceptor deployment. Mix one or 2 archons, templars, disruptors, collosi etcin the mix and you can melt any army that would have otherwise been good against the carriers but also needed micro.
I'm just busy trying to find a liberator build order that won't have me die in 2 seconds to rush
Now I'll just build voidrays as Terran
SkyToss Master Race.
Of course this is the first comment i see lol
En Taro Adun
Groundtoss for life. From the good old days of broodwar.
Ah, a fellow chad of culture
I disliked that you missed out on adding the fact that graviton catapult (carrier upgrade that makes interceptors come out faster) was removed.
the more I look at starcraft 2 the more I think making air units that are good against both ground and air is just a bad idea.
Ehh, starcraft 1 scouts and wraiths weren't busted, tho wraith was hot garbage. I thin command and conquer 3 venom is a good example of an air unit that deals good damage against ground and air.
@@marks7484 wraithballs were core in tvt but scouts were never used except for bm
IMO you just *cannot* have a generalist unit that is also flying. That alone will always make it A-move good at worst. Void rays enjoy balance history of being either completely worthless or ridiculously broken. This is because void rays do basically everything, and they fly. They attack both air and ground, have decent base damage, and do bonus vs armor (and everything is armored).
Carriers in effect kinda just behave like giant void rays, so they suffer from the same problem.
The only way to fix these units is to come up with a more utilitarian way to use them and scrap the "just a damage dealer" mindset. Good examples being basically every other air unit in the game.
Its the same with mutas/BC etc.
@@ixirion mutas are a special case because they SHOULD be good at harassment, it's just that they cost way too much for what you get out of them. Add onto that that they're actually the ONLY unit in the game that gets worse as upgrades get made, and it's pretty obvious why they're trash. Mutas are almost completely unchanged from brood war, meanwhile the game itself has changed drastically.
BCs are in a really good spot right now tho, idk what you mean. Their primary goal is utility and harassment. Since theyre a T3 unit they have to be a bit oppressive, but if you get anti air early enough you'll be fine. BCs are only oppressive to the people that ignore them.
Voids are good against armored stuff, weak against light. Try void rays against stim marines or hydras and see how they do. They're not good against everything.
@@taragnor stim marines are good against literally everything in the game lol. Also you made my point for me. When you have to nitpick units that are good against this unit, this unit is a generalist. My point was that you cannot have a generalist that also flies, it will always be bad for the game.
@@CorwinTheOneAndOnly You said "My point was that you cannot have a generalist that also flies, it will always be bad for the game." Then you go into apologist mode for mutas and battlecruisers, saying they're okay, when they can clearly attack everything and fly as well. So apparently it's not "always" bad.
Sounds like you just hate protoss.
That clip of MrLlamaSC before he became big in Diablo 2 brought a smile to my face.
ive been struggling with toss cheese many years but void ray buff finally defeated me since from then on every single XvP was either cheese (like void battery rush) or toss would be camping for 30 minutes behind cannons and batteries massing up 180 supply of sky. The fact that blizzard gave up on sc2 just after the patch and they left us with that meta to play with. It just was too much and i left.
I feel like SC2 has an overabundance of sky units in general (especially for protoss & terran) and sky units are all ranged and ignore (almost all) terrain and line of sight blockers, so they're a no-brainer. In Brood War there's much fewer sky units, most of the fighting is on the ground.
So, personal opinion. I think a lot of the problem is that there is a mismatch in design and goals.
Let me explain, in general, each of the races have a different supposed focus. Zerg players are supposed to be focusing on macro, their queens are inputting larva, they're expanding creep, all that jazz. And in the early game most of their units are pretty much A-move. They're a swarm. As the game goes on, they transition to a bit more micro, as everyone does once their economy is up and running. Then let's look at the Terran. Terran are kinda in the middle of the micro/macro divide, but their big focus is on setting up positions. A lot of their most useful and powerful units are about taking and securing a position, so the Terran player can really just focus on microing their bio ball.
But then there's Protoss. In theory, they look like they were designed to have the least focus on macro. 1 probe can build everything, Chrono Boost is the easiest most forgiving of the macro mechanics to use. But to make up for it, Toss units were powerful but needed a lot of micro. They have Zealots to be a bulwark, but after them all their other tier 1 units have spells of some kind. They even have the earliest dedicated caster unit with the Sentry (well... Zerg has Queens but they're again mostly meant to be a macro mechanic that can defend the base if necessary).
On paper that all works. Even the units that don't have actual abilities like Immortals, Archons, and Colossus are so big, bulky, and in a way surprisingly fragile, that you need to micro them to protect them. Often with prism shenanigans.
The thing is, Protoss, and especially air-Toss are really the only race in the game that doesn't get more micro intensive going into the late game. Zerg starts juggling casters. Terran does roughly the same thing they've done all game but with more things to pull off all at the same time. And here's Protoss late-game air that just A moves. You can't micro Carriers worth a damn. They're just a big bulbous thing that spits out a lot of little swarmy things. That's a Zerg unit. Protoss were supposed to be the micro-intensive ability juggling race. Where's the micro-intensive ability juggling? It's just not there. Fun Oracle shenanigans aside.
And this I think is part of the reason it's stuck as it is. There's little skill expression in the units. So they have to be big and powerful. If they're big and powerful the lower skilled players will struggle against them. And they'll call it cheap, because it kinda is. The race with the easiest macro builds up to the easiest micro. It's lame. But on the other hand, because there's so little skill expression with these units when you do get to the point that you have enough skill to defeat them, well, there's not a whole lot the Protoss Air can do. It has a low skill floor and skill ceiling.
Anyway, that's the thoughts of someone who loves the game, but who has 0 credentials and probably shouldn't be listened to. I'm not a game designer, nor a particularly good.
You have a point though. I always said in SC2 that T and Z are harder to play than P is right from the start. Terran needs to be on top of his production all the time and micro his units very well while dropping Mules etc, Zerg needs to macro, Creepspread and scout like crazy so he can react accordingly with weaker units and Protoss... yeah Protoss just kinda does whatever it wants. Warp in every few seconds, queue up some higher tech units every few seconds while boosting everything with Chronoboost that you want to have finished quicker.
The thing is Terran and Zerg basically start the game on hard and expert while Protoss start on easy or normal. Stronger but more expensive units, not really micro intensive, one Probe builds everything, quick Warp Ins in an Energy Field, Air Units the go-to late game army, Recall, Shield Batteries, the best static defense etc. Protoss was the race when I first started the game that felt the most intuitive to me - everything makes sense without special things to consider like spending larvae and chose if workers or army, spreading creep or choosing addons for production facilities and positioning for tanks and stuff.
This makes Protoss very easy to learn and very hard to master. A very bad Protoss can still win a lot of games in lower leagues because his army is stronger by default because of shields and if he just goes Skytoss. T or Z both have to use very advanced tactics to defeat a 200 supply Skytoss and most players in low leagues simply don't understand the game enough to do that.
The fact that Protoss (or rather Skytoss) are dominating in low leagues but are very rarely winning tournaments tells us all we need to know. This is where you can feel that those players learned the game on easy / normal and need to climb a huge learning curve to become a thread in the high leagues. The fact that beginner Protoss dominate those leagues with a bad Skytoss Build Order while having like 25 workers the whole game is nuts. They don't need to scout, they don't need to harass, they don't need to macro or micro. Just build Carriers and Void Rays man.
What we need is make Protoss a lot harder to play for noobs and buff their abilities in a way where actually good players can use them to their full potential. It can't be that Z and T either are forced to be so aggressive towards the P so he can't even tech up that high or have to bring triple the APM to the table the Protoss has to just to survive.
My ZvP, TvP and PvP games are 90% the same for years: They will either Cannon rush and then tech up to Skytoss, or macro super greedy while teching up to Skytoss. I play against very little Ground Toss players and I'm thinking about letting them win everytime so we have less Skytoss noobs rampaging around in the ladder.
Aside all patches between buffs and nerfs, I still believe the spark that made Skytoss too accessible was the 12 miners change in LOTV. Almost everybody open 2 bases nowadays because of that, and that makes airtoss very viable early game. Even BC for Terran at some point.Yet, none talks how MUTA were killed from the meta since HOTS/LOTV, except for ZvZ.
The REAL problem with mutas was how they weren't as microable as they were from BW. No moving shot, no dazzling pro muta micro.
@@d0k0night 1)Toss opens quite often Fenix early game, bye muta. 2) T can go whatever he likes. Widow mines, cyclones, Thors... God, even Raven with old patches were viable LOL
The root of the problem is the Viper was a bandaid unit that literally broke matchups. Should never been able to pull massive units.
Just change a target filter flag, Massive for Abduct in the SC2 editor from "Allowed" to "Excluded". It's a simple change.
That's kind of the whole reason they can pull in the first place...
"Write your opinion in the comments" Can't wait for this to be on the front page of TH-cam for audience interaction
That's why multiplayer games (especially RTS games) should be balanced around the casual players with the pro-players adapting, and not the other way around.
Making micro changes specifically for the pro-players only slightly manipulates the outcome of a single encounter (which gets either multiplied or divided based on the player's micro management level in the late game) with downright disastrous consiquenses for the casual level like buffing sky tos 5 times in a row while also massively nerfing Zerg player's only sole means of countering it.
Making changes on casual level affects the game's paste as a whole which in turn entirely changes the pro-player matches making them way more entertaining to watch. Remember the 2 minute Zergling Rush in WoL? Remember Siege tank rush in WoL? Remember Barracks rush? Me neither, the game has evolved so much that this is simply unthinkable at this point.
On the other hand remember how BS was the discovery of splitting marines AND stop-move-stop attacking? The mfrs quite literally had become Cyclones\Battlecruisers long before the “attacking while moving” mechanic was cool.
Just add a micro component to carriers... Hear me out... Each time the interceptors are released, they don't automatically target new targets once the initial target is dead, just fly around for the full duration until they return to the carrier. Only then do they automatically acquire the next target. That way at the very least you make skytoss shift+right click your every marine/hydra during a fight.
skytoss is like my worst nightmare but now i am not worried because i found the way to defeat skytoss
The only despicable strategy is cannon rush
I stoped playing SC2 a few times because of frustration against skytoss. If some basic units like Stalker ou Hydra got some extra damage against massive units, would help A LOT. Harstem said carriers should be banned from the game (i totaly agree) kkkk
sktoss is practically impossible to beat in team games. because team games are collaborative, one member can take the brunt of aggression while the other can max out of void rays. There isnt a way to punish turtling toss behind an aggressive zerg or terran. I dont know how you could even balance 2v2 or 3v3 without hurting 1v1
Void rays are pretty easy to stop if you know they're coming. EMP+marines, psi-storm or viper/hydra. The big problem really is that people don't scout well in team games then get surprised when mass voids shows up.
maps... lets face it the maps suck so much ass. There is this one 3v3 map in the pool that is basically 2 circles connected by a bridge. How can you get anything aggressive done if there is literally one 1 attack angle.
I would make earlygame and midgame last longer, so no one skips them
People should play campaign missions only in campaign mode
The original concept for the Void Ray was to output more damage the longer it attacks a single target. However in WoL they would maintain its charge for a few seconds after destroying a target or given a new order.
The original Void ray should’ve taken a long time to charge to full and RESET it’s charge when it attacks a new target.
The ability to manually activate the full charge should reset when attacking a new target. Force the void Ray to commit to get the best value for the Protoss while also increasing the risk losing them.
They shouldn’t be able to kite like they can.
Look, just say that you want voidrays to be completely useless. No need for an essay
@@HellecticMojo then instead increase the cost or build time.
@@MattSipka yeah, and they were useless a year ago when what you suggest were in place. there were zero reason to build voidrays until they got the decrease to both. Oracles did the harass much better by being faster and especially strong against workers not to mention granting detection in a stargate opener, Phoenixes were much better for harassment.
Yes, I liked that design. It meant that they did incredibly well vs high hp targets but were countered to many low hp targets. Seemed equally good and counterable. Not sure why they changed their mind right away on it.
@@Leonhart_93 because all that means is that a mass of them have diminishing returns. It punishes focus firing by constantly punishing good micro with damage resets, while anything other than thor tier in speed can just weave in and out to reset the damage.
If you take OP's design, all you get is a worse tempest (if you can believe that to be possible) a flyer that can only get its damage against buildings and massive units while being shorter range.
Thanks for the video! I've always thought that hydras should be available at hatch tech. But the upgrades unavailable, until Lair. This would help in the lower leagues a lot with the void ray players. And I don't think pros play with unupgraded hydras anyways. Terran can make cyclone with a rax and factory tech lab. Toss can make a void ray with a gateway, cyber core and Stargate. It not really fair zerg has to get a pool, Lair, hydra den, and upgrades before they are good. Decent players can have void rays or cyclones by 3:30. Good zergs take about 6 or 7 min to get upgraded hydras. Just doesn't seem fair for anti air.
Got queen, no need for lair.. plus range advantage is huge for ground unit... Hydras also wasn't that good without the range upgrade... Con is low level players are bad at positioning OVs, creep spread and unwilling to spend on spores so queen can catch up with voidray... They're also bad at scouting with OVs to see the sign of mass voids
@Amru Shahril exactly my point then they can make 3-5 hydras easily defend and slowly learn those skills. What you just described takes much more skill and effort than making void rays, it would make the game more equal, and allow a lot more zergs to survive to the mid game. They also would not have to rely on queens for basically everything, which might be nice too.
@@hamburgers7817 Nah. hydra dps is too high for early game. It will be like bio with stim. Sadly as zerg you just have to git gud and spread creep and move OV and queens.
@Ixirion that's why i think it's unbalanced. Zerg has to use queen for everything and toss and terran have great anti air units in the early game. And it's not a big investment to make a rax or a gateway. Building a Lair to unlock AA is a big investment in the early game. Do you think all ins would be too powerful with unupgraded hydras? I just don't see how terran would have trouble holding with tanks and bunkers. Toss have super battery. I think they would be fine.
@@hamburgers7817 it will be broken on higher level
I wound up going mech as protoss. Stalkers as throw away/aa Immortals, and sentinels. Always getting +1 ground weapons first. Shit tons of gateways, and bases. And hitting as early as possible. Going against zero I would slightly change it to having some chargelots.
Tldr I play protoss like it's zerg
Hello. I am recently watching your video about SC2. I have an suggestion.
In Legacy of the void, there is War Council that chooses three different units of each fraction. But there are four factions. What ability would be the fourth unit of each unused faction of each unit?
I know there are Taldarin Zealots and Stalkers but no unique abilities.
I wonder how they differentiate?
Something that is all too common in 4v4 matches on any level
One guy sits in his base gets 3 3 3 carriers and a moves.
And gg. UNLESS you have an answer like High impact load thors, Mass vikings with stutter step firing, Infester viper, Protoss just A moves while other races have difficulty handling mass carrier
You take out 3 guys then the other guy just a moves carriers and it can become a base race to deal with them.
16 Liberators >>>>>> an entire army of Skytoss
Also mines counter skytoss. And bio. And mass Viking. And mass bc.
- 16 Liberator can win but can’t kill the base
- Mines can be avoided easily just go another way
- Bio is 50/50 also require more micro to win the fight
- Mass Viking is stupidly hard to micro and very low fire rate
- BC can be easily countered with tempest( if not the mothership BC is the most expensive unit in the game)
16 liberators cant win, if you spread out your Voids and Carriers well
I just started playing and i chose protoss bc it seemed the most approachable. Haven’t made any air units in ladder bc i’m keeping it very simple for now. I think people are just going to be salty no matter what so idk how to make ppl happy.
Unrelated but the creep nerfs were non existent according to most of the pros and the 1 tongue viper nerf is not very significant imo but what do I know
Micro is hard. Everyone hates cheese, everyone hates skytoss, and everyone hates losing their whole army to a single bit of aoe. unfortunately all protoss has is cheese, an op air deathball, and high damage aoe. The aoe is mostly fair to micro against but it is still really hard and when you are just starting out your opponents aren't going to like the game being hard.
A bit late on the upload, the carrier nerf makes zerg corruptors an amove win vs them
(as they always should have been)
@@vladroll2607 suuure... let's ignore the cost difference, tech difference, build time difference, supply difference...
@@kenners1993 most importantly, let's ignore the fact that corruptors are a primary anti-air units by design ;)
@@vladroll2607 They have good anti building dps too
@@kenners1993 so what? This ability is what saves them from being completely useless against a ground-based army opponent. They still suffer against any anti-air units, which makes any attempt at sniping buildings a very risky maneuver.
After all, their DPS against buildings isn't that high. It looks scary when a lot of corruptors a focusing on one building. This number of corruptors will occupy a decent part of the overall army supply, which basically means "if Zerg can snipe your buildings fast, he has little anti-ground firepower"
Oh, and one last thing - damaging a building is an ability with a cooldown. They are unable to destroy many buildings one after another. They take down one building - they need to GTFO ASAP. (Unlike many other units that can deal damage with regular attacks as long as they are alive)
Esport / SC2 historians trying to make a video without including the BC toilet clip ( 1:44 )
*(Difficulty: IMPOSSIBLE)*
Although if they did the nerf to having cannons only after cybercore no voidray nerf is needed i think
Protoss in Wings of Liberty just went with ground deathball
SKytoss in 2v2 pisses me off. Unless im able to go mech and Mass Thor, Libs, Cylones/Vikings and Marines. Im pretty much Dead as a Terran.
Make a video about Polt! It ll be great
Sure, he's in my list
The sad thing is that despite all this, protoss has historically underperformed in professional play
skytoss wasn't really a broken strategy, it was basically protoss' only strategy against zerg, because they constantly buffed the hell out of zerg. The lurker alone makes an all ground army almost unthinkable in the late game. You need air to discourage lurkers because lurkers will destroy anything you have on the ground.
@@taragnor not if you know what you're doing. Z is getting nerfed all the time usually it's getting harder and harder for Z because every single counter they find out get's taken away so a Protoss can A-Move. Stop measuring everything on Serral or Reynor.
All this about skytoss, yet phoenix don't even get a single mention
Yeah I think I'll cover that separately since it's rare on casual levels
1: Bring HotS colossi back (or at least buff the unit). Groundtoss lategame just doesn't cut it against zerg and struggles vs terran. Colossi have to be covered, microed away from danger, and sometimes manually target enemy units as to not get distracted with some random depot. It's the one ground unit other than the stalker that requires some amount of skill.
2: Make carriers more micro-able. With the new threat priority change they're easier to fight against, now make them more skill-expressive. Give their interceptor launch more range so they can fight from further away, maybe make them slightly faster, but nerf their health considerably so they're worse in a pound-for-pound exchange.
3: Tempest is not very useful as part of skytoss because of its low AF dps, so it's almost exclusively an anti broodlord/liberator/battlecruiser unit, but even there it's still pretty bad. Make it cheaper/build faster so it's easier to get them to support ground armies.
4: Void Ray is pretty much useless at all stages. Honestly I don't even care, every time it becomes even remotely viable it leads to toxic strategies. Either rework it entirely or leave it to rot.
5: Warp Prism 12 chargelot warp-in in the main is very infuriating in ladder. Make the transition into phasing mode take a couple seconds longer and reduce the warp-in area so not that many units fit. It's still a threat, but there's more leeway to fight against it.
Based Intro
I read this title as "History of Artosis and why he hates everyone"
can't we use infestor to shoot all the interceptor?
You ignored one of the most important reason behind Skytoss.
Blizzard nerfed Protoss ground army while buffed VS tech units, it practically meant in order for Protoss to win late game, he or she had to use VS units.
That and lurkers. Now that most zerg learned to go for lurkers early enough, you're forced to transition to skytoss as you see them because if they mass them there is no way you can deal with them with ground army. There is no such unit forcing you to skytoss on terran race in my opinion.
@@baptiste2863 disruptors?
@@ObeliskM No it does not work. If you have left over you Can use them, if z IS just transitioning and ONLY have ,2 you Can clean, but in a macro game it IS not viable
@@baptiste2863 why, disruptors should easily destroy stationary lurkers
@@baptiste2863 yes but skytoss is just op vs terran anyway. the only issue is if you waste the money on a fleet beacon you easily get overrun before your first carriers get out if terran is playing active. Hence why it's a menace to low level terran and even high level turtle styles with tank liberator.
TvP be like: canon rush into skytoss
dafaq is that kurt hugo singing about void rays with husky???? O.o?
that is awesome haha
My point is actualy whine about ZvP.
Zergs was always a terror in hands of the bests, so zergs is unstopably nerfed. As low lvl zerg i kinda suffered from this. Flexebility of zerg leaded to next sequence. Top gamers find a new strat -> strat is nerfed or entirely killed -> repeat. Meanwhile low lvl acually gets nothing. Through the sky toss rise i was an active player and witnessed a hell of a nerfs especially against sky. Hydralisks nerf was huge, queens got less range, on the point when only valid srat was just to all in against toss early, queen's heal was nerfed, and also mentioned vipers abduction nerf. Vipers btw is extreamly hard unit cause it flies before all army at sonic speed. But yes we got that stupid useless microbial shrouds, cause in the end sky toss need like 10 limit for 5 templars to storm out whole zergs hydra packf. Meanwhile air just goes on a-click.
i may be wrong, so if you have on your mind what exactly zerg got to counter sky toss during that times please remind me.
Looking forward for katowice cause of target priority changes
As a protoss when my opponent goes skytoss I barf.
I genuinely don't get why the hell there haven't just been 2 regular eggs & 1 advanced egg per 2 regular eggs at hatcheries, lairs, hives... Being able to mass corruptours even if a Protoss massed 50 Phönixes without being scouted for whatever reason is ridiculous from the start. So instead having it so that you can choose your advanced eggs to build infestours, corruptours, ultralisks, etc. whilst regular ones can make mutas & hydras still would have made Zerg countre-potential finally on par with Protoss, but I get it would shift T. Vs. Z. It's just something that has been ridiculous from the start & should have been *morphed* so to speak into something more sustainable & balanced a long long time ago.
Alright then remove Warp Gate, Warp Prism and Chrono Boost right now.
@@raydafuq3570 15 gateways take time to recharge it's not like you're in the co-operative mode & can have a unique tech to give your gateways 'Charges' to be used.
You spend 0 resources to make a larva... *0*!
Can you do an addon to this video about things like microbial shroud?
I think it should have been in this one.
coud someone please point me at the heromarine game from 9:20? holy cow is that badass!
In lower leagues Skytoss is the default. Don't waste time or money scouting, or building ground units. Just bang out anti-air and thank me later.
The other option is cannon rush, or Stalkers all in. But people mostly just tech rush air units.
It's boring as hell and makes the game borderline unplayable. The only other sane option is to T1 rush early as possible to try and disrupt them.
As a retired casual player. My problem was in zvt. It wasn't a big deal in the first WoL. I felt it was a good backbone for a casual player. I migrated from scbw but was never any good. I just learned the strategies from watching. I understood how each unit worked in bw. Here's my problem. Terran got widow mines in HoS. I thought, this changes everything. So you're telling me blizzard. You couldn't of possibly worked in the vulture? One of the most iconic terran units in scbw history. Hold up. Wait just a minute. No? Oh. Ohhhh. Oh. You got a better idea? Wait. You introduced just the mine. Left out the vulture. Now you can move the burrow and unburrow the mine then hide it again. Fine, that's what mines do. They burrow and blow up. Wait. They don't blow up now? That's not all? So you're telling me they can shoot up now and still fight another day. Hmmm. My casual brain is still upset they got vastly upgraded in every way. Huh. Oh but its more of an impact missile that shoots in a radial effect within range and it can be repositioned at any time. Sounds a lot like a missile turret with legs that burrow and are invisible without detection. At what point was there anything that resembles a vulture. Actually yeah. It is like a vulture. Just get rid of the marine operator. Remove anything resembling a bike. Remove the vulture entirely. Keep the mine part. Give it dragoon legs that burrow like a zergling. Add radar for the missile defense to shoot air too. Ground units had it bad before. Let's destroy air units too. Fantastic idea. Blizzard ruined every fibre of the vulture. What even is this monstrosity. You can't possibly tell me that the widow mines has likeness to the vulture. It's a damn shame. Downright pathetic. Thus, retirement.
They tried to work Vultures in back during the WoL beta phase. Problem is, they just didn't work in SC2's engine and meta due to the vastly improved pathing, and the more smooth army control of SC2 made Spider Mines not be able to reach their target. 75 minerals for a stationary 1-time use mine (since, let's face it, the vulture as it was wouldn't be remotely viable in SC2 aside from the mine) that can be killed before detonation isn't worth it. The alternative would be to make Spider Mines invulnerable, but that would be broken. Spider mines just couldnt be balanced properly. That just left the bike, and the bike's role as a fast harassment and anti-light kiting unit was better served by the Hellion. At the time of WoL's release, they just didn't think Terran absolutely needed any replacement for the Mines with Vultures being out.
And WMs weren't initially intended to fill the same function as the Vulture's Spider Mine anyway. The original concept was the Shredder, which was a high damage AoE death field, so they turned it into what it is now to make it a bit more fair and easy to deal with. And the main reason they were put in was because Terran bio required way more micro and babysitting than any comps they'd be going up against (especially against Muta/Ling/Bane) and it was harder to set up favorable engagements--Widow Mines were a band-aid for this, both forcing a bit more active attention on armies by Zerg and Protoss and giving a map control tool to set up more favorable engagements. They're not a one-time use unit because theyre factory-made with non-negligible supply cost (needed to keep there from being too many at once), unlike the baneling which can be massed much quicker and have a negligible individual supply cost
@@BroadwayRonMexico but why shoot up? That what urks me. I really like your points and they're true. I get the map control but It just feels cheap to a casual zerg. It just seems out of the realm of scbw days. That's my own fault. Blizzard worked on terran first in the meta-beta then worked the other races around the terran units. I remember that. Just seems funny they would insert a versatile mine into the comp then work the other races around it afterwards. My ground units get blasted by a mortar underground. Understandable. Then realistically. How does a mine that is underground with limited vision being buried. Shot an air unit outta space and decimates an army in one shot and severally damages anything in that airspace. Stop the cap
@@NooniiToons The reason was that Terrans at the time had very little that could deal with Mutas reliably. Sure, in a straight-up fight Marines could beat a stack of mutas, but the problem is, they're way less mobile. Thors had a weapon that was good against Mutas, but their mobility is even worse than bio's. Vikings don't counter Mutas very well, due to both speed and the lack of armored tag on mutas. And turrets can only hold off so many of them, and they're easy to fall back from or bypass for a unit as fast as Mutalisks. And Liberators weren't added yet since the need for an airborne siegebreaker for Terran (that was mass Ravens) wasn't realized until the HotS meta was well underway. Sure, WMs are stationary when active, but they do splash damage and can zone Mutas out of your worker lines
@@BroadwayRonMexico Mines burrow without research, outrun upgraded banes off-creep out of the gate, shoot (and splash) up, deal way more damage in a larger radius at a much larger range than melee, and don't self-terminate (it's a MINE FFS!)
@@NooniiToons If you know mines are there, you can sacrifice a 25 mineral, half supply zergling to force out the mine's attack and leave it very easy to sweep up. Also, they're not faster than speedlings (which you should be using with banes anyway), so if you catch them unburrowed, they shouldn't be outrunning you. Their radius is also a lot smaller than a hydra's attack range, so if comps with hydras are your thing, they shouldn't be an issue at all as long as you bring an overseer and don't just blindly move across the map.
Mines aren't that difficult to deal with as Zerg, you just have to be a bit more mindful of your army's movement and not send clumped units into areas you know they're likely to be (like a clump of lings through chokepoints near your creep's edge or mutas into mineral lines).
And making WMs one-time use would mean that to compensate, they'd either need to cost no supply and/or build way faster. Either way, that'd make them way more spammable. And as it is, they often don't survive long enough to make more than a single shot anyway. You really can't nerf Widow Mines any more than they already have been without causing significant exploitable holes in the bio playstyle. They're really the ONLY decently reliable option for a bio player to prevent Muta harass, for example (Thors are too much of a mech commitment, Liberators are usually tied up with the army, Turrets are completely static and don't do splash).
Do you know how much time and resources making a "death ball" take? If you let me build it - I'll A-move the f out of you, sure.
try breaking a fully cannoned and batteried base with disruptors, templars and mass voids
@@norberthiz9318 why did you let them get there?
@@jeffreywarf because you can't stop someone from making void rays and canons
Great video, but Skytoss is not "nearly impossible to defeat below grandmaster"
You can counter it fairly easily, even in the metal leagues.
I like the past and present pro player videos are better. These have a lot of "wait, what?" misconceptions both from you and the reasonings given for different changes to the game throughout the years.
At 4:52 in this video, you mention each race got new units vs skytoss, like viper. That's was a mistake by itself. AoE damage + AoE slow/root = extremely strong when used by a good player in any RTS and practically worthless when used by bad players, especially when it's made as a manual cast and not an auto attack. So then instead of fixing that problem, they decided to buff carriers to make them more usable against what's supposed to counter them, because it counters them too hard at the top level?... Instead of in the first place just making the zerg and terran units to counter air either stronger against air, or able to be produced earlier in the game? Or even delaying how long it takes for skytoss to be produced?
There has been too little foresight and too much biased misconception by the people deciding on the changes, for many years. There's no simple way to fix a problem that's kept being made larger by the people put in charge of fixing it. So as you said, players have to either deal with it or not play. But this is also a problem of any video game that intends to continue with new patches consistently over a long period of time. Many times the people working on a game want to continue working on it, and a near-enough-to-perfect product doesn't need additional work. Kind of like tradeskills workers who leave problems unattended purposefully (or even make new problems purpsoefully) so they'll get paid again to come back out. "One of those mechanics that'll fix your water pump but leave you wondering if that isn't the most cleanly split timing belt a week later." Which is what most AAA video game companies do these days. A MOBA developer releases a new hero, everyone knows it will be OP, they get paid, they then get paid again to nerf the hero.
The good part of the new balance team is that I severely doubt Activision is paying them to provide balance patches, and that they're doing the work out of genuine (if sometimes biased) willingness and passion, not job security. Less purposeful mistakes, means only genuine biased misconception mistakes are left to be made.
I mean, is you as a Protoss can survive till you get sky toss, I think A-move is a reward.
Terrans have easier time against the skytoss in the early/mid game. Zerg players are totally missing the hydras or scourges the SC1/BW edition: cheap and fast to obtain. Zerg have literally nothing that shoots at the air in the early/midgame except the queens, which are hard to use in attack. And that makes zerg players suffer agains skytoss cancer and terran flying building cheese, which loses a base trading for zerg.
Just build vikings ore else and make shure to traget the ship not the drones, very important
The people who spam skytoss are the same ones that spammed that spammed skytoss against antiair infestors and complained they were op.
well... one game i had a bunch of carriers with maybe 50 percent interceptors inside... my opponent had couple of marines... i couldnt stand a chance... i dont think that sc2 is balanced - but who am I, I was only platin
All that Zergs and Terrans building their crap units from dirt and scrap. Just being jealous of our Battleships made of gold. Void Ray, Carrier, Storm until end of all days!
You did archon toilet for me again!!!!!!!!! 😭😭😭😍😍
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Chad RAY> everything else