His General Playstyle
The way I see the probe being played is as a hero who is never alone laning -- early on in the game, his structures take too much time warping in (time during which they take extra damage) to let him solo lane, and post-10, heroics can easily get him killed. The idea of the probe is a hero who is never out in the open, rather waiting until the enemies aren't looking, to then slip by and mass up on cannons. Once the probe has managed to mass up a certain amount of cannons, he is supposed to be very hard to stop. Maps like the sky temple, dragonshire, or, hell, even blackheart's bay, the tomb of the spider queen, the Infernal shrines, etc -- you get it, anywhere you can set yourself up to control key points. Any map that you can set yourself up nicely somewhere is a map where the probe will excel. However, the probe can also spec to get some MASSIVE support in a lane -- Zealots in the front line, High templars supporting from behind and Immortals dealing their damage. He can also get a level 20 talent, allowing him to change three minions for each wave into a more powerful, protoss version of itself. Despite it being late in the game, it adds more pressure to the enemy team, as it will require them to clear the waves, sooner or later, due to the fact that your waves will be more powerful and won't lose by themselves.
As an FYI, I designed this hero with that in my mind : "A person who is good at this should be able to make the enemy team potentially **** bricks out of fear".
The probe has amazing team fightabiltiy, amazing wave clear, amazing soaking.
But, the drawback is, his 90% damage, tankiness, soakability and wave clearing...
Cannot move.
Yeah. So I mean, sure you can make the enemy team **** bricks, bringing it throughout the whole game, but your team needs to coordinate very well with you, and you need to place your structures very, VERY carefully, as they take a huge (200%) bonus damage while warping in.
The Early Game
The probe's early game would most likely be a difficult stage -- Not much to work with, a lot of people in lane. The best he can hope for is to get a Zagara who can easily push people out of lane. Of course, once he sets himself up in the middle of the lane, it will be very hard for his lane-mate to lose it, as the cannons will be outputting constant damage. Of course, setting yourself up in another place (A sky temple, A dragon shrine, nearby the chests on Blackheart's bay, etc) may be preferrable, as to make sure your team doesn't lose objectives too early. Of course, this means giving up on your lane presence, but in maps where the objectives deal guaranteed damage to structures, this may prove to be the best course.
The Middle Game (Level 10+)
This stage of the game is problematic for the probe -- His team will be fighting all over the map, and the enemy team will probably have heroics, too.Heroes with long range heroics that can reach him from far away will probe more than painful to fight against. A good example would be Illidan -- That sucker can kill you near instantaneously with The Hunt, from a very long distance that forces you to stay out of sight at all costs. Highly mobile assassins will be a good counter to the probe, as will Sylvanas, with her ability to stun non-heroic targets. Of course, it is a very limited scope of heroes (Zeratul, Nova, Illidan, Sylvanas, Valla, maybe a few others) over the 41 heroes currently in the game, but still one that is numerous for the amount of counters a single hero has. At this level range, you may have been speccing towards something specific, which should be enough to tell your team what you will want to be doing.
The Late Game
I don't put level specific restrictions because when the late game starts is unclear, at best, for me.
The probe's Late Game, if built right and if the player has been doing a good job of managing the structure placement, is potentially terrifying -- If you went with the full lane push build, you have three modified minions per wave, and potentially up to six of your gateway zealots, two high templars and one immortal as well as your usual waves plus the three modified minions pushing. In other words, they'll need MUCH more than a bruiser camp to clear or stem it.
Of course, you may have went with more structure specific builds, or built for more survivability, which allows the probe to mount up at near no cost, to get 60% of his maximum health back whenever falling at 25%, to teleport on a much shorter cooldown than with bolt, and to, potentially, enhance his teammates in many, many ways.
First off: I don't think your contempt for "casuals" is a good idea. Making something complex doesn't mean making it better, and this guy just has way too much going on. Making it have to gather minerals, and gather gas, and keep buildings powered isn't a problem because "stupid casuals" aren't capable of keeping track of those things; they are problems because there's too many layers in between the player and the action. Gathering resources is part of SC2's core gameplay and it's built to make that process streamlined and only relevant when it's interesting; In HOTS, it's just a hoop to jump through in order to make buildings that you can't even directly control.
Second: where's Pylo the Pylon?
First off : I wasn't showing contempt for casuals -- I highly am one myself. I was saying this with a sarcastic tone, as I have seen people criticise concepts and using the "This game's community is way too idiotic for this" argument. I was just telling those people to screw off, pretty much.
Secondly : I don't think you got me right on the resources part. Minerals are just a glorified mana bar -- They regenerate automatically, and you get a tiny bounty upon killing stuff. And killing stuff is what you do, wether or not you get a mana bounty for it usually. As far as gas goes, you don't have to go back to the assimilator to gather it -- You place down the building and it automatically does its harvest, like the automated refinery in the WoL campaign ; you don't even have to interact with it once you placed it down. If you really think about it, that hero isn't overly complex -- You set down a building and set buildings around it. I would be capable of doing that, and if I am, I think that others can :)
Thirdly : Pylo's over there, in the corner.
Second: where's Pylo the Pylon?
I can see the Probe being easily harassed by a Highly Mobile Assassin like Illidan or Valla. I would prefer an Escape tool in the Primary Kit aside from Mount which isn't enough and I would rather not loose any of the current three abilities.