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Disclaimer: I'm ~850 diamond Protoss player (sorry, I know some people don't like posting rating at the top, but I think it helps to have a sense of a poster's level of play)
Terran players have been using hellions to great effect against Zerg since early beta, but hellions are still widely underused in TvP. As a Protoss player, I find the hellion to be the most scary unit in the Terran arsenal by far. I believe hellions are presently underused because seeing their true values requires looking a little deeper into the meta-game, but soon, hellions will be widely regarded as a staple unit in TvP.
First, the obvious: hellions are great harassment units. They're one of the fastest units in the game, and their line of splash damage makes them perfectly suited to dash into a base and wipe out big chunks of workers in a flash. With the ignitor upgrade, they 2-shot probes, so a pair of hellions can easily kill 10+ workers on a saturated mineral line in a single volley if they get into position. They're also cheap, mineral-only units that come out of a mandatory tech structure, which means you can afford to lose them in harass, and they don't drain your precious gas away from the marauders, tanks, banshees and ravens that you want to have against Protoss.
To fully understand why hellions are so scary, however, you need to consider the interaction between bio and the Protoss composition options at T2 (when hellions are available). Ignoring phoenixes and void rays for the moment, (P can't responsively use phoenixes or void rays against hellions because they take too long to get up and running) P has zealots, stalkers, sentries and immortals available at T2. Marine-marauder with stim is an incredibly potent force when controlled well, and of the T2 options listed above, P is left with one answer that's clearly better than the rest: tanking shots with zealots.
Consider: Zealots cost 100 minerals and take 17 marauder shots to kill. Stalkers cost 125/50 and take 9 shots to kill. Sentries cost 50/100 and take 8 shots to kill. Immortals cost 250/100 and take 21 marauder shots to kill. For cost, zealots tank shots from MM about 3 times better than any other Protoss unit depending on how you value gas vs minerals and the ratio of marines to marauders. This is HUGE. Having zealots in front of your stalkers and immortals is like having the HP of your units multiplied by 3. Zealots are the reason Protoss can compete with MM in the early-to-mid-game. Without zealots, the effectiveness of the T2 Protoss army is roughly halved (durability is less than half, but the damage output is slightly increased by building more stalkers and immortals).
So by now, the true threat of the hellion should be becoming clear. Not only is the hellion an insanely good harassment unit, but it also crushes the one unit that is the lynchpin of any early or mid-game Protoss composition. If you throw in a handful of hellions with the pre-ignitor upgrade into your primary MM composition, Protoss's zealots will evaporate, leaving the squishy stalkers and immortals exposed. Unless P already has an economic lead giving him a substantially larger army, P's only option will be to fall back into his base to forcefield his ramp until T3 when he can use storm or collosi to push out. During this time, the Terran player has free reign over the map to expand, add tanks or banshees, and continue harassment.
So, in conclusion, if you're a Terran player, use hellions more, and get the pre-ignitor upgrade. They're great harassment units, but even better, they're an incredibly effective complement to your main MM composition. Building hellions with pre-ignitor is a rare opportunity to efficiently improve both your harassment potential and the strength of your main army composition. In my opinion, no other unit in the game is as strong in both harassment and augmenting your main army composition (banshees are a distant second followed by zerglings and blink stalkers, IMO).
And if you're a Protoss player....well, fear hellions with pre-ignitor. Terrans aren't using them much right now, but in time, they will, and they'll be really hard to deal with.
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Results from unit tester. I used 1/1 infantry upgrades and no vehicle upgrades for Terran, 1/1 ground weapon/armor upgrades for Protoss, provided stim, conc shell, combat shield, pre-ignitor and charge. I used only limited micro to place zealots in front of stalkers before sending units and stimmed the MM right before they hit P army. Results:
Let's say P is concerned about facing a composition that's roughly half marines, half marauder by cost. To start, I tried 12 marauders and 22 marines against a balanced T2 Protoss army of 10 zealots, 10 stalkers and 2 immortals. Well, it turns out that:
12 marauders, 22 marines (2300/300) >> 10 zealots, 10 stalkers, 2 immortals (2750/700)
The Terran army, at significantly smaller cost, easily defeats this balanced Protoss composition every time. So our Protoss hero rethinks his composition, favoring zealots over stalkers. Results:
12 marauders, 22 marines (2300/300) is roughly equal to 16 zealots, 10 stalkers, 2 immortals (2725/450)
These battles went both ways, although I think the Protoss army came out on top more often. We'll call it even. While the cheaper Terran army is still roughly even with the Protoss composition, Protoss has to be happy that they can make their composition slightly less expensive and actually do much better against MM by skewing their composition toward zealots. This is in line with my earlier statement that zealots are ESSENTIAL against MM.
Now, let's try swapping in some hellions for marines against this more efficient Protoss composition:
12 marauders, 10 marines, 6 hellions (2300/300) narrowly beats 16 zealots, 10 stalkers, 2 immortals (2725/450)
So at the same cost, Terran can actually improve his composition against the more efficient zealot-heavy Protoss composition by replacing some of his marines with hellions.
Conclusion: These results indicate that, at the very least, Terran's main army composition is made no worse against an efficient Protoss mid-game composition by replacing some of the marines with hellions.
Now think about which composition is better for harass. Would you rather have 12 marauders and 22 marines for harassment, or would you take the 12 marauders, 10 marines and 6 hellions? It's not even close. Now, sure, the hellions aren't better than marines against more balanced Protoss compositions, but MM is so efficient against those compositions that you're guaranteed map control against those balanced compositions with either pure MM or MM+hellion.
Against a balanced Protoss composition, Terran will have mid-game map control with either MM or MM+hellion. Against a zealot-skewed Protoss composition, mid-game map control will be a battle
with a pure MM force, but a MM+hellion force will do somewhat better at winning Terran map control. A MM+hellion force is infinitely better for harassment than a pure MM force. So why wouldn't you add hellions to your mid-game composition?
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Adding a thought that I buried in a comment in the thread to the OP because I'd like more people to read it.
I'd like to see a small nerf to hellion damage vs zealots. Hellions are clearly designed to be harassment units, and building harassment units over muscle units should hurt the strength of your main army composition at least slightly. (Think muta-ling vs roach-hydra) In my experience, adding hellions slightly improves the strength of your main army, which makes them a little too good. IMO, nerfing their damage to 21 (so they still 2-shot drones) instead of 24 against light would more clearly define their role as a harassment unit. I don't think most Terran players would really mind this change, as the vast majority of them already see hellions as harassment-only units.
What do people think about changing hellion damage from 8 + 8 vs light (8 + 16 vs light w/ pre-ignitor) to 8 + 8 vs light (8 + 13 vs light w/ pre-ignitor)? IMO, a corresponding reduction in the cost of the pre-ignitor upgrade from 150/150 to 100/100 would be prudent, since it would add only 5 points of damage instead of 8. I believe hellions would remain effective combat units against zealots, hydras and zerglings--their combat-effectiveness would just be more in line with their mobility.
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Reposting my reply to the closed thread since you insist on reposting this everywhere:
I love my hellions, but I generally don't run bio in TvP. Chargelots with HT or colossi, sentry and stalker support do fine vs bioball + hellions, especially if you micro zealots out of tantalizing lines. FF is obviously effective at blocking them from reaching your HTs, making them path around, etc. If the Terran builds too many hellions, he won't have the minerals to make enough marauders to deal with the rest of your army.
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On August 26 2010 02:37 Shaithis wrote:
Reposting my reply to the closed thread since you insist on reposting this everywhere:
I love my hellions, but I generally don't run bio in TvP. Chargelots with HT or colossi, sentry and stalker support do fine vs bioball + hellions, especially if you micro zealots out of tantalizing lines. FF is obviously effective at blocking them from reaching your HTs, making them path around, etc. If the Terran builds too many hellions, he won't have the minerals to make enough marauders to deal with the rest of your army.
It's a different thread with a different angle. I think this is a topic that's worthy of a thread, and it'd be nice if we could keep this one free of flaming.
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hellions against P are not very good. in most situations I rather have 2 marines than a hellion. Yes they are good for harassing but including them in your army comp leaves your open to be countered alot easier. They will destroy all zealots and HTs with any micro but any smart P will quickly react to your lower mara numbers and produce more stalkers and immortals. After all your maras and damage dealers die 8 hellions are worthless against any number of stalkers. I do agree T should include hellions more, but more so for flanking a P army to snipe HTs or for harassing. Including them in your army just means less maras can hit the front line.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
Some replays/examples would really liven this thread up imo.
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On August 26 2010 02:46 Plexa wrote:
Some replays/examples would really liven this thread up imo.
I agree, ill look for some of my own, seems like an opinion battle ATM
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On August 26 2010 02:46 Plexa wrote:
Some replays/examples would really liven this thread up imo.
If you run equal cost compsitions of zealot/stalker/immortal vs MM and MM+blue hellion, you'll see what I'm talking about. I unfortunately don't have replays of it saved ATM because T plays so rarely use pre-ignitor. If a good T player wants to help generate some replays, let me know.
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Its just (yet) another Gateway-unit-destroying option they have, although there are a lot of Terrans who use their Factory as nothing but a scout or advanced warning system, when they could be using it to produce some pretty scary harassment and Zealot-destroying units with excess minerals. Those ones will figure it out eventually.
I'd rather they replaced Marines with Hellions, because it means I don't need Psi Storm, I can stick with T2 and my Void Rays and Phoenixes can get at them easier. But, when they build Hellions alongside the Marines, that becomes a pretty big problem.
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On August 26 2010 02:45 tipakee wrote:
hellions against P are not very good. in most situations I rather have 2 marines than a hellion.
Perhaps you should reconsider. With MM, marines are really there to kill zealots. Against stalkers, marauders do the same damage and have much better durability. Marines are helpful if P happens to have multiple immortals, but really, marines are there to deal with zealots.
Both stimmed marines and hellions do about 10 dps to zealots. Marines cost half as much, but hellions have double the HP of a stimmed marine (more than double w/o combat shield) and hellions have a big splash damage. So with regard to zealots (the marine's primary early-game purpose), hellions are substantially better in a head-to-head fight, and they also offer huge harrassment potential.
You definitely don't want to abandon marines entirely in favor of hellions. You need something that shoots up in case P gets a void ray, and marines will be helpful against immortals. But throwing in a handful of hellions with pre-ignitor is, IMO, a stronger play than spending that same money on marines.
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I dont think hellions are that strong against protoss actually, they just have a few things going against them.
First of all protoss always get stalkers because of marauder kiting and reapers. Stalkers are just neccesary in every PvT opening and partly because of that PvT always starts with relatively fast warpgates as well. Those 2 facts combined mean hellion harass is quite easy to counter early on. Later on hellion harass isn't superb against toss either because (blink) stalkers can be warped in a substantial amount and protoss has the least trouble of all races to quickly replace probes (excess nexus energy).
Also it's important to note the hellion might be a anti-light unit but it's damage output is mainly dependant on splash damage because even against light it's damage output isn't that fantastic.
A hellion does 9.6 DPS against light with pre-igniter if it hits 1 unit. A zealot does 13.33 DPS against anything without upgrades. So the thing making hellions decent combat units is not their damage against light but it's splash on light units and against protoss it's just difficult to really splash lots of units. Zealots with charge tend to space out quite a bit and don't take as much damage then, up close the zealots kill the hellion really fast so as front line unit they aren't exactly good either.
All in all money is usually just better spent on marines then hellions, i'll just name a few more reasons:
- hellions can't be healed with your medivacs, it's generally easier to have a entire army that can be healed as that makes kiting far easier and you can heal up entirely from a storm that partly hit you. Hellions taking some hits from storms just sucks. Also hellions are dodgy with their kiting (acting differently then infantry) making it much harder to kite with a marine/marauder/hellion/medivac army.
- hellions dont benefit from your infantry upgrades, especially lacking armor really makes them cannon fodder when the protoss gets some attack upgrades. For example a zealot with 1 attack upgrade exactly 5 shots a non-upgraded hellion in 6 seconds, that same pre-ignited hellion takes 12.5 seconds to roast a EMP'ed zealot!
- the pre-igniter upgrade can be hassle to get if you don't bother with siege tanks. Sure you can put a tech lab on your factory and put that tech lab to a barracks later but why should you bother if hellions aren't worth it. Also pre-igniter is quite costly to get if you only intend on using 1 factory for hellions...
- Using the factory for hellions because it's otherwise idle anyway is a nice idea but 1 factory hellions aren't too much of a real output anyway. Also barracks aren't too expensive so just upping your barracks count isn't that high of a cost especially later in the game. Also lots of people prefer to use that 1 required factory for some siege tanks.
- Hellions may harass nicely but so do medivac drops. You usually have enough attention going to those that you aren't really waiting for hellions and their harass ability.
The real power of hellions lies early game imo. Then all these above mentioned issue's aren't there yet as you won't have medivacs, won't have upgrades and a idle building IS still a waste. Usage in the line of TLO's play is how I like them most. Using the factory for early game aggresion while at the same time teching quite quickly to starport(s).
Later on you're better off floating the factory or making siege tanks then getting into the trouble of researching pre-igniter, a ghost or a infantry attack upgrade is just a far better way to spend your 150m 150g....
Edit: There should really come a custom micro map for sc2. It would help solve a lot of discussions about which army composition is better then what. About half the discussions on here go about bio vs mech, colossi vs templar, roach/hydra vs ultra/ling etc etc. A micro map where players alternate between sides and play 20 marauders 30 marines 5 medivacs vs a toss army and then 20 marauders 20 marines 5 medivacs 5 blue flame hellions vs a toss army would easily solve the discussion of their army potential.
Marines are a much better way to spend your money once a few upgrades kick in imo but it's impossible to proof for me right now.
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the problem with hellions is that they're so squishy if caught out of position and you really need blue flame to do good damage vs zealots. now it takes a tech lab to get blue flame, so it's kind of a meh situation. hellions aren't that good of a combat unit alone without blue flame, so unless you can get some kind of marine marauder hellion kiting thing going i don't think it'll be effective
mech is another story
i agree with harassing, don't think blue flame is needed for that though
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The main idea is to use hellions to kill zealots as you stim kite the rest of the army. That way all the zealots are clumped up together and aren't wrapped around your army.
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Once Terrans start harassing effectively with blue flame hellion drops, I don't realistically see Protoss winning. It's just impossible to cost effectively defend since hellions, if microed properly, eat probes so fast. Vultures could be killed by cannons before they could kill too many probes, but you can't even run probes vs hellions, and if they stand in the mineral line you just die to micro, even with 3 cannons.
Hellions are also good vs all gateway units and are decent vs Immortals.
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Hellions aren't good vs stalkers, that was only the case when stalkers were useless, ie. did 8 dmg per shot in the beta. Stalkers eat them up quite fast nowadays.
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Now that I think about it, these things are basically speedlings that are a bajillion times more deadly, but arrive later and are harder to mass.
Are we going to see Protoss having to wall-off with a wad of Stalkers against Terran soon?
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as a random balance notion, i kind of wonder why they are light. it doesn't really make sense out of any balance notion as ranged units tend to deal bonus damage to armor, going against what would be the intuitive answer to them.
perhaps Dark Templar? getting Pre-Igniter is costly and to really feel safe against DT, they'd want Combat Shields (so DT don't one-shot them) and Ravens (so you can attack them). All of that will set back their core army size significantly. Dark Shrine is more costly than Pre-Igniter, but is at the same speed and they have to accommodate the threat.
I actually, like getting my Dark Shrine scouted and not specifically intend to make any of them as it's roughly the same cost as getting a Raven so it pays for itself right there. Since it's easy to warp in DT quickly, it's easy to just respond to how defensively they play, and punish them if they try to skimp on it.
But in this case if you can get it out, they pretty much might get one scan of pushing then have to fall back, if that at all. Going MMH would look to be pretty mineral intensive so I wouldn't be surprised if they had to Mule/Depot most of their energy.
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On August 26 2010 03:27 Piy wrote:
Once Terrans start harassing effectively with blue flame hellion drops, I don't realistically see Protoss winning. It's just impossible to cost effectively defend since hellions, if microed properly, eat probes so fast. Vultures could be killed by cannons before they could kill too many probes, but you can't even run probes vs hellions, and if they stand in the mineral line you just die to micro, even with 3 cannons.
Hellions are also good vs all gateway units and are decent vs Immortals.
I really never seem to have much trouble with Helions, but maybe I simply haven't faced a Terran with the right control to pose a threat with them. In any case one route to stop Helions altogether would be to make a complete wall (i.e. closed) get blink stalkers and/or warp prisms to move your troops around. This way the T will have to go for an outright drop on the P base (which should be more easily defended) than simply run Helions up your ramp.
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On August 26 2010 03:18 Markwerf wrote:
- hellions can't be healed with your medivacs, it's generally easier to have a entire army that can be healed as that makes kiting far easier and you can heal up entirely from a storm that partly hit you. Hellions taking some hits from storms just sucks. Also hellions are dodgy with their kiting (acting differently then infantry) making it much harder to kite with a marine/marauder/hellion/medivac army.
- hellions dont benefit from your infantry upgrades, especially lacking armor really makes them cannon fodder when the protoss gets some attack upgrades. For example a zealot with 1 attack upgrade exactly 5 shots a non-upgraded hellion in 6 seconds, that same pre-ignited hellion takes 12.5 seconds to roast a EMP'ed zealot!
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Edit: There should really come a custom micro map for sc2. It would help solve a lot of discussions about which army composition is better then what. About half the discussions on here go about bio vs mech, colossi vs templar, roach/hydra vs ultra/ling etc etc. A micro map where players alternate between sides and play 20 marauders 30 marines 5 medivacs vs a toss army and then 20 marauders 20 marines 5 medivacs 5 blue flame hellions vs a toss army would easily solve the discussion of their army potential.
Marines are a much better way to spend your money once a few upgrades kick in imo but it's impossible to proof for me right now.
That's a good point re: medivacs. Still, medivacs complement hellions nicely as well because hellion drops are about 20x as scary as bio drops. With a bio drop, you pull your probes away, and warp in a couple zealots while you get back in position. Bio drops are good, but they're easier to deal with. Hellion drops, however--well, you can't run your probes away from hellions. It bunches them up in an overlapping line, meaning two hellions will 1-shot every single probe you've got. Anyway, once medivacs and infantry upgrades are in play, yes, I believe marines are stronger in the main army, but I'd still keep a handful of hellions because they're almost as good and they can split off from the main army to hit multiple positions.
That's kind of a false comparison between zealots and hellions. Hellions will hit several targets with each shot, multiplying their damage output. Also, hellions kite zealots. Yes, a hellion takes 17.5 seconds to kill a zealot. For comparison, a stimmed marauder marauder takes 17 seconds to kill a zealot (12 seconds to kill an EMPed zealot) and they only hit a single target. A stimmed marine takes 16.6 seconds to kill a zealot. So against one zealot, you're probably better off with the other options. In a real game, however, a handful of hellions will evaporate P's entire complement of zealots in 2 shots meaning he won't even have time to reinforce. A handful of hellions are as or more cost-effective against P compositions than the same cost in marines in head-to-head fights, but they also open up a ton of harrassment opportunities. They're a really solid investment.
With regard to the micro map, that's a great idea.
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Hellions are a cool unit they just need a ton of micro, and like previous posts have said, they lose their luster shortly after the early game. They aren't a bad unit to throw in the mix as a secondary, or tertiary control group though to help assist with zealots, but that's all about their good for. (workers are a given)
They need pre-igniter for sure, they have kind of low hp and cost 2 supply (lowest hp 2 supply unit in the game? someone correct me if i'm wrong), and are light armor. The low hp thing makes them pretty susceptible to colossus if they are in the wrong position (which ideally is backing up marines/marauders at the front lines dealing with zealots). They also fire really slow, additionally the splash is a fickle thing. Stop-attacking is sort of an art with them.
To really make them part of your army you're going to need some more factories since I don't know if many terran would be willing to sacrifice the production slot for a tank/thor. Don't get me wrong, they've got a lot of potential, but I think the amount of effort to make them work, both economically, and micro-wise. You may be better off building something else.
There's a good post about the GhostMech build which utilizes hellions with tanks and ghosts which is probably their best composition slot.
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On August 26 2010 02:57 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2010 02:46 Plexa wrote:
Some replays/examples would really liven this thread up imo. If you run equal cost compsitions of zealot/stalker/immortal vs MM and MM+blue hellion, you'll see what I'm talking about. I unfortunately don't have replays of it saved ATM because T plays so rarely use pre-ignitor. If a good T player wants to help generate some replays, let me know.
I am more than willing to provide. My general bio followup is 2 factory, 1 with reactor 1 tech. Hellions from reactor, siege tanks from tech. From there I get ignitor then siege mode (siege is basically there to deal with substantial colossi numbers, but most people don't even get colossi anymore.)
Ignitor hellions are the proper followup unit in the current metagame. Chargelots are just too strong vs bio, and coupled with storm and immortals, shred any size bioball with extreme effectiveness. You HAVE to get ignitor hellions. In addition, the potential to wipe out an entire base of probes is completely amazing. I've won so many games by getting 2 hellions into the main or just barreling 12 hellions into their expos 1 by 1. Also, once hellions get to a nice number (8-10) they absolutely murder everything light. If you get even more (20+) they start to murder stalkers and immortals too, which is hilarious. The splash does eventually kick in and they start becoming ridiculously good.
The biggest fear you should have when making hellions is colossi and storm + ff. Trapped and stormed hellions melt instantly, but fortunately good control and just diving to pick HTs can solve that problem, as well as ghosts (though feedback often shuts that down.) Colossi just hard counter hellions, so of course you need tanks/air to take care of them.
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EPT
