EPTIf anything we should be talking about the marauder, something about that unit just seems unfair.
[D] Stalker weapons upgrades: +1 or +1(+1)? - Page 5
| Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy |
|
emc
United States3088 Posts
If anything we should be talking about the marauder, something about that unit just seems unfair. | ||
|
Darkstar_X
United States197 Posts
On October 20 2010 12:27 wherebugsgo wrote: I don't know how many times this needs to be said, but stalkers are not the "I win unit" for protoss. You cannot expect a unit that hits air and ground and has mobility to be able to kill everything. It's just not a reasonable expectation. Stalkers are already very strong vs ground targets. They outrange marines and roaches, they do considerable damage vs structures such as spine crawlers and bunkers, and are able to snipe repairing SCVs or out-of-position units such as queens. They can easily go toe to toe with unupgraded or lone Marauders, and can function as panic AA when needed. What more from a unit could you possibly want? Giving stalkers +1/+1 will break stalker/colossus in the TvP matchup and quite possibly the TvZ matchup too. There would be no need for immortal; just get a forge and chrono tech while pumping colossus and stalker. I don't understand how you can possibly say this and think anyone will take you seriously. Cost for cost, are the weakest unit versus ground units and air units so saying they are "already very strong" is preposterous. The do less dps to structures than every other unit in the game including things like zerglings, zealots, and marines (let alone immortals, thors, ultralisk etc). Saying they "can easily go toe to toe with marauders" makes you look like a complete idiot. As far as AA goes, there simply isn't a cost efficient answer to air. The Phoenix trades with vikings, beats muta with micro, and looses to the rest. Void Rays are even worse.The difference of a +1 to armor upgrade is so minor, I simply don't understand people saying it will "break" matchups or make Carriers, Battlecruisers and Broodlords unusable. | ||
|
Vasili
Australia125 Posts
| ||
|
wherebugsgo
Japan10647 Posts
On October 21 2010 16:14 Darkstar_X wrote: I don't understand how you can possibly say this and think anyone will take you seriously. Cost for cost, are the weakest unit versus ground units and air units so saying they are "already very strong" is preposterous. The do less dps to structures than every other unit in the game including things like zerglings, zealots, and marines (let alone immortals, thors, ultralisk etc). Saying they "can easily go toe to toe with marauders" makes you look like a complete idiot. As far as AA goes, there simply isn't a cost efficient answer to air. The Phoenix trades with vikings, beats muta with micro, and looses to the rest. Void Rays are even worse.The difference of a +1 to armor upgrade is so minor, I simply don't understand people saying it will "break" matchups or make Carriers, Battlecruisers and Broodlords unusable. On paper, stalkers seem weak. But you forget things like: blink, shield regen, range, ROF, etc. etc. that all make the stalker a different (and often stronger) unit than, for example, roaches, marines, zealots, lings, and so on. Can they go toe-to-toe against marauders? Yes! Ever seen someone use micro to kill marauders with stalkers before upgrades have come into effect? Prior to marauders getting stim (and stalkers getting blink) in small numbers, stalkers are surprisingly effective against marauders. Since they are faster than marauders, you can preserve them (and punish the T) very easily. Then, think about what other grounds units hit both air and ground AND are as mobile as stalkers. No such unit exists! Marines can't blink, marines are weak in terms of health, and marines do not handle area damage well. Hydralisks are practically immobile, also weak in health, and also do not handle area damage well. They also require an upgrade to even be viable, Stalkers regenerate shields very quickly (like all toss units), are very mobile, and are the most durable "average" unit in the game (compare to marines or hydralisks.) The reason Marines are often massed more than stalkers is because marines do more DPS and marines synergize well with medevacs. Stim adds to both DPS and synergy. Stalkers use a different mechanism for preservation (that of blink micro) but make up for it by generally lasting longer than both marines and hydras, and being able to abuse position and mobility more easily. You can more easily punish an advantage and retreat from a bad situation with stalkers than you can with either hydras or marines. I say stalkers are considerably strong because of both their durability and their mobility. The few ground targets that beat stalkers cost-for-cost are slaughtered by the units that support stalkers. Period. And, the best part is that you don't need many of those support units. EDIT: I forgot to mention a key reason for marine vs stalker massability: most of the people in this thread think you should be able to get away with massing stalkers, but you can't because they cost vespene, and you need vespene for higher tech units. Marines are a mineral dump, so it's generally acceptable for T to dump minerals into massing marines when necessary. | ||
|
MalVortex
United States119 Posts
Numbers are in dps gained per attack level. DPS is used instead of an arbitrary "hits to kill target x from attacking unit y", as this is the raw attack benifit. Obviously things like +1 attack zeals vs x/0 lings will have much larger in game impacts than these raw numbers will indicate for this reason. Conversely, in large, mixed army battles, raw dps numbers will much more adequately represent the chaotic "shots everywhere" effect of massed, varried units firing on massed, varried units. This is precisely the scenario the thread seeks an addressing of: lategame stalker scaling compared to, well, any other unit. If units have +bonus vs X, that bonus is assumed to be in effect. The entire thread is looking at the stalkers bonused attack scaling, so the numbers are an apple to apple comparison of other +attack bonuses when available. Similarly, core DPS upgrades are assumed to be in effect (or their effect listed alongside base) - nobody gets +1 attack before stim, for example. Stalker scaling is in question, and scaling only happens in the mid and late game when the time and money for significant unit improvements are available. Ignoring other core damage bumps would not, therefore, be a fair comparison. Protoss: Tier ~1: Zealot: 1.67 (charge's effect on damage output is highly variable, but it can reasonably be assumed this unit generally scales better than 1.67 when that is in effect.) Stalker: 0.69 Sentry: 1.0 Tier ~2: Immortal: 3.45 Phoenix: 1.8 Voidray: 1.67 Tier ~3: Dark Templar: 2.95 Colossus: 2.42 Carrier: 5.33 (0.67 added per interceptor) Mothership: 2.1 Archon: 2.3 Terran: Tier ~1: Stimmed marine: 1.74 Stimmed Marauder: 2.0 Ghost: 1.33 Reaper: 1.82 vs units, 1.67 vs buildings Tier ~2: Helion: 0.8 weapon upgrade, +6.4 pre-ignitor (average 2.2 if you lump in 3 attack upgrades and infernal as its total, endgame scaling efficiency) Tank: 2.88 mobile, 1.67 siege Viking: 1 Banshee: 1.6 Tier ~3: Thor: 4.69 vs ground, 1.33 vs air Battlecruiser: 4.44 Zerg: Tier 1: Zergling: 1.44 (1.7 w/ adrenal)(this is per zergling, double this number if you want to count zerglings as 2 unit per "unit") Roach: 1.00 Queen: 2 vs ground, 1 vs air Baneling: * (infinite or zero, depending how you want to call it) Tier 2 Hydralisk: 1.20 Mutalisk: 0.95 (glaive bounce included) Infested Terran: 1.16 Corrupter: 1.05 Tier 3 Ultralisk: 4.65 Broodlord: 0.8 (direct damage), 1.55 (broodling attack) So, what can we conclude? There are only three units in the game with below 1.0 dps/upgrade in the game: the mutalisk, the broodlord (depending how you count broodling scaling), and the stalker. The mutalisk is a fantastic unit, and they scale very nearly to 1.0 as it stands. The broodlord result surprised me, but once you factor in broodling damage the numbers even out quite a bit, let alone the wall of broodlings to screw up movement and attack ai on units The third unit is the stalker, and it is the worst scaling unit in the game. The mutalisk, the only other "true" <1.0 dps/upgrade unit in the game, scales ~38% better. The sentry, a support spellcaster that lost 25% of its attack in beta, has 45% better scaling. The ghost, terrans anti-protoss spellcater, has 93% better scaling. The numbers speak for themselves. The stalker is a very low dps unit to begin with, doing less than half the dps of a stimmed marauder. Over the course of the game, the marauder gains 289% more benifit from attack upgrades, marines gain 252% more, zerglings gain 209% more (or 418% more if you count 2 zerglings as one unit). Hell, the Archon, one of the most maligned units in the whole game, has 330% better scaling. Yeaaa~~ The stalker is a cutsey unit, and nobody is arguing a bump to its damage or its ROF. The stalker, fundamentally, is a support and harassment strider with mobility and a fair chunk of regenerating shields. Again, no-one in the thread has argued otherwise. Bumping the stalker's dps scaling will not suddenly turn it into a 1a mass mover that makes the opponent quake in terror - while it is fast and cutesy, those same attributes serve it poorly in endgame, or even midgame, armies; Cutsey stuff is inferior in a straight up firefight given equal positions. Giving the stalker back its +1 attack vs. armored on upgrade, would bump it to a mighty 1.39 dps/upgrade. This would still scale worse than many of the core units on the list, but it would at least scale better than sentries! Those are the raw numbers folks, I don't see how giving it "still bad" scaling would in any way cause a negative balancing effect. | ||
| ||
