Siege Tanks underpowered against Protoss?

Does anyone here think that the early protoss units now all appear to be made to counter siege tanks?

Back in Starcraft, Protoss had only two ways (the most effective ways) of countering a siege tank defense.
1) By giving Zealot speed enhancements and rushing an army of them to the terran siege tank defense.
2) Dropping zealots, reavers and templars with the shuttle.

These were the most common ways Pro gamers use to counter a siege tank defense.

However, now that SC2 is coming out, the new Protoss units are all strong effective counters against the splash damaging siege tank. Not to mention, siege tanks are also now considerably more expensive (cost 50 gas and minerals more) and take up 3 supplies (unit counts) instead of 2.

I can already count three units that can be produced relatively early in the game that are strong counters to tanks.

1) Zealots: With the leg enhancements and charge, zealot bombing is now much more effective

2) Immortals: Even the new version of Dragoons are deadly against the siege tanks. With their special armor, they reduce siege tank damge to a mere 10 (Although they also reduce nuke damage from up to 800 to just 10)

3) Stalkers: With their blink ability, the Stalkers can easily break into a siege tank defense. They can easily teleport near tanks or pass the siege tank, working like zealot bombings.

However, the Zealots and Stalkers will require research to gain these abilities, but the new dragoons (immortals) are now the tanks worse enemy instead of their favourite.

Do you guys think the Protoss have too many counters against the siege tanks?

 

Stalkers are the new dragoons with the same attack, immortals are only the new dragoons lore-wise.

blink has a short range and won't allow a stalker to cross the entire distance, plus being a ranged and relatively large unit cross fire from siege tanks won't cause so much collateral damage to your own tanks.

Charge requires the zealot to get very close to the enemy which is very close to the siege tanks minimum range as far as i know.

Immortals, yes, they are an expensive unit specifically designed to counter hard hitting units like the siege tanks, they are vulnerable to small arms fire and can be brought down relatively easily from marines, forcing you to mix units a bit.

 

while Siege Tanks did have an increase in cost and food supply, they also gained increased damage(SC1 70 to 50+50 vs armored) and range(from SC1 12 to 13)

and while blink would help them get closer to the Siege Tanks faster they are weaker than Dragoons, so that part Balances out, Zealots always were an counter against Siege Tanks, now they get a little bit better at it. and Immortals well, they are design to to take on the heavy hits so that i cat really say much for that.

it all really depends tho. right now as far as we know its this way, but it will even out sooner or later.

 

Pro gamers won't just mass siege tanks right? They will have support units along with it to prevent these things.

 

They won't be able to just mass siege tanks or even the dreaded missle turret/siege tank spam with immortals in play.

Just makes me wonder about some ways for the zerg to deal with them.

 

Pro gamers will indeed have other alternatives to protect the siege tanks.

Though what happens when you have a combination of zealots and stalkers, or zealots and immortals?

Stalkers may have a relatively short blink distance, but the unit is also cheaper than the siege tank. It might not be able to immediately blink pass the siege tank defense, but it definitely will at least be able to blink very close to the tanks. Seeing as how a group of stalkers blink, the stalkers will surround the tanks like an Arbiter recall in SC in a very short period of time.

Not to mention, blink cooldown is just 15 seconds. Not too long and not too short. Meaning Stalkers can blink once to quickly surround the siege tanks, working like a zealot bomb. Then if they survive, blink into the base.

I do think that Blizzard will eventually even out, but with people screaming "Stalkers are overpowered" (As seen from how stalkers completely destroyed the zerg defense in the blizzcon demo). I have a feeling some units will be erased or added.

Perhaps this is where Thor comes in.

 

I'd be seriously suprised if any units were added or removed this late game.

15 seconds is by far enough time for a decent amount of siege tanks to rip apart a group of stalkers, with stalkers having lower health and siege tanks greater damage i'd imagine they wouldn't make any more distance than the old dragoon.

If stalkers destroy the tanks and are in distance to blink into the base the base is lost anyway? same as in starcraft with a group of dragoons, get some reinforcements to respond fast or lose the base or atleast your mineral production for a while.

Zealots and immortals, micro the tanks to fire on the zealots instead of letting the immortals tank the damage.
I don't think the zealot+stalker situation will be much different than starcraft due to stronger tanks and flimsier stalkers anyway.

 

Stalkers aren't a hard counter to siege tanks. They'd be hard countered by siege tanks if it weren't for their blink.

Immortals rock siege tanks hard though.

Does anyone have a video of zealots vs siege tanks? In the original gameplay video, the siege tanks rocked the (charging!) zealots. However, changes to damage types murky the waters. Siege tanks do more damage to zealots (50 vs 35 in SC I) but old siege tanks did 70 damage to zealot shields and the new ones probably only do 50 damage to zealot shields.

 

Zerg are the swarm they could just rush them like always with banelings/roaches.

 

Siege tanks hard counter roaches and are probably pretty good at killing banelings.

Before ultralisks, I don't really see how zerg can handle siege tanks on the ground.

 

Well they gotta reach a certain mass to counter banelings and roaches that's why the zerg player gotta keep the tank numbers down.

 

You could also get mutas to combat the tanks, though I don't know how useful they'll be since they can't move and fire anymore.

 

Siege tanks one shot roaches which takes the whole effectiveness of the unit against siege tanks out., banelings are probably too slow to do a good rush against tanks...

maybe a nydus worm right near the tanks?

Yeah, obviously you can counter tanks with air units...

 

I don't know... They might balance so they can't 1hit roaches, so it requires like 2 shots?

 

If they can't one shot then one siege tank can't kill a roach at all because of the rapid regeneration, siege tanks are meant to counter roaches.

 

@Eon Master: You could also get mutas to combat the tanks, though I don't know how useful they'll be since they can't move and fire anymore.

Blizzard is working on that. They do have that ability, but it currently sucks. Blizzard has great pathing AI people this time around; it'll work out. Not that this ability matters much against units that can't fight back.

Roaches keep wobbling from 80-90 hit points. I think Blizzard is doing that deliberately, but maybe with beta balancing they'll bump them to 110 - 125 or so.

Putting a nydus worm next to the siege tanks isn't a great idea. Units come out of nydus worms one at a time, and if there's more than one siege tank around, they can easily kill it (three hits will do it).

 

Roaches right now have 100 health

and the Nydus Worm idea, well it depends on how you place it i would place it as close to as many tanks as i can, the tanks attack the Worm and hurt the nearby tanks with splash, and the great thing is, is that Nydus Worms dont require minerals or gas in order to be made(aside from making the Nydus Network).

 

so, they could survive if you have a higher level armour than the tanks attack, right?

How much health do nydus worms have? i thought they could last a few volleys?

 

yes, the Tanks do 100 damage to armor units without any attack upgrades, while the roach has 100 health and 0 armor without any armor upgrades. so if the Roach has 1 armor and the Terrans have not upgraded the attack of the tanks the roach would survive with 1 health. BUT! if the Terrans upgraded the attack of the tanks by even once the Roach will never survive a shot from the tank even at max armor.

the Nydus Worm only has 200 health but has an armor of 1 so 3 shots would be require to kill it, unless the tanks attack been upgraded, then only 2.

 

Roaches heal fast, but I don't think one could get back to 100 (from 1) before the tank gets another shot off.

Addressing some concerns vs Protoss:

Let's not forget that SC2 Siege Tanks are being designed to be more effective in Tank Mode than they were in SC1. It will be a viable option to just unsiege when units get inside their minimum firing range.