[G] Shield Battery - Page 3

On March 21 2011 23:33 antrax wrote:
OP didn't mention that recharge sequence can be interrupted at any moment if you command move or attack to the unit, meaning that you can attack-recharge (some shield points)-attack-recharge-... with zealots, goons or archons, could be useful in defensive situations.

I thought this was discussed already, like the post about a reaver benefitting a lot due to the long cooldown between shots.

Another point is if you invest in shield upgrades (let's say middle or late game) now your shield regeneration is more meaningful due to upgrades, could be useful in PvZ or PvP. Don't forget the fact that when your shields are almost depleted the next attack will activate your shield upgrade + your armor upgrade, at this moment you can perform a multiple minirecharge, so several units could use again this protoss property. I know is very situational and mostly defensive but I've never seen anyone using it. Also, I think that before you get +3 attack you should invest in +1 shields, the cost is the same but any +1 upgrade takes significant less time than any +3 upgrade.

The reason people generally get attack upgrades first is because they provide the biggest bonus. Armor and shield upgrades always give +1 to each, but a +1 attack upgrade actually increase damage by +2 for zealots/dragoons and +3 for archons/dts, meaning they scale better. The reason armor is favored over shields is that shields do not benefit from damage types/unit sizes. For example, a dragoon does explosive damage and a zealot is a small unit. Normally, explosive damage vs a small unit is reduced to only 50% of its original damage (so a dragoon would do 10 damage). For protoss units, however, this only applies to hp damage and not shield damage. So a dragoon shooting a zealot would do the full 20 damage to the zealot's shields, but once the shields were gone it would only do 10 damage to the zealot's hp. Hence, the armor upgrade would be much more beneficial.

Another reason armor is better is because a lot of protoss units start with some base armor value and generally have more hp than they have shields. For example, a zealot has 100 hp with 1 base armor and 60 shields. Here are some comparisons of how many hits it takes for them to die with different upgrades:

+1 armor:
35 shots from marine
15 shots from dragoon

+1 shields:
32 shots from marine
14 shots from dragoon


One last idea for PvT when T does 14 CC, bunker at nat and you start shooting the bunker with ranged goons (3 or 4) why don't you build a pylon and a shield battery behind your goons and start sniping SCV's, retreat, recharge damaged goons and engage again, 3 or 4 dead SVC's plus cost of repairing the bunker could be an advantageous trade.

This is an interesting idea. It would certainly be cool to try out, but remember that you're investing in the pylon + shield battery + probe that is sent out. I think even if the benefit is slightly more than the cost, the other common responses to a 14 CC are probably even more cost efficient, meaning it won't see much use.