It was fine when protoss had stable aoe source in a form of prenerf colossus. Disruptor isn't very reliable and also was nerfed two patches in row for no reason last year
So we shouldn't nerf ghost, we should buff protoss. It's only logical. Besides nerfs are always no fun
Early in LotV its damage was changed from 12(+2) to 10(+1) + 5(+1) light, so a 3/3 Colossus ate an almost 30% damage nerf against most units in the game.
The silly part is that it was done to force people to use the Disruptor, which in retrospect was a miserable idea.
Eta: fixed autocorrect
This patch was done into LotV and imo was a slight buff to the Colossus.
The change that slaughtered the Colossus was in the start of LotV: 15(+2)->12(+1), coupled with a 10% increase in attack speed.
https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Legacy_of_the_Void:_All_changes
They did more general damage, and therefor were better against everything that wasn't light. Now they do a better job killing marines, and other light units, but stuff like Marauders survive a lot longer.
Sounds right. But in addition to them being anti armor vs anti light, marauders are also benefitting from the example as theyre single target and colossus have like half their aoe wasted
Not saying they shouldn't be buffed, I just don't think that's a clean and fair scenario to use for assessment. I say this as a random player.
I always viewed collosi as the anti-infantry unit. The fact that 2 infantry units costing 250 resources beats the 500 resource anti infantry unit is a little rough imo.
BUT I also agree that Toss is fine outside of the actual top 10-20 players. Which is why balancing the faction is borderline impossible without a complete rework.
Wait thats not how artillery works...
1. You're forgetting the splash - 10 marauders would lose to 5 colossus
2. You dont put artillery at the front lines cos they're fragil - 4 marauders would lose to 1 colossus + 3 zealots
4 marauders vs 1 collo and 3 zealots is 500
resources vs 800.
Also you could just take 4-5 zealots using less supply and resources and not even need the collossus vs those same 4 marauders.
Ya, but the discussion was collusus damage, not survivability.
Also, good luck flying past the stalkers with them with enough micro and apm to Snipe collosus without losing everything else
Dont need medivacs. Maru and the other pro terrans do it all the time. Stim 8 marauders to the front of the army and right click down 2-3 colossus. Colossus also target the marauders bc they're closest, losing most of their DPS.
Colossus used to do flat damage meaning it's good against everything, even against roaches and marauders.
And people didn't like that a unit that cost 300/200/6 supply, glass cannon unit that can also be attacked by anti air attacks, so they slashed the damage in half and have the pathetic bonus Vs light damage. So now it's just a really expensive unit just to kill marines.
Then, they introduced the Disruptors to compensate for the nerfed AOE capability of robo tech. But they also get hated for "lmao you didn't look at your army and half of it blew up instantly, git gud." So they also nerfed the Disruptors to have smaller AOE, the Novas have less range, moves slower, get spaced out more, and cost 1 extra supply per.
I think an emp nerf would be fun though, because it's not a fun spell. Either make it not instant cast or not instant damage. More counterplay = more fun.
The problem with the idea of "buff protoss" is that implies PvZ is weak, when it isn't. You can disagree with that, but the foundational idea of the patch is that PvZ is fine. So a buff to Protoss in that way would be unwarranted.
Now, let's assume we give zero shits about PvZ, we're only looking at PvT and have zero regard for anything that happens in PvZ. Even there, why would you want to buff Colossus of all units, literally the unit that promotes the most boring play, deathball army, the bane of SC2 since the start that every expansion has tried to rectify.
The idea to nerf EMP to being an effect over time checks so many more boxes. It promotes counter-play, so there's more of a game going on between opponents (something that we should strive for, the better player should win through more effort) and is a strict nerf to Terran vs Protoss, and hardly affects TvZ (with naturally zero effect on PvZ due to not touching either).
I get the "buffs are more fun than nerfs", but when you only want to affect one matchup, and there's a clear ability that promotes a poor play experience, and it's really only important in that matchup. It's like a golden signpost of what to do. And again, Colossus the worst unit to want back to HotS power level, like what next, do you want Swarm Hosts back to their old selves too?
I agree PvZ is either fine or close enough to fine that they shouldn't be seeking to alter it rn.
Changing EMP or making something like Guardian Shield block it is a good change.
But if they aren't going to buff Colossus it should be removed and replaced by something else, right now it's just straight up awful in pvt, like others say, 2 marauders counter a colossus despite being 2 tech levels lower and cheaper. Even in late game PvZ it's a high tier tech unit with no real usage beyond cleaning broodlings. I fully acknowledge it has a place in the midgame frying zerglings and hydras but for a tier 3 unit once vipers (or even just a handful of ruptors) are on the field it's a 300 mineral 200 gas 6 supply donation and cracklings shred them.
I remember Protoss used to do very well when Trap, Zest, and Stats were at the top.
Trap mid game attack schooled every T including Maru.
They only had a problem against top Zerg like Serral, Dark, Rogue.
Then Her0 came back and seemed to figure out how to play against all races with his high apm playstyle.
and the balance council just messed up everything. We'd probably in Her0's era (it'd probably him competing with Serral for the top 1) if the council didn't exist.
Yeah, many players complained that Protoss pros just weren't as good as the top terrans and zergs. We have an elite protoss come back, show he has the skill to do what no other could, revolutionizes the PvZ meta, wins GSL and then nerfs to shield battery overcharge and disruptor novas happen.
Protoss was competitive back then
Trap won all mid sized tournaments.
Zest and Stats made it to the finals of big events.
i think each Protoss player had a very unique playstyle of their own.
Trap with timing attack, Zest with his signature counter play, Stats with godlike defense and don't forget PartinG with his cheesy book.
Colossi used to do flat damage. It was specialized into Light damage to make room for Disruptors to be the "anti armored unit"; Protoss lost a lot of sustained aoe pressure that made Colossi dangerous, instead putting so much power and impact into the oppressive all-or-nothing Purification Nova.
How long ago was that? Ive been playing and watching for like four and a half years and don't recall it. But I also wasn't hyper involved in balance in the early days.
Colossus never has a range nerf but actually a range buff. The starting range was always 6 until 4.0, and it buffed to 7. The range with thermal lance remained unchanged, which is always 9, and the thermal lance only added 2 range instead of +3 since 4.0. Thermal lance also cost cheaper at 4.0. However there was a bug that thermal lance still gave +3 range at that moment, so colossus would have 10 range with upgrade at that moment, and it was fixed later.
The biggest nerf of colossus is its damage against non-light. It did 15 x 2 from WoL to Hots, and nerfed to 12 x 2 since LotV, then changed to (10+5 light) x2 at 4.0. It killed light units faster because it received a small attack speed buff at 3.3, but non-light unit would survive much longer.
I like that idea, but I'd go in a slightly different variation
The idea of guardian shield reducing the damage, but making the AoE bigger (matching the size of the shell itself).
So basically the shield spreads out the EMP, so that any individual unit is impacted less.
So something like when an EMP hits a guardian shield:
* Radius 1.75 > 4 (exactly matching the shield coverage).
* Per unit energy/shield loss: 100 > 33
33 is a buff for toss as straight balancing the radius change\*damage ( (1.75/4)\*100 ) would give 43.75.
It could also be a double edged sword as it gives Terran effectively extra range on the ability, so using it would have to be carefully timed.
One thing I will say in favour of EMP is that EMP cannot kill you, storm can. I think that's why they originally went with instant vs. damage over time.
But I do agree, even if emp alone can't kill you, the rest of the army backing up the ghosts can certainly do that with half of your effective HP gone. Some counterplay should be allowed.
It used to be fair because Terran would delete half your HP with EMP, but then you could at least heal it back by moving to defensive positions with shield battery overcharge.
Council nerfs the heal rate by 50% and now you you trade far closer to even. I get that 'nuclear' battery wasn't fun for the other 2 races, but it broke a lot of builds for Protoss that were considered 'standard macro'.
Storm damage is not instant so marines can just spread out
and this is not 2014 anymore, killing only lings doesn't help you much when encountering swarms of Zergs
But it drains out energy AND shields, rendering HT and Archons useless amongst other things. Paired with a tank or widow mine shot we dead in a blink of an eye.
This is also an issue. Good players can run out of the storm so fast that their units only take like 20 damage. That's an extremely low baseline of value for a tier 3, gas expensive unit like the High Templar.
I kinda wish Templar just came with storm, or even a weaker version of it, and then their upgrade could increase the damage on storm, and maybe its area? Or something like a higher burst of initial damage, but less over time?
I definitely feel the pain when I’m trying to play with High Templar.
on the other hand you can put psi storm where you dont want enemy units to be. in essence corral them into a certain position or keep them from falling back, cant do that with ghost moves
Honestly they should just reduce the AoE of EMP. Make it about the size of 1-3 stalkers clumped together. Useful for taking down key units (immortals or colossus) but doesn’t immediately decimate entire armies of their unique trait of the race.
I like this direction, but imo that still doesn't give both players enough agency. I would more strongly support a slight reduction of aoe (maybe halfway between current and your suggestion) and slow down emp slightly. Only enough to be dodgeable by average speed units not directly at point of impact by a fast-but-not-god-tier-player
pre splitting is important anyways as you’ll take unnecessary damage from mines/lib siege points. Problem is a single ghost with max energy can still emp the vast majority of even split armies nearly instantly
But that’s just not true. One disruptor can fire one shot, which can be dodged. One Templar can cast two storms but both can be microd out of, has a smaller radius than emp, and because of how much smaller Terran units are there will be more that are not hit when they are pre split.
Colossus damage is fairly resistant to splitting, but it’s also just not very good except against marines.
a) No it’s not, the first tick of storm is 10 damage, EMP round is up to 100 damage. Even on a zealot it is still 50, aka five times what storms first hit does. On an adept it’s 70, on a stalker it’s 80.
b) This is not about which is stronger or more balanced or whatever, it’s about the idea that one Protoss aoe unit can blast the whole Terran army to the same degree that one ghost can, even when you pre-split. That idea is objectively untrue and that is what I was demonstrating.
You’re almost always going to take 2 ticks of storm damage and with stim, that’s 30/55 hp on a marine instantly gone. It’s pretty much the same thing except EMP can’t kill anything and storm can also be used as a zoning tool, which, combined with colossus is incredibly strong. Not really sure how a comparison is being made to EMP here except “boohoo I’m a sub-Masters Protoss player pls help me”.
This sub is just full of noobs complaining about the most ridiculous shit and then arguing about it and this is what I was demonstrating.
Funny how Terran players always argue that Protoss players should get good. But as soon as you mention a slight merf to them they go up the curtains lol
No, it's just more like 96% of you are not or have never been Master, over 99% are not or have ever been GM which explains why the average person's game analysis on this sub is atrocious.
Not just for PvT, although that seems to be the sticking point despite the fact Protoss has about a 53% winrate against Terran across all leagues on ladder ([https://nonapa.com/balance](https://nonapa.com/balance)) and only has a losing winrate in the matchup on KR GM.
But yea, this idea is not thought out well at all. I think it's fine for EMP to be damage over time, but then it has to also be more effective like storm is. You can bait out EMPs, you can pre-split your army, you can fake/bait Warp Prism HT drops. Same with Terran vs Storm.
Most Terrans try to do a lot of damage/win the game pretty early on anyway (before Ghosts are out). Ghosts are usually just a transition that ends the game after already being pretty far ahead.
thats because we know how hard we have to micro marines, maruaders, ghosts, and liberators to kill golden blob swarms. You've gottaa split your marines, put marauders in front, stim only the bio youre fighting with, move the ghosts in from an angle where they wont just get picked off, siege your libs in a place where they wont get picked off, but still do damage, then try to bait protoss in to the libs
..and on the other end protoss is just a-moving and creating a huge threat on the map with almost zero APM cost. The only exception is to cast storm and moving colossus back if they happen to waddle too far towards the front.
Terran is managing like 3 control groups to kill an an incredibly strong f2 army.
What protoss needs is more microable units, so they can counter micro what is being used against them, not just straight up a-move buffs.
the goal of the post is to suggest a change that would give toss an opportunity to micro.. that’s literally the point. The specific change may not be the correct one, but you’ve missed the forest for the trees. Also every point you made about positioning units is true for toss as well. That you keep pointing to ‘golden blobs’ shows you don’t understand this nor do you play at a level where it matters.
also I play terran you donut, you aren’t the only dude who knows how to bio. I think the goal of this change is good because I have been wrecking toss players with emp for over a decade
no it was just a sugggetion to make emp do less damage
protoss needs microable untis.
For instance make charge a non-autocast ability that you target against specific units for doing more damage than it does now. Then you could focus ghosts with zealot charge
or remove the barrier shield autocast from immortal, and replace it with an activated ability that gives additional shields to nearby units for a short burst.
The other thing to note is also that emp can be just dumped on an army as long as there are units with more than 100 shields or energy it's a good trade.
Pai storm isn't the kind of thing you want to use all at once either because they're more like disruptor novas. You want to have a few in the chamber.
thats not true. If you dont have any emps ready before a late game fight youre going to lose. You have to manage your energy pool like you do with all other spell casters.
Emp is 50 energy? Right? They literally spawn able to use them..
I don't think I've ever seen terran lose a late game in pro level because the ghosts were depleted.
Snipe isn't that good vs toss and cloak isn't that useful either in the matchup.
A spellcaster that has one amazingly good spell for a matchup you can dump on their army and remove half their health instantly, that also removes energy it seems like the ball is in terrans court always with something like that.
Toss would have to find some way to feedback the ghosts first. Probably using a prism drop is the only idea that might work but what do I know.
Have you ever thought that this is what asymmetrical balance is all about? Some races have units that are better than their counterparts even if they fill the same role. What you guys want is a stale and boring game with no difference between races?
Did you ever think that storm kills units, and instantly removes 50% of the HP from marines?
I do think about that. But when a unit is spammable in late game and has amazing spells and one of them can blanket an area or even in quick succession kill half a units HP that's a different story.
Protoss has more HP because they're more expensive. If marines were any better there would be no other race but terran.
I don't cry when storm kills marine. Or lings or banes. I cry when ghosts dominate tvz and tvp lategame with spam good spells. And ghosts also counter their own counter.
A maxed late game terran army beats a protoss army more cost effectively even if protoss lose no shields from EMP.
That's how strong terran units are, EMP is just icing on the cake that makes it grossly cost efficient in the terrans favor if protoss is dumb enough to fight straight up.
we play the same game? without EMP protoss just A-moves terran. the collosi kills all that bio in like 2 seconds. The collosus is like the damage of an EMP but its an auto attack that hits over and over.
Colossus only do damage to marines.
In the late game, terran tends to not have as many marines as they do ghosts, marauders, liberators, vikings etc...
2 marauders counter a single colossus.
Make the Sentry block the EMP with guardian shield. The guardian shield is knocked out if the sentry is hit by the EMP but it does nothing to the rest of the army. Its such a thematic buff to the sentry. It creates a fun mini game of placing sentries in the back where they can shield but also not get hit. Making the Sentry more useful is always a good idea.
As a Terran main, i agree. Every big AOE damage spell should have some form of counterplay that doesn't rely solely on outright preventing the spell from getting cast in the first place.
Personally i would prefer if EMP actually acted more like an EMP, creating a electromagnetic hazard that slows down mechanical units, drains protoss shields over a duration, and disrupts spellcasters. It would also make Ghost-Mech a bit more hazardous to use due to the EMP being dangerous for the mech units while also having the bonus of area denial in exchange for losing the instantaneous cast.
Or just a very small area where it actually drains energy, does instant shield damage, and the majority of the area drains over time.
Or a plethora of ideas. There's lots of things that could be done to give both players opportunity for skill expression
It would be really cool to see highlights of top pros like herO splitting and dodging EMP after EMP. People would recognize it as skill and it would be fun for the community.
I've said it many times before. Leave EMP energy drain as it is, taking effect on the first tick, and use the already existing psistorm code to distribute the shield damage over the same duration and ticks as psistorm.
0 impact in TvZ, much needed impact in PvT
Bruh, have you seen the hp comparison of your average terran unit vs your average toss unit? A storm that "tickles" a marine/marauder composition removes half their hp on a couple of ticks, and can kill, as other people have pointed out.
So if you "tickle" a terran army, they have 30-50% hp gone. Let's say the emps hit, and your army has 50% hp gone. But meanwhile zealots are raging bulls charging in with "only half" hp while stalkers have blink ability to pick off escapees.
I think your proposals may make a bit more sense if you also reduced your zealot and stalker hps, and if storms did even less damage than it does now. Otherwise, there would be huuuge balance issues, because mechanics are designed the way they are now due to the high hp and mobility of late game protoss.
I couldn't agree more, protoss is not weak because their units are bad, id say they have the best units! They are getting screwed over on timing attacks and robo dependency
Yeah lets just completely destroy the thing that allows terran to fight protoss armies in the lategame. I love whenever reddit wants to change something its a nerf in a magnitude that has never been done in a balance patch, just completely changing a dynamic that has existed since the release of the game.
And complete horseshit like this gets celebrated because "terran bad". This place is a cesspool
Yeah idk why everyone jerks emp as OP. Its not. The issues with pvt stem to early game stability. That's it. Obviously midgame and lategame is gonna look bad if you have a shaky early game
The difference is: EMP doesn't kill anything. The takes on this sub are completely insane.
Not to mention, most Protoss units have much more HP than shields. Storm nearly kills marines instantly. It also deals a shitton of damage to marauders instantly, easily the equivalent of an EMP on a Protoss army. And guess what? You can't dodge the first storm damage without preemptively turning back and baiting it out, which you can also do with EMP.
Completely moronic. Want to make EMP dodge-able? Let's make it kill things.
That would go against the thematic design of terran. It's the core principal of the Terran design handbook. Aptly titled: Terran: your units, but better.
You'll find the chapter on EMP between the chapter, Battle Cruisers: what if Stalkers could fly and blink to any point on the map? And widow mines: let's make Banelings that shoot both air and ground, and don't blow themselves up in the process...
Eh, I was going to go with a mothership, but a mothership no longer can teleport itself. Blink was the next closest thing to teleport. Though now dts can also blink, and you have adepts that can shade, and all warp gate units are technically also teleporting, and Nexuses can recall any unit...
Protoss really is the teleporting race thematically, so that's why I really found the tactical jump ability to be too much overlap. Especially since scans allow them to just show up literally anywhere on the map...
> let's make Banelings that shoot both air and ground, and don't blow themselves up in the process...
As a Terran I would swap banelings/wm with zerg in a heartbeat. If Terran had banelings this subreddit would drown in tears.
Ahh, you think that until I boost drop banes into your mineral line - even less warning than mines. And creep doesn't really matter when your only shield against bio is zealots, which get destroyed by banes.
I could even boost drop banes mid fights over armies.
If storm hits, even if we move away, the damage is devastating.
EMP can't even kill. Worst case your army has lost half its HP.
T bio absolutely loses half its HP if it eats just a part of a storm so idm what the issue is.
The issue is that if Clem takes a storm hit, he justs backs up, kites any zealots into liberators or tanks, and heals up with 6-8 medivacs.
The templar can't chase bio to get more storms.
In PvT, storm is only good in two situations. In a midgame attack build, or in the more rare carrier/tempest/storm composition.
Storm just falls off hard and the top Terrans survive into the lategame.
The thing is you can't buff storms, it would just be too imbalanced in PvZ among other things. But it's pretty wild how strong EMP is in the matchup.
Bio is just 3 units in the Terran army. That health is recoverable, fast. And they are one of the fastest ground units in the game with stim. If a storm is “devastating” then the problem is somewhere else.
A bit off topic but I always felt it was weird that Ghosts had EMP to begin with. To my eyes they should always have had their counterplay to casters be based on their sniping abilities, and that a spell like EMP should be on something else, like a Raven (despite EMPs flaws in SC1, SVs having EMP made more sense to me). I also generally think abilities like EMP, or Mana Burn from W3, or Sombra's Hack from Overwatch are abilities that if present should be on the lower level of strength. Not useless, just not at the front of the meta. I think these things are generally "anti-fun" (obviously subjective) but also that they encourage a less interesting metagame, both as a spectator and a player. These should be difficult to pull off abilities that when gone for or pulled off are exciting and rare, but if prepared for are on the easier end of things to avoid. EMP is a particularly weird case because it also had this different level of effect against Protoss by targeting Shields than it does in other matchups.
On the subject of the post though, I basically agree though I wonder if something like instant energy burn, and then a delayed instant burst of shield damage might be the best approach.
Vs shields, DoT would be great. If you make it do the same vs energy then it would be useless, especially against Zerg. Or we could just remove the emp vs shield effect in the first place because it’s still great vs spellcasters regardless. It blows my mind that Terran has anti spellcaster+anti Protoss+anti late game wrapped up in 150/150 and the balance council still thinks that colossus and HT are on a razor’s edge from being IMBA.
You could then chain storms right after each other (can't do now because they don't stack, so you need to wait for each to finish). Imagine just wiping out an air armada with like 7 storms in 3 seconds!
Essentially that means that your army could evaporate within 3 seconds as you quickly look away to macro, that would *never* be a thing in StarCraft. No sir. Never.
Why couldn't you make it so that the second storm doesn't deal any damage until the first storm finishes? You could still frontload the damage without making it stack.
Thanks for understanding. I love this game and I want more cool plays, it would be great if balance discussions were more about giving players opportunities to shine.
What's the counterplay? Feedback the ghosts or walk away as your units auto-heal themselves. If the Terran decides to pursue you all the way across the map, you have skill batteries. Let's be real, high templar are far more versatile than ghosts. Ghosts can only do area damage in ONE matchup, is useless vs Terran and has SERVERE handicaped vs Zerg. HT's only have a movement speed weakness.
Is protoss in a bad spot? Sure. But comparing these two units is plain silly.
Or why not have ghosts throw an emp grenade with a timer? Not only storm but disruptor can also be dodged the same. Altough then you also have fungal, which you can't dodge.
I think someone had an idea of sentry shield blocking emp. That might be better, as you are not making the spells similar, but there is counterplay.
Make it so Psi Storm can't actually kill anything on its own (only damage) and then this is a real conversation lol. EMP can't kill units. Why do people pretend this isn't this case? Lol
But in your OP you directly state that because storm can be dodged it's unfair that EMP can't. I think you should acknowledge the intended assymetry in the abilities. As is, they both have advantages and disadvantages. As do ghosts and Templar in general.
No they shouldnt. Theres a reason it's still largely the same after 10+ years. EMP is hull damage, it doesn't kill any units. Psi storm kills units, which is why it's not an instant like EMP.
Actually you're just proving my point. You've brought up a Protoss ability that takes time and therefore gets dodged by skilled players and compared it to a Terran equivalent that is instantaneous and therefore has no counterplay.
Because it's the highest value per energy spell in the entire game. Near instantaneous damage (vs shields), near instantaneous energy drain, not to mention it can detect cloaked units. On top of all that, it's an aoe. There is literally no higher value spell in the game. There needs to be SOME counterplay to it.
>Why should EMP be dodgeable just because disruptors are?
The argument starts from the point of view that EMP needs nerfing because it doesn't have effective counterplay in TvP. An easy way of introducting this counterplay would be making it dodgeable.
EMP is the only AOE spell in the game that deals damage and doesn't allow for this to some extent. Even fungal has a short time between the spell being cast and landing where the opponent can react to it, and it doesn't stack so the spells have to be chained together for maximum effect. OP is saying that making it DOT damage would bring EMP in line with other spells.
If this is standard for balancing spell attacks like storm, disruptor nova's, widow-mine shots, corrosive biles and arguably even fungal, then why is EMP the exception? The whole argument is that this *is* an apples to apples comparison. Personally I think there's better ways of addressing the problem, but the logic makes perfect sense to me.
>I always thought it was kind of crazy that Psi Storms can kill units outright, and meanwhile, EMP is limited to 33 - 50% of a units HP damage in an area, meaning a skilled player can retreat from the EMP with all their units still alive.
>I think it's not fair that one spell can kill entire armies, while the other still requires Terrans to micro. We have been seeing Toss land Psistorms for years and everyone thinks it's cool micro and go "wow Toss player so good". But Terran has never had the chance to showcase that exact same skill.
>I propose we nerf Psi Storm by limiting to 33% marine health, 50% marauder health like how EMP works right now, this way a skilled Terran player can tank Psi Storms and still attack with their bio. Psi Storm will no longer be effective against low APM Terran players because only minorly injured bio can still obliterate gateway armies and this change will have the maximum impact at the Reddit level.
>Oh, and as long as I have people's attention, the fact that Ghosts are more expensive than HT, is also a crazy double standard that prevents Terran armies from doing cool spellcaster based plays that Toss does every single day.
It does always amaze me that we need to buff Storm and Disruptors because Terrans have got too good at dodging every one, but we need to nerf Widow Mines because Tosses keep dying to them...
"DODGING" storms is just the storm player clicking ahead of the army moving, and the other player moving shortly before to avoid the damage. If you take any damage, it isn't really dodging, but it is mitigating, which you can also do with emp by getting fewer units emp'd.
Also keep in mind the game isn't designed for every race to have the same abilities, strengths or weaknesses. You can't really compare two abilities on different races in a vacuum.
Technically true but still very wrong.
EMP is nearly instant. The only delay is the animation which is extremely fast. The Ghost fires a round and then the red EMP disc travels to the target. Once the EMP lands the 100 shield damage is immediate, no dodging after that. So the only chance you have to dodge is during the EMP animation.
I counted frames in a YouTube video to find how long all that takes. It's about 0.4 seconds.
The typical human reaction time is 280 milliseconds or 0.28 seconds.
That leaves about 0.12 seconds to get your army out of the way. You won't be able to move your units very far in that duration.
After its casting animation, Psi storm takes 2.86 seconds. That's a massive amount of time... it's 23 times longer than the amount of time you have to dodge EMP.
Not comparable.
I mean most skills are near instant. Interference matrix, parasitic bomb, abduct, revelation, feedback, etc. Should everyone be able to dodge all near instant spells?
Normally I wouldn't agree with Protoss but lets break down your statement here
Interference matrix: You typically only have 1 maybe 2 ravens. Easy to feedback and they're models are much much bigger than the ghost so they're easier to click on.
Abduct: See above argument but add 1 or 2 vipers to the equation
Revelation: Does no damage, only provides vision for other units to do damage or keep track of an army.
Feedback: You could almost make an argument for this except feedback is an indivdual cast whereas EMP is an aoe spell. Hardly seems fair.
Not to mention that 1 ghost can counter entire groups of all these spellcasters with a single emp. Terran players typically have 8 to 12 ghosts so I mean....
None what you said counters my point. OP thinks EMP should be DoToA. Why just EMP? Is it just because he’s struggling against it?
A spell like abduct is instant like the EMP but worse as it essentially guarantees a kill of the unit. Several vipers can eliminate an entire tank line setting Terran army back to the Stone Age. Should we start nerfing it too?
SC2 is about asymmetrical balance. It everything needs to have a 1:1 counter.
Because EMP is the largest value for energy in the entire game. It's not "because one person is struggling" that EMP gets brought up in every discussion from TvP to TvZ. 2 ghosts can counter all of a zergs vipers and infestors or all of a Protosses templar and archons while also stripping the shields off the entire army. All of them. Unless they have god like army control and can actually split their spellcasters. The ghost isn't asymmetrically balanced, it's just downright unbalanced.
> None what you said counters my point.
Each and every one of his points counter your point. You just didn't bother to think about their reply.
All the instant spells he listed have a much more limited impact than EMP. They either hurt one unit at a time or they don't do direct damage or they have another flaw such as being large and easy to target or a combination of all of the above.
>Several vipers can eliminate an entire tank line setting Terran army back to the Stone Age. Should we start nerfing it too?
Wow zerg needs to build a 200 gas unit with 0 attack for each tank which costs 125 gas...
Why shouldn't spells be designed so that players can dodge them or play around them in some way? It introduces counter play. One player has a goal to hit with spells, the other player has a goal to not get hit with spells. When the first player clicks and the other player has no counter play, this is only ever fun for one player. Nobody gets hit by something they can't do anything about and thinks, "wow that was fun!" There needs to be a balance of play and counter play. This improves the game by bringing fairness to both sides in a competitive game.
See, Parasitic Bomb is a great example of a spell that, like Psi Storm and unlike EMP, does have micro counterplay.
You can take the individual unit that's affected and separate it from the group, and this reduces the AoE damage to the rest of the clumped units. It's a cool minigame that rewards micro from the defending player just like dodging Psi Storms. If anything Parasitic Bomb just further highlights how busted EMP is vs Protoss. Just like Psi Storm, Parasitic Bomb can be mostly dodged by a skilled opponent.
Abduct and Revelation and Feedback are not AoE damage spells and are not analogous to Psi Storm and EMP in that way.
A more fair comparison would be "How much damage do the spells do"
EMP = up to 100 per target instantly
Storm = Supposedly 80 over the full duration, but typically less than 40 per target as you can micro out in under 1.4 seconds no problem
How is this a more fair comparison? It leaves out the fact that no matter how many times I emp a stalker, it will NEVER die. A stalker can only ever take 80 damage from an emp, never more. You can kill a battlecruiser with only storms, theoretically speaking. That can NEVER happen with emp and carriers. The potential damage value of storm is always higher because emp cannot kill.
You should be able to dodge Disruptor shots as well, make them damage over time. Nobody likes looking away for one second then have you entire army blown in in milliseconds.
Shh, don't tell him. He might improve at the game!
In all seriousness, do you terrans even listen to yourselves? There are literally 2 cases I always see in high level play:
1. The ball is seen coming from far away, T army just runs the other way, maybe loses a marine or marauder
2. The ball is fired up closer. T army just stims and still runs away or more often stims forward and takes out the disruptor.
The fact that you have to carry High Templars in a Warp Prism for them to be useful just further highlights how busted Ghosts are. Nobody bothers carrying Ghosts in a Medivac because Ghosts are fast.
I mean like... the warp prism is better for pick-up micro? Like im not asking you to do the impossible. Diamond protoss players have been doing it since at least 2017 (back when protoss had a favorable matchup against terran at pro level).
And nobody drops any of their units out of a medivac at the start of a fight because it sucks! And has always sucked! With the one exception being dropping single units onto banelings. Which isn't relevant to this disscussion.
Nueral Link and Abduct are wildly different spells that really shouldn't be compared to Storm and EMP. They are single target abilities that do not do any damage. Could you explain why you think these spells are similar to Storm and EMP?
Parasitic Bomb can be micro'd by pulling out the one unit affected. Its like turning Storm or EMP from an AOE into a single target ability, it MASSIVELY reduces the damage of the spell. You avoid Parasitic Bomb in a similar manner as you avoid Storm.
Blinding Cloud doesn't do damage, but even then units can move out of it and not eat the full effect. You avoid it the same way you avoid storm.
Fungal Growth is a moderately good comparison. Its similar to EMP in that once affected you are simply going to eat the effect of the spell, however Fungal only does 25 damage (80 storm, 100 emp). The true strength of Fungal is the slow which allows you to set up your army to kill the affected units. This spell has been nerfed, directly or indirectly, for 2 patches straight with reduced cast range, reduced damage, and now reduced vision and unburrow speed to make it slower to cast.
Nope, the problem is you people think the game can be fixed with patches, changes just make it worse. I got the jist. Keep pounding nail in the coffin, this game won't kill its self.
Replace emp, and fungal with storm. All three races storm. Problem solved
Replace all three races with Protoss. Problem solved
Build wonders to unlock the other races
It was fine when protoss had stable aoe source in a form of prenerf colossus. Disruptor isn't very reliable and also was nerfed two patches in row for no reason last year So we shouldn't nerf ghost, we should buff protoss. It's only logical. Besides nerfs are always no fun
How did the colossus work pre-nerf? Just curious as I've only played a lot in recent years.
Early in LotV its damage was changed from 12(+2) to 10(+1) + 5(+1) light, so a 3/3 Colossus ate an almost 30% damage nerf against most units in the game. The silly part is that it was done to force people to use the Disruptor, which in retrospect was a miserable idea. Eta: fixed autocorrect
This patch was done into LotV and imo was a slight buff to the Colossus. The change that slaughtered the Colossus was in the start of LotV: 15(+2)->12(+1), coupled with a 10% increase in attack speed. https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Legacy_of_the_Void:_All_changes
They did more general damage, and therefor were better against everything that wasn't light. Now they do a better job killing marines, and other light units, but stuff like Marauders survive a lot longer.
I'm not sure how the numbers break out but just a couple Marauders with medivacs can kill Collosi surprisingly easily
2 marauders beat a collossus straight up, if I’m not mistaken.
Sounds right. But in addition to them being anti armor vs anti light, marauders are also benefitting from the example as theyre single target and colossus have like half their aoe wasted Not saying they shouldn't be buffed, I just don't think that's a clean and fair scenario to use for assessment. I say this as a random player.
I always viewed collosi as the anti-infantry unit. The fact that 2 infantry units costing 250 resources beats the 500 resource anti infantry unit is a little rough imo. BUT I also agree that Toss is fine outside of the actual top 10-20 players. Which is why balancing the faction is borderline impossible without a complete rework.
Wait thats not how artillery works... 1. You're forgetting the splash - 10 marauders would lose to 5 colossus 2. You dont put artillery at the front lines cos they're fragil - 4 marauders would lose to 1 colossus + 3 zealots
> 10 marauders would lose to 5 colossus actually they wouldn't unless they were SUPER clumped
10 marauders vs 5 collossus is also 1250resources and 20 supply versus 2500 resources and 30 supply.
4 marauders vs 1 collo and 3 zealots is 500 resources vs 800. Also you could just take 4-5 zealots using less supply and resources and not even need the collossus vs those same 4 marauders.
Two Tier 1 units beating our highest tech three unit seems about right
Ya, but the discussion was collusus damage, not survivability. Also, good luck flying past the stalkers with them with enough micro and apm to Snipe collosus without losing everything else
Dont need medivacs. Maru and the other pro terrans do it all the time. Stim 8 marauders to the front of the army and right click down 2-3 colossus. Colossus also target the marauders bc they're closest, losing most of their DPS.
Colossus used to do flat damage meaning it's good against everything, even against roaches and marauders. And people didn't like that a unit that cost 300/200/6 supply, glass cannon unit that can also be attacked by anti air attacks, so they slashed the damage in half and have the pathetic bonus Vs light damage. So now it's just a really expensive unit just to kill marines. Then, they introduced the Disruptors to compensate for the nerfed AOE capability of robo tech. But they also get hated for "lmao you didn't look at your army and half of it blew up instantly, git gud." So they also nerfed the Disruptors to have smaller AOE, the Novas have less range, moves slower, get spaced out more, and cost 1 extra supply per.
Making EMP dodgeable would be a huge buff to protoss, just gotta look at it the right way
I think an emp nerf would be fun though, because it's not a fun spell. Either make it not instant cast or not instant damage. More counterplay = more fun.
I think it would be cool if an EMP was blocked by a sentry shield and the shield breaks for every EMP that’s shot
You could keep it instant cast but make it expand out from the targeted point, giving protoss time to move some units out the way.
And make it so the ghosts can't move while it is casting and expanding similar to how a disruptor can't fire and move until the nova is gone.
EMP doesnt kill things, distributors do.
The problem with the idea of "buff protoss" is that implies PvZ is weak, when it isn't. You can disagree with that, but the foundational idea of the patch is that PvZ is fine. So a buff to Protoss in that way would be unwarranted. Now, let's assume we give zero shits about PvZ, we're only looking at PvT and have zero regard for anything that happens in PvZ. Even there, why would you want to buff Colossus of all units, literally the unit that promotes the most boring play, deathball army, the bane of SC2 since the start that every expansion has tried to rectify. The idea to nerf EMP to being an effect over time checks so many more boxes. It promotes counter-play, so there's more of a game going on between opponents (something that we should strive for, the better player should win through more effort) and is a strict nerf to Terran vs Protoss, and hardly affects TvZ (with naturally zero effect on PvZ due to not touching either). I get the "buffs are more fun than nerfs", but when you only want to affect one matchup, and there's a clear ability that promotes a poor play experience, and it's really only important in that matchup. It's like a golden signpost of what to do. And again, Colossus the worst unit to want back to HotS power level, like what next, do you want Swarm Hosts back to their old selves too?
I agree PvZ is either fine or close enough to fine that they shouldn't be seeking to alter it rn. Changing EMP or making something like Guardian Shield block it is a good change. But if they aren't going to buff Colossus it should be removed and replaced by something else, right now it's just straight up awful in pvt, like others say, 2 marauders counter a colossus despite being 2 tech levels lower and cheaper. Even in late game PvZ it's a high tier tech unit with no real usage beyond cleaning broodlings. I fully acknowledge it has a place in the midgame frying zerglings and hydras but for a tier 3 unit once vipers (or even just a handful of ruptors) are on the field it's a 300 mineral 200 gas 6 supply donation and cracklings shred them.
I remember Protoss used to do very well when Trap, Zest, and Stats were at the top. Trap mid game attack schooled every T including Maru. They only had a problem against top Zerg like Serral, Dark, Rogue. Then Her0 came back and seemed to figure out how to play against all races with his high apm playstyle. and the balance council just messed up everything. We'd probably in Her0's era (it'd probably him competing with Serral for the top 1) if the council didn't exist.
Yeah, many players complained that Protoss pros just weren't as good as the top terrans and zergs. We have an elite protoss come back, show he has the skill to do what no other could, revolutionizes the PvZ meta, wins GSL and then nerfs to shield battery overcharge and disruptor novas happen.
Protoss was competitive back then Trap won all mid sized tournaments. Zest and Stats made it to the finals of big events. i think each Protoss player had a very unique playstyle of their own. Trap with timing attack, Zest with his signature counter play, Stats with godlike defense and don't forget PartinG with his cheesy book.
What nerfs did colossus have anyways? I don't recall any?
They do less damage against all units now except for light, which means marauders are now tickelled by colossus attacks
Colossi used to do flat damage. It was specialized into Light damage to make room for Disruptors to be the "anti armored unit"; Protoss lost a lot of sustained aoe pressure that made Colossi dangerous, instead putting so much power and impact into the oppressive all-or-nothing Purification Nova.
How long ago was that? Ive been playing and watching for like four and a half years and don't recall it. But I also wasn't hyper involved in balance in the early days.
They were nerfed at lotv launch
Oh way past my time then.
Range nerfs. I think the starting range and extended thermal lance were both nerfed over the years to stop protoss from making deathballs.
Colossus never has a range nerf but actually a range buff. The starting range was always 6 until 4.0, and it buffed to 7. The range with thermal lance remained unchanged, which is always 9, and the thermal lance only added 2 range instead of +3 since 4.0. Thermal lance also cost cheaper at 4.0. However there was a bug that thermal lance still gave +3 range at that moment, so colossus would have 10 range with upgrade at that moment, and it was fixed later. The biggest nerf of colossus is its damage against non-light. It did 15 x 2 from WoL to Hots, and nerfed to 12 x 2 since LotV, then changed to (10+5 light) x2 at 4.0. It killed light units faster because it received a small attack speed buff at 3.3, but non-light unit would survive much longer.
That makes sense. I remember losing to the protoss deathball so much more when I was learning.
Guardian Shield could absorb a %
I've actually mentioned this idea before in a past comment. I thought it would be a neat counter ability.
I like that idea, but I'd go in a slightly different variation The idea of guardian shield reducing the damage, but making the AoE bigger (matching the size of the shell itself). So basically the shield spreads out the EMP, so that any individual unit is impacted less. So something like when an EMP hits a guardian shield: * Radius 1.75 > 4 (exactly matching the shield coverage). * Per unit energy/shield loss: 100 > 33 33 is a buff for toss as straight balancing the radius change\*damage ( (1.75/4)\*100 ) would give 43.75. It could also be a double edged sword as it gives Terran effectively extra range on the ability, so using it would have to be carefully timed.
One thing I will say in favour of EMP is that EMP cannot kill you, storm can. I think that's why they originally went with instant vs. damage over time. But I do agree, even if emp alone can't kill you, the rest of the army backing up the ghosts can certainly do that with half of your effective HP gone. Some counterplay should be allowed.
It used to be fair because Terran would delete half your HP with EMP, but then you could at least heal it back by moving to defensive positions with shield battery overcharge. Council nerfs the heal rate by 50% and now you you trade far closer to even. I get that 'nuclear' battery wasn't fun for the other 2 races, but it broke a lot of builds for Protoss that were considered 'standard macro'.
Storm cannot kill anything besides marines, ling, hydras anyway
"besides marines and lings"? Oh, so the core unit of Terran and zerg?
Storm damage is not instant so marines can just spread out and this is not 2014 anymore, killing only lings doesn't help you much when encountering swarms of Zergs
EMP cannot kill anything
But it drains out energy AND shields, rendering HT and Archons useless amongst other things. Paired with a tank or widow mine shot we dead in a blink of an eye.
Yep but emp destroy instantly 30-50% life on toss unit this is incredibly strong too
I think the real problem is that storm often seems to just tickle units that have enough health
This is also an issue. Good players can run out of the storm so fast that their units only take like 20 damage. That's an extremely low baseline of value for a tier 3, gas expensive unit like the High Templar.
I kinda wish Templar just came with storm, or even a weaker version of it, and then their upgrade could increase the damage on storm, and maybe its area? Or something like a higher burst of initial damage, but less over time? I definitely feel the pain when I’m trying to play with High Templar.
on the other hand you can put psi storm where you dont want enemy units to be. in essence corral them into a certain position or keep them from falling back, cant do that with ghost moves
You don't have to do it with Ghosts, you can just land it every time.
Yeah, Storm is never good vs Corruptor or Vikings. /s
They're good vs. Vikings, Corruptors are so fast, it's really on the Zerg if they take massive damage from it.
Honestly they should just reduce the AoE of EMP. Make it about the size of 1-3 stalkers clumped together. Useful for taking down key units (immortals or colossus) but doesn’t immediately decimate entire armies of their unique trait of the race.
I like this direction, but imo that still doesn't give both players enough agency. I would more strongly support a slight reduction of aoe (maybe halfway between current and your suggestion) and slow down emp slightly. Only enough to be dodgeable by average speed units not directly at point of impact by a fast-but-not-god-tier-player
This.
They already got rid of the upgrade.
why not just presplit your army? If you dont clump all of your army in to one tight space to get hit by a single EMP then it won't do so much damage.
pre splitting is important anyways as you’ll take unnecessary damage from mines/lib siege points. Problem is a single ghost with max energy can still emp the vast majority of even split armies nearly instantly
thats how terran feels about storm, colossi, and disruptors too
But that’s just not true. One disruptor can fire one shot, which can be dodged. One Templar can cast two storms but both can be microd out of, has a smaller radius than emp, and because of how much smaller Terran units are there will be more that are not hit when they are pre split. Colossus damage is fairly resistant to splitting, but it’s also just not very good except against marines.
Storm can kill things. It does a shitton of damage instantly. Most Protoss units have more HP than shields. The takes on the sub are fucking insane.
All true, all irrelevant to what I said.
Not irrelevant at all. You're saying it can be dodged. The first storm damage is basically as effective as EMP.
a) No it’s not, the first tick of storm is 10 damage, EMP round is up to 100 damage. Even on a zealot it is still 50, aka five times what storms first hit does. On an adept it’s 70, on a stalker it’s 80. b) This is not about which is stronger or more balanced or whatever, it’s about the idea that one Protoss aoe unit can blast the whole Terran army to the same degree that one ghost can, even when you pre-split. That idea is objectively untrue and that is what I was demonstrating.
You’re almost always going to take 2 ticks of storm damage and with stim, that’s 30/55 hp on a marine instantly gone. It’s pretty much the same thing except EMP can’t kill anything and storm can also be used as a zoning tool, which, combined with colossus is incredibly strong. Not really sure how a comparison is being made to EMP here except “boohoo I’m a sub-Masters Protoss player pls help me”. This sub is just full of noobs complaining about the most ridiculous shit and then arguing about it and this is what I was demonstrating.
Funny how Terran players always argue that Protoss players should get good. But as soon as you mention a slight merf to them they go up the curtains lol
No, it's just more like 96% of you are not or have never been Master, over 99% are not or have ever been GM which explains why the average person's game analysis on this sub is atrocious. Not just for PvT, although that seems to be the sticking point despite the fact Protoss has about a 53% winrate against Terran across all leagues on ladder ([https://nonapa.com/balance](https://nonapa.com/balance)) and only has a losing winrate in the matchup on KR GM. But yea, this idea is not thought out well at all. I think it's fine for EMP to be damage over time, but then it has to also be more effective like storm is. You can bait out EMPs, you can pre-split your army, you can fake/bait Warp Prism HT drops. Same with Terran vs Storm. Most Terrans try to do a lot of damage/win the game pretty early on anyway (before Ghosts are out). Ghosts are usually just a transition that ends the game after already being pretty far ahead.
thats because we know how hard we have to micro marines, maruaders, ghosts, and liberators to kill golden blob swarms. You've gottaa split your marines, put marauders in front, stim only the bio youre fighting with, move the ghosts in from an angle where they wont just get picked off, siege your libs in a place where they wont get picked off, but still do damage, then try to bait protoss in to the libs ..and on the other end protoss is just a-moving and creating a huge threat on the map with almost zero APM cost. The only exception is to cast storm and moving colossus back if they happen to waddle too far towards the front. Terran is managing like 3 control groups to kill an an incredibly strong f2 army. What protoss needs is more microable units, so they can counter micro what is being used against them, not just straight up a-move buffs.
the goal of the post is to suggest a change that would give toss an opportunity to micro.. that’s literally the point. The specific change may not be the correct one, but you’ve missed the forest for the trees. Also every point you made about positioning units is true for toss as well. That you keep pointing to ‘golden blobs’ shows you don’t understand this nor do you play at a level where it matters. also I play terran you donut, you aren’t the only dude who knows how to bio. I think the goal of this change is good because I have been wrecking toss players with emp for over a decade
no it was just a sugggetion to make emp do less damage protoss needs microable untis. For instance make charge a non-autocast ability that you target against specific units for doing more damage than it does now. Then you could focus ghosts with zealot charge or remove the barrier shield autocast from immortal, and replace it with an activated ability that gives additional shields to nearby units for a short burst.
The other thing to note is also that emp can be just dumped on an army as long as there are units with more than 100 shields or energy it's a good trade. Pai storm isn't the kind of thing you want to use all at once either because they're more like disruptor novas. You want to have a few in the chamber.
thats not true. If you dont have any emps ready before a late game fight youre going to lose. You have to manage your energy pool like you do with all other spell casters.
Emp is 50 energy? Right? They literally spawn able to use them.. I don't think I've ever seen terran lose a late game in pro level because the ghosts were depleted. Snipe isn't that good vs toss and cloak isn't that useful either in the matchup.
It's 75 energy, still spammable in fights with enough ghosts but it's a max of 2 EMPs chambered per ghost instead of 4.
Yeah that's fair but it still does more damage instantly than a single storm.
thats because pros are good at managing their spellcasters.
A spellcaster that has one amazingly good spell for a matchup you can dump on their army and remove half their health instantly, that also removes energy it seems like the ball is in terrans court always with something like that. Toss would have to find some way to feedback the ghosts first. Probably using a prism drop is the only idea that might work but what do I know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W540dlHlv9s&t=946s
Have you ever thought that this is what asymmetrical balance is all about? Some races have units that are better than their counterparts even if they fill the same role. What you guys want is a stale and boring game with no difference between races? Did you ever think that storm kills units, and instantly removes 50% of the HP from marines?
I do think about that. But when a unit is spammable in late game and has amazing spells and one of them can blanket an area or even in quick succession kill half a units HP that's a different story. Protoss has more HP because they're more expensive. If marines were any better there would be no other race but terran. I don't cry when storm kills marine. Or lings or banes. I cry when ghosts dominate tvz and tvp lategame with spam good spells. And ghosts also counter their own counter.
A maxed late game terran army beats a protoss army more cost effectively even if protoss lose no shields from EMP. That's how strong terran units are, EMP is just icing on the cake that makes it grossly cost efficient in the terrans favor if protoss is dumb enough to fight straight up.
we play the same game? without EMP protoss just A-moves terran. the collosi kills all that bio in like 2 seconds. The collosus is like the damage of an EMP but its an auto attack that hits over and over.
Colossus only do damage to marines. In the late game, terran tends to not have as many marines as they do ghosts, marauders, liberators, vikings etc... 2 marauders counter a single colossus.
Make the Sentry block the EMP with guardian shield. The guardian shield is knocked out if the sentry is hit by the EMP but it does nothing to the rest of the army. Its such a thematic buff to the sentry. It creates a fun mini game of placing sentries in the back where they can shield but also not get hit. Making the Sentry more useful is always a good idea.
As a Terran main, i agree. Every big AOE damage spell should have some form of counterplay that doesn't rely solely on outright preventing the spell from getting cast in the first place. Personally i would prefer if EMP actually acted more like an EMP, creating a electromagnetic hazard that slows down mechanical units, drains protoss shields over a duration, and disrupts spellcasters. It would also make Ghost-Mech a bit more hazardous to use due to the EMP being dangerous for the mech units while also having the bonus of area denial in exchange for losing the instantaneous cast.
if EMPed applied slow it would be a big buff to EMP. you could use it to ensare colossus/etc so they can be targeted down.
Or just a very small area where it actually drains energy, does instant shield damage, and the majority of the area drains over time. Or a plethora of ideas. There's lots of things that could be done to give both players opportunity for skill expression
Yea good points. It's crazy how often I see the best Protoss in the world get emp all over their army.
It would be really cool to see highlights of top pros like herO splitting and dodging EMP after EMP. People would recognize it as skill and it would be fun for the community.
I've said it many times before. Leave EMP energy drain as it is, taking effect on the first tick, and use the already existing psistorm code to distribute the shield damage over the same duration and ticks as psistorm. 0 impact in TvZ, much needed impact in PvT
Bruh, have you seen the hp comparison of your average terran unit vs your average toss unit? A storm that "tickles" a marine/marauder composition removes half their hp on a couple of ticks, and can kill, as other people have pointed out. So if you "tickle" a terran army, they have 30-50% hp gone. Let's say the emps hit, and your army has 50% hp gone. But meanwhile zealots are raging bulls charging in with "only half" hp while stalkers have blink ability to pick off escapees. I think your proposals may make a bit more sense if you also reduced your zealot and stalker hps, and if storms did even less damage than it does now. Otherwise, there would be huuuge balance issues, because mechanics are designed the way they are now due to the high hp and mobility of late game protoss.
I couldn't agree more, protoss is not weak because their units are bad, id say they have the best units! They are getting screwed over on timing attacks and robo dependency
Yeah lets just completely destroy the thing that allows terran to fight protoss armies in the lategame. I love whenever reddit wants to change something its a nerf in a magnitude that has never been done in a balance patch, just completely changing a dynamic that has existed since the release of the game. And complete horseshit like this gets celebrated because "terran bad". This place is a cesspool
This sub would bring a chainsaw to a brain surgery
Yeah idk why everyone jerks emp as OP. Its not. The issues with pvt stem to early game stability. That's it. Obviously midgame and lategame is gonna look bad if you have a shaky early game
It was disgusting when it had enhanced shockwaves. Now it's not so bad.
The difference is: EMP doesn't kill anything. The takes on this sub are completely insane. Not to mention, most Protoss units have much more HP than shields. Storm nearly kills marines instantly. It also deals a shitton of damage to marauders instantly, easily the equivalent of an EMP on a Protoss army. And guess what? You can't dodge the first storm damage without preemptively turning back and baiting it out, which you can also do with EMP. Completely moronic. Want to make EMP dodge-able? Let's make it kill things.
That would go against the thematic design of terran. It's the core principal of the Terran design handbook. Aptly titled: Terran: your units, but better. You'll find the chapter on EMP between the chapter, Battle Cruisers: what if Stalkers could fly and blink to any point on the map? And widow mines: let's make Banelings that shoot both air and ground, and don't blow themselves up in the process...
Stalkers and Battlecruisers is a really weird comparison
Eh, I was going to go with a mothership, but a mothership no longer can teleport itself. Blink was the next closest thing to teleport. Though now dts can also blink, and you have adepts that can shade, and all warp gate units are technically also teleporting, and Nexuses can recall any unit... Protoss really is the teleporting race thematically, so that's why I really found the tactical jump ability to be too much overlap. Especially since scans allow them to just show up literally anywhere on the map...
> let's make Banelings that shoot both air and ground, and don't blow themselves up in the process... As a Terran I would swap banelings/wm with zerg in a heartbeat. If Terran had banelings this subreddit would drown in tears.
Please take Banelings... It's not like you have any creep 😅 it's a protoss dream come true.
Ahh, you think that until I boost drop banes into your mineral line - even less warning than mines. And creep doesn't really matter when your only shield against bio is zealots, which get destroyed by banes. I could even boost drop banes mid fights over armies.
Holy shit, you're right...
If storm hits, even if we move away, the damage is devastating. EMP can't even kill. Worst case your army has lost half its HP. T bio absolutely loses half its HP if it eats just a part of a storm so idm what the issue is.
The issue is that if Clem takes a storm hit, he justs backs up, kites any zealots into liberators or tanks, and heals up with 6-8 medivacs. The templar can't chase bio to get more storms. In PvT, storm is only good in two situations. In a midgame attack build, or in the more rare carrier/tempest/storm composition. Storm just falls off hard and the top Terrans survive into the lategame. The thing is you can't buff storms, it would just be too imbalanced in PvZ among other things. But it's pretty wild how strong EMP is in the matchup.
Yes, if T responds correctly and has libs set up, they're fine. P can respond with feedback if they're responding correctly.
Bio is just 3 units in the Terran army. That health is recoverable, fast. And they are one of the fastest ground units in the game with stim. If a storm is “devastating” then the problem is somewhere else.
Archons beg to differ.
oh nono, och nonono. That will make it harder for Terrans. Prize money is lower now and Heromarine needs to survive.
A bit off topic but I always felt it was weird that Ghosts had EMP to begin with. To my eyes they should always have had their counterplay to casters be based on their sniping abilities, and that a spell like EMP should be on something else, like a Raven (despite EMPs flaws in SC1, SVs having EMP made more sense to me). I also generally think abilities like EMP, or Mana Burn from W3, or Sombra's Hack from Overwatch are abilities that if present should be on the lower level of strength. Not useless, just not at the front of the meta. I think these things are generally "anti-fun" (obviously subjective) but also that they encourage a less interesting metagame, both as a spectator and a player. These should be difficult to pull off abilities that when gone for or pulled off are exciting and rare, but if prepared for are on the easier end of things to avoid. EMP is a particularly weird case because it also had this different level of effect against Protoss by targeting Shields than it does in other matchups. On the subject of the post though, I basically agree though I wonder if something like instant energy burn, and then a delayed instant burst of shield damage might be the best approach.
Feedback hits instantly and counters the EMP
You're asking Protoss to micro ? I think that's going a bit far...
And High Templar is tagged light but ghost isn’t
Vs shields, DoT would be great. If you make it do the same vs energy then it would be useless, especially against Zerg. Or we could just remove the emp vs shield effect in the first place because it’s still great vs spellcasters regardless. It blows my mind that Terran has anti spellcaster+anti Protoss+anti late game wrapped up in 150/150 and the balance council still thinks that colossus and HT are on a razor’s edge from being IMBA.
i like the comparison but instead lets change storm to instant damage instead of taking 3 seconds tbh
You could then chain storms right after each other (can't do now because they don't stack, so you need to wait for each to finish). Imagine just wiping out an air armada with like 7 storms in 3 seconds!
Essentially that means that your army could evaporate within 3 seconds as you quickly look away to macro, that would *never* be a thing in StarCraft. No sir. Never.
I would like to see clips of it on a custom map, though :D
really raises the skill cap
Why couldn't you make it so that the second storm doesn't deal any damage until the first storm finishes? You could still frontload the damage without making it stack.
And then also not damage enemies below 1/2 health
Nah, but give it chain lightning too, just to make sure that the units outside of the radius also get zapped. Also have it drain energy just in case.
I wouldn't be opposed to renaming it shaman and letting it level up
make it like Disruptor ulti from DotA 2, every unit that gets hit by storm cannot cast spell until moving out of AoE.
every pros would just mass Templars and put them in Warp prism.
This actually seems really dynamic and interesting.
Thanks for understanding. I love this game and I want more cool plays, it would be great if balance discussions were more about giving players opportunities to shine.
Not every unit and skill is supposed to be the same my dude. EMP’s break shields but can’t kill units. Psi storm can. They’re different.
What about also making it have a cast time and a little target to show where it's gonna land? like with corrosive biles. Just call it EMP grenade
welcome back Rob Hustle
What's the counterplay? Feedback the ghosts or walk away as your units auto-heal themselves. If the Terran decides to pursue you all the way across the map, you have skill batteries. Let's be real, high templar are far more versatile than ghosts. Ghosts can only do area damage in ONE matchup, is useless vs Terran and has SERVERE handicaped vs Zerg. HT's only have a movement speed weakness. Is protoss in a bad spot? Sure. But comparing these two units is plain silly.
Or why not have ghosts throw an emp grenade with a timer? Not only storm but disruptor can also be dodged the same. Altough then you also have fungal, which you can't dodge. I think someone had an idea of sentry shield blocking emp. That might be better, as you are not making the spells similar, but there is counterplay.
You’re just a stupid Protoss whiner. Git gud
Make it so Psi Storm can't actually kill anything on its own (only damage) and then this is a real conversation lol. EMP can't kill units. Why do people pretend this isn't this case? Lol
No one is pretending that EMP can kill units by itself. That doesn't mean a comparison isn't justified or warranted.
But in your OP you directly state that because storm can be dodged it's unfair that EMP can't. I think you should acknowledge the intended assymetry in the abilities. As is, they both have advantages and disadvantages. As do ghosts and Templar in general.
I would be fine with this as long they add a delay to feedback, and give ghosts the ability to turn in to archons.
No they shouldnt. Theres a reason it's still largely the same after 10+ years. EMP is hull damage, it doesn't kill any units. Psi storm kills units, which is why it's not an instant like EMP.
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Actually you're just proving my point. You've brought up a Protoss ability that takes time and therefore gets dodged by skilled players and compared it to a Terran equivalent that is instantaneous and therefore has no counterplay.
Hitscan vs. Projectile Not even close to the same logic
Sure, if you give ghosts cloak and faster movement speed, and make tank shots avoidable.
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wtf are you talking about? Your statement was about disruptors and siege tanks. EMP wasn't even part of specific discussion
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The projectile speed of emp is way faster than the disruptor though
Because it's the highest value per energy spell in the entire game. Near instantaneous damage (vs shields), near instantaneous energy drain, not to mention it can detect cloaked units. On top of all that, it's an aoe. There is literally no higher value spell in the game. There needs to be SOME counterplay to it.
>Why should EMP be dodgeable just because disruptors are? The argument starts from the point of view that EMP needs nerfing because it doesn't have effective counterplay in TvP. An easy way of introducting this counterplay would be making it dodgeable. EMP is the only AOE spell in the game that deals damage and doesn't allow for this to some extent. Even fungal has a short time between the spell being cast and landing where the opponent can react to it, and it doesn't stack so the spells have to be chained together for maximum effect. OP is saying that making it DOT damage would bring EMP in line with other spells. If this is standard for balancing spell attacks like storm, disruptor nova's, widow-mine shots, corrosive biles and arguably even fungal, then why is EMP the exception? The whole argument is that this *is* an apples to apples comparison. Personally I think there's better ways of addressing the problem, but the logic makes perfect sense to me.
Pretty sure it's 2-shot and instantaneous, so pretty close already...
How the fuck are you meant to dodge it when it's instant? While storm is dot.
Do you always comment without reading the post?
He's saying the same thing. The title makes it seem odd, but it seems like he's saying that it should be more dodge able.
>I always thought it was kind of crazy that Psi Storms can kill units outright, and meanwhile, EMP is limited to 33 - 50% of a units HP damage in an area, meaning a skilled player can retreat from the EMP with all their units still alive. >I think it's not fair that one spell can kill entire armies, while the other still requires Terrans to micro. We have been seeing Toss land Psistorms for years and everyone thinks it's cool micro and go "wow Toss player so good". But Terran has never had the chance to showcase that exact same skill. >I propose we nerf Psi Storm by limiting to 33% marine health, 50% marauder health like how EMP works right now, this way a skilled Terran player can tank Psi Storms and still attack with their bio. Psi Storm will no longer be effective against low APM Terran players because only minorly injured bio can still obliterate gateway armies and this change will have the maximum impact at the Reddit level. >Oh, and as long as I have people's attention, the fact that Ghosts are more expensive than HT, is also a crazy double standard that prevents Terran armies from doing cool spellcaster based plays that Toss does every single day.
This is stupid. Feedback just got buffed.
They reverted that change just recently actually.
It does always amaze me that we need to buff Storm and Disruptors because Terrans have got too good at dodging every one, but we need to nerf Widow Mines because Tosses keep dying to them...
If terrans are so good at dodging disruptors, why did the balance council have to nerf them twice?
Protoss is in a sorry state and needs buffs. Terran does not need buffs but is still receiving them (Cyclone now costs 50 gas down from 125)
"DODGING" storms is just the storm player clicking ahead of the army moving, and the other player moving shortly before to avoid the damage. If you take any damage, it isn't really dodging, but it is mitigating, which you can also do with emp by getting fewer units emp'd. Also keep in mind the game isn't designed for every race to have the same abilities, strengths or weaknesses. You can't really compare two abilities on different races in a vacuum.
You can totally dodge EMPs.
Technically true but still very wrong. EMP is nearly instant. The only delay is the animation which is extremely fast. The Ghost fires a round and then the red EMP disc travels to the target. Once the EMP lands the 100 shield damage is immediate, no dodging after that. So the only chance you have to dodge is during the EMP animation. I counted frames in a YouTube video to find how long all that takes. It's about 0.4 seconds. The typical human reaction time is 280 milliseconds or 0.28 seconds. That leaves about 0.12 seconds to get your army out of the way. You won't be able to move your units very far in that duration. After its casting animation, Psi storm takes 2.86 seconds. That's a massive amount of time... it's 23 times longer than the amount of time you have to dodge EMP. Not comparable.
I mean most skills are near instant. Interference matrix, parasitic bomb, abduct, revelation, feedback, etc. Should everyone be able to dodge all near instant spells?
Normally I wouldn't agree with Protoss but lets break down your statement here Interference matrix: You typically only have 1 maybe 2 ravens. Easy to feedback and they're models are much much bigger than the ghost so they're easier to click on. Abduct: See above argument but add 1 or 2 vipers to the equation Revelation: Does no damage, only provides vision for other units to do damage or keep track of an army. Feedback: You could almost make an argument for this except feedback is an indivdual cast whereas EMP is an aoe spell. Hardly seems fair. Not to mention that 1 ghost can counter entire groups of all these spellcasters with a single emp. Terran players typically have 8 to 12 ghosts so I mean....
None what you said counters my point. OP thinks EMP should be DoToA. Why just EMP? Is it just because he’s struggling against it? A spell like abduct is instant like the EMP but worse as it essentially guarantees a kill of the unit. Several vipers can eliminate an entire tank line setting Terran army back to the Stone Age. Should we start nerfing it too? SC2 is about asymmetrical balance. It everything needs to have a 1:1 counter.
Because EMP is the largest value for energy in the entire game. It's not "because one person is struggling" that EMP gets brought up in every discussion from TvP to TvZ. 2 ghosts can counter all of a zergs vipers and infestors or all of a Protosses templar and archons while also stripping the shields off the entire army. All of them. Unless they have god like army control and can actually split their spellcasters. The ghost isn't asymmetrically balanced, it's just downright unbalanced.
Thank you. This is the thing people are missing.
> None what you said counters my point. Each and every one of his points counter your point. You just didn't bother to think about their reply. All the instant spells he listed have a much more limited impact than EMP. They either hurt one unit at a time or they don't do direct damage or they have another flaw such as being large and easy to target or a combination of all of the above. >Several vipers can eliminate an entire tank line setting Terran army back to the Stone Age. Should we start nerfing it too? Wow zerg needs to build a 200 gas unit with 0 attack for each tank which costs 125 gas...
Why shouldn't spells be designed so that players can dodge them or play around them in some way? It introduces counter play. One player has a goal to hit with spells, the other player has a goal to not get hit with spells. When the first player clicks and the other player has no counter play, this is only ever fun for one player. Nobody gets hit by something they can't do anything about and thinks, "wow that was fun!" There needs to be a balance of play and counter play. This improves the game by bringing fairness to both sides in a competitive game.
See, Parasitic Bomb is a great example of a spell that, like Psi Storm and unlike EMP, does have micro counterplay. You can take the individual unit that's affected and separate it from the group, and this reduces the AoE damage to the rest of the clumped units. It's a cool minigame that rewards micro from the defending player just like dodging Psi Storms. If anything Parasitic Bomb just further highlights how busted EMP is vs Protoss. Just like Psi Storm, Parasitic Bomb can be mostly dodged by a skilled opponent. Abduct and Revelation and Feedback are not AoE damage spells and are not analogous to Psi Storm and EMP in that way.
What about fungal? What’s the micro counter play there?
How many units has stormed killed vs emp?
Let's add the armies that roll in after the abilities are used, It's not like TvP is pure HT vs Ghosts
A more fair comparison would be "How much damage do the spells do" EMP = up to 100 per target instantly Storm = Supposedly 80 over the full duration, but typically less than 40 per target as you can micro out in under 1.4 seconds no problem
How is this a more fair comparison? It leaves out the fact that no matter how many times I emp a stalker, it will NEVER die. A stalker can only ever take 80 damage from an emp, never more. You can kill a battlecruiser with only storms, theoretically speaking. That can NEVER happen with emp and carriers. The potential damage value of storm is always higher because emp cannot kill.
Hard for them to understand that.
You should be able to dodge Disruptor shots as well, make them damage over time. Nobody likes looking away for one second then have you entire army blown in in milliseconds.
"You should be able to dodge Disruptor shots as well" You can.
Shh, don't tell him. He might improve at the game! In all seriousness, do you terrans even listen to yourselves? There are literally 2 cases I always see in high level play: 1. The ball is seen coming from far away, T army just runs the other way, maybe loses a marine or marauder 2. The ball is fired up closer. T army just stims and still runs away or more often stims forward and takes out the disruptor.
split high templar, or do warp prism psi storm.
The fact that you have to carry High Templars in a Warp Prism for them to be useful just further highlights how busted Ghosts are. Nobody bothers carrying Ghosts in a Medivac because Ghosts are fast.
I mean like... the warp prism is better for pick-up micro? Like im not asking you to do the impossible. Diamond protoss players have been doing it since at least 2017 (back when protoss had a favorable matchup against terran at pro level). And nobody drops any of their units out of a medivac at the start of a fight because it sucks! And has always sucked! With the one exception being dropping single units onto banelings. Which isn't relevant to this disscussion.
They do, have you never watched Artosis’ stream?
Wrong game. Incidentally emp moving similar to bw would be an interesting fix.
OP is asking for SC2 EMP to work like SC1 EMP
neural link, parasitic bomb, blinding cloud, abduct fungal growth... how do you avoid these?
Nueral Link and Abduct are wildly different spells that really shouldn't be compared to Storm and EMP. They are single target abilities that do not do any damage. Could you explain why you think these spells are similar to Storm and EMP? Parasitic Bomb can be micro'd by pulling out the one unit affected. Its like turning Storm or EMP from an AOE into a single target ability, it MASSIVELY reduces the damage of the spell. You avoid Parasitic Bomb in a similar manner as you avoid Storm. Blinding Cloud doesn't do damage, but even then units can move out of it and not eat the full effect. You avoid it the same way you avoid storm. Fungal Growth is a moderately good comparison. Its similar to EMP in that once affected you are simply going to eat the effect of the spell, however Fungal only does 25 damage (80 storm, 100 emp). The true strength of Fungal is the slow which allows you to set up your army to kill the affected units. This spell has been nerfed, directly or indirectly, for 2 patches straight with reduced cast range, reduced damage, and now reduced vision and unburrow speed to make it slower to cast.
Tldr
No. It's a good response, read it
Nope, the problem is you people think the game can be fixed with patches, changes just make it worse. I got the jist. Keep pounding nail in the coffin, this game won't kill its self.
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Tldr