EPTI never used the shield upgrade because I thought it was useless but now I feel stupid
PvZ Shields Upgrade, look again! - Page 2
| Forum Index > Brood War Strategy |
|
Monstah-_-
249 Posts
I never used the shield upgrade because I thought it was useless but now I feel stupid | ||
|
ForTheSwarm
United States556 Posts
| ||
|
RebirthOfLeGenD
USA5860 Posts
The OP mentions the zergling needing 38 hits to get killed by a ling in a ling vs zealot fight, however if it were simply a 1on1 fight the Zealot would kill the ling before its even through its shield. Yes the shield upgrade is incredibly useful late game, and I don't see any reason not to upgrade it usually. Unless you REALLY need the money elsewhere, I usually get my +1 shield pretty fast. I mean come on, most of us have bad macro anyway, we probably have a few hundred of each lying around. | ||
Heyoka
Katowice25012 Posts
| ||
|
FabledIntegral
United States9232 Posts
On September 30 2009 05:43 Liquid`Drone wrote: yes, they are exactly like armour upgrades, they remove damage. so if you have +3 shield upgrades, all hits that damage the shield deal 3 damage less. where it becomes interesting is when you have a unit with less shield left than the reduced damage of the opponent unit, in this case the protoss unit benefits from both the shield and armour upgrade against the very same shot. this can actually be even better in say, pvt than pvz though, and is why you should make sure to upgrade shield if you are going carrier.. a 3/3/3 carrier will in fact occasionally reduce a goliath's attack by _20_ damage. ;p I didn't understand your math, anyway you could try to explain that again? From what I (mis)understood, you said having just 1 shield will completely negate an attack? Well then what's the difference between having 0 shield and 3 shield? The regeneration rate is still the same of the shields, correct..? So how would shield upgrades make a difference in negating the attack? | ||
|
Shikyo
Finland33997 Posts
On September 30 2009 08:35 FabledIntegral wrote: I didn't understand your math, anyway you could try to explain that again? From what I (mis)understood, you said having just 1 shield will completely negate an attack? Well then what's the difference between having 0 shield and 3 shield? The regeneration rate is still the same of the shields, correct..? So how would shield upgrades make a difference in negating the attack? Let's say the Zergling has an attack of 8(5+3), and the Protoss Zealot has 3-3-3 and 1 shield and some hp. First, the shield upgrade reduces the Zergling's damage to his shield before he loses any shield, so the damage is reduced to 5. Now, the attack goes through, and damages the Zealot's shield by 1. Zergling's attack has 4 damage left. Now, the Zergling is attacking the Zealot's health. The +3 armor reduces the damage by 3, so the Zergling has only 1 more damage left in his attack, and hence deals a grand total of 1 damage to the Zealot's hit points with the attack. | ||
|
RebirthOfLeGenD
USA5860 Posts
A carrier fully upgraded has 7 armor (4 is the default, then +3) and its shield would be +3. Goliath damage is #/2 depending on the upgrades. Lets say its +3 attack and 32 attack. Goliath attacks a damaged carrier, one that's shield is at 1. The first part of the attack hits and takes 1 shield away and goes into life, protecting from 10 damage, the second half of the attack has to go through the shield AGAIN, blocking another 3 damage, than the actual carriers life which is another 7 armor. This results in 20 damage being blocked. That is why he said sometimes I imagine that situation doesn't occur too often. Blocking 10 damage is probably way more common though. | ||
|
AnEsotericMan
United States12 Posts
Take a quick look at when armor is effective and when shields are effective. Attack affects only shields. Shields reduces attack by 1, armor does nothing. Attack affects both shields and hit points. Shields and armor both reduce attack by 1. Attack affects only hit points. Shields do nothing, armor reduces attack by 1. This means that factoring in the shield regeneration doesn't ever push the choice in favor of shields instead of armor unless the regeneration gives enough shields to absorb an entire hit. Let's use your single zergling example looking at +1 armor instead of +1 shields. 5x12=60 3x34=102 That's 46 hits, and an addition 2 hit from the shield regeneration for 48 hits versus the 42 that a shield upgrade yields. This for half the price, with comparable value against hydralisks. Armor is without a doubt far superior in the early game. The math is clear on that. And if you upgrade armor once, the next choice is skewed even further in armor's favor, at least in terms of immediate benefit. That said, shields are still extremely useful to have, especially late game when cannons archon and plagued units are taking more hits, and it can be difficult to get to 3/3/3 in a reasonable amount of time if you wait to start shield upgrades until you're already at 3/2/0. In short: For survivability of dragoons and zealots armor is better than shields. For survivability of archons, buildings, and plagued units shields are better than armor. Air units are a wash, you'd be better of upgrading ground armor and air armor than just shields. | ||
|
GreEny K
Germany7312 Posts
On September 12 2009 21:26 Kwark wrote: I go 1-0, 2-1. 3-1-1.3-2-2, 3-3-3 PvZ generally. That's dual forge after the first +1 attack because I find the +3 shields useful against zergling base sniping. It's scary how easily 3-3 cracklings melt cannons but a shield upgrade helps with that a bit. Same with archons. Also in 200/200 battles the shields are more than worth their cost because resources in the bank don't provide any advantage on the battlefield. At the op, hydras do 10 to shields which makes the shield armour less important. It's mainly useful against lings in my opinion. True, it also helps against plague. | ||
KwarK
United States42360 Posts
On September 30 2009 09:38 AnEsotericMan wrote: Armor is still both more effective and cheaper for Zealots and Dragoons in almost all situations. Which is why pretty much everyone here has advocated getting both. | ||
|
Shikyo
Finland33997 Posts
On September 30 2009 09:25 RebirthOfLeGenD wrote: Shikyo, your responding to the wrong thing. A carrier fully upgraded has 7 armor (4 is the default, then +3) and its shield would be +3. Goliath damage is #/2 depending on the upgrades. Lets say its +3 attack and 32 attack. Goliath attacks a damaged carrier, one that's shield is at 1. The first part of the attack hits and takes 1 shield away and goes into life, protecting from 10 damage, the second half of the attack has to go through the shield AGAIN, blocking another 3 damage, than the actual carriers life which is another 7 armor. This results in 20 damage being blocked. That is why he said sometimes I imagine that situation doesn't occur too often. Blocking 10 damage is probably way more common though. "How would shield upgrades make a difference in negating the attack?". That was a more simple example, you can perform the calculation similiarly if you want to know about carriers against Goliaths. To my understanding he asked about how the shield upgrades work, and that I explained to him. Also, how would 10 be more common? It should be 17 if we are to follow any kind of logic. | ||
|
KwarK
United States42360 Posts
On September 30 2009 10:17 Shikyo wrote: "How would shield upgrades make a difference in negating the attack?". That was a more simple example, you can perform the calculation similiarly if you want to know about carriers against Goliaths. To my understanding he asked about how the shield upgrades work, and that I explained to him. Also, how would 10 be more common? It should be 17 if we are to follow any kind of logic. Yeah, he meant 20 every now and then and 17 more usually but he can't count. | ||
Liquid`Drone
Norway28613 Posts
| ||
|
evanthebouncy!
United States12796 Posts
| ||
|
prototype.
Canada4200 Posts
On September 12 2009 20:30 boredcouch wrote: Other reasons to consider this upgrade pvz: 1. For units with more shields (dragoons, reavers, ARCHONS), this hidden disparity will jump even greater! 2. All of your buildings will take more hits from zerglings (CANNONS ANYONE?)! 3. With the upgrade, perhaps you can utilize SHIELD BATTERIES more effectively. 2. By the time shield is upgraded to 2 or 3, zerg would have defilers and cannons would still die really fast even without defilers. 3. Nobody is gonna use shield battery late game. Shield upgrade isn't a good investment early game since weapon upgrade is more effective and shield upgrade requires too much minerals and gas. | ||
|
ultramagnetics
Poland215 Posts
====================================== So +1 armor upgrade zealot (that's 2 armor) vs 2 zerglings (every 6 rounds zealot regenerates a shield or every 4.375 (35/8)rounds if no adrenal upgrade) 2 zerglings start attacking: First 6 rounds of attack from zerglings to evaporate shields (10 damage per round for 60 shields): 100 hp and 1.5 shields left at this point. Now it will take another 17 more rounds (6dmg*17=102 dmg to finish off the zealot) for zealot to die, plus the every 4.5 rounds zealot gets absorbs an extra damage from shields. So that (approximately) is 17/4.5 +4hp which is about 1 extra round from zerglings. 6+17+1= 24 rounds. Zealot survives 24ish rounds of attack. ================================ Shield upgrade zealot vs 2 zerglings: The zealot has 100 hp and 60 shields, takes 8 dmg every round, and every 5 rounds gains an extra 2 hp (gains a shield and has +1 shield armor). 160/8= 20. That 20 rounds divided by 4.5 shield regeneration and each shield counts twice with armor. 4.5*2= 9 extra hp or about 1 extra round. So the zealot survives 21 rounds of attacks. ========================================================== It seems a lot better to get armor even if you have only 2 zerglings per zealot. It will be slightly worse if zerglings have adrenal glands. Vs other protoss ground units shields also less useful since hydra's often snipe zealots, muta's do also. | ||
|
boredcouch
United States110 Posts
However, I am just telling people to not overlook it. My favorite benefit of the shield upgrade is that the better you are at keeping your units alive (aka micro), the more you will benefit from upgrading shields. In fact, since this is the case, upgrading armor actually also makes your shield upgrade stronger! I also want to see people use shield batteries more often. Instead of massing a bunch of cannons at expos, why not have 4-5 zealots and a few shield batteries instead? Or perhaps a mix of cannons, shield batteries and zealots? That way, zerg cannot just abuse swarm to take out all your expos. I'm just trying to spread awareness about shields yo! | ||
|
baubo
China3370 Posts
On September 30 2009 08:30 RebirthOfLeGenD wrote: Yes the shield upgrade is incredibly useful late game, and I don't see any reason not to upgrade it usually. Unless you REALLY need the money elsewhere, I usually get my +1 shield pretty fast. I mean come on, most of us have bad macro anyway, we probably have a few hundred of each lying around. I think this is an important point. Lower level players probably can't get as much use out of the extra units they produce in lieu of upgrades than top players. | ||
|
antrax
Peru191 Posts
Weapons: Base cost 100/100, modifier 50/50: L1 100/100, L2 150/150, L3 200/200 Armor: Base cost 100/100, modifier 75/75: L1 100/100, L2 175/175, L3 250/250 Shields: Base cost 200/200, modifier 100/100: L1 200/200, L2 300/300, L3 400/400 For me it would be more natural the same base cost 100/100 with the 100/100 modifier or even a greater modifier (125/125) modifier but low base cost anyway. I think that change would make this upgrade more attractive and viable (affordable in early or mid game). Sure it affects ground units, air units and buildings but also it receives full damage from everything. Protoss are suppose to be FEW but strong expensive units; shields are a considerable part of their total hit points. Blizzard make a patch </dreaming off> | ||
| ||
