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So, I used to follow broodwar very closely, and I've finally gotten over my snobbiness and moves over to the SC2 scene. But now I'm questioning the usefulness of stalkers. I've hit 1800 diamond(still going up so... dunno where i'll stop just yet) and honestly, it's VERY rare for me to use a stalker heavy army(excluding PvP obviously). I can't remember any 1v1 games where I used stalkers. Stalkers seems to melt against pretty much any unit. I do understand that they are GREAT supporting units, but once your zelots are dead, or you're out of forcefields, they seems to be completely useless.
Yes stalkers are "fast" but think about units that are FASTER than stalkers, zerglings, and bio units. both of which WRECKS stalkers. Even with blink, running away seems to be difficult unless you used blink against a cliff of something. Stalkers seem to be the least cost efficient unit. What is stalker supposed to counter? they somewhat counter zelots if zelots don't have charge, and they counter rines i suppose, but marauders, roaches, lings, they all eat through stalkers.
So, why is having stalkers as part of my army important? What's it's main purpose?
in BW goons were important against T since it was the only unit to really counter vultures effiently, and against Z they were only used during that mid game period since it was THE counter for lurkers from protoss. In SC2 it seems whatever stalkers can do, a lot of other units can do better.
I guess i do use stalkers when zerg going muta havey, but that's only because i have to, and even than, i try to transition over to archon/sentry ASAP.....
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they seem to me kinda like building hydralisks; pointless
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Except you have to build them because there is no choice. Its like building marines vs Templar Carrier *shudder*
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Stalkers are not cost effective against hardly anything, they're a unit that is necessary in supporting your army composition due to the role that they fill.
-3 Zerglings for 75 minerals beat 1 stalker easily
-Roaches trade evenly against stalkers but are cheaper.
-Marauders beat stalkers and are cheaper.
-Stalkers aren't very cost effective against hydralisks.
-Stalkers do OK against marines in early game, but marines are very cheap and once they have combat shields and stim, stalkers have no chance versus them.
-Stalkers are only so-so against mutalisks, but lose to the mobility disadvantage. Stalkers can also get taken down by mutalisks at critical mass. Stalkers are usually only a short-term solution against mutalisk until you can get storm to deal with larger numbers.
-Stalkers do poorly against Banshees, and banshees can fly and ball up, which makes them even stronger due to being able to clump up and focus fire, using terrain/mobility to their advantage. Add PDD to this combo and your stalkers have no chance.
-Stalkers get slaughtered by thors, tanks, ultralisks. Basically any late game high tier unit crushes stalkers.
So, yes, stalkers suck, but Protoss have to build them because it's our only real option in a lot of situations. You have to have stalkers in every game. You need them to protect against air attacks, to protect your Collosi, to prevent kiting from roaches/hydra/marauders, and etc.
In conclusion: You can like them, you can hate them, you can cry about them, but you have two options: Build stalkers or lose.
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Yes, stalker suck for their cost compared to other units. Protoss however doesn't have very many units that attack air during the early/mid game time except for phoenix and void rays, both of which require a completely different tech path.
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Stalkers are really jack-of-all-trades as they are the most mobile/versatile of all tier 1 units.
Except replace 'jack' with a 'nine' or 'ten' instead.
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Stalkers exist to protect your other units from getting kited.
Sure, they're weak and slow, but they're ranged. Until you get collosus/carrier, stick with the Stalkers.
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lol at the stalker hate... stalkers are amazing in every matchup.
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zzzzzzzzzzzzz
I get 1 banshee, gg
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On November 18 2010 12:20 SteveNick wrote:
Stalkers are not cost effective against hardly anything, they're a unit that is necessary in supporting your army composition due to the role that they fill.
-3 Zerglings for 75 minerals beat 1 stalker easily
-Roaches trade evenly against stalkers but are cheaper.
-Marauders beat stalkers and are cheaper.
-Stalkers aren't very cost effective against hydralisks.
-Stalkers do OK against marines in early game, but marines are very cheap and once they have combat shields and stim, stalkers have no chance versus them.
-Stalkers are only so-so against mutalisks, but lose to the mobility disadvantage. Stalkers can also get taken down by mutalisks at critical mass. Stalkers are usually only a short-term solution against mutalisk until you can get storm to deal with larger numbers.
-Stalkers do poorly against Banshees, and banshees can fly and ball up, which makes them even stronger due to being able to clump up and focus fire, using terrain/mobility to their advantage. Add PDD to this combo and your stalkers have no chance.
-Stalkers get slaughtered by thors, tanks, ultralisks. Basically any late game high tier unit crushes stalkers.
So, yes, stalkers suck, but Protoss have to build them because it's our only real option in a lot of situations. You have to have stalkers in every game. You need them to protect against air attacks, to protect your Collosi, to prevent kiting from roaches/hydra/marauders, and etc.
There's your answer. You don't build them because you want to, you build them because you have to.
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+ Show Spoiler +On November 18 2010 12:20 SteveNick wrote:
Stalkers are not cost effective against hardly anything, they're a unit that is necessary in supporting your army composition due to the role that they fill.
-3 Zerglings for 75 minerals beat 1 stalker easily
-Roaches trade evenly against stalkers but are cheaper.
-Marauders beat stalkers and are cheaper.
-Stalkers aren't very cost effective against hydralisks.
-Stalkers do OK against marines in early game, but marines are very cheap and once they have combat shields and stim, stalkers have no chance versus them.
-Stalkers are only so-so against mutalisks, but lose to the mobility disadvantage. Stalkers can also get taken down by mutalisks at critical mass. Stalkers are usually only a short-term solution against mutalisk until you can get storm to deal with larger numbers.
-Stalkers do poorly against Banshees, and banshees can fly and ball up, which makes them even stronger due to being able to clump up and focus fire, using terrain/mobility to their advantage. Add PDD to this combo and your stalkers have no chance.
-Stalkers get slaughtered by thors, tanks, ultralisks. Basically any late game high tier unit crushes stalkers.
So, yes, stalkers suck, but Protoss have to build them because it's our only real option in a lot of situations. You have to have stalkers in every game. You need them to protect against air attacks, to protect your Collosi, to prevent kiting from roaches/hydra/marauders, and etc.
since when do roaches trade evenly with stalkers!?!?
EDIT: stalkers have higher dps, 9.7 vs 8, plus 2 extra range, they both start off with the same amount of armor, stalkers start off faster, 80 shields plus 80 health is arguably better than 145 health... i could be way off here but the extra cost could be justifiable..
Perhaps the one change that i would agree the stalker needs is the upgrades to scale at +2, similar to the roach..
"END EDIT"
i need more roaches than they have stalkers, or at least the back up of a bunch of lings... and something that non zerg players often seem to disregard is that we have to manage larva, as effectively another resource. so yes lings are very effective against stalkers, but they cost a butt ton of larva to get a decent amount...
this being said, i wouldn't disagree that i smile when my opponent goes mass stalkers vs me as zerg.. 
from my limited toss knowledge (i did play them a little to begin with) i think there main purpose is simply to be the tanks of the army, while robo units do the damage...
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When I tested Stalkers VS Roaches in the unit tester (9v9) Stalkers came out with like 3 units left on all upgrades, and when I used Stalker VS Hydra it was about the same but depending on who was attacking the Hydra's win out with 1 or 2 low health unit's or Stalkers with the same. No Mircro was involved and was done with an A-move into the other ball or an A-move into one another. Stalkers only really suck in PvZ because Lings mess with their targeting and have poor VS Air attack but I think that's because they are designed to be a support and not the damage dealer. So they are good against most Zerg units with Microing them to attack the right things but you really really need Zealots to take down Lings, and against Muta's you need Phoenix or HT but it sucks for toss that they have to tech to those =/
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I don't think we should be thinking about this in a unit vs unit context. Stalkers help round out the weaknesses of your other Gateway units. For example, in the ZvP matchup, without Zealots your Stalkers would be very vulnerable to Zerglings. Without Stalkers, your Zealots would be very vulnerable to Roaches.
Stalkers are also excellent harass units when micro'd properly both early game (due to their innate speed) and beyond (due to blink).
Now I'm not a particularly high level Diamond so I don't want to toot my horn so loudly but if Stalkers suck so much then stop building them and see where that gets you. If you find yourself needing to build Stalkers then apparently they don't suck because they cover your ass in one way or another.
Also, I just hate that early first Stalker push. God that harass makes me want to choke out babies.
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9 stalkers: 1125 min, 450 gas
9 roaches: 675 min, 225 gas
Equal resources, roaches absolutely destroy stalkers. And that's before they get burrow regen micro.
User was warned for this post
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On November 18 2010 12:28 foo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 18 2010 12:20 SteveNick wrote:
Stalkers are not cost effective against hardly anything, they're a unit that is necessary in supporting your army composition due to the role that they fill.
-3 Zerglings for 75 minerals beat 1 stalker easily
-Roaches trade evenly against stalkers but are cheaper.
-Marauders beat stalkers and are cheaper.
-Stalkers aren't very cost effective against hydralisks.
-Stalkers do OK against marines in early game, but marines are very cheap and once they have combat shields and stim, stalkers have no chance versus them.
-Stalkers are only so-so against mutalisks, but lose to the mobility disadvantage. Stalkers can also get taken down by mutalisks at critical mass. Stalkers are usually only a short-term solution against mutalisk until you can get storm to deal with larger numbers.
-Stalkers do poorly against Banshees, and banshees can fly and ball up, which makes them even stronger due to being able to clump up and focus fire, using terrain/mobility to their advantage. Add PDD to this combo and your stalkers have no chance.
-Stalkers get slaughtered by thors, tanks, ultralisks. Basically any late game high tier unit crushes stalkers.
So, yes, stalkers suck, but Protoss have to build them because it's our only real option in a lot of situations. You have to have stalkers in every game. You need them to protect against air attacks, to protect your Collosi, to prevent kiting from roaches/hydra/marauders, and etc. since when do roaches trade evenly with stalkers!?!? i need more roaches than they have stalkers, or at least the back up of a bunch of lings... and something that non zerg players often seem to disregard is that we have to manage larva, as effectively another resource. so yes lings are very effective against stalkers, but they cost a butt ton of larva to get a decent amount... this being said, i wouldn't disagree that i smile when my opponent goes mass stalkers vs me as zerg.. from my limited toss knowledge (i did play them a little to begin with) i think there main purpose is simply to be the tanks of the army, while robo units do the damage...
A stalker fighting against a roach survives with 20-35 health left out of a total of 160. A stalker costs 125/50. A roach costs 75/25.
Put three roaches for 225/75 up against two stalkers for 250/100, and the roaches win.
This is ignoring the fact that Zerg can also generally get their economy up faster and make more units than Protoss can.
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I think stalkers are vital in zvp matchup. If it wasn't for them, zerg could go mutaling every single game and win. I think stalkers are stronger than dragoons, and helpful early to put pressure on zerg because they aren't too bad against lings. I'm not sure about the tvp matchup though
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On November 18 2010 12:33 RadicalEdwrd wrote:Now I'm not a particularly high level Diamond so I don't want to toot my horn so loudly but if Stalkers suck so much then stop building them and see where that gets you. If you find yourself needing to build Stalkers then apparently they don't suck because they cover your ass in one way or another.
It gets you kited, GG.
Whenever a player is good enough to just ignore the stalkers and kite the rest of your units, that is when Protoss flip their keyboards. Too bad nobody believes how crap they are until they've played Protoss for a good time.
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They're the most cost ineffective unit in the game, no doubt. They're really good for early game pressure vs. Z and can be used really well in all 3 matches with blink up until the mid-game (NEXGenius has showed us this), but once that's over they're garbage. (immortals, marauders, and hydras lol and them)
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Well spamming stalkers will not be cost effective unless you can blink micro which require a high APM. Nazgul pretty much shows how effective this is against zerg (idra).
I mean you can't win mostly with one unit
Zealot to absorb damage(zerglings) or sentries forcefields to abuse stalkers range
Meh its a good unit
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I think Sen said it best.
You see?
YOU SEE? Sentry IMBA!!!!!!
You see? Stalker! Blink No Micro PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW. * shoot laser beams with hands*
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I think that stalkers either A) are just supporting units, as someone said to shoot down vikings or other air trying to kill your collussus. or B) Have some other potential that hasnt been explored yet, after all SC2 is still a very very very new game and there are still some unexplored options out there and stalkers really do need blink/upgrades/ect to be good
finally, if you take a stalker with guardian sheild (and stalkers covered by guardian sheild happens all the time) you have a stalker with ~3 armor which is great none of the other races have something that has the option to instantly gain 2 armor and if you combine this with maybe an attack upgrade or something else viability of stalkers increases. Another post said "yeah marines with combat sheilds and stim do really well blah blah blah" well that is a marine that is upgraded to its fullest potential vs a regular stalker, obviously upgrades are important; a blink stalker vs a fully upgraded marine would definately be a better fight. Also if you need to do damage from high ground stalkers are basically your only viable option there. Im not going to run a zealot sentry ball down my ramp to engage a pack of whatever, nor am I going to fire at enemys trapped at the bottom of my ramp by a forcefeild; only stalkers serve that purpose.
yes they are expensive, but you cant say they aren't useful when you say that you never use them; because obviously you haven't explored them enough.
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On November 18 2010 12:36 SteveNick wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 12:28 foo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 18 2010 12:20 SteveNick wrote:
Stalkers are not cost effective against hardly anything, they're a unit that is necessary in supporting your army composition due to the role that they fill.
-3 Zerglings for 75 minerals beat 1 stalker easily
-Roaches trade evenly against stalkers but are cheaper.
-Marauders beat stalkers and are cheaper.
-Stalkers aren't very cost effective against hydralisks.
-Stalkers do OK against marines in early game, but marines are very cheap and once they have combat shields and stim, stalkers have no chance versus them.
-Stalkers are only so-so against mutalisks, but lose to the mobility disadvantage. Stalkers can also get taken down by mutalisks at critical mass. Stalkers are usually only a short-term solution against mutalisk until you can get storm to deal with larger numbers.
-Stalkers do poorly against Banshees, and banshees can fly and ball up, which makes them even stronger due to being able to clump up and focus fire, using terrain/mobility to their advantage. Add PDD to this combo and your stalkers have no chance.
-Stalkers get slaughtered by thors, tanks, ultralisks. Basically any late game high tier unit crushes stalkers.
So, yes, stalkers suck, but Protoss have to build them because it's our only real option in a lot of situations. You have to have stalkers in every game. You need them to protect against air attacks, to protect your Collosi, to prevent kiting from roaches/hydra/marauders, and etc. since when do roaches trade evenly with stalkers!?!? i need more roaches than they have stalkers, or at least the back up of a bunch of lings... and something that non zerg players often seem to disregard is that we have to manage larva, as effectively another resource. so yes lings are very effective against stalkers, but they cost a butt ton of larva to get a decent amount... this being said, i wouldn't disagree that i smile when my opponent goes mass stalkers vs me as zerg.. from my limited toss knowledge (i did play them a little to begin with) i think there main purpose is simply to be the tanks of the army, while robo units do the damage... A stalker fighting against a roach survives with 20-35 health left out of a total of 160. A stalker costs 125/50. A roach costs 75/25. Put three roaches for 225/75 up against two stalkers for 250/100, and the roaches win. This is ignoring the fact that Zerg can also generally get their economy up faster and make more units than Protoss can.
Stalkers are faster than roaches, and have more range, 6 vs 4, a little bit of micro will change the result of this fight phenomenally...
Like i said in my edit, the armor scaling is the one change that i think should be applied to the stalker..
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On November 18 2010 12:35 GoldenH wrote:
9 stalkers: 1125 min, 450 gas
9 roaches: 675 min, 225 gas
Equal resources, roaches absolutely destroy stalkers. And that's before they get burrow regen micro.
Just a question --
Would throwing one or two Zealots in the mix (7 Stalkers 2 Zealots vs 9 Roaches) change the outcome at all? If the Roaches try to kite the Zealots then they take damage from the faster pursuing Stalkers without exchanging fire on a 1:1 ratio. If they ignore the Zealots and focus fire the Stalkers the Stalkers can micro away easily giving the Zealots a few extra shots. If they focus on the Zealots then they need to burn through the Zealots first before firing on the Stalkers, while the Stalkers are hammering them the entire time with their bonus damage to armored units.
For some reason it just feels like throwing some Zealots into the mix would help a great deal, but that might just be me being a noob. So feel free to school me, heh, it's just theorycraft after all.
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On November 18 2010 12:36 SteveNick wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 12:28 foo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 18 2010 12:20 SteveNick wrote:
Stalkers are not cost effective against hardly anything, they're a unit that is necessary in supporting your army composition due to the role that they fill.
-3 Zerglings for 75 minerals beat 1 stalker easily
-Roaches trade evenly against stalkers but are cheaper.
-Marauders beat stalkers and are cheaper.
-Stalkers aren't very cost effective against hydralisks.
-Stalkers do OK against marines in early game, but marines are very cheap and once they have combat shields and stim, stalkers have no chance versus them.
-Stalkers are only so-so against mutalisks, but lose to the mobility disadvantage. Stalkers can also get taken down by mutalisks at critical mass. Stalkers are usually only a short-term solution against mutalisk until you can get storm to deal with larger numbers.
-Stalkers do poorly against Banshees, and banshees can fly and ball up, which makes them even stronger due to being able to clump up and focus fire, using terrain/mobility to their advantage. Add PDD to this combo and your stalkers have no chance.
-Stalkers get slaughtered by thors, tanks, ultralisks. Basically any late game high tier unit crushes stalkers.
So, yes, stalkers suck, but Protoss have to build them because it's our only real option in a lot of situations. You have to have stalkers in every game. You need them to protect against air attacks, to protect your Collosi, to prevent kiting from roaches/hydra/marauders, and etc. since when do roaches trade evenly with stalkers!?!? i need more roaches than they have stalkers, or at least the back up of a bunch of lings... and something that non zerg players often seem to disregard is that we have to manage larva, as effectively another resource. so yes lings are very effective against stalkers, but they cost a butt ton of larva to get a decent amount... this being said, i wouldn't disagree that i smile when my opponent goes mass stalkers vs me as zerg.. from my limited toss knowledge (i did play them a little to begin with) i think there main purpose is simply to be the tanks of the army, while robo units do the damage... A stalker fighting against a roach survives with 20-35 health left out of a total of 160. A stalker costs 125/50. A roach costs 75/25. Put three roaches for 225/75 up against two stalkers for 250/100, and the roaches win. This is ignoring the fact that Zerg can also generally get their economy up faster and make more units than Protoss can.
It also ignores every other factor in the game. Stalkers shoot up, that is where the extra cost comes from, versatility.
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On November 18 2010 12:41 Bull-Demon wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 12:36 SteveNick wrote:On November 18 2010 12:28 foo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 18 2010 12:20 SteveNick wrote:
Stalkers are not cost effective against hardly anything, they're a unit that is necessary in supporting your army composition due to the role that they fill.
-3 Zerglings for 75 minerals beat 1 stalker easily
-Roaches trade evenly against stalkers but are cheaper.
-Marauders beat stalkers and are cheaper.
-Stalkers aren't very cost effective against hydralisks.
-Stalkers do OK against marines in early game, but marines are very cheap and once they have combat shields and stim, stalkers have no chance versus them.
-Stalkers are only so-so against mutalisks, but lose to the mobility disadvantage. Stalkers can also get taken down by mutalisks at critical mass. Stalkers are usually only a short-term solution against mutalisk until you can get storm to deal with larger numbers.
-Stalkers do poorly against Banshees, and banshees can fly and ball up, which makes them even stronger due to being able to clump up and focus fire, using terrain/mobility to their advantage. Add PDD to this combo and your stalkers have no chance.
-Stalkers get slaughtered by thors, tanks, ultralisks. Basically any late game high tier unit crushes stalkers.
So, yes, stalkers suck, but Protoss have to build them because it's our only real option in a lot of situations. You have to have stalkers in every game. You need them to protect against air attacks, to protect your Collosi, to prevent kiting from roaches/hydra/marauders, and etc. since when do roaches trade evenly with stalkers!?!? i need more roaches than they have stalkers, or at least the back up of a bunch of lings... and something that non zerg players often seem to disregard is that we have to manage larva, as effectively another resource. so yes lings are very effective against stalkers, but they cost a butt ton of larva to get a decent amount... this being said, i wouldn't disagree that i smile when my opponent goes mass stalkers vs me as zerg.. from my limited toss knowledge (i did play them a little to begin with) i think there main purpose is simply to be the tanks of the army, while robo units do the damage... A stalker fighting against a roach survives with 20-35 health left out of a total of 160. A stalker costs 125/50. A roach costs 75/25. Put three roaches for 225/75 up against two stalkers for 250/100, and the roaches win. This is ignoring the fact that Zerg can also generally get their economy up faster and make more units than Protoss can. It also ignores every other factor in the game. Stalkers shoot up, that is where the extra cost comes from, versatility.
Damn, I wish marines costed 100 minerals or something.
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On November 18 2010 12:41 Bull-Demon wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 12:36 SteveNick wrote:On November 18 2010 12:28 foo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 18 2010 12:20 SteveNick wrote:
Stalkers are not cost effective against hardly anything, they're a unit that is necessary in supporting your army composition due to the role that they fill.
-3 Zerglings for 75 minerals beat 1 stalker easily
-Roaches trade evenly against stalkers but are cheaper.
-Marauders beat stalkers and are cheaper.
-Stalkers aren't very cost effective against hydralisks.
-Stalkers do OK against marines in early game, but marines are very cheap and once they have combat shields and stim, stalkers have no chance versus them.
-Stalkers are only so-so against mutalisks, but lose to the mobility disadvantage. Stalkers can also get taken down by mutalisks at critical mass. Stalkers are usually only a short-term solution against mutalisk until you can get storm to deal with larger numbers.
-Stalkers do poorly against Banshees, and banshees can fly and ball up, which makes them even stronger due to being able to clump up and focus fire, using terrain/mobility to their advantage. Add PDD to this combo and your stalkers have no chance.
-Stalkers get slaughtered by thors, tanks, ultralisks. Basically any late game high tier unit crushes stalkers.
So, yes, stalkers suck, but Protoss have to build them because it's our only real option in a lot of situations. You have to have stalkers in every game. You need them to protect against air attacks, to protect your Collosi, to prevent kiting from roaches/hydra/marauders, and etc. since when do roaches trade evenly with stalkers!?!? i need more roaches than they have stalkers, or at least the back up of a bunch of lings... and something that non zerg players often seem to disregard is that we have to manage larva, as effectively another resource. so yes lings are very effective against stalkers, but they cost a butt ton of larva to get a decent amount... this being said, i wouldn't disagree that i smile when my opponent goes mass stalkers vs me as zerg.. from my limited toss knowledge (i did play them a little to begin with) i think there main purpose is simply to be the tanks of the army, while robo units do the damage... A stalker fighting against a roach survives with 20-35 health left out of a total of 160. A stalker costs 125/50. A roach costs 75/25. Put three roaches for 225/75 up against two stalkers for 250/100, and the roaches win. This is ignoring the fact that Zerg can also generally get their economy up faster and make more units than Protoss can. It also ignores every other factor in the game. Stalkers shoot up, that is where the extra cost comes from, versatility.
The problem in paying for this versatility is that we're basically paying a large amount to have a unit that is mediocre against everything. It's not GOOD against anything. Let's take for example a TvZ match. If Zerg makes Mutalisks, Terran can make Marines, and no matter how many mutalisks Zerg has, if terran has an even close to similiar number of marines, Terran will win the fight.
The Protoss stalker is not like this. The Protoss stalker is only marginally effective against everything, rather than being truly effective at dealing with any one thing. Protoss just has to build them, because, well, we have to. If the Stalker was split into two units, one that was a REAL AA unit, and one that is a REAL ranged ground combat unit, then Protoss would have more options instead of just, "I have to build this ineffective unit.". Right now, Protoss does not have a cost effective ranged ground unit at low tier, such as the marauder and roach, and Protoss also does not have a cost effective ground AA unit such as the marine or hydralisk at low tier. Sure, we can build Phoenixes, but that requires a completely different tech path and is very hard to transition into.
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On November 18 2010 12:40 RadicalEdwrd wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 12:35 GoldenH wrote:
9 stalkers: 1125 min, 450 gas
9 roaches: 675 min, 225 gas
Equal resources, roaches absolutely destroy stalkers. And that's before they get burrow regen micro. Just a question -- Would throwing one or two Zealots in the mix (7 Stalkers 2 Zealots vs 9 Roaches) change the outcome at all? If the Roaches try to kite the Zealots then they take damage from the faster pursuing Stalkers without exchanging fire on a 1:1 ratio. If they ignore the Zealots and focus fire the Stalkers the Stalkers can micro away easily giving the Zealots a few extra shots. If they focus on the Zealots then they need to burn through the Zealots first before firing on the Stalkers, while the Stalkers are hammering them the entire time with their bonus damage to armored units. For some reason it just feels like throwing some Zealots into the mix would help a great deal, but that might just be me being a noob. So feel free to school me, heh, it's just theorycraft after all.
4 Zealots and 5 Stalkers V 9 Roaches leave 3 Stalkers alive. But if we throw zealots in then we'd have to throw Lings in for the Zerg too. I can see where Toss are coming from with the Stalkers being so weak mid to late game now but I don't think it's as big as some make it out to be.
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On November 18 2010 12:40 RadicalEdwrd wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 12:35 GoldenH wrote:
9 stalkers: 1125 min, 450 gas
9 roaches: 675 min, 225 gas
Equal resources, roaches absolutely destroy stalkers. And that's before they get burrow regen micro. Just a question -- Would throwing one or two Zealots in the mix (7 Stalkers 2 Zealots vs 9 Roaches) change the outcome at all? If the Roaches try to kite the Zealots then they take damage from the faster pursuing Stalkers without exchanging fire on a 1:1 ratio. If they ignore the Zealots and focus fire the Stalkers the Stalkers can micro away easily giving the Zealots a few extra shots. If they focus on the Zealots then they need to burn through the Zealots first before firing on the Stalkers, while the Stalkers are hammering them the entire time with their bonus damage to armored units. For some reason it just feels like throwing some Zealots into the mix would help a great deal, but that might just be me being a noob. So feel free to school me, heh, it's just theorycraft after all.
Well, think about it, if you take a stalker out and replace it with a zealot, assume they're getting the same micro.
You're replacing a 80/80 meatshield with a 100/50 meatshield. (extra 10 hp for stalkers, extra 20 health with +1 armor for the zealot. No diff). Except that the 80/80 meatshield will get 1 shot off, while the zealot might not. They just shoot the zealot first.
2 Zealots mean the 2nd zealot will get a shot off. Zealots do 16 damage a shot but now that's 2 stalkers that didn't get to shoot, 20 damage lost. Still better to have stalkers.
Ultimately you will find that instead of 6 stalkers and 2 zealot, you should get 6 zealots 2 stalker and a sentry, then if you use guardian shield and get a good forcefield you win! Stalkers are only there to prevent you from being kited.
On November 18 2010 12:39 OriginalBeast wrote:
finally, if you take a stalker with guardian sheild
Stop right there, Sentries are not the marine shield/stim of the Protoss world, we just don't get that. They're the Medivac of the Protoss world.
Forcefield/Drop - clearly drop counters forcefield.
Heal/+armor - different sides of the same coin.
Hallucinate/Fying - for scouting and feints, obviously.
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Good info Golden, thanks for the reply. It seems to me that Stalkers are a very versatile unit which is why they are so expensive for their apparent strength. They are the glue that helps keep the Protoss army intact. They are also a very agile unit, which, if I'm not mistaken, offers a great deal of map control early game if you go for a small pack of Stalkers which you use aggressively, since they can harass effectively with little repercussions due to their speed.
I'm honestly not understanding the Stalker hate here. People are pitting mineral values against mineral values, but that's not all that's at stake here in these matchups. It was mentioned before that three Roaches beat two Stalkers while being less expensive, but the Roaches can't shoot up either, and they also can't catch the Stalkers without speed, so who is to say that the Stalkers are beaten by Roaches when the Roaches hypothetically can't even catch their intended target?
This is an interesting thread. Certainly helpful for me since I'm having trouble with my TvP matchup.
edit: Here's what I've put together --
Do you need map control with harassment potential? Stalkers or Phoenixes.
Do you need anti air? Stalkers or Phoenixes.
Do you need an early game DPS backbone against an armored infantry biased attack? Stalkers or Immortals.
Etc etc.
Stalkers do not fill a UNIQUE role, which is perhaps what is disturbing most Protoss players. However, they do fill MANY roles, which is where their value lies, and it should not be overlooked! To me, this makes it harder to catch a Protoss vulnerable while he's transitioning between techs since he has a halfway man of sorts to help bridge the gap in the form of Stalkers.
I very well could be extremely wrong, though.
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stalkers are a pretty terrible unit pound per pound and are very cost inefficient against just about anything your non-protoss opponent can throw at you. Not to mention, they scale TERRIBLY with upgrades. The only way to make them worth warping in is having tons of guardian shield/force fields or having blink if you are using a pure stalker army.
Basically, they are pretty weak units but it's not as though we have any other units to fill the roles we need stalkers for. I want my dragoons back 
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did you guys miss that awesome micro from liquid nazgul vs idra in the msl when he knocked him out? stalkers are very nice if you can micro. sorry it requires something else to do that just a move...
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I've been playing with minimal stalker count (yes i'll get 1, or maybe 2 in the beginning in case i wanna pressure but that's about it) and I actually do decently against all these build that people mentioned up there... I mean if T is going banshees they're not gonna have a lot of ground army, meaning i'm nto gonna be spamming zelots, i'm going to make 2, zelots and 1 stalker and tech up (usually to templar tech), and if a banshee comes, just feedback it....
Mutas, yes they do give me a bit of a problem, but at the same time, if i'm not making stalkers, i have extra gas/minerals to spend. My current favorite being, play a lot like BW toss do now days, get +1 leg up lots (usually 6~8 lots by the time both upgrades are done) to pressure, this causes
#1 zerg to use larva in to roaches/lings/hydras
#2 find out if zerg is going roaches, hydras, or mutas. If they're going roaches, pull back immediately, a couple cannons and add HT (if all the gas you spend is 1 stalker, and then the upgrades, by the time +1 is about half way done i can throw down the templar archive). If they seem to be going mutas, just rush in, lings will melt, and then just run past the crawlers as soon as you can. Queen/lings can't do much against +1 leg up lots. This usually buys me enough time to morph an archon.
Suprisingly 1 Archon(yes they're bad i know) with 1, or maybe 2 cannons by each mineral line, deters zerg from using their mutals too aggressively.
BTW, when i said "i don't build stalkers" doesn't mean i'm spamming zelot like a idiot troll..... I am getting AA.. just not in a traditional form...
ALSO, Stalkers are actaully not even "Decent against everything", they just "don't COMPLETELY suck agianst anything" but they do kinda suck against everything.
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despite everything mentioned here about how bad they are, at least stalkers are better than hydras
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But... zerg's not really forced to make hydras.... protoss is (even i build 1~3 stalkers and i'm prob. one of the tosses that uses the least amount of stalkers)
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On November 18 2010 13:04 RadicalEdwrd wrote:
Good info Golden, thanks for the reply. It seems to me that Stalkers are a very versatile unit which is why they are so expensive for their apparent strength. They are the glue that helps keep the Protoss army intact. They are also a very agile unit, which, if I'm not mistaken, offers a great deal of map control early game if you go for a small pack of Stalkers which you use aggressively, since they can harass effectively with little repercussions due to their speed.
I'm honestly not understanding the Stalker hate here. People are pitting mineral values against mineral values, but that's not all that's at stake here in these matchups. It was mentioned before that three Roaches beat two Stalkers while being less expensive, but the Roaches can't shoot up either, and they also can't catch the Stalkers without speed, so who is to say that the Stalkers are beaten by Roaches when the Roaches hypothetically can't even catch their intended target?
Its true, Roaches can't shoot up, but think about it.
Both Terran/Zerg get their armored anti-armored ground unit at T1. Protoss waits until T2 (IMMORTALS!). Immortals surprisingly, don't counter either of the other armored anti-armored ground units, and are worse in other ways, but they are even against those units.
But one of Protoss' T1 units is still Armor. D:
And actually, the roaches can catch the stalkers on Creep, its just, they can't really be aggressive with them until they get Roach Speed, then they're faster than stalkers off Creep too, but Stalkers have Blink so they can run away, but actually, that's not fast enough because the upgrade makes Roaches so incredibly fast on creep and late game they'll probably have a huge amount of the map covered in it..
This is a bigger deal than it may seem. If you're at your base, it doesn't really matter if you can chase them or not, you're not going to because you'll get flanked and lose. As long as you can keep up with them, you're good.
If you're at their opponents base, and they run away, you just go "SWEET" and kill all their probes, gg. Ever seen 3 roaches in probe line, if they focus fire, they one shot probes.
In the middle, before blink/roach speed stalkers are probably better, well, at least they WERE, until the range 4 upgrade. Now you can't kite them anymore so you just have to trade armies, guess that's better than trading probes.
On November 18 2010 13:04 RadicalEdwrd wrote:This is an interesting thread. Certainly helpful for me since I'm having trouble with my TvP matchup.
edit: Here's what I've put together --
Do you need map control with harassment potential? Stalkers or Phoenixes.
Neither of which give you map control, they give you a pin to the opponents base for about ~3 minutes, which is enough to get an expo up or some tech out (actually, the other tech you NEED TO SURVIVE, since you already paid tech time to get Stalkers or Phoenix out in the first place. If your harassment was predicted, you die instantly.)
Do you need anti air? Stalkers or Phoenixes.
Yup, though phoenix is actually terrible against battlecruiser/viking with marine support/corruptiors/brood lords. So you gotta get Stalkers in some situations, Carrier/Void Ray can be as good, but its pretty risky.
Do you need an early game DPS backbone against an armored infantry biased attack? Stalkers or Immortals.
Etc etc.
Yup.
Stalkers do not fill a UNIQUE role, which is perhaps what is disturbing most Protoss players. However, they do fill MANY roles, which is where their value lies, and it should not be overlooked! To me, this makes it harder to catch a Protoss vulnerable while he's transitioning between techs since he has a halfway man of sorts to help bridge the gap in the form of Stalkers. I very well could be extremely wrong, though.
Yeah, you're wrong in the point where you think they actually fill any role. It's easy to say, "Well, Stalkers prevent you from being kited," but that only works if the opponent thinks they're being prevented from kiting, if they just kite anyway, you lose. "Stalkers protect you from Air." Not if they actually commit to it, 2 port banshees or 3 base muta will crush any number of Stalkers. "Stalkers harass the opponent." Only for an amount of time it takes to get blink, and even then, only if they weren't ready for it, and unlike most harass options Stalkers don't make a good addition to your army.
Stalker's one saving grace is that they can be built from warpgates and you need them for zealot/sentry. So if your opponent just pushes into your base with 1 too many air unit you can make it even with a round of stalkers. That's it tho.
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On November 18 2010 13:17 Cyber_Cheese wrote:
despite everything mentioned here about how bad they are, at least stalkers are better than hydras
No question, hydras need a buff.
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On November 18 2010 12:35 GoldenH wrote:
9 stalkers: 1125 min, 450 gas
9 roaches: 675 min, 225 gas
Equal resources, roaches absolutely destroy stalkers. And that's before they get burrow regen micro.
And now throw them in a choke. Suddenly not all Roaches are even fighting, while all stalkers are.
And that's before they get Blink micro.
On November 18 2010 13:28 GoldenH wrote:
Both Terran/Zerg get their armored anti-armored ground unit at T1. Protoss waits until T2 (IMMORTALS!). Immortals surprisingly, don't counter either of the other armored anti-armored ground units, and are worse in other ways, but they are even against those units.
Immortals devastate Roaches o.o
Not trying to discredit you, but it's true.
Also, Zerg don't have an anti-armored ground unit till Ultras, Roaches don't do +armored damage, only Marauders and Stalkers do at T1 
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Stalkers without micro are not very cost effective, but once you get blink or a decent number of zealots, sentries or immortals, they are great for surgical harrasment (blink up a cliff, kill workers, blink out) and are decent antiair & range support in PvP and PvT. They are not very good in PvZ, excluding if you are going for some kind of 3/4gate blink stalker build to punish roach heavy.
You need something in front of them though, or they will get rofflepwned by swarm units (zerglings, marines, possibly zealots) or stomped by anti-armour.
If stalkers are supposed to be an anti-armour T1.5 unit (aka poor man's immortal) , then why do they only do +4 damage to armoured over their regular attack.
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the whole "stalkers keeps your units from being kited" is essentially... a lie.
Any good player knows that with charge being used zelots are considerably faster than stalkers. So just run away for about quarter of the map, then zelots are quite a bit ahead of stalkers (all they need to be is like 4~5 range away from the stalkers since you yoursefl will be using 3~4 range to hit the zelot) and you can start kiting then.
If you're terran. AWESOME those zelots can't even run away!!
If you're zerg. AWESOME roaches eat zelots before they CAN run away!!
I agree with golden H that Realistically stalkers are there incase your opponent has a few air units to hit you.
The other "usefulness" seems to be if you happen to be holding a ramp with sentries against zerg (yeah, a very specific case which supports that stalkers are not very useful) you need the ranged unit to find them off. Then again this happens pretty much only if zerg is cheesing/half cheesing quite early. Though if you were going for the +1 zelots (which is what i usually do) you have the forge anyways, why not build a cannon or two, and use that time you didn't spend making 2 stalkers and make more sentries? (yeah i know the math doesn't work out, but hey, toss is short on gas early on, not minerals, and if you're short on minerals early just cut probes for a while. Zerg's semi cheesing anways)
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On November 18 2010 13:36 57 Corvette wrote:
Stalkers without micro are not very cost effective, but once you get blink or a decent number of zealots, sentries or immortals, they are great for surgical harrasment (blink up a cliff, kill workers, blink out) and are decent antiair & range support in PvP and PvT. They are not very good in PvZ, excluding if you are going for some kind of 3/4gate blink stalker build to punish roach heavy.
You need something in front of them though, or they will get rofflepwned by swarm units (zerglings, marines, possibly zealots) or stomped by anti-armour.
If stalkers are supposed to be an anti-armour T1.5 unit (aka poor man's immortal) , then why do they only do +4 damage to armoured over their regular attack.
The problem is that stalks can't really run away unless it's under certain conditions. And even that is only when you're attacking. If you're defending and you're short on zelots you're done. you have to give them the expo.
So what are stalkers supposed to be? is they're not supposed to be anti-armor, what ARE they supposed to be?
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On November 18 2010 13:36 Seam wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 12:35 GoldenH wrote:
9 stalkers: 1125 min, 450 gas
9 roaches: 675 min, 225 gas
Equal resources, roaches absolutely destroy stalkers. And that's before they get burrow regen micro. And now throw them in a choke. Suddenly not all Roaches are even fighting, while all stalkers are. And that's before they get Blink micro. Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 13:28 GoldenH wrote:
Both Terran/Zerg get their armored anti-armored ground unit at T1. Protoss waits until T2 (IMMORTALS!). Immortals surprisingly, don't counter either of the other armored anti-armored ground units, and are worse in other ways, but they are even against those units.
Immortals devastate Roaches o.o Not trying to discredit you, but it's true. Also, Zerg don't have an anti-armored ground unit till Ultras, Roaches don't do +armored damage, only Marauders and Stalkers do at T1
Yes, because zerg will most definately fight at a choke? If you're attacking then just hold the outside of the choke and just expo, if you're defending just let them up the choke and wreck them.... I mean if you follow that logic then Marines>Zelots, just block ramp? If you're gonna give them very specific conditions then the outcome can be reversed for a lot of the matchup that's semi close.
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See, the thing is I don't think people utilize them to their full extent. People keep saying, "They're good against marines until marines get fully upgraded..." Well, why not fully upgrade your stalkers then by getting blink? Blink is awesome and when fully utilized, can be better than stim kiting because you get all of your weak stalkers to the back in massive engagements which can be huge because while their units are dying, you still have most of your stalkers if not weakened meaning you don't lose any DPS.
The thing is, you only see blink being used when its just stalkers. People have to start using blink in combination with zealots and sentries to get the most out of their stalkers just like you need marauders and medivacs and marines. You can't just have one unit and win in SC2 but it seems like that is all that people want to do. Try to do some blink kiting and you'll see just how effective the stalker can be.
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Using stim is a one time (maybe two in a prolonged battle) process. Doing what you (KotaOnCue) said in a engagement requires constant attention while using storm/forcefield/guardian shield while macroing is... in a completely differnet level. The reason people are able to do that in when there are only stalkers is because you don't have to worry too much about macroing at that stage of the game, since that's only early game. Or you're putting a lot in to the harass that you're doing, and the macro you're going to catch up real soon.
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On November 18 2010 13:45 TossNub wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 13:36 Seam wrote:On November 18 2010 12:35 GoldenH wrote:
9 stalkers: 1125 min, 450 gas
9 roaches: 675 min, 225 gas
Equal resources, roaches absolutely destroy stalkers. And that's before they get burrow regen micro. And now throw them in a choke. Suddenly not all Roaches are even fighting, while all stalkers are. And that's before they get Blink micro. On November 18 2010 13:28 GoldenH wrote:
Both Terran/Zerg get their armored anti-armored ground unit at T1. Protoss waits until T2 (IMMORTALS!). Immortals surprisingly, don't counter either of the other armored anti-armored ground units, and are worse in other ways, but they are even against those units.
Immortals devastate Roaches o.o Not trying to discredit you, but it's true. Also, Zerg don't have an anti-armored ground unit till Ultras, Roaches don't do +armored damage, only Marauders and Stalkers do at T1 Yes, because zerg will most definately fight at a choke? If you're attacking then just hold the outside of the choke and just expo, if you're defending just let them up the choke and wreck them.... I mean if you follow that logic then Marines>Zelots, just block ramp? If you're gonna give them very specific conditions then the outcome can be reversed for a lot of the matchup that's semi close.
Yes, because protoss will most definitely fight in an open area?
This goes both ways.
And if you happen to have a sentry or 4 you can make your own chokes.
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Stalkers may suck 1on1, but people are missing the point. This game isn't about units fighting 1vs1. The value of the role stalkers provide toss is quite invaluable.
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On November 18 2010 13:51 Seam wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 13:45 TossNub wrote:On November 18 2010 13:36 Seam wrote:On November 18 2010 12:35 GoldenH wrote:
9 stalkers: 1125 min, 450 gas
9 roaches: 675 min, 225 gas
Equal resources, roaches absolutely destroy stalkers. And that's before they get burrow regen micro. And now throw them in a choke. Suddenly not all Roaches are even fighting, while all stalkers are. And that's before they get Blink micro. On November 18 2010 13:28 GoldenH wrote:
Both Terran/Zerg get their armored anti-armored ground unit at T1. Protoss waits until T2 (IMMORTALS!). Immortals surprisingly, don't counter either of the other armored anti-armored ground units, and are worse in other ways, but they are even against those units.
Immortals devastate Roaches o.o Not trying to discredit you, but it's true. Also, Zerg don't have an anti-armored ground unit till Ultras, Roaches don't do +armored damage, only Marauders and Stalkers do at T1 Yes, because zerg will most definately fight at a choke? If you're attacking then just hold the outside of the choke and just expo, if you're defending just let them up the choke and wreck them.... I mean if you follow that logic then Marines>Zelots, just block ramp? If you're gonna give them very specific conditions then the outcome can be reversed for a lot of the matchup that's semi close. Yes, because protoss will most definitely fight in an open area? This goes both ways. And if you happen to have a sentry or 4 you can make your own chokes.
Stalks can't run away if protoss meets ling/roach army in a open field. But in both cases i listed up there zerg is given a choice. but in a open field protoss doesn't really have the option of running away unless he wants to lose 1~2 stalkers for free... Choke points are usually where you can make a decision of going in or staying out, but in a open field that's not the case
Yes i can make chokes with sentries, but that's another 400 gas... I guess just picked that off the ground? making that count of stalker/sentries means zerg will most likely have enough lings to over run the protoss even without roaches....
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On November 18 2010 12:35 GoldenH wrote:
9 stalkers: 1125 min, 450 gas
9 roaches: 675 min, 225 gas
Equal resources, roaches absolutely destroy stalkers. And that's before they get burrow regen micro.
Stalkers can't just be 1A'd. They need support from other units and decent micro.
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Stalkers are good units early in the game, due to their speed in range. Sadly, once every other race gets their t1.5 upgrades (conc shell, stim, roachspeed, lingspeed) or higher tier units, stalkers begin to lose out. Once that advantage is gone, what's left is an overpriced unit that trades badly against most other units, and upgrades poorly.
You make stalkers because they're your standard ranged unit that forms the core of your army. By cost, they're godawful. A large part of their mobility ceases to be relevant due to the slow speed of the other units in the P army, unless you're going for an all-in blink rush.
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On November 18 2010 13:36 Seam wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 12:35 GoldenH wrote:
9 stalkers: 1125 min, 450 gas
9 roaches: 675 min, 225 gas
Equal resources, roaches absolutely destroy stalkers. And that's before they get burrow regen micro. And now throw them in a choke. Suddenly not all Roaches are even fighting, while all stalkers are. And that's before they get Blink micro.
Not really.
(1) Roaches are smaller, and will go through a choke nicely. 3 to a file instead of 2 to a file up a ramp... which is actually just the ratio they need to win.
(2) Roaches have the same DPS... but their BURST rate is higher, they can stutter step better than stalkers, and so they won't be in a choke for long unless you get a good forcefield off. A good forcefield that lets them run away, not one that lets them kill you.
On November 18 2010 13:28 GoldenH wrote:
Both Terran/Zerg get their armored anti-armored ground unit at T1. Protoss waits until T2 (IMMORTALS!). Immortals surprisingly, don't counter either of the other armored anti-armored ground units, and are worse in other ways, but they are even against those units.
Immortals devastate Roaches o.o Not trying to discredit you, but it's true. Also, Zerg don't have an anti-armored ground unit till Ultras, Roaches don't do +armored damage, only Marauders and Stalkers do at T1
Its not true. Do some tests. In small numbers, they're equal in cost effectiveness. Only once you get 8 or so immortals do they become more cost effective, but thats like midgame and you've committed pretty heavily to a unit that can't shoot air or deal with zerglings.
And no, Roaches don't do +armored, but they're still do DPS according to the anti armored unit. Its just that they do full damage to everything.
Immortal:
cost: 250/100
dps: 13.8 against all units, 34.5 against armored.
health: 200/100 (+60 from hardened shield)
shots to kill 1 roach: 3 in 4.35 seconds
4 Roaches:
cost: 300/100 (400)
dps: 32 dps against all (28)
health: 580 health (507)
shots to kill 1 immortal: 23 in 11.5 seconds
Okay so the roaches are 400 resources instead of 350. The numbers in brackets fix it by this ratio. So, lets see what happens!
4 seconds: -80 shields to immortal
4.35 seconds: 1 roach dead
6 seconds: no shields, -16 health to immortal
8 seconds: -64 health to immortal
8.7 seconds: 2 roach dead
10 seconds: -96 health to immortal
12 seconds: -128 health to immortal
13 seconds: 3 roach dead
14 seconds: -144 health to immortal
16 seconds: -160 health to immortal
17.4 seconds: 4 roach dead.
So you end up with a 40 health immortal, but guess what, in bigger numbers it turns out to be pretty even, you'll only end up with 1-2 surviving immortals (depending on micro) until you get 8+, and you better hope there's no lings (Zealots will just be kited :D).
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On November 18 2010 14:00 jstar wrote:
Stalkers may suck 1on1, but people are missing the point. This game isn't about units fighting 1vs1. The value of the role stalkers provide toss is quite invaluable.
So tell me what IS the role of stalkers? That's what i'm trying to figure out. If i KNEW the role of a stalker i might use it more. In BW you needed goons for that ranged dmg even apart from the whole mine clearing/the only counter to vultures and lurkers. Because the idea of "auto surround" didn't exist. But in SC2 with all the auto surround, added zelots/sentries with the money i would've spent on stalkers seems SO much more useful in a main army fight. As for being harassers, lings will chase/kill me, and usually if i have a significant number of stalkers harassing, my opponent can just break my entrance easily. So, tell me what IS the role of stalkers?
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On November 18 2010 14:03 Gigazing wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 12:35 GoldenH wrote:
9 stalkers: 1125 min, 450 gas
9 roaches: 675 min, 225 gas
Equal resources, roaches absolutely destroy stalkers. And that's before they get burrow regen micro. Stalkers can't just be 1A'd. They need support from other units and decent micro.
Stalkers don't need support from other units, they need to BE support for other units.
I know they need micro. But because they take so long to turn and shoot, with the 4 range, Stalkers can be at best equal to roaches with micro, when before, they were better.
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The role of the Stalker in early-mid game is to keep you alive. Because pure zealot sentry immortal can't do that.
That's the purpose, and it's a shitty one. Late game uses are Blink harass which is very situational, and AA for people who go carriers/voidrays or viking/BC. Really common as well, right? They are also to protect your colossus from AA...
I'm really hating my race, I've got to stop reading these stupid threads.
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I hear you bro, I'm waiting for the next patch, that's why I am qqing so much (sharing the facts) on these forums instead of playing
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For as much fun as Stalkers are compared to other units, they do feel pretty lackluster. I attribute it mostly to just how ineffective they are against staple units of T/Z in many situations.
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On November 18 2010 14:03 Gigazing wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 12:35 GoldenH wrote:
9 stalkers: 1125 min, 450 gas
9 roaches: 675 min, 225 gas
Equal resources, roaches absolutely destroy stalkers. And that's before they get burrow regen micro. Stalkers can't just be 1A'd. They need support from other units and decent micro.
Stalkers have longer range and hit air.
What am I missing here?
The answer is: yes, they're worth building.
With Force Fields, they easily pick off Roaches from a safe distance, especially in circumstances where you can completely trap Roaches and keep your army safe.
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I admitted in the starting post that i DO build 1~2 stalkers in the beginning of the game. But say after.... idk 6 min in to the game (being generous here) what do they do? Stalkers as a harass unit is a terrible idea. No splash, takes quite a few shots to kill the worker, and by the time they respond you'll be LUCKY to have 2 probe kills per stalker on average. making them quite inefficent harass unit.
Name a unit that you almost HAVE to build in the beginning to survive but becomes completely useless later (even a bunker is more useful since you can salvage for 100% return)
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On November 18 2010 14:04 TossNub wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 14:00 jstar wrote:
Stalkers may suck 1on1, but people are missing the point. This game isn't about units fighting 1vs1. The value of the role stalkers provide toss is quite invaluable. So tell me what IS the role of stalkers? That's what i'm trying to figure out. If i KNEW the role of a stalker i might use it more. In BW you needed goons for that ranged dmg even apart from the whole mine clearing/the only counter to vultures and lurkers. Because the idea of "auto surround" didn't exist. But in SC2 with all the auto surround, added zelots/sentries with the money i would've spent on stalkers seems SO much more useful in a main army fight. As for being harassers, lings will chase/kill me, and usually if i have a significant number of stalkers harassing, my opponent can just break my entrance easily. So, tell me what IS the role of stalkers?
In my current MUs:
Against terran, I build 2 stalkers in my build to prevent reapers, the rest of my build is immortal/zealot/sentry. Late game I build 6 stalkers to snipe medivacs and vikings. If he is going battlecruisers I do go mass Stalker since their last damage nerf to ground. Void Rays have less health and are easily yamatoed, so it's a practical thing.
Against zerg, I build 2 zealots and 1 stalker to make a poke at the FE zerg player and force him to make zerglings instead of drones for a bit, then run away. The stalker is there to do a bit more DPS to the queen while she is kiting the zealots.
I then build half zealot/half stalker for my next push while getting my expo running and Stargates up; I need the stalkers for the inevitable mutas and my Stargates just are too slow so I need to warp in more stalkers until I get 6 or so phoenix when I switch back to pure zealots/sentry. I also use my existing stalkers to prevent my zealots from being kited by zerglings (I know its sounds hilarious but I've had zerg players micro 2-3 zerglings to get a few zealots to split off from the group and then surround them, it works if there's no stalkers). But I don't build any more, unless he starts going Corruptor, then I need ~8 of them because they will kill phoenix/carrier and kite VRs to death, and they're OK against Broodlords.
Against Protoss I don't make any Stalkers after I get my expo up, I use a couple for scouting early game and to prevent my zealots from being kited if he fast 2 stalkers me. I build a stargate to make phoenix for scouting and make sure he doesn't try and VR me.
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I think the reason PvZ is imbalanced right now (IMO), is because protoss has no choice but to make quite a few stalkers to fend off roaches, and just in case mutas show up.
On the other hand, you don't need a lot of stalkers against terran because zealot/sentry is good against MM early game. Later, robo units are good against MMM.
So the strength of a protoss army in general is inversely correlated by how many stalkers it has.
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So i thought about it in my head, and i think i know what the role of stalkers were SUPPOSED to be. To STALK the enemy if they're running from you. That' was the purpose of blink wasn't it? to make sure you can chase them down and kill them?
But they've lost their purpose because if you have any decent number of stalks in your army your enemy is NEVER running away from you since they just ROFLstomped you....
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The obvious solution is to zealot sentry every match up... It actually works surprisingly well until you know... it actually doesn't...
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Yeah, that's a good observation. But any good protoss player will tell you NEVER to blink into an attack. Its okay if you're just going to pick off a unit or two when they obviously can't get you (picking off low health muta, or sniping that retreating medivac) but you otherwise need to save the blink so you can run away if they attack.
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On November 18 2010 14:30 Lobber wrote:
The obvious solution is to zealot sentry every match up... It actually works surprisingly well until you know... it actually doesn't...
Metalopolis >_<
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To put how bad the stalker is into game context, I'll use Idra vs Nazgul from MLG Dallas:
Nazgul pushed out with 12 blink stalkers (1650/750)
Idra defended with 10 speedlings and 4 hydra without range (750/350)
Idra wins the fight even with Nazgul's great blink micro only losing the 10 lings
Nazgul lost 1500/600 to Idra losing 250/0 even though his army was over twice as expensive.
Are people seriously saying hydra are worse than stalker or stalkers are a decent unit?
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well, they are useful for shooting ground and air units.
before i read your post,i was gonna be like, dumb argument. I read your post, and my thoughts remain.
Yes, they are useful. Play a 100 games without building a single stalker. Let us know how many you win.
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hydra are really bad... They are pretty much only usable in the same circumstances as Stalker, only you can't get them early game and they can't blink. Better for base defense though and nydus/drops.
Stalker has 2x health and half the DPS, and is armored for 25 minerals more... you can't really say one is good and the other is bad, they are mirrors of each other.
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On November 18 2010 14:41 mprs wrote:
well, they are useful for shooting ground and air units.
before i read your post,i was gonna be like, dumb argument. I read your post, and my thoughts remain.
Yes, they are useful. Play a 100 games without building a single stalker. Let us know how many you win.
I've played nearly 100 games using 5 or less stalkers (PvTs and PvZs) and won most of them.
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On November 18 2010 14:45 TossNub wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 14:41 mprs wrote:
well, they are useful for shooting ground and air units.
before i read your post,i was gonna be like, dumb argument. I read your post, and my thoughts remain.
Yes, they are useful. Play a 100 games without building a single stalker. Let us know how many you win. I've played nearly 100 games using 5 or less stalkers (PvTs and PvZs) and won most of them.
What rank are you? I wouldn't mind seeing some replays of your macro games against zerg.
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not to mention they scale horribly with upgrades compared with almost any other unit >.<
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On November 18 2010 14:49 AndAgain wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 14:45 TossNub wrote:On November 18 2010 14:41 mprs wrote:
well, they are useful for shooting ground and air units.
before i read your post,i was gonna be like, dumb argument. I read your post, and my thoughts remain.
Yes, they are useful. Play a 100 games without building a single stalker. Let us know how many you win. I've played nearly 100 games using 5 or less stalkers (PvTs and PvZs) and won most of them. What rank are you? I wouldn't mind seeing some replays of your macro games against zerg.
1050 diamond, though I'm matched up against 1700~1900 diamonds mostly, so i'm guessing that's my MMR
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On November 18 2010 14:42 GoldenH wrote:
hydra are really bad... They are pretty much only usable in the same circumstances as Stalker, only you can't get them early game and they can't blink. Better for base defense though and nydus/drops.
Stalker has 2x health and half the DPS, and is armored for 25 minerals more... you can't really say one is good and the other is bad, they are mirrors of each other.
This would be a fair argument if Zerg only had hydralisk and no roaches, but that's not the case. Protoss has to rely on the Stalker for that role, while Zerg can use hydralisk OR roach depending on situation.
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Stalkers are flat out better than hydralisks because they move faster, deal bonus damage vs armored, have extra range without requiring upgrade, and have blink ability.
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Personally, I believe that the stalker has filled the role of the dragoon very well. It may have less range, but it is much more mobile, not even counting blink. I agree that the DPS is a bit lower, but I would still take the stalker over the dragoon any day.
On November 18 2010 15:03 SteveNick wrote:
This would be a fair argument if Zerg only had hydralisk and no roaches, but that's not the case. Protoss has to rely on the Stalker for that role, while Zerg can use hydralisk OR roach depending on situation.
But can't the Protoss go Immortal/Stalker depending on the situation?
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I am a zerg player who has only started playing again recently.
A small number of tosses ive been playing have been really playing hardcore reactive style gameplay with more expanding which can be pretty frightening to deal with midgame. (something like 5 or so gateway with robos and stargates or high templar) most of these few players are getting a few stalkers early game but mostly zealots and sentries into the late game. I find ALOT that if a toss goes high templar + zealot they will never go stargate and instead opt for a scary chargelot+high templar(sometimes archons too 0_o) and use small teams of blink stalkers to run around and kick down all my expansions.
This is mainly against my heavy roach/speedling builds ive been favoring against toss lately
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On November 18 2010 15:09 Rkie wrote:
Personally, I believe that the stalker has filled the role of the dragoon very well. It may have less range, but it is much more mobile, not even counting blink. I agree that the DPS is a bit lower, but I would still take the stalker over the dragoon any day.
I'd rather have a dragoon, a unit with the range to snipe bunkers, and an instant turning speed so you could stutter step that eats marines alive instead of for equal cost. It'd probably do alright against roaches too, since the only reason that the stalker is poor against roach is their turning speed/attack animation.
On November 18 2010 15:09 Rkie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 15:03 SteveNick wrote:
This would be a fair argument if Zerg only had hydralisk and no roaches, but that's not the case. Protoss has to rely on the Stalker for that role, while Zerg can use hydralisk OR roach depending on situation. But can't the Protoss go Immortal/Stalker depending on the situation?
Why would you, the Immortals the tank, and what does the damage. The best parts of the roach/hydra. The stalker has the worst parts, low health, low damage. But hey, it shoots air.
Roach hydra > zealot stalker clearly. But it wouldn't hurt the game to give the hydra a bit more health. It's too weak against air units.
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Stalkers aren't an end-all counter unit. SC2 also isn't about hard counters. It's very much about macro and sometimes getting little advantages with micro. Stalkers are great in the early game, so-so in the mid-game and admittedly pretty bad in the late-game (even with upgrades). Other units often excel with upgrades even towards the end stages, Stalkers don't, but that would be about their biggest con. They are far from useless and arguably essentially to good Protoss play.
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On November 18 2010 14:36 Darkstar_X wrote:
To put how bad the stalker is into game context, I'll use Idra vs Nazgul from MLG Dallas:
Nazgul pushed out with 12 blink stalkers (1650/750)
Idra defended with 10 speedlings and 4 hydra without range (750/350)
Idra wins the fight even with Nazgul's great blink micro only losing the 10 lings
Nazgul lost 1500/600 to Idra losing 250/0 even though his army was over twice as expensive.
Are people seriously saying hydra are worse than stalker or stalkers are a decent unit?
If Idra has that combination, then Nazgul probably shouldn't have gone in with 12 stalkers. Some mix of Chargelots or Sentries + Stalkers or all three would have been far better. Even if SC2 is more about macro than it is about unit compositions, a poor unit composition is still going to do very poorly.
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I'm too lazy to read through the rest, but stalkers are amazing units. Watch Tyler's (Nony's) or especially nazgul. Toss takes allot of micro to pull off, but especially with blink they are amazing units not to be underestimated. They're great at harass. They're good at kiting, and I've seen a guy take blink stalkers, catch his opponent at his natural, force field a ramp, blink up and wreak havoc on his drone count before the force field dissipated.
They have very nice mobility with blink, and while, yes, zerg units can be faster, when successfully micro'd, a retreat is very possible if you have a decent number of stalkers left. The high range combined with thier formidable speed make for a fabulous unit in the early game. Obviously in the late game, they lose some of their power with units like immortals, etc out, but a tremendous unit all around IMO. Also, with blink, great response to muta play.
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On November 18 2010 14:23 AndAgain wrote:
I think the reason PvZ is imbalanced right now (IMO), is because protoss has no choice but to make quite a few stalkers to fend off roaches, and just in case mutas show up.
On the other hand, you don't need a lot of stalkers against terran because zealot/sentry is good against MM early game. Later, robo units are good against MMM.
So the strength of a protoss army in general is inversely correlated by how many stalkers it has.
This isn't exactly true. Something I've been doing in my PvZ is surprisingly relevant to this thread actually. I try to exploits zergs terrible A.A.
Not sure how effective the first part is, but a single or double gas steal after a 10 gate opening. Building nothing but zealots, while my core and stargate comes up, Chrono boost out two voidrays and begin an attack on the main. Queens get melted. There's a few responses but they're easily controlled. Kill any building evo chamber or hydra den. Handle any ling/roach counter attack with third voidray and zealots. Even if you lose all your zealots, the voidray will mop up.
Seems to be working great for me, and you'll notice there's no stalkers built at all. Just need to wall to ensure no lings get in.
This thread is sure making me question my stalker counts though....hmmmm...
But I don't see immortals being any more useful. ;_;
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Haven't ever had a 200/200 army of stalker+colossus+sentry owned by burrow roach?
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Stalkers have 10 damage normal, 14 vs armored units.
You want to abuse their 6 range against a roaches 4 range when you go colossus and he goes roach to counter in PvZ.
In PvT, you want to abuse their blink to kill ravens before the PDD drops, and also to abuse their blink to get a better surround on the army if you skillfully place your units. Blink stalkers are also helpful vs tanks.
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On November 18 2010 15:09 Rkie wrote:Personally, I believe that the stalker has filled the role of the dragoon very well. It may have less range, but it is much more mobile, not even counting blink. I agree that the DPS is a bit lower, but I would still take the stalker over the dragoon any day. Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 15:03 SteveNick wrote:
This would be a fair argument if Zerg only had hydralisk and no roaches, but that's not the case. Protoss has to rely on the Stalker for that role, while Zerg can use hydralisk OR roach depending on situation. But can't the Protoss go Immortal/Stalker depending on the situation?
Besides cases where you're using a composition of pure stalkers, mobility is irrelevant. The rest of the Protoss army is at 2.25, and the bulk of it cannot fire on the move or exploit mobility. The Protoss style of engagement, furthermore, tends to be heavily static - locking parts of the enemy up with forcefields and destroying it.
If you use pure stalkers, then the mobility is valuable - but you run into the issue of your units simply not being that good at killing the enemy. Blink stalker rushes work because P gets a massive amount of unit investment at a point Zerg has nearly nothing - with even army values, P will have severe trouble doing anything.
On November 18 2010 16:00 Msrobinson wrote:
Stalkers have 10 damage normal, 14 vs armored units.
You want to abuse their 6 range against a roaches 4 range when you go colossus and he goes roach to counter in PvZ.
In PvT, you want to abuse their blink to kill ravens before the PDD drops, and also to abuse their blink to get a better surround on the army if you skillfully place your units. Blink stalkers are also helpful vs tanks.
Theory. Blinking to kill a Raven is generally suicide as it places your stalkers in the heart of a marine/banshee(/tank) ball that will result in you losing all your units. The range vs roaches argument works... if you're off creep, with no upgrades on the roaches, in the open field. Not so helpful when roaches are pushing in your nat, or when you're trying to break Z.
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I am a 1750 Diamond.
There have been so many questionable claims made in this thread that I will simply focus on basic comprehension, which will displace several claims. Two obvious claims (of many) that are countered: “It's [stalkers] not GOOD against anything.”, and “they somewhat counter zelots (sic) if zelots (sic) don't have charge”
(1)
Good matches are:
Zerglings (normal speed)
Zealots (without charge)
Roaches (off creep)
Marines (even in moderately large numbers)
Neutral (to slightly favoured) matches are:
Roaches (at the edge of creep)
Small groups of charge lots (the cool down can be triggered by a single target and kiting can recommence)
Small to moderate sized groups of Mutas
Moderate sized groups of Speedlings (4 Zealots are enough to wall to set the kite on groups smaller than 20 Zerglings)
Bad matches are:
Marauders
Roaches (on creep) [This is a new development. The longer range has combined with speed bonus to make effective micro impossible on creep.]
Similarly sized groups of Banshees
Mutaballs (30+ with 2-0 air upgrades)
Immortals
Moderate sized groups of Chargelots.
(2)
“What are the benefits that stalkers offer compared to roaches (and more broadly – other units of equal tier value)?” is another common topic of the thread.
Range, speed, shields, and the ability to hit air.
(3)
The problem with your direct cost to cost comparison is that it completely ignores the game states and player abilities. Many different posts have hinted at various aspects of this, such as the Zerg player that pointed out that Zerg has to produce combat and econ units from a single structure, and therefore (A) the larva management is the hard cap on early roach numbers, and (B) the cost difference is mitigated by the fact that competitive production of combat units restricts the Zerg’s economy. Ignoring racial mechanics devolves even further into ignoring the game state. The double production cycle of the four gate (and the stalker costs allowing for a double cycle) allows for a timed push on an expanding Zerg. I challenge the notion that the only value of a unit comes from it behind cost effective in generic small scale microless engagements. Want more proof? Dark Templers prior to opponent getting detection – excellent... afterwards – hopefully you get the point. The unit doesn’t have to be universally cost effective if it is dominate at some period within the game.
Undoubtedly the question of whether stalkers really are dominant at a particular time or favoured in the match-ups I have listed is going to reassert itself, because of this naive insistence on privileging theorycraft results from absurd situations over actual game results. When a Zerg player sees an early Stalker push, he is going to respond with Zerglings (hopefully Speedlings). Your next warp cycle is going to be spent on Zealots. Four Zealot wall with 6-7 Stalkers can manage a moderate sized group of Zerglings (which I must remind you, are limited by larva production and cost the economy). These three Zerglings take a Stalker scenario are stupid, because real players (good players) are not going to stubborn mono-Stalker 1a into a Zergling ball. (some of the posters on the forum might, but that is... the problem)
I think that the failure to understand this has lead to a drastic underestimation of the Stalkers abilities. Only two more range than a Roach? Can move slightly faster? But three Roaches take two Stalkers! Give me a game state – near my base, so off creep on a long map? My four Stalkers will take seven of your Roaches and three will probably live. Assessments on the straight up fights are dumb, or more likely perpetuated by bad players that tend to fight straight up. People who don't (or can't micro) don't understand the power of the range and speed, cost isn't as important if my units never get hit. And this absurd comparison has led to overlooking a considerable strength – shields. Stalkers are heavily recyclable. If a Stalker isn’t killed, then it is back to 70% in 10 seconds. Which means, in realistic situations (like a four gate timed push) a slightly larger army with range and mobility will be recycling units against successive waves of weaker units. When there are cumulative returns involved, micro makes all the difference.
If you want to compare Roach v Stalkers - fine, but do a real analysis. One that follows roughly the way it is going to play out in a game, with consideration of micro, timed pushes, production limitation, and not some stupid 1a three to two scenario. (btw - The solution to the three to two fight is to refuse to fight. Yes, speed means Stalkers can walk away from Roaches.)
P.S. For the original 1800 level poster that rarely builds Stalkers and thinks they only “kinda” counter slow Zealots, I would like to verify your rating in game. Please reply with the appropriate information.
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I like Stalkers. I think once you get a certain amount it's better to invest in other units though. I usually build mostly a stalker army in the early going, and then switch over to other units. If you blink micro properly you can use your stalkers to cover your big unit retreats (immortals/colossi) and your zealots act as the signal to end your push. Out of charge lots? Probably a good time to end your push. Run off, maybe throw down a few force fields. Let your stalker get off a few shoots and cover your retreat.
If you're good with them, then you can keep that group of stalkers alive for most of the game. I think the biggest pain in the ass about stalkers is that you really do need a certain amount to compliment your army, but in the mid-game they are pretty terrible by themselves unless you are able to use them to snipe a ton and contain your opponent - similar to the concept of mutas.
The biggest issue with stalkers is that they don't benefit much from upgrades. Blink is an absolutely key upgrade for them, but +1 attack really doesn't do much for them. I think at some point Protoss will just have to learn how to transition into air support with robo bay and gateway in the late game to adapt to this fact. The future of Protoss will probably revolve around the heavy use of air units in the late game such as Speed Rays to replace the much weaker stalkers. Still, I wouldn't complain if they buffed the stalker to benefit more from upgrades. >_>
Theory. Blinking to kill a Raven is generally suicide as it places your stalkers in the heart of a marine/banshee(/tank) ball that will result in you losing all your units. The range vs roaches argument works... if you're off creep, with no upgrades on the roaches, in the open field. Not so helpful when roaches are pushing in your nat, or when you're trying to break Z.
Depends on how you do it really. I think Stalkers are pretty effective at splitting off from the main army and creeping up behind to snipe things such as tanks, ravens, colossi, or even brood lords. Obviously this requires some thinking and some information about the impending attack, but if you can get them in position and blink them out, or blink into the back end of the army you can circumvent a lot of damage to your main army with just a small army of stalkers.
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Compare the stalker to the hydra instead of to the roach and you'll see that stalkers are pretty nice. Not only are hydras T2 and more expensive than stalkers, they are also way slower, way less durable and can never learn to blink.
Protoss often consider their AA weak... but they have a better hydralisk as a T1 unit. I wouldn't mind roach being as expensive as a stalker, but they better get the ability to shoot air then, which is a huge bonus to any unit.
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You simply cannot compare one unit in SC to the other and use it for balance discussion. You can't compare stalkers to roaches or hydras because of infestors, sentries, upgrades, immortals colossus etc etc. Whenever you find yourself comparing one unit to another and using this for balance discussion just give up immediately and admit you do not understand the game. As a result, do not press the post button in the Strategy forum. .
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Stalkers are absolutely amazing units. I don't think I've ever seen a Protoss player go through a game without building and/or using at least several of them.
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Stalkers are iffy for one primary reason that's been covered several times already; their overall damage fails to scale well with upgrades. This puts them at an outright disadvantage vs ANY unit, regardless of race, towards the mid-game. Also, there's the issue of air units. Stalkers are really mediocre against anything in the air that can shoot back, except for void rays (now that they've been nerfed, are less effective than they used to be).
You can try to go air like T or Z. However, toss Air takes up SO much gas and TIME for arguably mediocre results, except if you catch your opponent off-guard (double starport guess vs mutaling, for example), or take wayyyy too long and leaves such a large timing window that any half--decent opponent will KILL you before you get them(aka, the carrier).
Proper micro with use of unit positioning and forcefields are argually, required to make use of stalkers. The poor scaling of damage means that the instant upgrades start kicking in, stalkers become less effective and then you're just slamming your head against a wall called "Stupidly cost-ineffective but necessary unit". Hence, I find I end up abandoning the stalker in 2/3 match-ups vs T that make it towards the mid-late game. At most, you'll run maybe 6-10 stalkers? in a 80 food army, with the rest of your resources going towards templar, zealots and sentries.
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On November 18 2010 18:05 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
You simply cannot compare one unit in SC to the other and use it for balance discussion. You can't compare stalkers to roaches or hydras because of infestors, sentries, upgrades, immortals colossus etc etc. Whenever you find yourself comparing one unit to another and using this for balance discussion just give up immediately and admit you do not understand the game. As a result, do not press the post button in the Strategy forum. .
This should just be a sticky in the strategy forum
Stalkers are solid units, but aside from a few cool timing attacks they're a support unit meant to fill gaps in your main army most of the time it feels like
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im just going to chime in a bit here
but I WISH that they gave the stalker +1 (+1 vs armored) per upgrade instead of the fixed +1
that would probably remove any complaints from most stalker haters
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On November 18 2010 12:06 TossNub wrote:
it's VERY rare for me to use a stalker heavy army(excluding PvP obviously). I can't remember any 1v1 games where I used stalkers.
Spider sense would indicate that there's a lesson to be learned in those two sentences.
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To answer the OP's question "Are stalkers really useful?"
Ask yourself this question: Do SC2 pros use stalkers as a key unit in their armies?
Yes --> Go to 1.
No --> Go to 2.
1. Stalkers are useful.
2. Stalkers are not useful.
It's not hard really, it really isn't. Way too much theorycrafting in this thread. If you want to know HOW to use stalkers, then go watch some replays of high-level PvX.
On November 18 2010 18:05 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
You simply cannot compare one unit in SC to the other and use it for balance discussion. You can't compare stalkers to roaches or hydras because of infestors, sentries, upgrades, immortals colossus etc etc. Whenever you find yourself comparing one unit to another and using this for balance discussion just give up immediately and admit you do not understand the game. As a result, do not press the post button in the Strategy forum. .
Exactly. Whether or not a unit "sucks" or is cost-inefficient against any other unit is NOT the most important factor to determine its usefulness. How well the unit complements your army, and the tactics that you can employ with it(e.g. with blink) are the most important criteria, IMHO.
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On their own they do really, really suck and they aren't cost effective from a resources/stats perspective so people making 1v1 comparisons aren't exactly wrong...but they're just wasting their time because they're describing scenarios that rarely if ever occur in an actual game. The point is, is that they're an essential ingredient in the protoss army; mixed in with zealots and sentries they fill a very important role. So to answer to "Are stalkers really useful?" is yes, of course, but in the right context. Just like any other unit in the game.
On the other hand, if you do want to only make pure stalker (just like if you want to make pure marines or roaches for example) I think you have to be extremely knowledgeable of that unit's strengths and weaknesses. Abuse the hell out of their strengths and absolutely avoid letting their weaknesses be abused. For stalkers this would basically be mobility, and coincidentally enough, movement speed is a stat rarely brought up in these conversations, whereas as attack power constantly is.
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Stalkers come out of the box with a lot of goodies - 6 range, fast move speed, and 80 points of regenerative shields. They're probably the best unit on the battlefield when they first arrive, and they're great skirmishers.
But they're terrible at anything else - too expensive to serve as meat, too low DPS to be fire support. Stalkers are an awful addition to an army - they're not remotely cost effective unless you can keep inflicting damage via their range/regen/speed, which cannot be done passively.
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I think there's a fair amount of ignoring what Stalkers are supposed to be and a fair amount of trying to make stalkers into something they're not.
Seriously, stalkers are actually a pretty good AA unit. Obviously they have nothing to fear from Vikings or Corruptors and deal substantial damage to either if they're flying overhead, and being Armored and relatively quick means they're also good at fending off any kind of Phoenix shenanigans. As for Mutas, anything that can shoot up and has an Armor upgrade is good against Mutas, and Stalkers actually get said armor for free. Hard ground attackers like Banshees, Broodlords, and Void Rays will give them a hard time even numbers, but they will never fight in even numbers because there will always be more opportunities for Stalkers to be made than either Banshees or Void Rays. They're also the most economical counter to Battlecruisers because the more damaging counter, Void Rays, can be yamatoed down easily. I think that leaves Carriers and Motherships, but such things really ought to be the least of your worries.
That's about it. There's no ground unit they're particularly good against, but that's what Zealots are for, and you'll want to bring some Stalkers along for air cover, anyway. The whole kiting zealots thing is ridiculous because you'll use Forcefield properly to cut off the "kiting" unit's escape route and slice them in half with your chargelots. If you're fighting on creep then you're definitely doing something wrong vs. Zerg. No zerg should ever be able to spread creep with Observers being so easy to grab as Protoss.
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As an aside, does anyone remember blizzards original plans for the stalker?
+ Show Spoiler +
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Dear Mr Lazyass, I must agree with you that the game state has to be considered, but I feel that you're ignoring crucial aspects of the game that are inflating your opinion of the Stalker and in what situations it is useful in, particularly against the Roach.
In particular the question of whether a roach or a stalker wins in a stand up fight is important because it tells us in what circumstances we can use the Stalker to put pressure on the zerg opponent or take advantage of a weakness.
In addition I feel that the microability of the Stalker is highly overrated, especially when using it as part of your general unit mix and not getting Blink first thing because you are doing something else instead (alternate tech, expanding, focusing on economy). While the Zerg does indeed have to consider Larvae that limits unit production, so too does Protoss have temporal limits on how many units he can produce.
Do you realize that in order to maximize the efficency of the Stalker against the roach you have to actually stand there and take a volley of damage? That's because even after you move out of roach range, the time it takes the stalker to turn and fire on the roach (even if you cancel the animation!) is so long the Roach can easily cross a 2 range distance. Practically, the best you can hope to do is to make 2 volleys for each one of the roach's. But even that is only possible if the Zerg player does not micro by advancing towards your stalkers in between his roach volleys.
You have to go back and forth on Lost Temple *three times* before you managed to trade stalkers for roaches equal resources. To do better than equal resources, that is, for the stalkers to not get hit at all, the timing is so precise that I can only manage it 50% of the time even with no lag, playing against the CPU on normal speed. With greater than 3 stalkers, they get so bunched together that it is impossible. This is off creep, no roach speed or blink.
So what happens when you make a bunch of stalkers and the Zerg player just marches some roaches into your base? Even if you kited them allll the way there, the Roaches would arrive in your base with you both having traded 1/3 of the resource values down. If you have a wall, I guess you'll have to stand and fight. Sure, the Zerg player will have to trade his army for any damage to economy or buildings he does, but he'll get at least his resources back on buildings of his choice and there's nothing you can do to stop this trade.
Now lets look at other use of the Stalker. How about putting on pressure early game. Well the whole point of pressure is to make the economy minded Zerg produce more units than he wants to, right? And thus eat into his money to prevent him from teching or expanding again soon. Well, fortunately, any units the Zerg makes is more than he wants, so, any roaches at all are a victory. But this doesn't cost him enough to make him slow his tech. Anyway, at best, we could force the Zerg player to build a third in base hatch so he has the Larvae he needs to hold off an all-in attack (which is what 4 gate blink stalker is, and for a zerg, it's when the Zerg player spends every Larvae on units and none on drones). But if he does not even need to do that, your attack has already failed before you launched it and you'd have been better off building cannons at an expansion, which can at least take out equal resource of roaches (and they'd better, cuz you can't micro them at all).
If you are fighting in his base and he has roaches, you're at a severe disadvantage. He's on Creep, and that means you cannot even trade resource for resource, larvae for production cycle, APM for APM. But hey, maybe you could expand, if you hadn't spent all your money on stalkers instead of a Nexus. Too bad the Zerg player still can.
The only advantage here is that you can punish a Zerg who fast expands by drastically slowing down his growth and forcing him to micro, in exchange for completely halting your own, but eventually, assuming you both play well, the Zerg will come out ahead or you will have to judge when you are even and retreat. If it had a chance to do damage if you out microed your opponent, it would make sense to perform such a risky move beyond just a desire for variety. Unless you know your opponent sucks at micro, why even commit to such a strategy? And if he really sucks, why even care about Stalkers, you could kill him with any unit, certainly, it has nothing to do with wether the Stalker is a good choice in this situation.
Then what unit is? Well, this thread is about the stalker, but I've discussed how the Stalker can and cannot participate in the larger game extensively in this thread already, and it had pretty much nothing to do with what the unit costs, except at the end you can add it up and decide if its feasible or not. I really feel that army value is a good way to compare armies, better than food even, because despite everything, the Resource Income charts and worker counts in every game I've played are pretty damn even.
This isn't theorycraft. This is all from actual game experience and training to specifically see what is possible from the unit in a perfect environment. There are some numbers to hammer home the point, but not replays because really, who wants me to post an hour long replay of me trying to kite and flank roaches from one end to the other of an enormous empty map. Just try it yourself.
Edit: If people want to go then say "duh, stalkers aren't for roaches", great, thanks for agreeing with me, but that's not what I'm hearing in this thread.
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Protoss units are slow. Sloooow, SLOOOOOOOOOW.
-Zealots are slow
-Sentries are slow
-Immortals are slow
-High Templars are slow
-Dark templars are average at best
-Colossus aren't exacly sprinters
Stalkers are pretty much only mobile ground attack and/or defence protoss has. The instant zerg realizes protoss has 0 stalkers, mutalisks are on the way to wipe out the protoss completely. Colossus are needed vs terran, to defend colossus and to defend vs drops you need stalkers.
I don't know how to compare stalkers to what other races have, but stalkers are absolutely vital to almost any protoss.
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Honestly my real issue with stalkers is the fact T have a very fast upgrade for their 1.5 unit which is better than stalkers and can be upgraded from the same building which is required to build them which prevents the micro ability of the stalker.
Basically looking at the following items:
Marauders build times 30s - 100m 25g - upgrade 50m 50g 60s
Stalkers build time 42s - 125m 50g - upgrade (building 150m 100g 50s) then 150m 150g 110s
Granted eventually Protoss get warp gates which can allow for rapid warp ins of units, and they gain force fields.
Honestly I think the core issue is Terran bio is currently way to strong early and mid game vs Protoss.
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Can someone please close this thread? I was about to post but it has been said over and over again:
It's all about utility/micro/and unit composition. SC2 is better than SC1 in regards to depth: It's completely ridiculous to compare ONE unit to another unit of an entirely different race whose roles are different: Stalker is a versatile unit that can triple as a support/dps'ish/AA but not amazing in any of those regards. Roach is a straightforward dps/tank unit that doesn't really deviate.
Done. End of story.
To answer the OP "Are stalkers useful?" - Yes. By God. Yes. You could go a risky build like zlot/sentry but one small blunder or play a better player and you lose outright. Stalkers fill the dps function in place of sentry but below zlot. All 3 are essential. There is no, "OMG, ONE IS BETTER THAN THE OTHER, IMBA/OP/QQ/GAMEFLAW."
Please people, stop attacking arguments that don't exist.
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On November 18 2010 17:57 Tobberoth wrote:
Compare the stalker to the hydra instead of to the roach and you'll see that stalkers are pretty nice. Not only are hydras T2 and more expensive than stalkers, they are also way slower, way less durable and can never learn to blink.
Protoss often consider their AA weak... but they have a better hydralisk as a T1 unit. I wouldn't mind roach being as expensive as a stalker, but they better get the ability to shoot air then, which is a huge bonus to any unit.
Why do people like you try to talk when your ignorant. Stalker is 125/50, hydra is 100/50. More expensive? You talk about the lower mobility and health but fail to mention the higher dps. Plus the potential for speed increase via creep. No bias here huh.
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On November 18 2010 13:28 GoldenH wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 13:04 RadicalEdwrd wrote:
Good info Golden, thanks for the reply. It seems to me that Stalkers are a very versatile unit which is why they are so expensive for their apparent strength. They are the glue that helps keep the Protoss army intact. They are also a very agile unit, which, if I'm not mistaken, offers a great deal of map control early game if you go for a small pack of Stalkers which you use aggressively, since they can harass effectively with little repercussions due to their speed.
I'm honestly not understanding the Stalker hate here. People are pitting mineral values against mineral values, but that's not all that's at stake here in these matchups. It was mentioned before that three Roaches beat two Stalkers while being less expensive, but the Roaches can't shoot up either, and they also can't catch the Stalkers without speed, so who is to say that the Stalkers are beaten by Roaches when the Roaches hypothetically can't even catch their intended target? Its true, Roaches can't shoot up, but think about it. Both Terran/Zerg get their armored anti-armored ground unit at T1. Protoss waits until T2 (IMMORTALS!). Immortals surprisingly, don't counter either of the other armored anti-armored ground units, and are worse in other ways, but they are even against those units. But one of Protoss' T1 units is still Armor. D: And actually, the roaches can catch the stalkers on Creep, its just, they can't really be aggressive with them until they get Roach Speed, then they're faster than stalkers off Creep too, but Stalkers have Blink so they can run away, but actually, that's not fast enough because the upgrade makes Roaches so incredibly fast on creep and late game they'll probably have a huge amount of the map covered in it.. This is a bigger deal than it may seem. If you're at your base, it doesn't really matter if you can chase them or not, you're not going to because you'll get flanked and lose. As long as you can keep up with them, you're good. If you're at their opponents base, and they run away, you just go "SWEET" and kill all their probes, gg. Ever seen 3 roaches in probe line, if they focus fire, they one shot probes. In the middle, before blink/roach speed stalkers are probably better, well, at least they WERE, until the range 4 upgrade. Now you can't kite them anymore so you just have to trade armies, guess that's better than trading probes. Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 13:04 RadicalEdwrd wrote:This is an interesting thread. Certainly helpful for me since I'm having trouble with my TvP matchup.
edit: Here's what I've put together --
Do you need map control with harassment potential? Stalkers or Phoenixes. Neither of which give you map control, they give you a pin to the opponents base for about ~3 minutes, which is enough to get an expo up or some tech out (actually, the other tech you NEED TO SURVIVE, since you already paid tech time to get Stalkers or Phoenix out in the first place. If your harassment was predicted, you die instantly.) Yup, though phoenix is actually terrible against battlecruiser/viking with marine support/corruptiors/brood lords. So you gotta get Stalkers in some situations, Carrier/Void Ray can be as good, but its pretty risky. Show nested quote +Do you need an early game DPS backbone against an armored infantry biased attack? Stalkers or Immortals.
Etc etc. Yup. Show nested quote +Stalkers do not fill a UNIQUE role, which is perhaps what is disturbing most Protoss players. However, they do fill MANY roles, which is where their value lies, and it should not be overlooked! To me, this makes it harder to catch a Protoss vulnerable while he's transitioning between techs since he has a halfway man of sorts to help bridge the gap in the form of Stalkers. I very well could be extremely wrong, though. Yeah, you're wrong in the point where you think they actually fill any role. It's easy to say, "Well, Stalkers prevent you from being kited," but that only works if the opponent thinks they're being prevented from kiting, if they just kite anyway, you lose. "Stalkers protect you from Air." Not if they actually commit to it, 2 port banshees or 3 base muta will crush any number of Stalkers. "Stalkers harass the opponent." Only for an amount of time it takes to get blink, and even then, only if they weren't ready for it, and unlike most harass options Stalkers don't make a good addition to your army. Stalker's one saving grace is that they can be built from warpgates and you need them for zealot/sentry. So if your opponent just pushes into your base with 1 too many air unit you can make it even with a round of stalkers. That's it tho.
Anti-armor unit? Zerg? What unit would this be?
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On November 18 2010 20:42 Digamma wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 17:57 Tobberoth wrote:
Compare the stalker to the hydra instead of to the roach and you'll see that stalkers are pretty nice. Not only are hydras T2 and more expensive than stalkers, they are also way slower, way less durable and can never learn to blink.
Protoss often consider their AA weak... but they have a better hydralisk as a T1 unit. I wouldn't mind roach being as expensive as a stalker, but they better get the ability to shoot air then, which is a huge bonus to any unit. Why do people like you try to talk when your ignorant. Stalker is 125/50, hydra is 100/50. More expensive? You talk about the lower mobility and health but fail to mention the higher dps. Plus the potential for speed increase via creep. No bias here huh.
Have you read any of GoldenH's posts? THAT'S bias for you.
To GoldenH, even in your last post you still insist on comparing Roaches and Stalkers in 1on1 situations despite numerous people having told you that you simply can not do that. Starcraft is
not a game where you just build one unit, you are ignoring so many other factors in this game that
one simply can not take your posts seriously. In you first post you mentioned that 3 lings can kill a stalker, i mean what the fuck? by your logic every zerg player could come here and complain about Hydras being useless against Stalkers and then claim that ZvP is broken, it simply doesn't work that way.
Yes, roaches may be more cost effective than stalkers, but games aren't as one dimensional as you seem to think, if i go mass roaches just build one void ray and end the game?
If toss players like you insist that they win more games with just 4-5 stalkers in the mix then by all means go on, any decent diamond player would WRECK that shit.
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Um, right, I'm sure your army has no stalkers in it.
Because you didn't build any.
Because they're not useful.
Seriously why is this thread still alive?
Next time post a slightly less retarded title if you want real discussion rather than protoss qq.
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Zurich15358 Posts
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EPT
