Why Protoss race struggles to win any Premier Tournament in StarCraft 2

credit to @SC2HL for footage
Timecodes:
00:00 Protoss winrates are falling
00:30 Reason №1
02:15 Reason №2
02:43 Reason №3
03:25 Reason №4
#sc2
#starcraft
#starcraft2
#esports

[EsportsStoryteller]

Timecodes:
00:00 Protoss winrates are falling
00:30 Reason №1
02:15 Reason №2
02:43 Reason №3
03:25 Reason №4

[lothar]

I think I read someone summarizing the Protoss issues pretty well: A gimmicky race loses power when its strategies are figured out. Relying on gimmicky stuff is just a knowledge battle, once people download the solution, it is over.
I always liked the Protoss race as a concept, but their implementation on SC2 is very lacking to me:
- Zealots are probably the worst tier 1 unit in the game, dying way too quickly to have any relevance in combat. They are basically mineral dump units at best, used for mineral line harass when you're basically already winning the game.
- Stalkers are overused and the faction is over-reliant on them, which means once you figure out what hurts stalkers, you figure out what hurts protoss itself. They are also horribly inefficient in combat, because they are slow projectile units battles take forever with them as they overkill to much. Still, basically the only unit in the faction that translates skill into power.
- Disruptors are an awfully designed unit that should just be removed for the sake of both protoss and its opponents. There is no skill and no fun involved, it's just bad full stop.
- Colossus are a joke, too many weaknesses, and the reason why Disruptors are needed.
- Archons are pathetic, they die too quickly for something SO EXPENSIVE. "But they take so many banelings in the face" who cares? They cost over 200 gas, they die like flies to marines. Their AoE damage is overrated too.
- High Templar only exist against zerg, against terran they are just a joke, actually, can we talk about how Ghosts just completely invalidade the entire Protoss faction? Like, what is even the point to fight after Ghosts appear? Just GG no RE.
- Adepts are a gimmick.
- Sentries are a gimmick.
- Dark Templar are a gimmick. Stealth sucks in this game.
- Immortals take too long to build, great units, too inaccessible. A huge mistake in my opinion.
- Phoenixes are amazing.
- Oracles are a necessity.
- Void Rays exist I guess? Who makes them?
- Tempests exist I guess? Who makes them?
- Carriers are a pain to balance, they are either monsters or a pathetic thing.
- And then the Mothership, what is it even supposed to be?

Protoss just needs units that work and do the goddamn job, where are they?

[GigaTyGuy]

Things that are detracting from the joy of watching my favorite race:

* disruptors are all or nothing and at the highest levels of play, usually nothing. Yes, big booms are cool. But at world tournament levels, they're very rare. And the slow 'ruptors are usually getting picked off before detonation.

* collosus are wicked easy to counter. They're just not scary at all anymore. Usually only get brought out in timing attacks, to have their counter reach critical mass before real damage is done, and then get discarded with a tech switch.

* toss has to work so much harder for vision/detection. Outside the defense buildings, they're the only race that *has* to spend supply for detection. And their detection units kinda suck at staying alive in mid to late game.

[madumlao]

I think there was a tastosis comment about how if Terran wins its the amazing micro but if Protoss wins its the fucking lasers

[nickoslekkas]

Toss race just approached it's plateau imo, everything abusable has been nerfed throughout the years or other races have learned how to defend it near perfectly, you can do adept glaves all ins and blink stalker pressure for so many years after all.

[Hayman]

The real problem is that robo units take too long to build and emp not only makes high Templar useless but also takes shields away from the Protoss army making archons useless and all other units weak

[Zadrigo]

There are many problems on pro level but also below, and most important is well described in this video - tier 1 army is next to useless. But even later, the only decent unit is Immortal, which doesn't shoot up. Splash units need to hit but have hard counters (ghost who drain templars) or low impact (colossi are good vs light but vs other units deal almost no damage, but are vulnerable to antiair, disruptors were nerfed). Result is that Protoss army has many vulnerabilities that can be exploited by other races, and needs to defend and hug the base/battery almost always, which gets pretty boring. Also, high supply value and unit cost makes it harder to scout with default units, and scouting is very risky because if you loose couple of units it can snowball very easily.

Not sure what can be done. On high level, yes, we can wait for our Lord and Savior Parting to return, wait for Stats to get in form, but fundamental problem is that on lower levels other races playstyle is far more comfortable. Every Terran even in Diamond can copy Maru's or Cure's push timings, and even if they are 15-30 secs late, Protoss player needs a lot of skill and luck to defend because he needs to invest in proper units/techologies, needs batteries, needs good surround...and even then he only defended. But he can be attacked by so many different units - tanks, liberators, mines, bio, and almost all of these require rather different units and methods to deal with. Not to mention that Protoss army relatively similar in strength can be split into two parts that are simply not enough. Like, if you face bio and Terran splits it, those are still 2 groups of bio, but if you split 3 colossi and send group with only 1 colossi against the bigger Terran bio group, you loose the game. And so on, and so on.

[Omgtired]

Pretty much spot on analysis, I'd say now protoss find themselves weaker on all stages, skytoss is not as scary as it was, I'd say both lategame terran and zerg have more powerfull.

[sekisc]

Back in 2010, these kinds of developments were so hard to forsee, and they are part of the core design of the race. Image how hard it is right now, to design a race in Stormgate to be balanced for the next 20-30 years across different skill levels xD

[enriquegarciacota]

It’s the race that needs more micro, and yet they only have 3 fingers

[Ghost-YouTubeIsGarbage]

its too late to talk about that since most of the players have already left playing starcraft or left playing protoss.
all these issues were well-known for years, but developers were mostly focused on satisfying average simple-minded player base and were fixing minor details, rather than taking a general and serious approach. now, as a result of developers' incompetence, we have what we have.

[sleeper]

The problem with toss balance has always been warp-in. When gateway units are efficient vs other tier 1 units, attack timings with warp in become way too strong. So gateway units are balanced down, which makes toss rely on other things like splash damage to compete in the mid game

[aaronfarley]

I honestly believe that those high impact splash units don't need much changes and they should focus on buffing gateway units. I'm honestly happy they nerfed protoss air as a protoss myself. Protoss really just needs more answers to things like ghosts, and heavy bio pushes that don't have to rely on big splash.

[Templarfreak]

i think for the most part most of the community does understand Protoss does have 1 key issue that does hold them back balance-wise: they dont really have any good lategame scaling options for their ground units that stack up with Zerg and Terran.

Zealots and Stalkers also dont need this lategame scaling, but other Gateway or even Robo units could almost certainly benefit from having a very strong but very tech-heavy upgrade, like being at robo support but being locked behind templar archives but massively improving a unit.

generally, the reason why such upgrades didnt really exist much at all in SC2 is because it was apart of Blizzard's approach to "streamline" the game more. they removed many lategame upgrades because they had the mentality that these lategame upgrades were meaningless since you wouldnt want to use the units without those upgrades anyway (ex: SC1 Ultra's armor and speed upgrades).

over the years, especially recently, this mentality has been slowly being undone, especially with community feedback. Z in particular has had lategame changes made to them, with Lurkers and Ultralisks, and T has seen some buffs to their lategame, but no similar love has really been given to the Protoss yet.

Colossus or Disruptors would probably benefit the most out of any ground Protoss unit from some kind of upgrade that greatly improves their lategame potential. i would lean more toward the Colossus because that sounds like a really hard task to do with Disruptors but then still keeping them feeling fair. Immortals might also benefit from having something.

but i think there are 2 Protoss units that are often overlooked, and that is the Sentry and the Adept. i think these two units, while maybe not able to benefit the most from such changes, would be very welcome to have lategame changes made to them. especially the Sentry, which is often a favorite amongst both players and viewers but that has fallen off quite a bit recently.

[jonathannaranjo]

in my op;inion. the mothership core was a crucial unit that allowed the protoss to defend bases and allins, and also get better scouting. In the current meta protoss has to go oracle against zerg to defend his thirdbase, no other openings are viable to stop the zerg from killing an early thirdbase. MSC can allow protosses to become more deceptive with their openings and have more variety. Simply bringing back the MSC would help. Another change I think is useful is buffing the colossus range. Colossus have became useless in all 3 matchups. longer range can make them more viable and less susceptible to abducts or vikings.

[jasonjia]

I remember when sc2 first came out and I thought to myself “is it just me, or does the Terran secondary basic unit (rauder) absolutely crush the toss secondary (stalker)? A near decade later, I see I was right and that blizzard always expected Toss to be underpowered. I can handle that when it comes to PvZ cuz Z is higher skill cap. But for PvT the imbalance is out of this world. Thanks Bluxzard, bunch of shit Terran players on the dev team

[alexandrecorbineau]

You know the balance is bad when pretty much all terran pros said as Jonkopping that Terran is strong atm xd

[CorwinTheOneAndOnly]

The problem is that all good things that were supposed to be protoss characteristics were given to the terrans. And for that matter all good things in general were given to the terrans.

Protoss cant have nice things because terran players will complain and then get nicer things.

-zerg player

[Kenbd]

Definitely noticed the lack of major Protoss results of late. Hard to know exactly what to suggest to fix it. Maybe a slight buff to late game air toss, and if storm charged shields slightly? I wouldn't be averse to bringing back the old Archon toilet.

[rahawala]

This is also the area of the game where it seems it’s been the most challenging to balance elite and casual level play simultaneously.