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In addition to thread about rarely seen units.
Hallucination
If it did not cost so much and did not require costly research, it might see some use, even despite competing with storm. As of now, storm is always better, sadly. Only on very very rare occasions hallucinations are used to make sure that arbiter or shuttles can get into fortified terran base with turrets under their cover.
Mind control
Has only single very niche use: steal SCV when protoss get maxed, to put terran on death clock timer. Does not work on pro level, though.
In theory mind control could also be used to counter shuttle drops in PvP, but games mostly end before someone can get a DA and research spell. Also it hard counters carriers and BCs, but both are not built vs protoss...
Feedback
Sometimes used on defilers and high templars. Very cost efficient counter, though not popular on pro level, and dark archons almost never get built just for that purpose.
Disruption web
I guess by design it was supposed to be used against terran, but since it costs so much, does not last long, and requires to build otherwise useless in PvT unit... basically no one casts them.
The only competitive use for d-web is corsair-reaver strategy, since you already have fleet of corsairs anyway, and do not want to lose expensive reavers to hydralisks too quickly.
Restoration
Another almost useless spell. It does not cost much energy, but requires research and extra micro. And there are not many things worth dispelling anyway, this is not Warcraft. The only competitive use is to save BCs from their common counter plague, but even then most pros simply let battlecruisers die and focus on other things.
Optical flare
What a joke of spell. Has no real use...
Parasite
Very rarely seen in very late ZvP, if zerg needs to see where HTs are on super defended base.
In theory can be good vs mech, giving vision of Terran mech army, and to put on a SV: vessel already costs more than a queen, so for 75 energy you've either forced Terran to throw away a unit that costs more than queen or give yourself a vision advantage.
Ensnare
Good counter to mass wraiths, if terran player`s micro is too good and wraiths are too annoying. Ensnared wraiths cannot cloak and get killed by mutas very easily.
Can be used on group of bio units, too, but usually is not worth extra micro, resources and energy demands.
Also rarely seen in muta wars. Spending resources on queen and ensnare instead of more mutalisks is risky, unless you already have huge army, but it pays off later: ensnaring stack of mutalisks basically guarantees a victory.
Infest Command Center
Infested terrans are pointless units in ZvT, however finishing off CC quickly and getting flying buildng to scout with is a good move. Of course you will not build queen just for that purpose, but even if pros already have queens built, they usually do not bother with infestation for some reason. Maybe because it requires extra apm.
Lockdown
Another very weak spell. In theory it is a perfect counter to BCs and carriers, but cost, research time, vulnerability and most importantly micro demands result in everyone not bothering to build ghosts.
Nuke
Used in rare nuke rush strategy. Also rarelly used to nuke tank lines in late TvT. Still more useful than lockdown, though.
EMP
More popular than other spells above, since it is a default counter to arbiters trying to sneak into terran base to recall. On rare occasion vessels emp HTs, too, if protoss is not careful and groups them together before assault.
Can find a use in late TvT in battlecruisers wars, since yamato is so powerful spell.
In theory lucky emp hit could counter queens, which are popular counter to terran mech.
P.S. Spawn broodlings and maelstrom in the past were almost never used spells as well, but now they are popular powerful counter to mech / mutalisks sniping HTs. Which shows that pro players are generally very conservative, since so many years have passed...
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I've came across some creative use of optical flare recently by some player from pure, it was quite interesting, the guy goes T v P fast expand bunker marine with medic opener with optic flare, the build is interesting in a way it makes goon range no use early game since goon no vision, however it is a bit questionable how it would fare against fast reaver, but it was very interesting.
He just make bunker with 4 marine, and no stim or anything , just optic flare, it was very interesting.
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I honestly think DA's are the next answer to late game PvZ. Defilers are so deadly efficient, DA's and feedback are the perfect counter (especially due to it's range). It's just so hard to immediately recognize an attack and FB the defiler before anything goes down. It is great through. Feedback is also great in mid to late-game PvP to snipe HTs, hard to execute though. It has minimal use against T, only really vs vessles and it's questionable whether it's worth it or not.
I've also always somewhat thought that Optical Flare could potentially be somewhere but every time I think about how it could be utilized well, i.e. a counter to shuttle play TvP by blinding the shuttle(s), it always seems like it'd be to hard to execute and it won't 100% work because like in this situation, it still won't deter people from bombing your main or whatever cuss there's observers on the map for vision and some players YOLO it and just go anyways. I've also thought that you could use it is to blind observers in TvP instead of killing them, so P still has the useless supply but P can always just kill their own obs to free up supply, and a medic takes supply of your own, you might as well just kill obs. I truly think optical flare might be the most useless spell but maybe one day we'll think of a use for it.
Restoration is pretty damn useless. Medics have the most useless spells for whatever reason. Only 2 things I can see here where it's truly useful is if P is recalling units into your main and stasising units on your ramp to block you from getting up. Restoration (I'm fairly sure) will unstasis the unit(s) at the ramp and free you up to clear your main. Also, casting it to unparasite a vessle or whatever is helpful.
Hallucination is actually a good spell and can be used in multiple spots in all match ups (less-so in PvP) to some efficiency.
Esnare and Parasite are underused and both are fantastic. I've seen some sick plays with Esnare vs bio recently and I think casting Parasite on neutral map creatures (especially flying ones) for vision that your opponent doesn't recognize is one of the sickest things in the game even though it's not super helpful 90%+ of the time lol.
EMP is great too obviously.
D web sounds good but it costs a lot (mostly cuss of the fleet beacon price and time) and it wears off too fast.
Lockdown is good in situations but too expensive for the tech.
Nuke is good in certain scenarios (I wish Nukes didn't cost so much supply though; 8 supply?!?!? like wtf?). See NaDa vs Larva nuke rush to see a modern scenario for a nuke rush. No spoilers but it was clever as hell.
Mind Control is great but it costs too much. PvP stealing another man's shuttle + reaver after you open DT tech is fantastic. Taking another worker and unleashing the true unstoppable power of Protoss is just too unfeasible in any competitive setting. However, I will say that if you're playing BGH or something and you can get up to a crap ton of DA's with MC, it's pretty cool cuss MC is the only spell in the game that I can think of that doesn't double cast when you have a ton of them selected. So, you can pull an SC2 with it and mass select DAs and just hit the MC spell + left click on the unit you want, over and over and only one DA will cast each time because you can't double cast MC on a unit.
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The issue with feedbacking defilers is that if they do not die, they replenish energy almost instantly, and there is no way to know how much energy defiler has. They also cast spells pretty quick and from long range, unfortunately.
Stasising terran units on ramp is a rare situation though, there is no point in building medics just for that case.
Hallucination is a good spell? Who uses it competitively? There is almost no reason to cast hallucination instead of another storm...
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I remember a player by the name of Sexybate42 on iccup who used optical flare on observers in TvP regularly. With the combination of spider mines it made for some interesting games.
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On December 24 2024 05:40 SiarX wrote:
The issue with feedbacking defilers is that if they do not die, they replenish energy almost instantly, and there is no way to know how much energy defiler has. They also cast spells pretty quick and from long range, unfortunately.
Stasising terran units on ramp is a rare situation though, there is no point in building medics just for that case.
Hallucination is a good spell? Who uses it competitively? There is almost no reason to cast hallucination instead of another storm...
Well, it's true that feedback won't kill a defiler if the defiler doesn't have enough energy to kill it but there two points on this. 1. Most of the time, defilers have a good amount of energy from consume or from accumulation of their slow asses walking across the map. 2. Even if for some odd reason they dont have a bunch of energy yet, feedback is pretty cheap at like 50 energy, so you'll typically have a couple casts at least when a defiler comes in, so if a defiler has low energy and doesn't die, after it consumes once or twice for swarm, you finish it off with feedback then. If it doesn't consume after the initial feedback, who cares, the DA did it's job with preventing dark swarm.
True about stasis. Only time I could see it is if it keeps happening in a wild game and you just say F it and get medics with restoration lol.
I've used hallucination plenty of times in competitive matches and I'm sure others have as well even though it's rare. It's more common on weird older maps that would have double gasses at bases and stuff like that where you can hit timings with hallucinated archons or zealots for busts but it can be used on normal maps too, it's just less common. You'll also see arbs hallucinated to get your real one into enemy bases for recalls in certain scenarios PvT or PvZ (especially into ultra turtled bases with mass turrets or spores). Not saying any of these strats are God tier or standard or anything but they are used.
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Now I think about it I wonder why no one uses optical flare to push up a ramp that lurker just have a good position holding the ramp, since Marine Medics are generally hard to fight up those positions, and in quite often scenario zerg have no additional zerglings and other support units around since early game economy is pretty tight. That would be really really interesting.
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Probably because lurkers are burrowed in a stacked position, and you can't target them all. At least with irradiate you could be clearing them one at a time...but the realistic ways tend to be d-matrix or drops.
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Norway28785 Posts
yeah comments on these:
Feedback should be used more in both pvz and pvp. Hard counters storm in pvp anyway. DA is expensive sure but kill two templars and you've more than made up for it. Same vs defilers, and there the mael makes it worthwhile anyway.
I've been stating that queens are criminally underused for nearly 25 years now, and while they're less underused than they used to be, there are still some situations where they just don't see the play they should.
Number one is in semi late and very late game zvp; Parasite. Protoss actually has no counter.
Vs terran you see people get parasite on a vessel before throwing down broodlings vs mech, and that's good, but using parasite vs terran actually inspires the one situation where restoration becomes a must-research spell. However parasiting 2-3 archons? Or a couple corsairs? One of two things happen - protoss ends up needing to keep some very expensive units away from battle, or they give you perfect vision of their army movement, and what you invested was a couple 75 energy spells with 12 range from a fast and inexpensive flying unit; essentially hardly any risk. If they keep units away from battle, or even better, respond by killing their units (shocking how often that happens tbh), you just parasite more. Big win for you.
Ensnare is getting some more use every now and then, and that's sweet. It's a fantastic spell when going crazy zerg zvt, great vs wraith play. Not that great zvp tbh, aside from a few niche scenarios.
One of those, however, is one that should be seen, but hardly ever is; The relatively mass queen against late game protoss death ball consisting of reaver archon templar zealot. I've seen countless games where protoss ends up winning in these situations where if zerg had made 10 queens - combined with guardian hydra - at a point where they had near limit and tons of resources, rather than going defiler lurker ultra ling - they'd never lose. To be fair, you might say it'd be a one-two punch attack as protoss has a decent counter in the dark archon, but generally, if you kill one death ball, you win the game, and if you're playing against templar archon and you have sufficient queens and guardians, you win without losing units. I've genuinely had a ton of success with this, although it's a bit niche and not something most games allow for.
Dweb is the last spell that should get some more use. Also somewhat niche, but if a protoss has managed to preserve a 6+ sair army together with a big goon templar army, there's no question that some games would be outright won by getting dweb. Namely - when z goes sunken heavy in two key spots holding 4 bases while moving towards hive. P having 6 webs together with 20 goons will crush 10 sunkens and a few lurkers - while the other counter (reaver) is prone to stupidly walking into range or getting picked off by hydras. Now if zerg is instead playing hydra heavy and is low on the static d, you're nearly always better off spending your apm on storm than trying to throw down webs, but in the specific scenario where zerg chooses to turtle, power and tech, dweb can be a hard counter to that. Virtually never see it, but it's viable.
I've tried to use hallucination quite a lot. The one that is consistently worth it is arbiters for recall. And one time I played a pvp on gorky island where I went carrier and the other guy went mind control to counter and I made some hallucinations and he ended up mind controlling my hallucinations, which basically let me win the game.
Aside from those two, it's almost always been a losing play. Hallucinated units just die too fast. Sure if it's a near stalemate pvt and you have tons of gas and you have to break a terran with some tanks and mines and you have few minerals left then yeah, hallucinating some zealots can in theory work out, but I think in 90% of the games where I've tried to hallucinate ground units, I've ended up doing worse than if I used the energy for storm or even made archons instead.
Also it's impossible to restore stasised units.
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On December 24 2024 09:17 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Also it's impossible to restore stasised units.
Didn't know that.
Thank you 
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On December 24 2024 08:16 Soulforged wrote:
Probably because lurkers are burrowed in a stacked position, and you can't target them all. At least with irradiate you could be clearing them one at a time...but the realistic ways tend to be d-matrix or drops.
I'm talking about early game, mid-late game is not useful at all.
I am talking about when zerg sneak a 3rd expansion fast with lurker blocking choke on a ramp, and you have a hard time to push in as a terran sort of scenario, it's very specific short timing window it would be that useful
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On December 24 2024 10:40 G5 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2024 09:17 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Also it's impossible to restore stasised units. Didn't know that. Thank you
Can't believe that's something I donno .... after all these year since 1998
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Okay, it doesn't work. I still wonder if archon hallucinations work.
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EPT
