EPTwhats better to research? Armor or Weapons?
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BelCanto
United States27 Posts
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fadestep
United States605 Posts
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OutlaW-
Czech Republic5053 Posts
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BelCanto
United States27 Posts
TvP- Armor TvZ- weapon TvT- weapon But generally, what do pros get first? | ||
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BelCanto
United States27 Posts
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fadestep
United States605 Posts
TvT - Armor TvZ - Weapons TvP - Either | ||
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Perscienter
957 Posts
You usually can't make a mistake by upgrading weapons first. You usually really get both. Vs sling/bling/muta, you need the weapons vs banelings, but slings and muta demand armor upgrades. Vs high templars armor is useless, but they are often escorted by zealots, which have 2 attacks and therefore also demand armor upgrades. I currently don't know a situation like in bw, when you could head for 3-0-0 in PvT. | ||
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Waes
4 Posts
For example,im a zerg player.In zvz,if we both go mutalisk i get armor upgrade first for my mutas,because it dramatically reduces the splash damage.If he goes hydras,ill get attack upgrade for my mutas. There are so many scenarios like this in which your decision on what upgrades should be done first may change on what you are facing,or what race you are playing against. | ||
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Perscienter
957 Posts
On October 10 2010 03:14 Waes wrote: it depends... For example,im a zerg player.In zvz,if we both go mutalisk i get armor upgrade first for my mutas,because it dramatically reduces the splash damage.If he goes hydras,ill get attack upgrade for my mutas. I don't agree on this decision. A mutalisk attack upgrade will help your mutalisks against any opposite unit. It's clearly the superior upgrade decision. | ||
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lyAsakura
United States1414 Posts
On October 10 2010 03:17 Perscienter wrote: I don't agree on this decision. A mutalisk attack upgrade will help your mutalisks against any opposite unit. It's clearly the superior upgrade decision. Mutalisk vs mutalisk, armor is better. | ||
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Catreina
United States304 Posts
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Undercroft
United Kingdom166 Posts
- Going bio? get attack upgrades first. - Going mech? get attack upgrades unless going mass thor, in which case grab armour to lol at lings. - Going Air but not cruisers? Get air attack (and do hit and run attacks) - Going Cruisers? Get air armour (seriously. it makes BCs live so much longer. Can grab yamato to kill off counter units easier) | ||
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Perscienter
957 Posts
I tried to model a mutalisk vs mutalisk fight and have a few questions.
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Zombo Joe
Canada850 Posts
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ZeusWTFrudoin
United States35 Posts
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Perscienter
957 Posts
On October 10 2010 16:03 Perscienter wrote: I tried to model a mutalisk vs mutalisk fight and have a few questions.
I'm still wondering about those. Any ideas? | ||
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tetracycloide
295 Posts
On October 12 2010 22:53 Perscienter wrote: I'm still wondering about those. Any ideas? Minimum damage after armor reduction is .5 Fractions are computed as simple floating point operations. Health has several digits after the decimal that don't show in the UI that are used in damage calculations. Damage caused by a bounce is a fraction of the base damage less the target's armor. (damage * fraction) - armor In a straight muta vs. muta fight 1/0 mutas will loose to an equal number of 0/1 mutas every time. The reasoning is simple: Damage from attack upgrade is added completely to the first attack but only as a fraction to the second and third bounce. Damage reduction from armor upgrades reduces damage from all three attacks by the full amount to the mimimum of .5 | ||
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CDC.Mek
United States22 Posts
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Shikyo
Finland33997 Posts
On October 10 2010 03:07 ichangedmyname wrote: There really is no easy answer. If I had to break down what to get against the 3 races I would say. TvT - Armor TvZ - Weapons TvP - Either Why on earth would you go for Armor in TvT? Assuming your opponent gets +1 weapon and you get +1 armor, all their mech units will deal more damage in comparison and their Marauders will deal more damage in comparison to yours. You will have no advantages in any situation. | ||
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dcberkeley
Canada844 Posts
On October 13 2010 00:16 Shikyo wrote: Why on earth would you go for Armor in TvT? Assuming your opponent gets +1 weapon and you get +1 armor, all their mech units will deal more damage in comparison and their Marauders will deal more damage in comparison to yours. You will have no advantages in any situation. Huh? On the other side, all your mech will suffer less damage in comparison?! I don't understand your logic. You're just saying you would deal more damage with weapons upgrade. Which is obvious. On the other hand, his logic is probably that in TvT, which is dominated by high damage, slow shooting, armor will let you survive an extra hit or two and therefore you will be able to do one more hit on them, which is far more effective than getting a little bit more damage in. | ||
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Amber[LighT]
United States5078 Posts
On October 12 2010 22:53 Perscienter wrote: I'm still wondering about those. Any ideas? Not 100% sure: 1. Minimum damage is 1. I don't believe damage can be negated completely 2. Can't answer. 3. I think the mutalisk damage goes 9 - 3 - 1 for an unupgraded Mutalisk. If you upgrade armor the damage is 8 - 2 - 1. If you upgrade weapons it will be 10 - 4 - 2. Mutalisk info | ||
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.ImpacT.
United States390 Posts
On October 13 2010 00:24 dcberkeley wrote: Huh? On the other side, all your mech will suffer less damage in comparison?! I don't understand your logic. You're just saying you would deal more damage with weapons upgrade. Which is obvious. On the other hand, his logic is probably that in TvT, which is dominated by high damage, slow shooting, armor will let you survive an extra hit or two and therefore you will be able to do one more hit on them, which is far more effective than getting a little bit more damage in. The only time this occurs is if there is a "critical" hit number. + Show Spoiler [EXAMPLE FROM BW Source: Liquipedia] + TvT Weapons upgrades are very important in TvT, as they allow you to kill off an opposing Siege Tank in two shots, instead of three. This ability allows you to break tank contains much more easily, and also gives you an advantage when trying to blitz through a tank line. Since defensive upgrades cannot prevent your Tanks from dying to sieged Tanks in two shots (once two attack upgrades are done), armor upgrades are rarely seen. | ||
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Shikyo
Finland33997 Posts
On October 13 2010 00:24 dcberkeley wrote: Huh? On the other side, all your mech will suffer less damage in comparison?! I don't understand your logic. You're just saying you would deal more damage with weapons upgrade. Which is obvious. On the other hand, his logic is probably that in TvT, which is dominated by high damage, slow shooting, armor will let you survive an extra hit or two and therefore you will be able to do one more hit on them, which is far more effective than getting a little bit more damage in. I have a siege tank with +1 attack. You have a siege tank with +1 armor. My siege tanks deals 53 damage per attack to your siege tank, your siege tank deals 49 damage per attack to my siege tank. Your units will take MORE damage in comparison with armor. On October 13 2010 00:30 .ImpacT. wrote: The only time this occurs is if there is a "critical" hit number. + Show Spoiler [EXAMPLE FROM BW Source: Liquipedia] + TvT Weapons upgrades are very important in TvT, as they allow you to kill off an opposing Siege Tank in two shots, instead of three. This ability allows you to break tank contains much more easily, and also gives you an advantage when trying to blitz through a tank line. Since defensive upgrades cannot prevent your Tanks from dying to sieged Tanks in two shots (once two attack upgrades are done), armor upgrades are rarely seen. No, because the opposing attack upgrade completely negates the armor upgrade and even gives a bonus. Terran has all ranged units so it's not like with Zerg where your Zerglings have to get carapace in order to even get to attacking distance(plus it affects both ranged and melee units for Z). | ||
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DragonDefonce
United States790 Posts
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Hautamaki
Canada1311 Posts
On October 13 2010 00:29 Amber[LighT] wrote: Not 100% sure: 1. Minimum damage is 1. I don't believe damage can be negated completely 2. Can't answer. 3. I think the mutalisk damage goes 9 - 3 - 1 for an unupgraded Mutalisk. If you upgrade armor the damage is 8 - 2 - 1. If you upgrade weapons it will be 10 - 4 - 2. Mutalisk info Not sure if the same holds true in SC2 but this would be false in BW. If you upgrade damage you do 10 - 3.33 - 1.111 for a net gain of +1.444 damage. Armour gets you a net reduction in damage of 3; therefore the armour upgrade is more than twice as good. Not even factoring in that armor would also help your overlords. As far as the op's question it's a simple question of math. Almost all attack upgrades increase damage by 10-18%. All armor upgrades reduce the damage done to you by the enemy's units by exactly 1, therefore the percentage decrease varies from as much as 20% (in the case of a zergling) to a negligible amount (in the case of very high damage attacks like siege tanks or banelings). Therefore, generally speaking the damage upgrades are more likely to be useful. Note though that some attacks are X2 or even in the case of the Thor air attack X4, which means absolutely nothing in game terms aside from the fact that armour will count double (or quadruple) against that particular attack, making the armour upgrade more useful than it appears at first glance against these kinds of attacks. Of course everyone knows from SC:BW the importance of the protoss +1 attack vs zerg +1 carapace in zealot vs zergling because of this mechanic. Another factor comes into play though; ranged vs melee units. Generally, melee units have much higher dps, but that dps doesn't come into play nearly as reliably as a ranged unit's dps because the melee unit is much more likely to die before getting a decent amount of attacks in. Therefore, for most melee units, increasing their armour is actually more likely to increase their dps since it will increase their chances of closing to melee range and beginning to deal damage. Ranged units, likewise, generally have less HP and armour than melee units, and thus for them upgrading their attack damage is also the best way to increase their survivability against melee units. Increasing their armour when they have low HP and are facing very high dps melee units makes neglible difference. But increasing their attack and thus allowing them to pick off more melee units before they can get into melee combat reduces the enemy dps significantly. Bottom line is that if you are terran all your units are relatively low hp, low armour, ranged units. Attack is always the best choice. As protoss, armour helps your zealots immensely against most zerg ground units, especially zerglings (but does nothing for your other melee unit, archons), and against marines too (but not marauders so much) but damage is much better for your stalkers, immortals, colossi, (and archons too since armour is useless to them) therefore damage is also a first priority, though armour is still quite useful. As zerg armour is key for your zerglings, ultras, and even roaches vs enemy zerglings and MMM, and armour is better in muta vs muta too. Armour also has the benefit of affecting all ground units, whereas attack is divided into two categories. Therefore armour is the best first choice for zerg in most situations. | ||
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.ImpacT.
United States390 Posts
On October 13 2010 00:43 Shikyo wrote: I have a siege tank with +1 attack. You have a siege tank with +1 armor. My siege tanks deals 53 damage per attack to your siege tank, your siege tank deals 49 damage per attack to my siege tank. Your units will take MORE damage in comparison with armor. No, because the opposing attack upgrade completely negates the armor upgrade and even gives a bonus. Terran has all ranged units so it's not like with Zerg where your Zerglings have to get carapace in order to even get to attacking distance(plus it affects both ranged and melee units for Z). The liquipedia source was directed at armor will let you survive an extra hit or two and therefore you will be able to do one more hit on them, in the post above mine. | ||
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LionKingMax
Canada10 Posts
Yur T? Get Attack Yur P? Get Attack Yur Z? Get Armour Or after getting your core army, just start double upgrading. | ||
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EriktheGuy
Canada132 Posts
It's common as terran to have a few damage soaking units in front (maruader/thor) and a large group of marines in back. In this case, you can really amp up your army with infantry weapon upgrades. In the ZvT matchup, +1 ground weapons allow zealots to kill zerglings in 2 attacks instead of 3. I suggest going the Day9 route on this. Instead of trying to come up with general rules, try to come up with a few hard and fast rules for specific situations. If I am fighting zealots vs speedlings --> ground weapons If I have a lot of marines in the back --> infantry weapons If he is attacking my infantry with mutalisks --> infantry armor Experiment with those ideas, develop more rules over time. Try to be concise (get upgrade X at 20 food, etc). If you have a concise rule to apply, it will be mechanical during the game, requiring little attention to execute. | ||
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TheRealDJ
United States124 Posts
Bio-Attack, marines gaining a point of attack each upgrade vastly improves their attack damage, up to 50% more effective. Factory units - Armor, mostly going up against either ling or mutalisk, and few have a double attack, so its better to get vehicle plating for these to improve survivability since it adds up. Improving attack never improves the AtK ratio. Air - Attack, almost every unit has a double attack, so it doubles the effectiveness of attack upgrades | ||
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lololol
5198 Posts
Health and damage are accurate down to 1/4096. Minimum damage is 0.5, but if the damage is less than 0.5 in the first place then it is dealt directly. Mutalisk damage is 9->3->1, attack upgrades increase this by 1->0.333->0.111 each(exact values for the bounces are 1364/4096 and 455/4096, totalling 4092/4096 and 1365/4096 at full upgrades), so against mutalisks upgrading armor reduces more damage than their attack upgrades provide. | ||
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TSM
Great Britain584 Posts
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RoboBob
United States798 Posts
The problem with armor is that +1 armor always results in a unit simply receiving 1 more armor. But some units such as tanks and marauders receive scaling damage from attack upgrades. For example, a +1 siege tank goes from 35 + 15 vs armored to 38 + 17 vs armored, which in reality results in +3 or +5 damage. But another thing to consider is the rate of fire of your units. In the siege tank example above, yeah you get +3 to 5 damage, but the tank fires very slowly so you wont be applying that extra research damage very often. But a stimmed marine (or crackling) can fire off 5 shots while the siege tank is on cooldown, So even though +1 attack upgrade only gives marines/zerglings one extra damage, it's really like +5 damage because they can apply that +1 so often. Another thing to consider is splash damage. If you're opponent is using lots of splash (tanks, thors vs air) obviously armor will become a bit more attractive because +1 armor across each unit hit by the attack with reduce the total damage received by the total number of units hit. The same goes for units that have x2 or x4 attacks, since you "gain" the benefit of applying your armor multiple times on that single round of attacks. Of course, the opposite thing applies to units that have x2 or x4 attacks; in those cases +1 attack really becomes +2 or +4 because its applied to each individual attack in the round. But again, this assumes you're teching faster than your opponent, and that your damage gain per attack upgrade is greater than +2. Also another thing to consider is the HP totals of the units your fighting against. +1 attack zealots vs 0 armor zerglings is brutal because then the zealot can 2-shot the zergling instead of 3-shot, and if you're attacking with a pure zealot force that means that your zealots gain +50% extra effective damage vs zerglings in a straight-up fight to the death. But again, this factor assumes that your opponent has not picked up the +1 ground armor themselves, and if they did, this aspect of upgraded damage is reduced significantly. I think a good rule of thumb is that in the early/mid game, go armor vs units that have a fast rate of fire, and attack vs units that either have a slow rate of fire or you know your opponent isn't upgrading as fast as you and you can exploit an HP advantage. Of course this doesn't apply to every unit in every situation, just a rule of thumb. And then in the mid/late game, re-evaluate your unit composition. If you're using lots of multiattack units (like thors, vikings, banshees, etc) start favoring attacking upgrades, otherwise use the same early/mid game process. | ||
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link0
United States1071 Posts
T v P - Attack T v Z - Attack | ||
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rs_al
United States1 Post
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tehemperorer
United States2183 Posts
1. Generally, get them. Doesn't matter which one first, unless you have a timing attack planned. Some Examples: - PvZ: Attacking with Zeals early, get +1 weapons then attack because zeals 2 shot lings - PvT: "Winning Unit" I chose to tech for is High Templar... get ground armor so that EMP and marines have a tougher time against unshielded zealots/stalkers, Marauders have tougher time against unshielded zealots/HT - PvP: Ground weapons and armor: This fight will be between gateway/colossus armies, get both with preference for weapons (2/1 or 3/1) - PXXvXXX: Yeah, sure, it's 3vs3, I'll mass carriers... Air weapons and air armor exclusively, maybe shields - 2gate/Stargate timing: Get shields? Don't really know, but I think shields would be best because only mass marine can beat this build at the time in the game that it comes | ||
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Zvendetta
United States321 Posts
What should I FIRST upgrade, and then what should I be upgrading over the course of the game. A lot of people have given great information about why you should research armor or upgrades first in early mid game, and you really have to take each one as individual scenarios, but as the game progresses you should be considering how much you're investing in the army composition you have. For example, in Starting off with +1 weapons will make mutas much more efficient at killing workers, however, what if the terran transition into thors? I remember watching HD or one of the youtube commentators find that mutas have a threshold against thors. Unupgraded thors take FOUR shots to kill mutas if they have +2 armor researched, therefore the *perfect* (don't take this at face value though) for a zerg heavily investing in air would be to aim for getting +1/+2. BL's also benefit more from armor upgrades, so this would lend you enough gas to achieve a sizable army that isn't hindered in size because of upgrades. As far as ground forces go, the farther/longer the game progresses the more effective upgrades will be. Weapon upgrades and armor upgrades do essentially cancel eachother out, but it comes to a point where you're economy can support double upgrade buildings (engineering bay for bioball, double evos for zerg, double forge- but if you stick with chronos well you may not need it.) | ||
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EriktheGuy
Canada132 Posts
@ OP If you do not know what attack to kill (AtK) ratio is, it's simply the number of attacks one unit needs to kill another. It can vary with upgrades, and help you decide which upgrades to take. For example, 0/0 zealots kill 0/0 zerglings in 3 (AtK=3) hits, while 1/0 zealots kill them in only 2 (AtK=2) hits. Furthermore +2/0 zealots do not do any better than the +1/0 zealots (AtK=2). This means that upgrading zealot weapons once is increasing damage output by 50%, and increasing a second time increases damage output by 0% (in this particular unit matchup). This means that lvl 1 ground weapon upgrades can be very important in the ZvT matchup. | ||
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Nazarid
United States445 Posts
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Zvendetta
United States321 Posts
I want to take it onestep further-- Remember that upgrades will essentially cancel each other out. +1 weapons are negated by +1armor, minute differences aside. So, knowing that if a protoss is opting to build +1 weapons to make his lots 2shot lings, you can anticipate this by preparing +1armor for your zerg army. (You have to really think about the descision though since its 50 min 50 gas more expensive) In ZvP, ground armor is definitely more important to specifically nullify the bonuses toss get from weapons. | ||
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SovereignGFC
United States13 Posts
Infantry: Weapons first Mech: Weapons first Ships: Depends--if I'm going MMM I upgrade the armor first so Medivacs are tougher, but if I'm going air-attack I upgrade weapons first. I'm also a big fan of dual upgrade buildings. Does anyone else do this? I find it lets me out-tech my opponent so whatever I do is more effective (since I've never seen anyone actually do the same thing I do with more than one upgrade building). | ||
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Ryuu314
United States12679 Posts
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EriktheGuy
Canada132 Posts
On October 13 2010 13:01 Ryuu314 wrote: I'm pretty sure as Terran weapons first is always better simply because of how well it scales. The only time I'd imagine armor being better than weapons is against mutas... Yeah, this is probably always true. | ||
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canikizu
4860 Posts
This clip talks about some good number evolving around upgrading. Personally I only upgrade weapon. If I have 2 engineering bay or armory, I will upgrade other stuffs too, but if I want to squeeze tech from a single tech building, I only go with weapon. | ||
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doerit
Germany234 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + He provides some very interesting information and juggles a lot with numbers. One example:Thor(0/0) vs. Drone/Zergling(0/0) takes one round of attack to kill, vs. Hydras(0/0) two. The number of attacks to kill these units will not change with upgrades, a 3/0 Thor will still need one round of attack to kill a drone/zergling (0/0) and two to kill a hydra (0/0). Crota provides some empirical evidence to answer this question. I liked it a lot. Edit: It takes way to long to write my posts :D | ||
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osten
Sweden316 Posts
But this dosen't matter, only exactly how many shots unit x needs against unit y. The metagame is the only concern, and that's just something you need to teach yourself with that spreadsheet  | ||
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Oxb
199 Posts
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BEARDiaguz
Australia2362 Posts
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Velr
Switzerland10774 Posts
+Weapon upgrades are often more than +1 DMG. +Armor upgrdes are allways just +1 Armor. Therefore it's often better to get Attack-Upgrades, especially for Metal-Units. | ||
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Lighioana
Norway466 Posts
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MrMotionPicture
United States4327 Posts
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EriktheGuy
Canada132 Posts
On October 13 2010 23:15 Lighioana wrote: That depends. All you have to do it open a unit tester map and test things. You will a lot of useful stuff like for example: as zerg, against zealots it's better to upgrade attack for zerlings, but for roaches the carapace is better. Actually, once those zealots get +1 weapon upgrades, +1 armor on your zerglings increases the number of attacks needed to kill them by half (3 instead of 2) | ||
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DoubleReed
United States4130 Posts
Yeah it's got 100% to do with what units you both have. Anyway if you were to look at it generally and logically armor would always be better, the people saying attack is better are not logical and jumping on a false bandwagon. That's why it costs more. If you can afford both armor is ofc more value for the same amount of time and it gives you damage if your units survive more and it gives you hp against things you cannot know in the future like marauders vs air and lets you position yourself and gives your units more time to reach goals. Well the list goes on. Don't listen to noobs that don't have arguments for their bandwagon style of posting. Attack is not always better, only cheaper, which actually makes it better. If you are not pro, almost always get armor. Don't give in to wishful thinking. TvZ, Terran has all ranged vs zerg with mostly short range. Attack is generally better because you'll kill more units before they're able to get in range. THAT is how you survive longer. Terran should almost always get attack first. With Protoss it's generally better to get attack first because the armor and shield upgrades are separate, so it ends up costing more. Only with zerg is it generally better to get armor. | ||
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