Well, the best strategy against any build is to deny them doing it in first place. But Stephano seems to do what he wants no matter what :/ I feel sad when I watch him play Protoss, especially somebody lovable like Grubby or WhiteRa.
Of course forcefields (and storms later on) are quite basic micro in the grand scheme of things, and I'm sure people who don't play Protoss will tell me they're OP or whatever ("you try hitting a good EMP", "you try splitting marines"), but they are absolutely key to surviving against most of the builds used against Protoss these days. It's simply botching of engagements that's costing me, whereas I don't really see what bit of mis-micro the mass-roach player, or a terran with a big MMM ball, can do to screw up an engagement on a similar scale, other than the act of deciding whether the engage or not in the first place. When you get to a higher level there are obviously ways in which players will do to get more out of their roaches than just try to hug my army, and there will be terran players who don't simply stim and a-move their ball into mine and generally hope for the best, but trust me when I say these builds are being quite effectively used at my level without the need for much micro ability whatsoever. Played about 15 games against terran in the past couple of days and I don't think there's been even a single attempt at a drop in my base.
FWIW I'm Plat, although hovering quite low at the moment after losing more than I've won in the past couple of days.
Can't speak for Zerg as I'm a Terran player, but let me say that the micro burden (and penalty for mis-microing) is hardest on the Terran in most matchups. For example the MMM ball which you mentioned... I have to stim then kite backwards against zealots. This alone is harder than any micro the protoss has to do, plus it requires constant clicking so I can't macro in the meantime. Add in EMPs and/or focus-firing vikings. If I don't do any one of these things, or mess it up, then I will lose, all other things being equal. Another example would be running marines out from storms. If I delay for even a second, or run in the wrong direction I'll lose ~20 marines instantly.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Toss is EZ-mode - each race has it's own challenges, and depending on army composition, the other races may well have to micro harder. What I'm saying is that in the majority of engagements, using the most common compositions, the Terran has to micro WAY harder than the other races.
If you are losing to an a-moving MMM ball as toss, then you either have a really bad army composition, you engage at terrible angles, or you are being outmacroed. Hell, a-moving chargelot archon rapes MMM silly. What you really want though is a good mix of HT, colossi and sentries (the gas-heavy units) and then the rest of your army mainly chargelots, with a handful of stalkers thrown in to clean up the medivacs. If you go pure colossi chargelot and he has no vikings you literally have to a-click once to win. However the composition I listed before would be a more general comp for PvT, just tweak the proportion of each unit depending on what the enemy is doing. Regarding engagement angles, you need to be pretty careful. If the terran gets his army in a really nice concave while yours is coming through a choke, this makes a HUGE difference to the outcome.
Another disagreement we have Sheep. Just stop doing this to our relationship.
Can't speak for Zerg as I'm a Terran player, but let me say that the micro burden (and penalty for mis-microing) is hardest on the Terran in most matchups. For example the MMM ball which you mentioned... I have to stim then kite backwards against zealots. This alone is harder than any micro the protoss has to do, plus it requires constant clicking so I can't macro in the meantime. Add in EMPs and/or focus-firing vikings. If I don't do any one of these things, or mess it up, then I will lose, all other things being equal. Another example would be running marines out from storms. If I delay for even a second, or run in the wrong direction I'll lose ~20 marines instantly.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Toss is EZ-mode - each race has it's own challenges, and depending on army composition, the other races may well have to micro harder. What I'm saying is that in the majority of engagements, using the most common compositions, the Terran has to micro WAY harder than the other races.
If you are losing to an a-moving MMM ball as toss, then you either have a really bad army composition, you engage at terrible angles, or you are being outmacroed. Hell, a-moving chargelot archon rapes MMM silly. What you really want though is a good mix of HT, colossi and sentries (the gas-heavy units) and then the rest of your army mainly chargelots, with a handful of stalkers thrown in to clean up the medivacs. If you go pure colossi chargelot and he has no vikings you literally have to a-click once to win. However the composition I listed before would be a more general comp for PvT, just tweak the proportion of each unit depending on what the enemy is doing. Regarding engagement angles, you need to be pretty careful. If the terran gets his army in a really nice concave while yours is coming through a choke, this makes a HUGE difference to the outcome.
On the other hand, a Terran does not have to stim & kite and/or split his MMM ball to win an engagement, and obviously the Roach player just has to click towards where he wants to go and press A.
If I don't micro and the Terran doesn't micro, the Terran wins.
And the MMM-ball will almost always engage at least once long before I have a chargelot / archon army, or the death-ball with colossi, which are late-game compositions (and my post wasn't really referring to the late game), so your comments on kiting, vikings and A-move chargelots are irrelevant.
Can you try not to sound so condescending with your next response? Telling a player of a different race to the one you play what unit compositions he should get, or speculating that he must simply suck if he's losing to a certain build / strategy, isn't really the right way to debate a point.
I was making observations from my perspective of the game, not asking for tips.
As a zerg player, I will agree that A-move is mostly what you have to do. However, we are disadvantaged in other ways. For one, a straight A-move is actually usually a bad idea. Roaches have little range, and no abilities to compensate. For a zerg to win a Protoss ball, we have to have a strategic advantage. IE, surrounding the ball. Otherwise you'll almost certainly lose. To get that surround though is very difficult.For example, most zerg players I play seem to mass roach, either going for an early bust or simply trying to get up 3 bases and hit me with 200/200, and I'm guessing they do so because it works against all the other Protoss players they come up against. A mass roach army is essentially A-move, with either running away or burrowing being the only other things the zerg will ever have to do, so it's not really a strategy that requires much skill to pull off when it comes to engaging. If I A-move a similar sized Protoss army (which it wouldn't be anyway, as my units are more expensive and I have to spend more on tech, so naturally I'm behind in supply if we haven't traded off and are on a similar macro level), I will be crushed.
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Just got called Ridiculous on a ladder match TvZ.
Came in with a 3tank marine push with just a few medivacs. It got wiped by ling bling.
Did a doom drop hoping to catch up. Killed all his tech except his Lair and all his mutas as he obviously didn't get the memo about Marines being imba. He cleaned it up with ling bling again.
Few minutes later I came in with 15 medivacs full of tanks and marines. He thought i'd drop in the same place as before so he moved all his units there. I drop off on the lower ground near his units. He got raped with splash damage and he ragequits after BM'ing XD
Think my worst matchup now is TvT. I seem to go through phases.
When your weakest match up is the mirror match up, that's when you know your race is OP
Also, I don't see how stim and kite is harder than FF placement... FFs you have to place them very quickly - often too quickly to see how your FF wall is going along... kiting seems to be click s click s click s... I'm willing to be corrected by someone who plays terran though
Kiting requires very tight timing otherwise your units will miss some shots in between movements. Also it requires constant clicking so macro is impossible while doing it unless you're insanely fast. Forcefields take a second or two to do and then you can forget about the sentries. Kiting needs to be done continuously through the whole battle, while also attempting to do the other things which need to be done (EMPs/snipes unless you manage to do them before the engagement, microing vikings etc).
Force fields aren't hard. Neither are storms, or EMPs or fungals too. As long as you know the right places to put them and don't have your casters too far back then it's easy.
Basically it can be summed up as: Both players have to micro their casters and special units, and this has similar difficulty, however the terran ALSO has to micro the main meat of their army, constantly, while the meat of the protoss army is basically a-move. The cause is a) chargelots and b) the damage-over-time nature of storms. Neither are OP but are hard to deal with because the terran is so constricted with unit choice, due to feedback countering all tier 3 (the things which would actually be good against chargelots or storms).
Ok ok these are all late game things...
Force fields aren't hard, yet even some of the best protoss players regularly make a dogs ear out of them? FFs are far harder to get right than snipe, feedback, EMP, fungal or storm, and early game, a slightly missed forcefield can easily end the game - I have lost many games by having a slight hole in a FF wall. Mis-kiting has relatively little effect unless you are absolutely terrible.
I admit that if protoss gets multiple collosus, chargelots, archons, HT with storm then its easier for the protoss to win a battle but then FFs would just block zealots so are barely used in those battles
Everyone thinks that the race they play is the hardest.
All I will say is Toss imba.
No... overall I don't think Protoss is hardest, but early game fail force fields are far more likely to lose a toss the game than any lack of kiting skill, and are very difficult to do perfectly. That's what the debate was about... Nothing about balance whining until your needless comment. If you actually took notice of what I said, I conceded that if I terran lets toss get the perfect late game composition, it is more difficult for terran.
Anyone know the cheapest place to get this game?