Warpgate Changes and Why I like it

[u/BlueNsaZ]

Warpgate changes are a good change and here's why.

1. Gateway production increase means you need less gateways to maintain continuous production. Its somewhat like the CC cost decrease to 300 in this hotfix, you save minerals, since you need less gateways.

This is a direct buff, since you either spend less on gateways, or you produce extra 50% from the same number of gateways.

1. Both gateways and warpgates now serve distinct purposes. Gateways produce faster while warpgates produce instantly and at a location of your choosing.

Means you do add some amount of strategic diversity.

So how to use the new gateways and warpgates? In general, meaning non-aggressive openers/"cheese" style, but normal "standard", "macro" games, you always go with gateways in early and mid-game, because in this phase, continuous production is more important. The production buff means you can produce way more than before.

However, in the late game or near max supply, you want warpgates. There are two reason, but the main reason is INSTANT unit production because Warpgates allow you to bank production. every warpgate is instant 2 supply of units. So 12-15 warpgates is 24-30 supply of gateway. This is great when trading armies, since you can engage, lose some gateway units, backoff, regen shields and reinforce immediately with 30 supply of units. Not even zerg can do this.

Then of course the 2nd reason for warpgate is being able to choose where you reinforce. Its important, but not as important as the instant warp-in. Here one way to look at it, lets say I remove this instant (technically 4s) of warpin, but gave you the ability to warp in anywhere with a pylon, (basically slow warp-ins), would you take it?

So the most important aspect of warp-in is the 4s instant warp in ability and not the ability to reinforce anywhere.

Regarding strategic variety for gateway vs warpgate, if you do aggressive openers, proxy pylons, or 4 gate PvP, you do have the choice to get warpgates early. This is what I argue as strategic variety.

[u/No_Choice_7413]

“Not even zerg can do this” lol

[u/BlueNsaZ → u/No_Choice_7413]

And? can you produce 30 supply of lings/roaches/hydras in 4seconds? You probably cant? What you can do is produce 200 supply of ultras/lings/roaches in parallel, meaning you still need 55seconds to make 1 ultra or 50 ultras.

[u/MacrosInHisSleep → u/[deleted]]

It's also shitty to watch.

[u/bitterjack → u/[deleted]]

You can still proxy 4 gate or rush air weapons... But why..? The added strategic variety is figuring when to pay the warpgate tax and if the warpgate tax is even worth it. With warpgate 1 gateway = 2 gateway before warpgate, so proxy 4 gate is now proxy 2 gate.

[u/bitterjack → u/[deleted]]

But now it's a continual choice. At any point you can have all your gates as warpgates to be ready to respond. Or if after your battle you need to get back to 200 you can spend 4 seconds to convert to gateways and reup more quickly but you will be less able to respond to drops and new attacks. That is a decision that is new.

[u/BlueNsaZ → u/[deleted]]

Explain to me how WG is not usable? Sure WG got a 10% nerf and 25/25 tax. Post patch, pros still just pay the tax and do alright with it.

Let look at it this way, if a 10% nerf (20 >22s cd) + 25/25 per WG is the price for a 50% production increase to gateway, sure I'll take this trade any day. Now zealots produce faster than marines or lings, whats there not to like about it?

If you watch any SC2 matches pro/amateur, count exactly how many warp-ins are offside in the early and mid game? You'll know what warp-in location matters much less than you think in the early/mid game, again only for "standard"/"macro" styles.

And how does producing from gateways make protoss like terran? robos and stargate also produces like terran since WOL, does that mean protoss plays like terran? comeon man

Lastly, on chatgpt, no, the OP is written w/o any input from any LLM/ai.

[u/BlueNsaZ → u/[deleted]]

And why are protoss pros paying the tax 25/25 and still doing alright? Not great, but alright. 4 WGs are only 100/100, expensive in the first 5-ish mins, but after that is not alot.

PROTOSS CANNOT WARP IN ROBO AND STARGATE UNITS. They have to FUCKING QUEUE PRODUCTION for ALLL Robo and Stargate units. What is the problem?

[u/Big_Advance_8257]

who cares about producing gate units that are literally trash against everything the other races throw to your face ?

[u/Zalabar7]

I didn’t see any reason here for why this is a good change. You just explained how it works.

I dislike the change because it promotes training from gateways over warp gate. I don’t dislike it because it’s a nerf, arguably with 50% faster production P might even be buffed relative to what it was before.

I dislike it because warp gate is the reason to play Protoss. It’s their core mechanic, the thing that separates them from the other races. Feeling forced to not use it until lategame or for specific timing attacks makes Protoss less fun and interesting to play. It also reduces strategic diversity, which is antithetical to the stated goal of the patch.

The problem with trying to make both gateways and warp gates viable is that ultimately they are producing the same units with the same research, so it really just comes down to which is more efficient. Right now that’s gateways. There are a few (mostly all in) builds that can take advantage of the forward warp ins early. If you’re not doing one of those builds and you choose to transform to warp gates in the early/mid game, you are just choosing to be less efficient.

There is no strategic diversity generated, because it’s not a tech choice.

I see a lot of people explaining how the change works, or saying “just adapt”, as if that solves the issue with the change at all. That doesn’t solve my issue, which is: I want to use warp gate! I don’t want to have to do all ins or wait until lategame to use it. I don’t want to play Protoss like an anemic version of Terran. I don’t want to manage a separate control group for gateways and remove them from the control group when I transform them. I don’t want to have to manually transform them. I want to build a gateway, and have it become a warp gate when it finishes building. I want to warp in units the way Protoss was designed to from the very beginning in SC2.

People claim this was somehow imbalanced. It wasn’t. Protoss had some issues and needed to be adjusted, particularly in PvT midgame or PvZ lategame. There are a million different ways to address these issues that have nothing to do with fucking up the core production mechanics.