Topic
Zealot/Archon TvP late game
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The composition is already difficult to deal with in the late game as a Terran. Protoss already has a significant advantage in macro ability over Terran in the late game in that warp gate allows protoss to replenish 200/200 armies much faster than Terran.
Chargelots effectively avoid splash damage from hellions due to their ability. Siege tanks lackluster as a unit in TvP with the exception of the early game. From my experience, they seem greatly ineffective. Barracks units also seem to have a hard time dealing with this composition, as the charge ability is unkitable, marines are very vulnerable after units like Collosi, Archons, and High Templar become available, and Maurauders fare poorly vs. Chargelots. Banshees are very cost ineffective with archons on the field, and I can't mass more than a battlecruiser with waves of inexpensive 200/200 zealot-heavy armies constantly trading unit supply. How am I to deal with the Zealot/Archon late game? |
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As Maverick says, EMP.
On my toss account, generally I suck against terran, I have trouble vs very aggressive ones. But if I'm able to pull through to the late game, I usually only lose if he uses ghosts better than I use high templar. |
Weird, As Maverick says, EMP. You haven't tried this vs. zealot archon on the PTR yet, have you? >.> Did you stop to think why I posted here instead of the Terran forums? |
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EMP the army and snipe the archons, they are the linch-pin of the build and are dealing and tanking mots of the damage.
Protoss out-macroing a terran? What what? We can reinforce our army faster, when we have a proxy set up. But in terms of pure production the Protoss who must rely on pricey and slow to build T3 unit's terran production is miles ahead. -You can build 2 units at once - Have the strongest T1.5 in the game -Don't need to rely on T3 units - Lower Tier units cheaper and are the backbone of your forces (T3 is pretty even for all races) If your talking about, resource macro then Terran are also ahead thanks to mules in the late game. |
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Edited by Dully on 10/28/11 8:09 PM (PDT)
I hope you realize it takes 4 emps to take down a single archon. I don't think you've ever played a late game TvP. When the Protoss maxes out, they just need to make sure to trade armies efficiently and and warp units in. You (as the terran player) don't have a macro advantage. You don't get to have unit retention. You're lucky if you have 100 energy on your ghosts. Because that means that somehow your maxed protoss enemy hasn't been attacking you for 45 seconds for some impossible reason. So yeah, I guess if you have 4 ghosts to every archon he has, at best you can kill the archons and lose to zealots. Congrats.
Two ghosts, which I just explained is not enough to deal with a single archon is about the same cost of an archon. A single emp, with the new radius size and the size of an actual archon will not hit more than one archon. Unless somehow you manage to funnel him into a small bottleneck (in which case why is he attack moving up your ramp instead of starving you of resources like an actual intelligent player) you will not hit more than one archon. Zealots are inexpensive. They are a mineral dump. You cannot build marines because of high templars/archons. You can not use hellions because they don't work. Anything you will use vs. zealots will be much more costly, and will take a significant amount of time longer to produce than a zealot. That is how you are behind in macro. Do you understand? In other words, my concern is that if there is no way to deal with such composition, TvP must be played to kill the protoss before this kind of play can happen, otherwise you have no chance of winning. That means entirely playing 1-1-1 all-in style games instead 1 rax FE style games because you don't want to ever end up in the late game. In essence, this would increase the number of Terran players trying to end the game with builds you don't want to play against. Understand? -You can build 2 units at once Mule = between 3 and 4 workers. It requires 3 additional worker cost to get to, and forces you to cut production for 2 workers. You can easily get ahead in probe count. Your buildings cost less. You spend 150 minerals on a gateway. We spend 200/25 or 200/50 on each of our barracks (and those are the cheapest). The cost of your cybernetics core is negligible in the late game. Our production facilities are ridiculous in cost in comparison. I can't build 2 marauders out of a single base. I can 2 marines out of 1 buildings. I can build 2 hellions out of one building. !@#$ing useless when those units are garbage late game unless you refuse to get charge or are just going mass voidray. We don't need "tier 3" because our battlecruiser is meant to kill your carrier (which you don't need because your warp gate units are superior in every way), and our thor loses very cost ineffectively to your zealots. So little wonder why we don't build them. Lower tier units cheaper? Again, it's doesn't matter if you can't build them. I'm talking late game here. tl;dr: You should really, really be concerned as a protoss because if we can't play evenly in the late game, we will be forced to end every game in the early game. |
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EMP same AOE as storm in next patch. Storm does only 10 instant damage and a total of 80 which can be micro'd out of, emp is 100 instant damage to shields and energy. Although zealots only have 50 shields that is more damage than storm is ever going to do!
Can you currently micro to dodge emp? No, you can perfectly spread your army and still have ever single unit hit. Can you currently dodge storm/collosus? Yes, terran can easily spread their army into 4 groups and dodge 3/4s of the damage. Do terran have an option to retreat if they somehow miss emps? yes, stim and run. Chargelots will do minimal damage while splitting off from the high dps units making them easy targets. Do protoss have an option to retreat if they miss even a single forcefield or get all their sentries emp'd? No, GG |
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Edited by KayJ on 10/28/11 9:27 PM (PDT)
Mule = between 3 and 4 workers. It requires 3 additional worker cost to get to, and forces you to cut production for 2 workers. You can easily get ahead in probe count. Your buildings cost less. You spend 150 minerals on a gateway. We spend 200/25 or 200/50 on each of our barracks (and those are the cheapest). The cost of your cybernetics core is negligible in the late game. Our production facilities are ridiculous in cost in comparison. I can't build 2 marauders out of a single base 1st orbital is exactly the same as cybernetics core so saying it requires 3 workers cost is very very ignorant. Ok you have to cut production of 2 workers, but once its finished you gain 270 minerals FOR NO SUPPLY in a very short period of time. The reason we (protoss) get ahead in workers is because of chronoboost but once you are over 18 probes/workers on a mineral line workers take a lot longer to pay for themselves, this is not the case with mules because they mine over other workers without disrupting saturation and they are free. Therefore protoss is forced to expand just to stay even with terran. Our buildings have very similar cost. Some buildings cost more some cost less. Although there is a big difference in the cost of barracks and gateways, the reason for this is marauders are a lot cheaper than stalkers and beat them one on one. Also your upgrades are a LOT cheaper and are available as soon as a tech lab is finished. Also all your units build slightly faster. All this scales for perfect balance between gateways and rax, it all comes to micro and although terran kiting requires more apm, it is also very easy and very effective. We also can't build 2 stalkers/zealots/sentries from a single production building. Reactor marines = 1 zealot from warp gate, 100 minerals each... |
You haven't tried this vs. zealot archon on the PTR yet, have you? >.> Did you stop to think why I posted here instead of the Terran forums? Obviously not. |
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Edited by Dully on 10/28/11 11:32 PM (PDT)
I'm very sure this nerf won't break your game... just as sure I can beat any P in your league without ever getting a ghost. I know this is cliche, but you have some fundamentals to work on.
You can use forcefields to pin units into place. Terran lacks any such ability. EMP doesn't actually kill units. You can kill an entire Terran army with a few storms. Yes our spell does 20 damage more, but think of it this way: Storm kills a marine. EMP leaves a zealot with 100 hp. Storm leaves marauder with 45 hp. Emp leaves stalker with 80. Feedback works on a decent amount of units, and can OHKO Ghost, critically wound a thor (150 energy for a useless ability? lol), critically wounds BC (more expensive energy ability. gee thanks blizzard), negates ghost (even gives you easy minimap spam mechanic to make up for your one less range), negates raven, and negates medivac (!@#$ I would love to combine to medivacs into an archon if they lost their energy, but it's cool because I play Protoss too ♥). EMP, well it'll kinda kill your army, if you actually still have an army to use. Fighting after getting EMP'd as toss is kinda like fighting over stimmed as terran. You can still do a %^-*-ton of damage, and it still takes units to clean it up.
lolwut? I can hit about a collosus and 1-2 surrounding units with a hit. The collosus will still have 250 hp. The archon will still have 260 hp. I can drain shields. Big !@#$ing deal. I can emp you twice, three, times four, etc. to no effect. I can storm a Terran army until he has nothing. Storm is strong. It is game changer. HT is a killing machine. EMP is a weak assist unit, and the only real tool terran has vs. protoss that is viable to have and does splash damage. You have archon, storm, and collosus for splash damage. Why can't tanks be decent late game? Why does seeker missile have to suck so much? Why can't I have EMP as it is? Because you can't move you can't keep your high templar far apart enough (the distance that they need to be is less than a marine shoots. It's not big).
So you're too lazy to ff. That's cool. That's fine. But %^-*, can you at least spread your army? Your units cost more pop typically. It shouldn't be hard to split your army up into spread out groups. I can do it in half the time i can with a terran army. Easy peasy.
Ghosts don't have stim. I'm sure as not hell moving anything near your splash damage a-move ball until I can play evenly.
Chargelots are unkitable, naturally spreading unit able to cost effectively without any apm making units like the siege tank and hellion garbage. How come when I stim my units don't automagically spread from splash damage and target fire your units as cost efficiently as possible like the zealot does? How come I can't recover from !@#$ing up by getting feedbacked from HT like you do when you get EMP'd and make archons? How come EMP doesn't kill units if it's going to have the same radius? !@#$, make emp only do 60 damage but have it hurt armor too. I'll be happy with that. make more maurdeur and medivac. Yeah because a high APM unit to kill UNKITABLE chargelots lategame which kill marauders in 7.5 hits (whose volleys are quicker than marauders) vs. marauder who takes 17 shots (which fire slower than your zealot attacks) to kill your zealots, costs gas to produce and requires medivacs to stay alive for more than 5 seconds and cost gas unlike a zealot which only requires a single a-move command and is just as effective if you're not even watching it fight is totally a reasonable option.
They all cost less than terrans. ALL OF THEM. Every single %^-*ing one of them. You want to build a warpgate? It's 150, 70 seconds. The more warp gates you build the less significant that cyb core costs. You want to build a rax so it builds a useful unit like a ghost or marauder? 200 minerals 25 gas. You want to build a robobay? 200/200 80 seconds to our 200/25 85 seconds. So you pay 125 more gas so you can actually build useful units. You know what the factory is good for in TvP? !@#$ing flying scout that has the speed of almost an overlord. It's only use is to exist so I can build a starport. %^-*ing garbage piece of !@#$. Starport? 200/150 100 seconds, because medivacs and vikings are what you need to build unless you're all-inning. Stargate? 150/150 60 seconds. You know what you're not taking into consideration? You pay more out the %^- as terran as the game scales up, it takes longer to get each facility going, and you have to walk your 2.25 speed units across the map while your protoss buddy warps in units straight into the fight wherever he pleases. You have every macro advantage. Terran's advantage of marines for mineral dump, and variety of units only works in the early game. Once the game gets past that, the *!@# hits the fan. Cyb core warp gate tech puts Protoss behind in the early game until to spiral out of control when it finishes. Although there is a big difference in the cost of barracks and gateways, the reason for this is marauders are a lot cheaper than stalkers and beat them one on one. Also your upgrades are a LOT cheaper and are available as soon as a tech lab is finished. Also all your units build slightly faster. All this scales for perfect balance between gateways and rax, it all comes to micro and although terran kiting requires more apm, it is also very easy and very effective. Stim takes longer than a $%^-ing mothership with a single 25 energy chronoboost. Believe me, you can still get your upgrades faster if that was your goal. You don't need your abilities to make your units amazing. Stalkers can beat marauders without concussive shell. Zealots seem to get the short end of the stick until you start to remember that you have ff, and can tear them up easily. Our units build faster, until you are talking about the late game and we have fewer production facilities despite being on the same base, and the fact that our structures take more time to build. We have to cut production for add-ons. We don't get to speed up upgrades or unit production like you can (and you guys don't even though you can. Every protoss I see, pro or not has 100 energy on all nexuses. You refuse to use chronoboost, even though it's good for pretty much anything you have). If you used your damn chornoboost, nothing of ours actually builds faster. Once again, we don't get to have our army straight into the battle. It actually takes a whole 50 seconds or so to walk units over. I can't just say: oh he warped in a wave of High templar, maybe I should warp a field of ghosts so I can make up for the ones I lost so I can deal with them. I have to wait 40 seconds for them to build, then another minute to walk them over and hope I didn't die in the meantime. Our upgrades are cheaper? Nope. You get your +1 gateway attack and +1 robo attack at the same time for a discounted price. We both spend 100,100 60 seconds for +1 attack, but ours doesn't upgrade our factory units. Yours takes longer? Nope. Same time, and even significantly less with chronoboost. The only exception is the factory upgrades. Those cost more. But you I won't complain about that for TvP because factory units have no use in this matchup unless you're doing an all-in build like 1-1-1 marine, tank, banshee or a hellion drop + marine/banshee push. Sorry for spelling/grammar. Beer does help with communicating freely and openly, but it doesn't make you more coherent. |
The composition is already difficult to deal with in the late game as a Terran. Protoss already has a significant advantage in macro ability over Terran in the late game in that warp gate allows protoss to replenish 200/200 armies much faster than Terran. i dont think u can do anything |
You can use forcefields to pin units into place. Terran lacks any such ability. EMP doesn't actually kill units. You can kill an entire Terran army with a few storms. Yes our spell does 20 damage more, but think of it this way: Storm kills a marine. EMP leaves a zealot with 100 hp. Storm leaves marauder with 45 hp. Emp leaves stalker with 80. Feedback works on a decent amount of units, and can OHKO Ghost, critically wound a thor (150 energy for a useless ability? lol), critically wounds BC (more expensive energy ability. gee thanks blizzard), negates ghost (even gives you easy minimap spam mechanic to make up for your one less range), negates raven, and negates medivac (!@#$ I would love to combine to medivacs into an archon if they lost their energy, but it's cool because I play Protoss too ♥). EMP, well it'll kinda kill your army, if you actually still have an army to use. Fighting after getting EMP'd as toss is kinda like fighting over stimmed as terran. You can still do a %^-*-ton of damage, and it still takes units to clean it up. Comparing balance between EMP and forcefield + storm is too situational because EMP can disable these units easily and sentries are only super effective in a choke. The only statistic that can be compared is cost of the units. Ghost = 150/100 and HT + sentry = 100/250. olwut? I can hit about a collosus and 1-2 surrounding units with a hit. I don't think you are making enough ghosts... Each ghost can easily emp twice for a timing attack, make 3 and you have instantly 6 emps because they have no cool down inbetween emps. They all cost less than terrans. ALL OF THEM. Every single %^-*ing one of them. Starport? 200/150 100 seconds, because medivacs and vikings are what you need to build unless you're all-inning. Stargate? 150/150 60 seconds. Starport = 150/50 and putting a reactor on it makes it into 2x starports. As you said there is no reason to make anything other than medivacs/vikings. Ghost academy = 150/50 (from memory) HT building = 200/200 with storm requiring 200/200. Stim takes longer than a $%^-ing mothership with a single 25 energy chronoboost. Believe me, you can still get your upgrades faster if that was your goal. You don't need your abilities to make your units amazing. Stalkers can beat marauders without concussive shell. Zealots seem to get the short end of the stick until you start to remember that you have ff, and can tear them up easily. Our units build faster, until you are talking about the late game and we have fewer production facilities despite being on the same base, and the fact that our structures take more time to build. We have to cut production for add-ons. We don't get to speed up upgrades or unit production like you can (and you guys don't even though you can. Every protoss I see, pro or not has 100 energy on all nexuses. I never said anything about speed, I said your upgrades (should have said abilities) are "cheaper" to make up for the expensive buildings. Concussive shells: 50/50 Stim: 100/100 compared to Charge: 200/200 Blink: 150/150 Thermal Lance:200/200 Psionic Storm:200/200 And the reason late game energy is saved up is because when we hit 3,3,3 and have all unit abilities researched there is nothing left to chrono except for probes (if we lose them to harass) or to rebuild collosus. There should always be more gateways than income to defend against drops effectively and to easily dump your money when needed because we cannot queue gateway production via hotkeys. Our upgrades are cheaper? Nope. You get your +1 gateway attack and +1 robo attack at the same time for a discounted price. We both spend 100,100 60 seconds for +1 attack, but ours doesn't upgrade our factory units. Yours takes longer? Nope. Same time, and even significantly less with chronoboost. The only exception is the factory upgrades. Those cost more. But you I won't complain about that for TvP because factory units have no use in this matchup unless you're doing an all-in build like 1-1-1 marine, tank, banshee or a hellion drop + marine/banshee push. I meant to say "unit ability upgrades." BUT on the topic of upgrades, our attack upgrades effecting all our ground units is justified by armor upgrades only applying to half (or with zealots 2/3) of our total HP. Nothing else in PvT is made other than infantry so terran actually gets an advantage with upgrades. No air upgrades are resourced in PvT from both sides. And you can kite chargelots, I have had it done to me on many occasions. Although you can't actually avoid all damage from the zealot if you kite long enough they will separate from the high dps units behind them (archon, collosus, especially HTS) that's when you can commit, when the zealots die or you reduce them to low numbers the high tech units WILL retreat. Massive win for the terran there. Tbh this discussion reminds me completely of the amulet removal threads. The amulet removal and the ghost cost buffs a few months ago is probably one of the biggest reasons EMP should get nerfed. Back with warp-in storms EMP was perfectly balanced, now it's just too much of a chance game whether or not all your HTs get EMP'd or not, and the more chance in a game the less skillful it is. |
Except that it's nothing like the KA amulet nerf, and zealot archon is already a huge problem about to be exacerbated by the emp nerf. I'll reply to the rest of your post when I'm sober enough to tomorrow. |
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Edited by Dully on 10/29/11 10:11 AM (PDT)
UNKITABLE chargelots Patch 1.3.0 Charge will now hit a fleeing target at least once. Doesn't matter if you have concussive shells or moving at the speed of light. You will get hit.
It's not actually. So you need to use something besides HT to kill units. Same deal as EMP. Ghosts by themselvles are weak. What you want me to add a marauder and a medivac for every ghost so I can make some larger value than what you made?
You didn't read my whole post. I'll quote myself to make it easy for you. I don't think you've ever played a late game TvP. When the Protoss maxes out, they just need to make sure to trade armies efficiently and and warp units in. You (as the terran player) don't have a macro advantage. You don't get to have unit retention. You're lucky if you have 100 energy on your ghosts. Because that means that somehow your maxed protoss enemy hasn't been attacking you for 45 seconds for some impossible reason. So yeah, I guess if you have 4 ghosts to every archon he has, at best you can kill the archons and lose to zealots. Starport = 150/50 and putting a reactor on it makes it into 2x starports. As you said there is no reason to make anything other than medivacs/vikings. Are you dumb? Raw Starport costs 150/100. We have to build a 150/100 useless building that adds no value to use it (though I'm not counting that, because it's just like a mandatory expensive, slow, brutish observer). Reactors cost 50/50 each. Reactor startports cost 200/150 a piece. A reactor is like using a single chronoboost, something Protoss players don't even need in the late game because your units reinforce much quicker. Ghost academy = 150/50 (from memory) HT building = 200/200 with storm requiring 200/200. Ghost is our early game castor, comparable to your sentry which you get for free. I don't get ghosts just by adding a tech lab. Our raven is meant to be our splash damage castor, but 125 energy spell with 6 range means we will never be able to use seeker missile. So you don't have to worry about us not having to build a building for. It's already broken. We don't have a splash damage unit. Do I really, really have to repeat this argument again?
Again: read my posts. I'll quote myself because you missed it. You don't need your abilities to make your units amazing. Stalkers can beat marauders without concussive shell. Zealots seem to get the short end of the stick until you start to remember that you have ff, and can tear them up easily. And 200/200 for a spell you only have to buy once is pretty good. Nukes are the only thing ghosts can actually kill units with. Not that that fly-swatter gun it's equipped with. That costs 100/100 for something that actually damages our own army. IMO protoss splash damage, being superior to all Terran splash, should also damage all of Protoss's units. And the reason late game energy is saved up is because when we hit 3,3,3 and have all unit abilities researched there is nothing left to chrono except for probes (if we lose them to harass) or to rebuild collosus. There should always be more gateways than income to defend against drops effectively and to easily dump your money when needed because we cannot queue gateway production via hotkeys. You've never warped in high templar along with some stalkers or zealots and used chrono to get them to catch up? That's because you're lazy and your macro is already good enough vs. late game terran that you don't even need your race bonus used to beat them. You can queue hotkeys, but you sacrafice that for a superior ability. If you want I'll gladly trade my ability to queue (which is a terrible, terrible idea for macro) for your ability to warp in units anywhere before even paying the wait time. I meant to say "unit ability upgrades." BUT on the topic of upgrades, our attack upgrades effecting all our ground units is justified by armor upgrades only applying to half (or with zealots 2/3) of our total HP. Nothing else in PvT is made other than infantry so terran actually gets an advantage with upgrades. No air upgrades are resourced in PvT from both sides. No it's not, because of EMP you're not ever researching shields anyway. Your units are balanced in combat by your players never going for shield upgrades. And you can kite chargelots, I have had it done to me on many occasions. No, you can't. Not since patch 1.30. Although you can't actually avoid all damage from the zealot if you kite long enough they will separate from the high dps units behind them (archon, collosus, especially HTS) that's when you can commit, when the zealots die or you reduce them to low numbers the high tech units WILL retreat. Massive win for the terran there. Zealots ARE high DPS units. Marauders are low DPS units. Chargelots are very cost effective vs. terran lategame with the expection of marines, who get crushed like a papercup in a trash compactor in TvP lategame. Tbh this discussion reminds me completely of the amulet removal threads. The amulet removal and the ghost cost buffs a few months ago is probably one of the biggest reasons EMP should get nerfed. Back with warp-in storms EMP was perfectly balanced, now it's just too much of a chance game whether or not all your HTs get EMP'd or not, and the more chance in a game the less skillful it is. I can't just warp in a round of EMPs whenever I'm losing a fight. If I need EMP, I have to build the ghosts and walk them over. It still takes longer than the time it takes for you to have the energy you need for storm. You still have the ability to warp in HTs for immediate feedback to counter ghosts too. |
It's not actually. So you need to use something besides HT to kill units. Same deal as EMP. Ghosts by themselvles are weak. What you want me to add a marauder and a medivac for every ghost so I can make some larger value than what you made? This is the only thing I'm going to respond to because frankly you killed yourself in every other comment. Ghosts can cloak so they don't need any support, scan-snipe observers and you can literally get anywhere on the map. Are you dumb? Raw Starport costs 150/100. We have to build a 150/100 useless building that adds no value to use it (though I'm not counting that, because it's just like a mandatory expensive, slow, brutish observer). Reactors cost 50/50 each. Reactor startports cost 200/150 a piece. A reactor is like using a single chronoboost, something Protoss players don't even need in the late game because your units reinforce much quicker. It was a typo because I was thinking of the ghost academy. 200/150 for 2x starports is pretty damn good. A single chronoboost only reduces the production time by 10 seconds, a reactor builds 2 units at the same time. I.e. chronoboost = 1.5x building efficiency, reactor = 2x building efficiency. |
