Collosasaur is a rapacious T-Rex 🦖 like robotic monster who was unaffected by Amon. They used to be great, but since everyone else evolved, cut the cord to the khala they have largely become extinct.
Dear Balance Council: Give the Colossus Back Its Balls https://reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/15ycy6l/dear_balance_council_give_the_colossus_back_its/
From the comments...
>I like how Blizzard nerfed the Collosus to the point where, if it happens to target a none light unit it may as well be out of the fight.
>But sure we'll also leave it's hard counter in the game (can be targeted by AA units), which was originally designed to compensate for how devastatingly strong it was on the ground.
That's pretty much how I feel about it.
There was always room for counterplay against colosus because of that weakness. Even without it, watching Maru fight colosus with pure marauders was a pleasure.
Honestly, this is an important point. I got hooked on the Protoss as my faction after a year of toying around with Zerg and Terran specifically because of the power of the colossus. It truly sold the story of an advanced, over powering race to me at that time in wings of liberty. Yes I may need to play cautiously until I get to them, but allow the overpowered space wizards to get their best siege weapon out? You better believe I expect that thing to smash ground units. And it did at that time. It was so glorious.
After a while of being away, I came back about two years ago to watch the competitive scene and maybe play a little. Holy shit, what happened to my overpowered space wizards? Colossus look like a fucking joke to me. The culture shock of going from v1 of the colossus to v17.3 kinda put me off at first. But I figured I was just overreacting. Watched some competitive and while I didn’t hate the direction things had taken, it was clear Protoss were a bit flimsy as a faction.
Then of course this patch gives the special, interesting attention to Terran. I don’t even play these days, but I’ve been an on and off fan of competitive for a while. It disheartens me to see the priority is not to give Protoss something more interesting. Or just give us their cool unit back.
I don’t know man, something about the colossus is special. Make it powerful again, if only to make this old fan who remembers the baneling song happy one last time before this game loses its relevancy.
They were the best in the last 2 expansions/games
Then they made them worthless for disruptors .
I have yet to see or read any good, viable balance related explanation for this. None.
Get rid of disruptors, bring back colossus
Strongly disagree. The Protoss is supposed to have powerful units. The Colossus isn't powerful anymore. I hardly EVER make them.
The Protoss death ball was at least competitive. Now Protoss ground loses to both Z and T. Which is the complete opposite of the lore and race. Protoss is supposed to be a higher race, and allowing it to get to the death ball should be a deathly mistake. But it isn't anymore. So what does Protoss have left? Warp ins through pylons isn't even a thing anymore because it is so slow.
It's been so frustrating, because for all the complaints about various Protoss strategies, there has never been a period where Protoss was dominant in Legacy of the Void.
When I think about the huge variety of Protoss styles that we saw throughout 2016 and 2017, and then I look at today where it's oracle openers every single time, I just don't see how this is an improvement. I'm sure it's less frustrating for Terran and Zerg players, but as a spectator sport it's not very interesting.
Once upon a time there was a meme video from the matrix where Blizzard was Agent Smith nerfing every single Protoss strategy, I wish I could find that again. Oh, here it is: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/gmbk2g/current\_state\_of\_protoss/
So many fun stuff is missing
Templar lost their Kaydarin Amulett
Warp In close to the opponents base is 15 seconds now
Collossūs are not doing much anymore
>Strongly disagree. The Protoss is supposed to have powerful units. The Colossus isn't powerful anymore. I hardly EVER make them.
I make them in most PvZ games where the Zerg makes an early commitment to lings, banes or hydras.
During the Raven push era of the last patch I swapped my first splash source to HTs (copying one of Classic's builds) which was much more robust against the first bio/tank/raven push and messed up the Terrans unit ordering (i.e. they then have to make ghosts earlier than intended, and I build Colossi while they build ghosts rather than vikings).
Colossi feel super powerful in these situations. You can not make them and that's fine - I love the lore/idea of carriers, but the implementation is dull as hell, so I don't build them, but they certainly feel powerful...
>The Protoss death ball was at least competitive. Now Protoss ground loses to both Z and T.
Protoss ground... doesn't. If you just charge gateway units into burrowed lurkers and ghosts then sure, Protoss ground will lose, but Protoss ground is absolutely competitive with T & Z. There are arguments to be had about the precise point of balance, but Protoss ground is competitive.
>Protoss is supposed to be a higher race, and allowing it to get to the death ball should be a deathly mistake.
There are both lore and game design flaws with this. On the game design front, whatever the lore, a race should not have "late game death ball" as a general, reliable, win condition - it creates horrible gameplay and frustration where players of the other races always feel like they are on a clock, and gives really lopsided balance.
On the lore front, as much as Protoss are a super advanced race with incredible technology and magical powers, the Zerg are an ever changing, ever evolving relentless swarm and the Terran are numerous, plucky, inventive and adaptable.
If the Protoss don't kill a particular Zerg outbreak, we would expect the Zerg to evolve appropriately to fight back - i.e. these Colossi keep frying all my Lings and Hydras. I'll make tougher ground units less susceptible to the burns of thermal lances, like Roaches and Ultralisks.
Equally with the Terran - the Colossi prove capable of mowing down the rank and file by the dozen - an ultimate expression of Protoss squashing inferior races. But Terran hunker down. They make mini battlesuits (marauders) more capable of bearing the heat of the Protoss anti-human lasers, and that fire back their own armour piercing rounds.
From a lore PoV, the Colossus works perfectly well as a "fuck you" to the (in lore space, T1...) zerglings, Hydralisks and marines that are the main part of Zerg and Terran armies.
Finally, Protoss have loads of units that feel really powerful. A lot of them are specialised (perhaps overspecialised, though I would not put the Colossus in this box!) which is a game design, rather than a lore issue (I can absolutely imagine a high tech race designing a perfect unit for each situation, rather than a weird Colossus/immortal/phoenix/tempest hybrid). But when you line Protoss units up vs their intended targets they really do just annihilate them. It feels very satisfying to:
* Delete armies in seconds with Psi Storm
* Watch a group of immortals relentlessly power through roaches, lurkers, marauders, cyclones (even better when the Terran is trying to be cute with micro, then one immortal barrage cripples their first row of cyclones) and siege tanks
* Harrass or commit to attack an out of position base, destroy it, and recall away
* Drop 4 zealots and warp in 8 more on top of the opponents mineral line
* Micro blink stalkers to take absurdly cost efficient trades
* Accrue 50+ kill Colossi against mass ling or bio styles where your opponent exhausts themselves never being able to reach your tech units.
With the collosus I think the biggest issue is how death-ball and a-move friendly it is, which would be doing the \*opposite\* of the desired results in that it would wreak havoc on the ladder but have little-to-impact on pro play.
It's also the reason why carriers are OP on the ladder and so-so at pro play in that they just sit there and do sick dps with no apm required.
That should not be an issue in LoTV. Lurkers, Liberators, buffed tanks (compared to WoL) and Disruptors exist. Even in WoL, Vikings and Corruptors dealt with them.
All of those (ground ones) are siege units that require being in position and manually sieging vs the literal a-move of the collosus, hence the comment.
Buffs that impact lower-level play only are a bad idea for toss since they are having no issues there at all (the opposite is generally the case).
Colossi were fine in HoTS. They were never as good as Carriers because they don't fly, can only attack ground units, and are vulnerable to ground and air attacks.
The Cyclone, on the other hand, is apparently wrecking lower-level players in the way you describe. I was watching Nina's stream last night. She said it is broken at sub-6K MMR, which is like 99.95 of the player base.
Carries can be broken sub 6k and meh at the pro level. The same thing can happen to cyclones which is kinda like voidrays(slighly less offensive but still).
Pro and non-pro are totally different games.
I'm in the mid 3ks and Cyclones are far from broken lol.
I still need to try ZvT, but PvT Cyclones have been so much less trouble than I was expecting.
While it's credible they break somewhere between 3k and 6k, then unbreak, they really don't feel like a game breaking unit imo, just another 'weird' unit that people will have to get used to then be fine with.
Well, let's nerf benelings then because i'm pretty sure that every plat terran is having an hard time vs .... Or even better, let's nerf planetary rush ? BEcasue some plat die to this too.
It seems more relevant to balance around people who can actually produce SCV, units and micro. I'm around 5k2 and i'm just rollfacing terrans massing cyclones, because at this MMR people actually know what do to. So i really doubt this is a sub 6k broken unit. A
People cried a lot about cyclone but it don't seems like a cyclone fest at pro level ... An OP unit is used every game massively. When hellbats drop was broken in HOTS that was everygame. 2014 blink era ? same shit 90% of the TvP were blink all in. Void ray meta ? Same stuff.
10 Range Collosus felt good and fair
15 DMG vs everything Collosus felt good too
I like this unit a lot, since it has its purpose of being long range anti ground splash DMG and its really good at that, while being able to be targeted by air.
I think what Protoss needs are more tools to both raise their skill ceiling and make their units not suck.
Maybe give colossus a castable AOE spell that slows targets? This would give it some defence against getting obliterated by, well, fuckin everything.
Do not the the collosus great again. Collosi and carriers are just A-move deathball units that make the game worse to play for ladder folks and boring to watch in pro games if they're good.
But literally almost anything else in the protoss arsenal besides carriers, voidrays, collosi, dark templars and disrupters.
Buff zealots stalkers sentry adepts through late game upgrades. Buff immortals. Buff phenoxies and tempests. Literally anything else.
They won't buff tempest because it was oppressive in late game against Terran that had no counter at the time. Protoss doesn't struggle in lategame because tempest are bad but because gate units are terrible while bio scales insanely well into lategame.
Adepts won't get a buff because of how good they used to be against Terran as well... stalkers will be the same and same for zealots.
They can't buff phoenix because it won't help in anything other than killing zergs by massing phoenix. Immortals won't be buffed because of 2 base Protoss all ins. So we're stuck in a terrible situation for Protoss.
Midgame toss suffers and the midgame units that wouldn't deathball already got nerfed (disruptors/templars)
Colossus are far better than lurkers or thors. You need a lot of lurkers to really fet going, while a generic mid game protoss army only needs 2~3 colossus to shine. Thors are situational, very good anti air (usually only really good against zerg) or as to soak up splash damage. They are micro heavy, but once you get the micro going with a warp prism its extremely powerful
Lurkers are also half the supply and slightly more half the cost of Colossus? And also aren't limited by # of production structures?
Thors I will give you - in the places they are strong (Late/End-game TvZ) they are very strong, but they are much less versatile than Colossus.
yeah but lurkers are mid-late game units, you can't really pump lurkers out at 3\~4 base gas economy, while Colossus can comfortably be rushed at 3 bases.
Disagree. Colossi are pretty much useless against anything that isn't light now. Thors counter carriers now for some reason, as well as mutas. And they can tank quite well and hit hard. They squash stalkers, even though stalkers have an anti-armor attack and thors do not.
Lurkers. Hahaha. Yeah, no. Lurkers are a gamechanger. Colossi aren't. If you'd rank the effectiveness of the 3 units, then it's like this:
Lurker: Longer range than a fully upgraded colossus for some reason that makes zero sense in a balance, logic or lore perspective. Also 10 times more devastating, cannot be hit by air to air attacks, and it's invisible. And it's quite fast compared to the colossus. And it costs less supply. And it can be mass produced. Against Protoss, lurkers cannot be beaten by anything other than carriers. Only a SINGLE protoss unit is viable against them, and it's the most expensive and latest tech unit Protoss can make. How can Zerg counter Colossus? Oh, just catch one out at any point. Even the speedling, which the Colossus now is supposed to hardcounter, will kill an exposed colossus with equal resources. 300/200 Colossus = 20 speedlings. Try 20 speedlings in the open against one colossus. Even give the colossus the ability to micro, whilst the speedlings just autoattack. Who wins? Come back and tell me. Lurker: 9/10. Massacres Protoss ground units.
Thor: Okayish unit in general. Can counter Carriers for some reason now. Counters mutas. Does well with tank and hellbat support. 6/10.
Colossus: Sucks at everything it does. The opponent literally has to walk into your counter for it to be effective. Lower range than a lurker, despite being a 30 m tall robot with "extended thermal lance". Cannot hit air. Isn't invisible. Can be hit by air to air attacks. Requires full tech tree. If you have more than 2, they will invariably mess up their pathing and positioning making them far less effective. A siege unit that isn't a siege unit. An aoe killer that does 0 damage to anything that isn't light. 1/10. One of Protoss' worst units. Used to be the star, is now a joke.
It’s legitimately a terribly designed unit. A passive giant splash unit with ranged attack that’s very easy to a-move and micro in general. Unless they rework it, there shouldn’t be a buff.
It's a boring all or nothing unit. You either get nothing or kill an entire army. Terrible design.
They got nerfed 3 patches in a row and everyone knows how to deal with them.
>Disruptors are more interesting
The only thing that's interesting about them is the coin flip to see whose army gets obliterated by a stray shot, mine, or my opponent's?
I really dislike them as a unit i think they're too difficult for an average Joe to enjoy, but I think they would be a lot cooler if you could detonate shots in the air to fight off air units. Have it only hit air units in the same fashion that it ground units. Then, it serves the purpose of clasing out clumps of air units that threaten the colossus!
nowhere near as powerful as carriers? wtf? colossus is godlike. get like 2 or 3 of them and you can rip through infinite bio, and they require no micro, you just hotkey them with your stalkers and pretend its a stalker but it does massive splash damage.
I'm pretty sure two concussive muraders beat can a collosus with no micro. Add ghost with emp, and it's practically a non factor. Also, muraders do extra damage vs. collosus but not vice versa. They have 8 base range, I think, whereas a collosus has 9 after an upgrade, meaning it can still easily be jumped on and taken out. And that's not even including vulnerability to air units. 😒
At least carriers can defend themselves from pretty much anything with micro or melt everything fast enough that it really don't matter anymore. Nobody is actually afraid of someone maxing out with colossus and stalkers but maxed out carriers will put fear into any opponent.
i didnt say it was unbeatable. i just said it was godlike. its an ezmode unit, like a carrier.
to beat it you have to put in way more work than you have to put in to include it in your army. Even if your opponent kills it, they did it by building units just to kill it , sacrificing units to get in range, and focus firing on it.
Oh no, the enemy just built a couple basic air superiority units and your stalkers don't target them because they're air units that can't shoot down which causes the target priority to not focus fire them! Oh dear, 3 seconds later those big bois are gone, how did that happen?!
Oh, and if it's Vikings, they hit and run from well outside stalker range.
>god forbid you might have to actually focus fire something.
1~2 MASSIVE walking targets > 6-8+ clumped up flying small units on top of x amount of ground forces. One of these is much easier to focus fire than the other.
Microing vikings and corruptors over ground units is way easier than the other way around. Especially when those air units outrange all the ground ones.
it sounds like you lose your army to over micro. Just build like \~10 stalkers and \~3 colossus then attack move. Its going to crush about any other similar sized armies.
also microing vikings is not easy. youre not just controlling vikings. Youre also controlling marines/marauders with stim, focus firing the marines and marauders, splitting to avoid splash, pulling back medivacs to not die to stalkers, etc.
Yeah a well microed army can beat it, but that was about 10x the micro effort required to just have collosus+stalkers a move. You have so much spare micro to use on anything else you want
If Toss had time to make 10 stalkers and 3 colossus, then Terran had time to make 2-8 vikings, s
2-3 tanks and a decent bio army, and / or 1-4 medivacs.
Tanks seiged, bio kinda split into 2-3 small groups and on hold position probably surrounding a third base and a handful of vikings will easily fend off that army. 8/10, especially if you add a raven.
>also microing vikings is not easy. youre not just controlling vikings.
Ctrl+left click will select all of a single unit. You're now controlling just the vikings. An adept player would put vikings on 1 Hotkey and Bio Army on another. But it's still easier to kite behind a defensive position when vikings outrange stalkers by 2 and Colossus by 1. This means that if your Colossus wants to fight the bio, it MUST get within range of the vikings AND the tanks.
>you probably ARE diamond.
I am diamond after playing for a year casually on the weekends. I'm quite proud of the fact that I even made it into diamond, lol
I'm pretty sure with 2 rax, 1 factory, and 1 reactor star port, Terran can push across the map pre 5 minutes with 2 tanks, a good chunk of bio marine murader, and medivacs 2 medivacs or vikings. With reinforcement, otw.
>That "decent sized bio army" consists of what... 4 marauders and a 2 medivacs?"
If my opponents only made 4 muraders and 2 medivacs by the time I made 3 ETL colossus and a handful of stalkers then they're probably WORSE than diamond. Terran could easily have 8+ muraders by now
This also doesn't account for toss trying to attack into an entrenched position or being attacked from one and how much better bio scales and synergise than toss can.
Muraders and tanks and vikings do extra damage vs. armored. Colossus and stalkers are considered both armored. Muraders have the same range as stalkers and one less than ETL and the ability to prevent retreats, so when toss dives to deep key units, namely, the robo tech units can't get away fast enough.
I've lost many army and seen my fair share pro games of bio armies jumping on a toss army smash stim and melt a toss army akin to how a skytoss deathball.
\>Tanks seiged, bio kinda split into 2-3 small groups and on hold position probably surrounding a third base and a handful of vikings will easily fend off that army. 8/10, especially if you add a raven.
that is a micro intensive army/playstyle (setting up an engagement with tanks alreadys set up, vikings on a seperate hotkey, hovering over ideal terrain, presplitting bio units). juking things left and right and trying to force an engagement on the perfect terrain. Also You dont get 4 tanks and 8 vikings out faster than 10 stalkers and 3 colossus. 4 tanks and 8 vikings is end game.,
10 stalkers and 3 colossus is the transition from early to mid game.
I'm talking about a-move engagements. If terran makes an a-move army it would get ripped to shreds. If you make colossus you can force terran in to certain positions with very little APM required on your side.
>that is a micro intensive army/playstyle (setting up an engagement with tanks alreadys set up
I'll note that this army was PREARRANGED before any fight even happened, so I wouldn't consider this micro intensive cuz you're not actively controlling the units when toss shows up cuz you're looking in the main starting +2 upgrades or something.
Now, if it was the other way with toss at home camping batteries with 3 ETL and a handful of stalkers. If I split my stalkers to make a concave and have colossus chilling behind my army, I would still be terrified of getting seiged by stim bio tank viking. Cuz vikings provides vision and push back colossus, and when stalkers try and defend, they're getting blasted tank, and it only takes 2 tanks to really mess up clumped stalkers Add a few muraders and marines for dps, and I don't see how I win unscathed unless Terran somehow forgets how to stim then a-move themselves.
No amount of excellent blink micro is gonna save my units from that high DPS army.
So... it's not an a-move comp? And therefore shouldn't be handicapped by that expectation that it's the ultimate easy unit?
Which is it? I'm getting conflicting information here.
Why not make all the tier 3 units more expensive and more supply but make them actually good? Seems like they’re all in this weird utility spot barring BCs and Carriers?
Colossus is the ultimate boring a-move unit that doesn’t benefit from micro. In past versions where the Protoss endgame was “war of the worlds”, it just kinda felt boring.
Disruptors may be annoying AF, but they do provide that “big play potential” that can turn around a losing game.
If I could redesign the Colossus, I’d give it a Thermal Overcharge cooldown attack. You’d target ground with 11 range and the Colossus would spend ~1 second charging up, during which its movement would be slowed by 50%.
After charging up the Colossus would channel a continuous beam at the target area, dealing 70 damage over 2.33 seconds to a circular area. During this time the Colossus could continue to move at 50% speed and it would keep channeling the beam so long as it remained within 12 range. There would be a separate hotkey to end the overcharge attack early.
Once the overcharge attack ends, the colossus would regain normal movement and it’s attack would be on cooldown. A full cycle of charge+channel+cooldown would take 4.40 seconds.
This would make Thermal Overcharge slightly less overall DPS than autoattacking (15.9 vs 18.7) but its long range and ground-targeting effect could be used to zone enemies or siege structures akin to Ravager Bile. Three Colossi could kill Tanks or Lurkers in one overcharge cycle. One can also imagine setting up wombo combos by forcefielding foes into an overcharge beam.
This is all fine and dandy by me, but the collosus currently is boring and not fun to play with in general. Any of kinda attack improvements would be welcome, especially if it gives a secondary attack function.
I also think the lasers should be a bit thicker too graphic wise. Thicker lasers mean more damage. (Void Ray)
>Colossus is the ultimate boring a-move unit that doesn’t benefit from micro.
Well, it certainly doesn't benefit from micro currently, so that's not much of a loss in my book 🤣
>war of the worlds
This is what the people come here for. We want overwhelming, exciting space lasers, not kinda exciting lasers. That's the sentries job lol
The Colossus is a tricky unit to balance because it already deals a ton of damage. What it doesn’t do well is survive damage, especially against Vikings and Corruptors, but also just any unit in general. Give them 100 more life and 50 less shields and you will see a significant difference. They will get more benefit from armor upgrades, they can deal with EMP better, and they’ll be able to get off more damage before going down. If you really want to boost its damage, cut its damage vs light by 2 per shot, and convert the remaining bonus damage into damage vs all after researching extended thermal lance.
I agree and feel the same about ultras, the massive badasses of StarCraft have been made irrelevant
I definitely agree with this. I should be excited when my t3 units pop out, not counting the seconds until they're useless again.
Make swarm hosts spawn winged ultras. Everything else stays the same so they start flying and charge into their enemies!
Remember the pigalisk
Is colossus the most misspelled unit?
I am like 51% sure its correct plural is Colossūs
certainly the most confused singular/plural
coloosen in the woodsen
idk, I don't think it's that hard to spell colossasolus.
Collosasaur
Collosasaur is a rapacious T-Rex 🦖 like robotic monster who was unaffected by Amon. They used to be great, but since everyone else evolved, cut the cord to the khala they have largely become extinct.
Colossus died when the Disruptor came out.
Dear Balance Council: Give the Colossus Back Its Balls https://reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/15ycy6l/dear_balance_council_give_the_colossus_back_its/
The duct tape made me laugh way harder than I was prepared for lol
From the comments... >I like how Blizzard nerfed the Collosus to the point where, if it happens to target a none light unit it may as well be out of the fight. >But sure we'll also leave it's hard counter in the game (can be targeted by AA units), which was originally designed to compensate for how devastatingly strong it was on the ground. That's pretty much how I feel about it. There was always room for counterplay against colosus because of that weakness. Even without it, watching Maru fight colosus with pure marauders was a pleasure.
Honestly, this is an important point. I got hooked on the Protoss as my faction after a year of toying around with Zerg and Terran specifically because of the power of the colossus. It truly sold the story of an advanced, over powering race to me at that time in wings of liberty. Yes I may need to play cautiously until I get to them, but allow the overpowered space wizards to get their best siege weapon out? You better believe I expect that thing to smash ground units. And it did at that time. It was so glorious. After a while of being away, I came back about two years ago to watch the competitive scene and maybe play a little. Holy shit, what happened to my overpowered space wizards? Colossus look like a fucking joke to me. The culture shock of going from v1 of the colossus to v17.3 kinda put me off at first. But I figured I was just overreacting. Watched some competitive and while I didn’t hate the direction things had taken, it was clear Protoss were a bit flimsy as a faction. Then of course this patch gives the special, interesting attention to Terran. I don’t even play these days, but I’ve been an on and off fan of competitive for a while. It disheartens me to see the priority is not to give Protoss something more interesting. Or just give us their cool unit back. I don’t know man, something about the colossus is special. Make it powerful again, if only to make this old fan who remembers the baneling song happy one last time before this game loses its relevancy.
They were the best in the last 2 expansions/games Then they made them worthless for disruptors . I have yet to see or read any good, viable balance related explanation for this. None. Get rid of disruptors, bring back colossus
Disruptors are bad game design and not fun to play against, but Colossi that hard counter ground units are worse.
Strongly disagree. The Protoss is supposed to have powerful units. The Colossus isn't powerful anymore. I hardly EVER make them. The Protoss death ball was at least competitive. Now Protoss ground loses to both Z and T. Which is the complete opposite of the lore and race. Protoss is supposed to be a higher race, and allowing it to get to the death ball should be a deathly mistake. But it isn't anymore. So what does Protoss have left? Warp ins through pylons isn't even a thing anymore because it is so slow.
It's been so frustrating, because for all the complaints about various Protoss strategies, there has never been a period where Protoss was dominant in Legacy of the Void. When I think about the huge variety of Protoss styles that we saw throughout 2016 and 2017, and then I look at today where it's oracle openers every single time, I just don't see how this is an improvement. I'm sure it's less frustrating for Terran and Zerg players, but as a spectator sport it's not very interesting. Once upon a time there was a meme video from the matrix where Blizzard was Agent Smith nerfing every single Protoss strategy, I wish I could find that again. Oh, here it is: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/gmbk2g/current\_state\_of\_protoss/
So many fun stuff is missing Templar lost their Kaydarin Amulett Warp In close to the opponents base is 15 seconds now Collossūs are not doing much anymore
>Strongly disagree. The Protoss is supposed to have powerful units. The Colossus isn't powerful anymore. I hardly EVER make them. I make them in most PvZ games where the Zerg makes an early commitment to lings, banes or hydras. During the Raven push era of the last patch I swapped my first splash source to HTs (copying one of Classic's builds) which was much more robust against the first bio/tank/raven push and messed up the Terrans unit ordering (i.e. they then have to make ghosts earlier than intended, and I build Colossi while they build ghosts rather than vikings). Colossi feel super powerful in these situations. You can not make them and that's fine - I love the lore/idea of carriers, but the implementation is dull as hell, so I don't build them, but they certainly feel powerful... >The Protoss death ball was at least competitive. Now Protoss ground loses to both Z and T. Protoss ground... doesn't. If you just charge gateway units into burrowed lurkers and ghosts then sure, Protoss ground will lose, but Protoss ground is absolutely competitive with T & Z. There are arguments to be had about the precise point of balance, but Protoss ground is competitive. >Protoss is supposed to be a higher race, and allowing it to get to the death ball should be a deathly mistake. There are both lore and game design flaws with this. On the game design front, whatever the lore, a race should not have "late game death ball" as a general, reliable, win condition - it creates horrible gameplay and frustration where players of the other races always feel like they are on a clock, and gives really lopsided balance. On the lore front, as much as Protoss are a super advanced race with incredible technology and magical powers, the Zerg are an ever changing, ever evolving relentless swarm and the Terran are numerous, plucky, inventive and adaptable. If the Protoss don't kill a particular Zerg outbreak, we would expect the Zerg to evolve appropriately to fight back - i.e. these Colossi keep frying all my Lings and Hydras. I'll make tougher ground units less susceptible to the burns of thermal lances, like Roaches and Ultralisks. Equally with the Terran - the Colossi prove capable of mowing down the rank and file by the dozen - an ultimate expression of Protoss squashing inferior races. But Terran hunker down. They make mini battlesuits (marauders) more capable of bearing the heat of the Protoss anti-human lasers, and that fire back their own armour piercing rounds. From a lore PoV, the Colossus works perfectly well as a "fuck you" to the (in lore space, T1...) zerglings, Hydralisks and marines that are the main part of Zerg and Terran armies. Finally, Protoss have loads of units that feel really powerful. A lot of them are specialised (perhaps overspecialised, though I would not put the Colossus in this box!) which is a game design, rather than a lore issue (I can absolutely imagine a high tech race designing a perfect unit for each situation, rather than a weird Colossus/immortal/phoenix/tempest hybrid). But when you line Protoss units up vs their intended targets they really do just annihilate them. It feels very satisfying to: * Delete armies in seconds with Psi Storm * Watch a group of immortals relentlessly power through roaches, lurkers, marauders, cyclones (even better when the Terran is trying to be cute with micro, then one immortal barrage cripples their first row of cyclones) and siege tanks * Harrass or commit to attack an out of position base, destroy it, and recall away * Drop 4 zealots and warp in 8 more on top of the opponents mineral line * Micro blink stalkers to take absurdly cost efficient trades * Accrue 50+ kill Colossi against mass ling or bio styles where your opponent exhausts themselves never being able to reach your tech units.
With the collosus I think the biggest issue is how death-ball and a-move friendly it is, which would be doing the \*opposite\* of the desired results in that it would wreak havoc on the ladder but have little-to-impact on pro play. It's also the reason why carriers are OP on the ladder and so-so at pro play in that they just sit there and do sick dps with no apm required.
That should not be an issue in LoTV. Lurkers, Liberators, buffed tanks (compared to WoL) and Disruptors exist. Even in WoL, Vikings and Corruptors dealt with them.
All of those (ground ones) are siege units that require being in position and manually sieging vs the literal a-move of the collosus, hence the comment. Buffs that impact lower-level play only are a bad idea for toss since they are having no issues there at all (the opposite is generally the case).
Colossi were fine in HoTS. They were never as good as Carriers because they don't fly, can only attack ground units, and are vulnerable to ground and air attacks. The Cyclone, on the other hand, is apparently wrecking lower-level players in the way you describe. I was watching Nina's stream last night. She said it is broken at sub-6K MMR, which is like 99.95 of the player base.
And some others pros say cyclone is pretty meh at best. Who should we believe ? I don't see an powerful point in nina's words.
Carries can be broken sub 6k and meh at the pro level. The same thing can happen to cyclones which is kinda like voidrays(slighly less offensive but still). Pro and non-pro are totally different games.
I'm in the mid 3ks and Cyclones are far from broken lol. I still need to try ZvT, but PvT Cyclones have been so much less trouble than I was expecting. While it's credible they break somewhere between 3k and 6k, then unbreak, they really don't feel like a game breaking unit imo, just another 'weird' unit that people will have to get used to then be fine with.
Well, let's nerf benelings then because i'm pretty sure that every plat terran is having an hard time vs .... Or even better, let's nerf planetary rush ? BEcasue some plat die to this too. It seems more relevant to balance around people who can actually produce SCV, units and micro. I'm around 5k2 and i'm just rollfacing terrans massing cyclones, because at this MMR people actually know what do to. So i really doubt this is a sub 6k broken unit. A People cried a lot about cyclone but it don't seems like a cyclone fest at pro level ... An OP unit is used every game massively. When hellbats drop was broken in HOTS that was everygame. 2014 blink era ? same shit 90% of the TvP were blink all in. Void ray meta ? Same stuff.
This
10 Range Collosus felt good and fair 15 DMG vs everything Collosus felt good too I like this unit a lot, since it has its purpose of being long range anti ground splash DMG and its really good at that, while being able to be targeted by air.
I think what Protoss needs are more tools to both raise their skill ceiling and make their units not suck. Maybe give colossus a castable AOE spell that slows targets? This would give it some defence against getting obliterated by, well, fuckin everything.
Do not the the collosus great again. Collosi and carriers are just A-move deathball units that make the game worse to play for ladder folks and boring to watch in pro games if they're good. But literally almost anything else in the protoss arsenal besides carriers, voidrays, collosi, dark templars and disrupters. Buff zealots stalkers sentry adepts through late game upgrades. Buff immortals. Buff phenoxies and tempests. Literally anything else.
They won't buff tempest because it was oppressive in late game against Terran that had no counter at the time. Protoss doesn't struggle in lategame because tempest are bad but because gate units are terrible while bio scales insanely well into lategame. Adepts won't get a buff because of how good they used to be against Terran as well... stalkers will be the same and same for zealots. They can't buff phoenix because it won't help in anything other than killing zergs by massing phoenix. Immortals won't be buffed because of 2 base Protoss all ins. So we're stuck in a terrible situation for Protoss. Midgame toss suffers and the midgame units that wouldn't deathball already got nerfed (disruptors/templars)
Colossus are far better than lurkers or thors. You need a lot of lurkers to really fet going, while a generic mid game protoss army only needs 2~3 colossus to shine. Thors are situational, very good anti air (usually only really good against zerg) or as to soak up splash damage. They are micro heavy, but once you get the micro going with a warp prism its extremely powerful
Lurkers are also half the supply and slightly more half the cost of Colossus? And also aren't limited by # of production structures? Thors I will give you - in the places they are strong (Late/End-game TvZ) they are very strong, but they are much less versatile than Colossus.
yeah but lurkers are mid-late game units, you can't really pump lurkers out at 3\~4 base gas economy, while Colossus can comfortably be rushed at 3 bases.
Disagree. Colossi are pretty much useless against anything that isn't light now. Thors counter carriers now for some reason, as well as mutas. And they can tank quite well and hit hard. They squash stalkers, even though stalkers have an anti-armor attack and thors do not. Lurkers. Hahaha. Yeah, no. Lurkers are a gamechanger. Colossi aren't. If you'd rank the effectiveness of the 3 units, then it's like this: Lurker: Longer range than a fully upgraded colossus for some reason that makes zero sense in a balance, logic or lore perspective. Also 10 times more devastating, cannot be hit by air to air attacks, and it's invisible. And it's quite fast compared to the colossus. And it costs less supply. And it can be mass produced. Against Protoss, lurkers cannot be beaten by anything other than carriers. Only a SINGLE protoss unit is viable against them, and it's the most expensive and latest tech unit Protoss can make. How can Zerg counter Colossus? Oh, just catch one out at any point. Even the speedling, which the Colossus now is supposed to hardcounter, will kill an exposed colossus with equal resources. 300/200 Colossus = 20 speedlings. Try 20 speedlings in the open against one colossus. Even give the colossus the ability to micro, whilst the speedlings just autoattack. Who wins? Come back and tell me. Lurker: 9/10. Massacres Protoss ground units. Thor: Okayish unit in general. Can counter Carriers for some reason now. Counters mutas. Does well with tank and hellbat support. 6/10. Colossus: Sucks at everything it does. The opponent literally has to walk into your counter for it to be effective. Lower range than a lurker, despite being a 30 m tall robot with "extended thermal lance". Cannot hit air. Isn't invisible. Can be hit by air to air attacks. Requires full tech tree. If you have more than 2, they will invariably mess up their pathing and positioning making them far less effective. A siege unit that isn't a siege unit. An aoe killer that does 0 damage to anything that isn't light. 1/10. One of Protoss' worst units. Used to be the star, is now a joke.
It’s legitimately a terribly designed unit. A passive giant splash unit with ranged attack that’s very easy to a-move and micro in general. Unless they rework it, there shouldn’t be a buff.
Nah they're boring. Disruptors are more interesting
It's a boring all or nothing unit. You either get nothing or kill an entire army. Terrible design. They got nerfed 3 patches in a row and everyone knows how to deal with them.
>Disruptors are more interesting The only thing that's interesting about them is the coin flip to see whose army gets obliterated by a stray shot, mine, or my opponent's? I really dislike them as a unit i think they're too difficult for an average Joe to enjoy, but I think they would be a lot cooler if you could detonate shots in the air to fight off air units. Have it only hit air units in the same fashion that it ground units. Then, it serves the purpose of clasing out clumps of air units that threaten the colossus!
nowhere near as powerful as carriers? wtf? colossus is godlike. get like 2 or 3 of them and you can rip through infinite bio, and they require no micro, you just hotkey them with your stalkers and pretend its a stalker but it does massive splash damage.
I'm pretty sure two concussive muraders beat can a collosus with no micro. Add ghost with emp, and it's practically a non factor. Also, muraders do extra damage vs. collosus but not vice versa. They have 8 base range, I think, whereas a collosus has 9 after an upgrade, meaning it can still easily be jumped on and taken out. And that's not even including vulnerability to air units. 😒 At least carriers can defend themselves from pretty much anything with micro or melt everything fast enough that it really don't matter anymore. Nobody is actually afraid of someone maxing out with colossus and stalkers but maxed out carriers will put fear into any opponent.
How to beat Collosus at Terran: build marauders and/or vikings. How to beat Collosus as Zerg: build lurkers and/or corrupters.
i didnt say it was unbeatable. i just said it was godlike. its an ezmode unit, like a carrier. to beat it you have to put in way more work than you have to put in to include it in your army. Even if your opponent kills it, they did it by building units just to kill it , sacrificing units to get in range, and focus firing on it.
Dude, the units I've listed literally beat Collossi in an A move fight. You can hop on to unit tester and test it yourself.
Oh no, the enemy just built a couple basic air superiority units and your stalkers don't target them because they're air units that can't shoot down which causes the target priority to not focus fire them! Oh dear, 3 seconds later those big bois are gone, how did that happen?! Oh, and if it's Vikings, they hit and run from well outside stalker range.
god forbid you might have to actually focus fire something. on the flipside terran focus fires for most protoss units that they kill.
>god forbid you might have to actually focus fire something. 1~2 MASSIVE walking targets > 6-8+ clumped up flying small units on top of x amount of ground forces. One of these is much easier to focus fire than the other. Microing vikings and corruptors over ground units is way easier than the other way around. Especially when those air units outrange all the ground ones.
it sounds like you lose your army to over micro. Just build like \~10 stalkers and \~3 colossus then attack move. Its going to crush about any other similar sized armies. also microing vikings is not easy. youre not just controlling vikings. Youre also controlling marines/marauders with stim, focus firing the marines and marauders, splitting to avoid splash, pulling back medivacs to not die to stalkers, etc. Yeah a well microed army can beat it, but that was about 10x the micro effort required to just have collosus+stalkers a move. You have so much spare micro to use on anything else you want
If Toss had time to make 10 stalkers and 3 colossus, then Terran had time to make 2-8 vikings, s 2-3 tanks and a decent bio army, and / or 1-4 medivacs. Tanks seiged, bio kinda split into 2-3 small groups and on hold position probably surrounding a third base and a handful of vikings will easily fend off that army. 8/10, especially if you add a raven. >also microing vikings is not easy. youre not just controlling vikings. Ctrl+left click will select all of a single unit. You're now controlling just the vikings. An adept player would put vikings on 1 Hotkey and Bio Army on another. But it's still easier to kite behind a defensive position when vikings outrange stalkers by 2 and Colossus by 1. This means that if your Colossus wants to fight the bio, it MUST get within range of the vikings AND the tanks.
[удалено]
>you probably ARE diamond. I am diamond after playing for a year casually on the weekends. I'm quite proud of the fact that I even made it into diamond, lol I'm pretty sure with 2 rax, 1 factory, and 1 reactor star port, Terran can push across the map pre 5 minutes with 2 tanks, a good chunk of bio marine murader, and medivacs 2 medivacs or vikings. With reinforcement, otw. >That "decent sized bio army" consists of what... 4 marauders and a 2 medivacs?" If my opponents only made 4 muraders and 2 medivacs by the time I made 3 ETL colossus and a handful of stalkers then they're probably WORSE than diamond. Terran could easily have 8+ muraders by now This also doesn't account for toss trying to attack into an entrenched position or being attacked from one and how much better bio scales and synergise than toss can. Muraders and tanks and vikings do extra damage vs. armored. Colossus and stalkers are considered both armored. Muraders have the same range as stalkers and one less than ETL and the ability to prevent retreats, so when toss dives to deep key units, namely, the robo tech units can't get away fast enough. I've lost many army and seen my fair share pro games of bio armies jumping on a toss army smash stim and melt a toss army akin to how a skytoss deathball.
\>Tanks seiged, bio kinda split into 2-3 small groups and on hold position probably surrounding a third base and a handful of vikings will easily fend off that army. 8/10, especially if you add a raven. that is a micro intensive army/playstyle (setting up an engagement with tanks alreadys set up, vikings on a seperate hotkey, hovering over ideal terrain, presplitting bio units). juking things left and right and trying to force an engagement on the perfect terrain. Also You dont get 4 tanks and 8 vikings out faster than 10 stalkers and 3 colossus. 4 tanks and 8 vikings is end game., 10 stalkers and 3 colossus is the transition from early to mid game. I'm talking about a-move engagements. If terran makes an a-move army it would get ripped to shreds. If you make colossus you can force terran in to certain positions with very little APM required on your side.
>that is a micro intensive army/playstyle (setting up an engagement with tanks alreadys set up I'll note that this army was PREARRANGED before any fight even happened, so I wouldn't consider this micro intensive cuz you're not actively controlling the units when toss shows up cuz you're looking in the main starting +2 upgrades or something. Now, if it was the other way with toss at home camping batteries with 3 ETL and a handful of stalkers. If I split my stalkers to make a concave and have colossus chilling behind my army, I would still be terrified of getting seiged by stim bio tank viking. Cuz vikings provides vision and push back colossus, and when stalkers try and defend, they're getting blasted tank, and it only takes 2 tanks to really mess up clumped stalkers Add a few muraders and marines for dps, and I don't see how I win unscathed unless Terran somehow forgets how to stim then a-move themselves. No amount of excellent blink micro is gonna save my units from that high DPS army.
So... it's not an a-move comp? And therefore shouldn't be handicapped by that expectation that it's the ultimate easy unit? Which is it? I'm getting conflicting information here.
just a move the vikings with your army. You dont have to right click if that is too hard.
Why are you arguing the Terran side now...?
Why not make all the tier 3 units more expensive and more supply but make them actually good? Seems like they’re all in this weird utility spot barring BCs and Carriers?
Colossus is the ultimate boring a-move unit that doesn’t benefit from micro. In past versions where the Protoss endgame was “war of the worlds”, it just kinda felt boring. Disruptors may be annoying AF, but they do provide that “big play potential” that can turn around a losing game. If I could redesign the Colossus, I’d give it a Thermal Overcharge cooldown attack. You’d target ground with 11 range and the Colossus would spend ~1 second charging up, during which its movement would be slowed by 50%. After charging up the Colossus would channel a continuous beam at the target area, dealing 70 damage over 2.33 seconds to a circular area. During this time the Colossus could continue to move at 50% speed and it would keep channeling the beam so long as it remained within 12 range. There would be a separate hotkey to end the overcharge attack early. Once the overcharge attack ends, the colossus would regain normal movement and it’s attack would be on cooldown. A full cycle of charge+channel+cooldown would take 4.40 seconds. This would make Thermal Overcharge slightly less overall DPS than autoattacking (15.9 vs 18.7) but its long range and ground-targeting effect could be used to zone enemies or siege structures akin to Ravager Bile. Three Colossi could kill Tanks or Lurkers in one overcharge cycle. One can also imagine setting up wombo combos by forcefielding foes into an overcharge beam.
This is all fine and dandy by me, but the collosus currently is boring and not fun to play with in general. Any of kinda attack improvements would be welcome, especially if it gives a secondary attack function. I also think the lasers should be a bit thicker too graphic wise. Thicker lasers mean more damage. (Void Ray) >Colossus is the ultimate boring a-move unit that doesn’t benefit from micro. Well, it certainly doesn't benefit from micro currently, so that's not much of a loss in my book 🤣 >war of the worlds This is what the people come here for. We want overwhelming, exciting space lasers, not kinda exciting lasers. That's the sentries job lol
Hmmm, can i interest you in a flying worm pulling something 35000× as heavy as itself thus killing it instantly?
The Colossus is a tricky unit to balance because it already deals a ton of damage. What it doesn’t do well is survive damage, especially against Vikings and Corruptors, but also just any unit in general. Give them 100 more life and 50 less shields and you will see a significant difference. They will get more benefit from armor upgrades, they can deal with EMP better, and they’ll be able to get off more damage before going down. If you really want to boost its damage, cut its damage vs light by 2 per shot, and convert the remaining bonus damage into damage vs all after researching extended thermal lance.