• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 07:46
CEST 13:46
KST 20:46
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
Serral wins HomeStory Cup 298Serral wins Maestros of the Game 243ByuL, and the Limitations of Standard Play3Team Liquid Map Contest #22: Results and Winners7Code S Season 2 (2026): RO4 and Finals Preview12
Community News
Weekly Cups (July 6 - 12): Protoss strike back2BSL Season 22 Full Overview & Conclusion7BSL Season 22 Full Overview & Conclusion7Weekly Cups (June 29-July 5): Solar Doubles0MC vs IdrA, Boxer vs Nal_rA to be Legacy Matches @ BlizzCon44
StarCraft 2
General
Weekly Cups (July 6 - 12): Protoss strike back Is the larve respawn broken? Serral wins HomeStory Cup 29 Serral wins Maestros of the Game 2 Reynor: GSL Loss Wasn't About Preparation Format
Tourneys
GSL CK #5 Race War WardiTV Summer Cup 2026 RSL Revival: Season 6 - Qualifiers and Main Event HomeStory Cup 29 Vespene Cup #1 — $300+ USD, July 10
Strategy
[G] Having the right mentality to improve
Custom Maps
New Map Maker - Looking for Advice - Love or Hate Work In Progress Melee Maps [D]RTS in all its shapes and glory <3
External Content
The PondCast: SC2 News & Results Mutation # 534 Burning Evacuation Mutation # 533 Die Together Mutation # 532 Nuclear Family
Brood War
General
Pros Debate: Zerg Unfairly Nerfed? (ASL S22 map) ASL 22 Proposed Map Pool ASL22 General Discussion BSL Season 22 Full Overview & Conclusion BGH Auto Balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/
Tourneys
[ASL22] Wildcard Qualifier IPSL Spring 2026 Top 4! [Megathread] Daily Proleagues CSLAN 4 is Coming!
Strategy
Fighting Spirit mining rates Simple Questions, Simple Answers Creating a full chart of Zerg builds Relatively freeroll strategies
Other Games
General Games
General RTS Discussion Thread Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Path of Exile Summer Games Done Quick 2026! Nintendo Switch Thread
Dota 2
Looking for a Dota Mentor Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug
TL Mafia
NeO.D_StephenKing vs This Guy From 1 Million Dance TL Mafia Community Thread TL Mafia Power Rank Vanilla Mini Mafia
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread UK Politics Mega-thread YouTube Thread Canadian Politics Mega-thread
Fan Clubs
The IdrA Fan Club The HerO Fan Club!
Media & Entertainment
[Req][Books] Good Fantasy/SciFi books Movie Discussion! Anime Discussion Thread Series you have seen recently...
Sports
2024 - 2026 Football Thread McBoner: A hockey love story Tennis[sport] Formula 1 Discussion TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Simple Questions Simple Answers FPS when play League Of Legend on laptop How to clean a TTe Thermaltake keyboard?
TL Community
The Automated Ban List
Blogs
Major Shifts in the Gaming I…
TrAiDoS
An Exploration of th…
waywardstrategy
Gauntlet SC2: A Retrospectiv…
Ctone23
ramps on octagon
StaticNine
Funny Nicknames
LUCKY_NOOB
Evil Gacha Games and the…
ffswowsucks
StarCraft improvement
iopq
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 8169 users

Unit Analysis

Blogs > Shiladie
Post a Reply
Shiladie
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
Canada1631 Posts
April 01 2011 21:45 GMT
#1
This is less focused then my past few blogs, and is mostly my rambling thoughts I jotted down while I worked, so take it how you will.


If I had to rank the stats of a unit in order of importance, I'd put it in this order
Range
mobility (speed/air/cliffwalk/blink/charge/stim etc)
dps/splash
survivability

Range is at the top due to the simple mechanics of the game making each ranged unit added to a group add more power to the group than the previous, up to a soft-cap related to the range of the unit and how open the space you're fighting is. This makes it difficult for blizzard to balance units throughout the course of the game though, as to make a melee unit worth using vs a large number of ranged units, it needs to be strong enough that if the ranged units DON'T have that critical number, then it just walks right over them, as shown right now with the zergling early game dominance and then fall-off towards mid-late game. This is generally attempted to be resolved with upgrades and other extreme synergies, such as were seen in broodwar with the much more powerful adrenal gland upgrade and dark swarm.

Mobility comes in a healthy second place. One of the only things the mutalisk has going for it is it's extreme mobility, but that makes it one of the most used and feared air units in the game, allowing it to strike a mineral line and then escape within seconds. On the other extreme we have the thor and the siege tank, who are statistically two of the most powerful units in the game, but their slow speed and siege mode transition time bring them into parity with the rest of the units. Where mobility is really hurting right now though is with the hydralisk and the ultralisk. These units by their numbers are actually frightening, but their low mobility makes them situational at best, and a game loser to make them at worst. The broodlord also has a slow speed, but this is made-up-for by it being both flying and having an extreme range. Protoss is very much in the middle of the road on mobility with most of it's units, not quite mobile enough to take full advantage of it in terms of harass except possibly with phoenixes, but also never at a disadvantage due to low mobility either. Once you hit late game however mobility takes an unfortunate back seat, as units trade away a lot of their staying power in an army for that mobility.

dps and splash are very similar, but markedly different in their effectiveness as the game goes on and armies get larger. early on, with small unit numbers splash is relatively useless. Splash however increases in power as you get more units on each side of an engagement, up until you cap out your targets hit with the splash damage. additionally attack speed and missile speed play a large role here, as overkill can mean a lot of wasted dps. There is a good demonstration video(shown below) of just how much the tiny missile delay of a hydralisk can affect the outcome of a fight. This is a less extreme scenario though, if you combine both a slow attack speed and a missile speed this gets even worse, as seen with roaches, where a theoretical example of 8 roaches attack a marauder, doing 120 damage, leaving the marauder with 5 hp, unless the player micros and has only 1 roach attack that marauder for the next volley, 115 damage will be lost as all 8 roaches attack that same marauder on their next attack. high mobility allows for good micro to minamize the negative effects of low attack speed, muta micro is good example of this in BW, but we don't see much of it now.

Survivability is last on the list, as while it can definitely be important, it is more often that a unit will live or die on it's other merits instead of how much actual damage it can actually soak up. Ultralisk thor immortal, the 3 units in the game specializing in survivability. The thor is mainly used for it's high range splash, or it's high dps medium ranged ground attack though. the immortal sees sparing use right now, used primarily for fighting off stalkers early game, or for breaking tank lines late game TvP. The ultralisk however falls flat on both range and mobility, leaving it as simply high damage and high survivability, but that, as shown by how hated they are by zergs, is not enough.

Something that has baffled me is that all units that deal bonus damage to armoured are in fact armoured themselves. This has created an oddity with the remaining units. The roach for example can be said to counter any unit that doesn't do bonus damage to armoured, even countering stalkers to a degree. The same is nearly true for light, exempting thor anti-air and banelings. As it stands there isn't a lot of actual countering done by the bonus damage mechanic, except for the fact that everything dies faster, which in the end simply favors the higher ranged units. Though getting down to it, I don't know if we want an influx of bonus to armoured light units, or vice versa, as it would then create a much more hard-counter system than what we currently have, which is fairly muddy.

Higher tech units being lower food?
There seems to be an aversion to making a unit that you get later in the tech tree being something you mass more, which i think is a flaw that is limiting the game's design. For protoss I can see building up towards some grand fleet or what-have-you, but for zerg, I don't see why there can't be some hive-tech unit that isn't a massive death machine costing 4+ food.


This rambled and didn't quite get to a few of the points I wanted to make. A lot of musings and not a lot of conclusions, sorry about that.

*
AcrossFiveJulys
Profile Blog Joined September 2005
United States3612 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-01 23:12:31
April 01 2011 23:09 GMT
#2
Edit: double post
AcrossFiveJulys
Profile Blog Joined September 2005
United States3612 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-01 23:12:45
April 01 2011 23:12 GMT
#3
I wouldn't rank it this way, though I think you discuss good unit features. I would look at a unit's goodness of each feature, something like:

Range:
1: unit is bad at this
2: unit is okay at this
3: unit is good at this

And do the same for each feature, then do the ranking as

(Range=R1, Mobility=M1, DPS/Splash=D1, Survivability=S1)
(Range=R2, Mobility=M2, DPS/Splash=D2, Survivability=S2)
,,,
(Range=RN, Mobility=MN, DPS/Splash=DN, Survivability=SN)

Granted, this would yield a list of 81 items but if you have each variable take on two values instead of 3 it would be a list of 16 items instead which is more manageable. Then you could see which units fit each category and propose a unit ranking.

You might also consider taking cost and supply into account.
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
WardiTV Weekly
11:00
WardiTV Mondays #95
IntoTheiNu 509
WardiTV461
TKL 208
Rex113
LiquipediaDiscussion
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
Lowko407
TKL 208
Ryung 159
Rex 113
SHIN 71
herO (SOOP) 61
DenverSC2 26
StarCraft: Brood War
Calm 6162
Sea 2417
Bisu 1370
Shuttle 990
Jaedong 538
Hyuk 523
firebathero 440
Mini 321
BeSt 273
EffOrt 189
[ Show more ]
Light 167
Larva 164
Soulkey 159
Stork 154
Snow 134
ggaemo 123
Soma 115
ToSsGirL 104
Sharp 80
Free 66
ZerO 64
Pusan 63
Mong 62
Hm[arnc] 47
PianO 44
Rush 43
Bale 41
Sea.KH 37
soO 37
910 35
hero 35
[sc1f]eonzerg 34
sorry 30
scan(afreeca) 27
Killer 25
Sexy 24
Aegong 20
JYJ 19
yabsab 19
Icarus 17
IntoTheRainbow 17
sSak 15
Shine 12
Barracks 11
Yoon 11
Noble 11
Movie 7
Dota 2
Gorgc4306
Dendi391
syndereN86
League of Legends
JimRising 378
Counter-Strike
x6flipin142
markeloff30
Other Games
B2W.Neo809
crisheroes235
RuFF_SC210
ZerO(Twitch)9
Organizations
Other Games
gamesdonequick2588
BasetradeTV268
StarCraft: Brood War
lovetv 10
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
[ Show 13 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• LUISG 39
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
• sooper7s
StarCraft: Brood War
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
League of Legends
• TFBlade511
• HappyZerGling82
Upcoming Events
The PondCast
22h 15m
Replay Cast
1d 21h
CrankTV Team League
1d 23h
Replay Cast
2 days
CrankTV Team League
2 days
Replay Cast
3 days
RSL Revival
3 days
Clem vs Lambo
Scarlett vs Cure
CranKy Ducklings
3 days
IPSL
4 days
Dragon vs Hawk
RSL Revival
4 days
Classic vs Trap
herO vs SHIN
[ Show More ]
Sparkling Tuna Cup
4 days
IPSL
5 days
Bonyth vs Ret
WardiTV Weekly
5 days
Monday Night Weeklies
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

YSL S3
HSC XXIX
Eternal Conflict S2 E2

Ongoing

IPSL Spring 2026
Acropolis #4
CSL 2026 Summer (S21)
RSL Revival: Season 6
CranK Gathers Season 4: BW vs SC2 Team League
SCTL 2026 Spring
XSE Pro League 2026
IEM Cologne Major 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 2
CS Asia Championships 2026
Asian Champions League 2026
IEM Atlanta 2026
PGL Astana 2026
BLAST Rivals Spring 2026

Upcoming

Escore Tournament S3: W3
ASL S22 SEASON OPEN Day 1
Escore Tournament S3: W4
ASL S22 SEASON OPEN Day 2
Escore Tournament S3: W5
CSLAN 4
Blizzard Classic Cup 2026
HSC XXX
SC4ALL II: StarCraft II
Kung Fu Cup 2026 Grand Finals
Light Tournament 2026
Eternal Conflict S2 Finale
Eternal Conflict S2 E3
Logitech G Connect 2026
StarSeries Fall 2026
FISSURE Playground #5
BLAST Open Fall 2026
Esports World Cup 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer Qual
Stake Ranked Episode 3
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2026 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.