Forum Overview :: Starcraft II: Heart Of The Swarm :: Are we playing the same game?

[quote name="blackwater"]In the SC2 I remember, Protoss was pretty helpless early on. Zerg had Queens, a pretty beefy unit against any early ground (or even air), and Terran had bunkers, the ability to repair shit and wall in, and even the ability to fly away bases if things went bad. Protoss had... zealots which could run around comically chasing (but never actually catching) an intruder like a reaper, or zerglings, or really any ranged unit... Canons which were too expensive to build early on unless you were a total newbie. Things got a little better for Protoss once you got gas production going plus the cybernetics core (two things you did NOT need for queens or marines)... then you could get out the first stalker and at least have a chance against ranged units. If you were very good at micro, you could go for some sentries and hope that you could block somebody for a while with a force field. But that was about it. Does Protoss have more mid-game options than the other races? I really don't think so. The main ones I remember are 4-gate (lots of gateway units), going for robo, and going for air. Going straight for dark templars is an amusing cheese strategy, but it will fail against anyone who knows his ass from a hole in the ground. Even going for air is probably going to fail most of the time unless your opponent somehow misses the fact that you're doing it. There are very good counters for all the protoss air units. Canon rushes, proxy pylons behind the enemy's base, and rushing for dark templars are all easy to defeat if you just ACTUALLY SCOUT. If you play zerg, just send in some disposable units, or fly some overlords. If you play Terran, just scan for fuck's sake. If you play Protoss... well, really, scouting is probably one of the weakest things about Protoss. Maybe the Oracle has changed that? Haven't played with them long enough to tell. The thing about protoss is... gateway units just aren't that good in the midgame. Especially against Terran. Once Terran gets enough marauders, zealots can't make a dent, and stalkers are not cost-effective. So you have to make this awkward transition from gateway units into whatever your lategame build will be. Terran and Zerg have less trouble with this. Zerg can use any hatchery to produce any unit, of course. And for terran, marines are useful the whole game. Terran strategy is a lot more compicated than just "mech or not?". Good players will use things like multi-pronged drops, mining frontier bases with hordes of mules, banshees and other air assaults, etc. The list goes on. "mech" is not even a single thing in Terran, since you have to upgrade ship weapons and ground weapons separately, so you have to choose what to focus on. Even if you decide to only do ground, a build with a lot of tanks is going to be a lot different than a build that is mostly goliaths. You have to scout and see what the enemy is doing. I've been out of the game for a while, but that's the balance I remember.[/quote]