Hey, this is Corbin, and I’m excited to have the first
article on this website! Today I’m going to discuss how the Protoss race in
Star Craft II is broken when compared to the other two races. I would like
anyone reading this to comment their ideas for solutions, just a way to get
some conversation going.
So I've been a huge Blizzard fan since I can remember. I’ve
been playing War Craft since my brother first showed me War Craft I: Humans and
Orcs, I've been playing Diablo ever since I can remember, and I've been playing
Star Craft longer than I've been playing Diablo. I have never, however, taken
any time to play as Protoss, besides the campaign option in the first game. I
recently played Protoss competitively for the first time on battle.net and
kicked some crazy butt, and I have to say that this race is heavily broken.
There may be those that disagree with me, and that's what
I'm counting on. I want to know a legitimate, well thought out argument as to
why the Protoss race isn't broken. The following are my major points as to why
the race needs to be nerfed, and I mean effectively (Blizzard has given them
one or two weak limitations that don’t do anything to balance the race at all).
1.
Protoss
Shields
 |
A Protoss Colossus being attacked by two Vikings and
five Marines |
Every Protoss unit and structure is protected by shields. Protoss shields
effectively double their health, if not substantially increasing it, which is
usually higher than their counterparts in other races anyways. Take, for
example, each race’s basic combat unit. Zerg has a duo of Zerglings (I say duo
instead of one because they are individually weak and actually hatch in pairs),
Terrans have the Marine, and Protoss has the Zealot. Disregarding attack power,
which is substantially higher in a Zealot anyways, a pair of zerglings has 35
hp each and each unit has 0 (+1) defense and no shields. A Marine has 45 hp (an
upgrade can be bought to boost it to 55), 0 (+1) defense, and no shields. A
Protoss Zealot starts with 100 hp, 1 (+1) defense, and 50 points of shields. This
is without any upgrades, though just as many upgrades can be bought for Protoss
units as can be bought for units of other races. This pattern is consistent
with all comparisons between Protoss units and counterpart units of other
races.
As
if the fact that the Protoss have shields isn’t overpowered enough, the shields
regenerate at a very generous rate. True, this can only happen after the unit
has been out of combat for a few seconds, but Protoss speed makes it
exceedingly easy to escape combat in enough time to regenerate shields or even
make it back to base.
2.
The
Warp Gate
 |
A Gateway that has been transformed
into a Warp Gate |
The Protoss’ basic unit production structure, called the Gateway, is the
building that produces every single protoss unit, besides air units and the two
heavy units (the immortal and the colossus). Like Terran structures and some
Zerg structures, it queues up to five commands at once and completes them in
the order in which they are given by the player. Training takes about as much
time as units for other races and costs just a little bit extra (once again using
basic combat units, Zealots cost 100 minerals and a pair of Zerglings or a
single Marine costs 50 minerals. It’s twice as much but remember that Marines
can attack from a range and a pair of Zerglings can double team).
All in all, the Gateway isn’t a particularly broken structure. The
breaking comes in when the player inevitably decides to transform it into a
Warp Gate. Before I explain what a Warp Gate does, let me explain how to go
about getting one. You pay 150 minerals for a Gateway, research Warp Gate for
50 minerals and 50 gas, then wait for two minutes and click the Warp Gate
button in the gateway menu. Warp Gate research is as cheap as a worker unit in
terms of minerals, the cheapest item whether it be unit, structure, or
research, in terms of gas, and takes average time to complete, considering how
beneficial the research is. From the second you finish the initial research,
you can turn a Gateway into a Warp Gate without any cost at all besides the ten
second wait. Even at this point, a Warp Gate can be turned back into a Gateway
immediately with, again, absolutely no cost and a ten second wait. It’s already
a teensy tiny bit broken in its own right and I haven’t even explained what it
does.
The
Warp Gate allows you to build new units at any point on the map that is powered
by a Warp Prism or a Pylon. Training a unit from a Warp Gate clear across the
map has absolutely no penalty, resource cost, or drawback of any kind. After
the first unit, the upgrade has entirely paid for itself. The unit in question
is completed almost in only five seconds and only one unit per Warp Gate can be
queued at any given time before the structure has to cool down. This works for
any unit available from the Gateway (pretty much every Protoss ground unit
besides Immortals and Colossi, this includes the indefinitely cloaked Dark
Templar with an unrealistically high damage rate for such a convenient unit)
and none of the units cost any more than they would from the Gateway. Neither
does the act of actually building them on the site. Essentially, you have a
ground unit production structure that can build almost universally strong and
useful units on any point of the map, provided that spot has a power supply,
which isn’t difficult by any means, considering the fact that the pylon is the
cheapest structure and quickest build for that entire race.
3.
Probes
 |
| A Protoss Probe |
The
Protoss worker units, known as Probes, cost 50 minerals, 0 gas, and only take
17 seconds to train. That is not a criticism, as these statistics apply to
every single worker unit in the game. What breaks Probes for the Protoss is how
they build. A Zerg Drone, more often than not, must sacrifice itself to become
a structure. This makes that structure effectively cost 50 minerals more than
its listed price. A Terran SCV has to stay on a structure and can take no other
action until the structure is completed or canceled. The Protoss Probe can set
up a build site instantaneously and then go about other things while the
structure builds itself. Given enough resources, a probe could start building
every available structure within a second and let them take care of themselves.
The brokenness is self explanatory. Other races either have to temporarily or
permanently give up a worker unit to build any given structure.
4.
Void Rays
The
Protoss air unit known as the Void Ray is already powerful just because it's an
air unit, never mind that it's an air unit that can attack air and ground units
(a feat only shared by the Zerg Mutalisk and the Terran Battlecruiser. I don't
count vikings because they have to transform into an air unit to attack air and
transform into a ground unit to attack ground, which takes time and uses a
different type of weapon for each form). These facts alone do not make it a
broken unit. What breaks the unit is the fact that the longer one void ray
attacks a unit, the stronger its damage rate becomes, of course meaning that if
you mass up a bunch of void rays (who already have decent damage rate to begin
with), your opponent might as well not even play. Great for a lazy player who
wants to climb the ladder, but not so great for any player looking to play a
challenge or a challenging race.
5.
Photon Cannons
 |
| An active Protoss Photon Cannon |
Whereas the Zerg have two different defensive structures, one that can
only attack ground units and one that can only attack air units and is a
detector, and Terrans have an air defense structure and a ground/air defense
structure that must first be loaded up with individual combat units before it
can do anything but sit tight and soak up fire, the Protoss have only one
defensive structure: the Photon Cannon. The Photon Cannon can attack both air
and ground units, unlike Zerg defensive structures, and it can do so without
having to build additional units to power it, unlike the Terran Bunker. The
easiest way to get a Photon Cannon off your back is to destroy any Pylons that
could be powering it, though there could be many and Photon Cannons can easily
cut an army down to size before the army destroys all of the necessary Pylons.
6.
Protoss Cloaking
 |
| Two cloaked Protoss Dark Templars |
My
final grievance with the Protoss race's brokenness is their cloaking abilities.
Zerg and Terran have to research methods for hiding their units. Zerg,
fortunately for them, can just research burrow once and then any Zerg unit with
the ability can do so indefinitely. Terrans have to research cloaking for
Banshees, though not for ghosts, but remaining cloaked will drain energy from
either unit. The cloaked unit will eventually become revealed. This is a fairly
good balancing mechanism for Terran cloaking units. Protoss units with the
ability to cloak, however, are warped in cloaked, stay cloaked indefinitely,
and do not lose energy for being cloaked. They don’t even have the option to
not be cloaked. Additionally, the unit called a Mothership can cloak any units
nearby just by being there, even if the units can't normally cloak. The ability is passive, meaning it doesn’t
have to be activated, the ability doesn’t use up any energy at all, doesn’t
need to be researched, doesn’t have a limit to how many units can be cloaked,
and can cloak air units and ground units, as well as any friendly structure.
The units being cloaked don’t even have to have a cloaking ability to begin
with.
These are the reasons why I was disappointed
with the Protoss race even when I was doing so well with them. I decided that
the race was extensively broken. Blizzard does, however, put into effect three
apparent balancing mechanisms to try and nerf the race a bit. None of them work
and it would seem that some of these are Blizzard’s efforts to actually nerf
the nerfs instead of nerfing the breaks in the race.
1.
Limiting Protoss Regenerative Properties
Protoss units and structures cannot
replenish hp in any way, shape, or form. Probes can’t repair structures or
mechanical units, units can’t regenerate health naturally, and the Protoss have
no healing class units. This is a measure taken to nerf the Protoss to make up
for their shields, but due to the fact that the shields are substantial,
regenerate generously, and can’t be disabled, the measure was taken in vain by
Blizzard.
2.
Power Limitations
Protoss
structures can only be built where power is supplied by a Warp Prism or a
Pylon. A Pylon also serves as the player’s supply source, so the player is
likely to build many of them all over their base anyways, and a Warp Prism is
essentially an airborne Pylon that can move around and has a smaller radius for
powering structures or warping in units. Though a structure that is powered by
either of these will immediately deactivate once power is cut off, many structures
are powered by three or four Pylons just because of the number the player is
required to build to have enough supply for an army. This, and the fact that
Pylons are cheap and quick to build, as well as having shields, makes this an
ineffective limitation on the Protoss.
3.
Warp Gate Limitations
I know what you’re thinking- “Ah, so the Warpt Gate does have limitations, making it not so broken after all.” Think
again. The Warp Gate has three limitations
·
Fog of War
·
Power Supply
·
Cooldown
Let us start with the most
pointless limitation on the Warp Gate, fog of war. The fog of war is a useful
and clever mechanic used in almost every Real Time Strategy game to limit a
players’ sight. It works by showing only basic terrain and terrain previously
seen by a given players units when that area is not within the visual radius of
a friendly structure or unit. This forces a player to scout out areas they want
to explore, to have to look for an enemy base instead of immediately knowing
where their opponent is, and to have to spy on an enemy to know what kinds of
structures and units that player is building. It is a key factor in developing
strategies, and Blizzard actually states one of the Warp Gate’s limitations as
being that it cannot warp any unit into an area covered by the fog of War. This
limitation is rendered useless by the fact that the only places a Warp Gate can
warp to are areas covered by a Pylon or Warp Prism’s power grid, an area that
is without exception within a unit or structure’s visual radius and in no way
covered by fog of war.
That brings us to the second
limitation of the Warp Gate, the limitation shared by all Protoss structures-
power supply. A Warp Gate cannot function if it doesn’t have a power supply
but, as I mentioned earlier, it is more than likely powered by several well
defended power sources that are easy to rebuild and, again, have a generous
shield regeneration rate.
The third and most limiting
mechanic on the Warp Gate is its cooldown. After warping in a unit from an
individual Warp Gate, that individual Warp Gate has a cooldown period that
varies from unit to unit but is always substantially shorter than the time it
takes to train that unit at a Gateway. The longest possible cooldown period is
30 seconds and that period is for the High Templar, which takes 55 seconds to
train at a Gateway. The cooldown does nothing to balance a Warp Gate against a
Gateway or any other unit producing structure.
So there you have it, the Protoss
race is clearly broken all over the place, which is a shame since it is
actually an entertaining race to play and is used frequently in every league on
Battle.net. All credit for pictures used in the article should go to Liquipedia at www.teamliquid.com, The best source for Blizzard game information on the internet.
This works between closer generations too, though. Who among you introduced a sibling to first gen Pokemon games after seeing them play a newer generation game? I'm also willing to bet that Skyward Sword was a first Zelda game for many people who were then introduced to earlier games trough an older sibling or older gamers in a community of gaming.
