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Stalkers deal 10(+4 armored) base damage. While their 14 damage to armored units isn't great for cost, with micro, stalkers are intended to be a big part of Protoss's response to armored units. The obvious example is the roach where stalkers are THE early game Protoss response, and as the game continues, continue to be an important core of the army since you can't go mass immortal. Against marauders, stalkers are the primary damage dealers in the early game. And as the game continues, stalkers are intended to comprise a portion of the solution to the bigger armored units like siege tanks, battlecruisers, brood lords, collosi, carriers, and even for focus firing units like thors and ultralisks.
The problem is that stalkers are arguably unit that benefits least from upgrades in the entire game. Armor upgrades are of little use since half of their health is in shields, but the bigger problem is that their weapon upgrade only offers +1 damage to their base damage of 14 vs armored.
Consider the stalker vs roach match-up. The stalker deals 14 base damage and has 1 armor that applies to 80 of its 160 health (effectively 0.5 armor). The roach deals 16 base damage and has 1 armor that applies to the entirety of its 145 health. In the early game, the stalker is slightly weaker for cost in combat, but its greater speed and range makes it reasonably effective against the roach. In the later game, however, roaches will be fully upgraded giving them 22 damage and 4 armor while stalkers might be 3/3/0 or 3/2/1 giving them 17 damage and effectively 2 armor (since either armor upgrade applies only to half of their health). The early game matchup between the stalker's 14/0.5/160 (attack/armor/health) vs the roach's 16/1/145 is now 17/2/160 vs 22/4/145. In the early game, stalkers cede 2 points of damage and a half a point of armor to roaches. In the late game, however, stalkers cede a massive 5 points of damage and roughly 2 points of armor (depending how diligent you are with shield upgrades) to roaches. Late game roaches CRUSH stalkers regardless of micro because roach upgrades are so much more effective than stalker upgrades.
You might want be inclined to say that stalkers don't get matched up against roaches in the late game because immortals, collosi, forcefields, storms etc supplement the Protoss army, but Zerg of course has tech options open up as well. And more importantly, the stalker-vs-roach example is just one example. A similar pattern emerges with every armored unit the stalker would match up against. Before upgrades, stalkers do reasonably against every armored unit (including marauders with zealot meatshields), but as upgrades get factored in, the stalker falls far behind its counterparts.
Shouldn't weapons upgrades give stalkers +1(+1 armored) to keep them reasonably useful in the late game? It's not like Protoss has too easy of a time already against upgraded armored units like roaches, ultras, brood lords, battlecrusers, thors and tanks. They're all really freaking hard to beat in the late game....
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They're AA units, it's a little too much to make them too good against ground units lategame, their tier 1.5, I'd prefer giving them an upgrade other than blink to make them more viable than do the +1(+1). In PvZ stalkers are very viable lategame so I think it's strange to suggest they're not.
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for this very reason, i honestly cut stalkers from my mid-late game army. chargelots and immortals get HUGE boosts from upgrades (+2 and +5 respectively), with hts for support. against T for instance, i never make more than 10 stalkers the whole game (unless he goes air heavy of course). though i have been incorporating blink stalkers in my pvz play, but the roach range buff doesn't help the issue..
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Well, I agree adding just base damage to units may be a little off balance, but really upgrades are ment to add small amounts. Maybe a +0.5(+0.5) could be possible on units with bonuses, for an effective +1 against armor'd units, but then people would complain about it having just +0.5 normal damage.
But look at the units you're comparing, a roach +16 base damage, vs a stalkers +10(+4) base damage, very different. Blink and additional range is the only redeeming quality in the matchup. Individually yes, the roach will always be better than stalker if the units are standing right next to each other and not being microed. Simply adding forcefields to reduce range (or guardian shield to add an effective +2 armor to your own units can offset this greatly, without even having to micro anything). On top of that stalkers are faster, and can teleport away, or behind the enemy.
Another thing to keep in mind, roaches are ground only units, stalkers can attack air. Simply having a single void ray, or carriers or whatever you prefer will turn the tide. If someone is going with a large ground force of roaches, it would make sense to counter with air.
Zerg is the king of late game though, their entire race is macro focused in general, it's obviously going to be a challenge to take out a large zerg army late in the game, for any race.
in terms of armor, we have immortals for a reason.
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I'd agree. But i try to remind myself in game stalkers have the lowest dps in the game for a reason. And that reason is blink.
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Literally every unit in the game benefits more from upgrades than the stalker. Armor upgrades benefit only archons and DTs less, but both of these units benefit much more from their weapons upgrades. Stalker's attack upgrades scale very poorly. They receive only a 7% increase in damage vs armored with their level 1 upgrade. For comparison, an attack upgrade increases a zergling's damage by 20%, a marine's damage by 17%, a zealot's damage by 12.5%, a roach's damage by 12.5%, a marauder's damage by 10%, and so on. There's no reason to make upgrades scale worse with the stalker than every other comparable unit. Protoss could certainly use a little more damage from their stalkers against late game armored units like ultras, roaches, marauders and battlecruisers.
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On October 19 2010 03:38 Roaming wrote:
I'd agree. But i try to remind myself in game stalkers have the lowest dps in the game for a reason. And that reason is blink.
That's true, but changing their upgrades from +1(+0) to +1(+1) wouldn't change the fact that stalkers have low dps. They'd just be slightly less awful vs ultras, battlecruisers, and 3/3 masses of marauders or roaches.
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Stalkers already had +1(+1) in the early beta, it was deemed too powerful and was nerfed in beta patch 6.
They're probably not going to revert that change.
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Theres not much I can say except /agree here. The switch from 8/+6 to 10/+4 in beta was a big boost to the stalker, but the loss of their +1/+1 from weapon upgrades was a big blow to their scaling. Sadly, the stalker is the only viable AA unit capable of threatneing armored air, which is really the problem. Phoenix don't do any meaningful damage, voidrays do less dps than stalkers as it stands until fully charged (and still suffer the same scaling issue), carriers take way too long and suffer massive penalties to armored targets due to their number of attacks.
Giving the stalker back their +1 armored scaling would be nice and help shore up protoss's stupidly weak AA. Why it even got removed in the first place is a mystery to me, given how bad stalkers were early on in the beta.
edit:
Stalkers already had +1(+1) in the early beta, it was deemed too powerful and was nerfed in beta patch 6.
They're probably not going to revert that change.
They weren't deemed to powerful, beta patch 6 buffed the stalker, by changing it from 8(+1)/+6(+1) to 10(+1)/+4(+0) as it is now. Before that change, stalkers took way too long to kill anything light on the ground - your talking about *5* hits to kill a zergling and an astounding 22 hits to kill a zealot! The small tweak significnatly improved the efficacy of the stalker on the ground, but it came at the cost of the unit scaling, which is frankly a problem. Keep in mind, many things have changed sense beta patch 6, including repeated nerfs to other viable AA armored units like the voidray.
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On October 19 2010 03:26 da_head wrote:
for this very reason, i honestly cut stalkers from my mid-late game army. chargelots and immortals get HUGE boosts from upgrades (+2 and +5 respectively), with hts for support. against T for instance, i never make more than 10 stalkers the whole game (unless he goes air heavy of course). though i have been incorporating blink stalkers in my pvz play, but the roach range buff doesn't help the issue..
Although I agree with you that I also like to incorporate more chargelots and immortals in my army than stalkers in the mid-late game army, I would like to point out that a zealot's +2 attack bonus is effectively only +1 because a zealot's attack is actually 2 attacks - 8 (+1) (x2).
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On October 19 2010 03:51 BlasiuS wrote:
Stalkers already had +1(+1) in the early beta, it was deemed too powerful and was nerfed in beta patch 6.
They're probably not going to revert that change.
MalVortex nailed this. Patch 6 was a stalker buff. And more to the point, can anyone name a unit that +1(+1) would be too powerful against? Late-game stalkers seem underpowered vs roaches, marauders, ultras, upgraded broodlords, upgraded battlecruisers, upgraded tanks, thors, collosi....pretty much every armored unit in the game. Maybe a case could be made for vikings or carriers. Maybe. On the whole tho, late game stalkers suck because their upgrades scale terribly.
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Stalkers have 1 armor and 1 shield armor...
Stalkers were too strong in beta late game, thereby discouraging any higher tech units in favor of blink tech/stalker play. Their upgrade is good because although they did too much to armored units, they still needed the +1s for the unarmored units, both on the ground and in the air
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Well stalkers are the weakest tier 1 unit, but its fast to make up for it.
But is that really a good, solid unit you can rely on in big battles? if you ask me no.
its the only viable AA toss has but its still a very weak unit and that is what worries me a bit gameplay wise.
What is really dumb about the stalker is that they are an early game unit and is really not the ideal lategame unit.
I think toss should get their dragoon back because they are more of a support fire unit rather than a harrass unit.(if you ask me stalkers does three things: early game dps, dealing with mutas and blink harras, which is great if you going for a harras ur enemy to death strat)
but the main reason is probably because dragoons are cooler 
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On October 19 2010 03:53 MalVortex wrote:
Theres not much I can say except /agree here. The switch from 8/+6 to 10/+4 in beta was a big boost to the stalker, but the loss of their +1/+1 from weapon upgrades was a big blow to their scaling. Sadly, the stalker is the only viable AA unit capable of threatneing armored air, which is really the problem. Phoenix don't do any meaningful damage, voidrays do less dps than stalkers as it stands until fully charged (and still suffer the same scaling issue), carriers take way too long and suffer massive penalties to armored targets due to their number of attacks.
Giving the stalker back their +1 armored scaling would be nice and help shore up protoss's stupidly weak AA. Why it even got removed in the first place is a mystery to me, given how bad stalkers were early on in the beta.
Protoss AA mainly has problems with battlecruisers, which has already been slightly offset by reduction to BC damage in the 1.1 patch. I don't think Protoss requiring stronger AA vs armored justifies increasing their upgrade damage to +1 (+1), but I do think that stalkers get weaker and weaker late game vs. armored and you are basically forced to incorporate Immortal to fight off ultras/thors. The problem is that +1 (+1) does seem a bit imba though given the mobility and versatility of stalkers, and you will just end up seeing mass stalkers rolling through a lot of match-ups. I think 10 (+5 armored) / +1 is good buff to stalkers for mid-late game, but has a high risk of making them too good very early game.
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On October 19 2010 04:12 tehemperorer wrote:
Stalkers have 1 armor and 1 shield armor...
Stalkers were too strong in beta late game, thereby discouraging any higher tech units in favor of blink tech/stalker play. Their upgrade is good because although they did too much to armored units, they still needed the +1s for the unarmored units, both on the ground and in the air
Except no unit in the game has any base shield defense value (shield armor), sooo you know, your wrong. Mass stalker was not a viable strategy by patch 6 in the beta, and instead you had far more abusive strategies, such as 40s build time immortal drops, and the old school 3 charge, 7 range voidrays. Or how about the colossus with 23x2 base damage?
Beta 6 buffed the stalker, the loss of scaling was random and inexplicable.
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I really dont like to discuss what should be changed, because players have no (concrete) influcence on these things anyways.
But from the current state I really dislike Stalkers. Low(est) dps, fragile (due to armored), expensive, scales horrible with Upgrades (as you mentioned).
Their Main Strength is their Mobility but due to the fact that I dont have the APM to micro them properly while doing other stuff and be not a fan of Blink-Play I take it as da_head and build as much as necessary and as little as posssible.
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On October 19 2010 03:53 MalVortex wrote:Show nested quote +
Stalkers already had +1(+1) in the early beta, it was deemed too powerful and was nerfed in beta patch 6.
They're probably not going to revert that change.
They weren't deemed to powerful, beta patch 6 buffed the stalker, by changing it from 8(+1)/+6(+1) to 10(+1)/+4(+0) as it is now. Before that change, stalkers took way too long to kill anything light on the ground - your talking about *5* hits to kill a zergling and an astounding 22 hits to kill a zealot! The small tweak significnatly improved the efficacy of the stalker on the ground, but it came at the cost of the unit scaling, which is frankly a problem. Keep in mind, many things have changed sense beta patch 6, including repeated nerfs to other viable AA armored units like the voidray.
If it wasn't deemed too powerful, then why did they remove the + damage from upgrades? Why didn't they just change it to 10(+1)/+4(+1)?
Because it would be too strong that's why. Blizzard doesn't make random balance changes for no reason, so statements like this:
On October 19 2010 04:16 MalVortex wrote:
Beta 6 buffed the stalker, the loss of scaling was random and inexplicable.
don't really make sense. It wasn't random, and it wasn't inexplicable. I just gave you the explanation.
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On October 19 2010 04:21 BlasiuS wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 03:53 MalVortex wrote:
Stalkers already had +1(+1) in the early beta, it was deemed too powerful and was nerfed in beta patch 6.
They're probably not going to revert that change.
They weren't deemed to powerful, beta patch 6 buffed the stalker, by changing it from 8(+1)/+6(+1) to 10(+1)/+4(+0) as it is now. Before that change, stalkers took way too long to kill anything light on the ground - your talking about *5* hits to kill a zergling and an astounding 22 hits to kill a zealot! The small tweak significnatly improved the efficacy of the stalker on the ground, but it came at the cost of the unit scaling, which is frankly a problem. Keep in mind, many things have changed sense beta patch 6, including repeated nerfs to other viable AA armored units like the voidray. If it wasn't deemed too powerful, then why did they remove the + damage from upgrades? Why didn't they just change it to 10(+1)/+4(+1)? Because it would be too strong that's why.
You do realize that 10(+1)/+4(+1) is the same vs. armored as the old 8(+1)/+6(+1), right? And that stalkers were really pretty bad around that time? As I recall, blizzard basically said something like "stalkers are now a bit better vs. light, but in exchange they now scale poorly against armored" as justification for the change. Was it the right decision for the time? Who knows, thats like 8 months ago. Whether that decision is still an appropriate one is the question, and I'm having a hard time imagining a whole +1 extra damage per stalker/upgrade destroying any strategies out there.
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On October 19 2010 04:23 MalVortex wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 04:21 BlasiuS wrote:On October 19 2010 03:53 MalVortex wrote:
Stalkers already had +1(+1) in the early beta, it was deemed too powerful and was nerfed in beta patch 6.
They're probably not going to revert that change.
They weren't deemed to powerful, beta patch 6 buffed the stalker, by changing it from 8(+1)/+6(+1) to 10(+1)/+4(+0) as it is now. Before that change, stalkers took way too long to kill anything light on the ground - your talking about *5* hits to kill a zergling and an astounding 22 hits to kill a zealot! The small tweak significnatly improved the efficacy of the stalker on the ground, but it came at the cost of the unit scaling, which is frankly a problem. Keep in mind, many things have changed sense beta patch 6, including repeated nerfs to other viable AA armored units like the voidray. If it wasn't deemed too powerful, then why did they remove the + damage from upgrades? Why didn't they just change it to 10(+1)/+4(+1)? Because it would be too strong that's why. Was it the right decision for the time? Who knows, thats like 8 months ago. Whether that decision is still an appropriate one is the question, and I'm having a hard time imagining a whole +1 extra damage per stalker/upgrade destroying any strategies out there.
yes it was the right decision for the time, and it's still an appropriate one, for reasons already explained.
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Wow, really? I had no idea stalkers got so bad late-game. I shall have to explain this to my Protoss buddy, who plays a pretty stalker-heavy style.
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On October 19 2010 04:18 Xanatoss wrote:
I really dont like to discuss what should be changed, because players have no (concrete) influcence on these things anyways.
But from the current state I really dislike Stalkers. Low(est) dps, fragile (due to armored), expensive, scales horrible with Upgrades (as you mentioned).
Their Main Strength is their Mobility but due to the fact that I dont have the APM to micro them properly while doing other stuff and be not a fan of Blink-Play I take it as da_head and build as much as necessary and as little as posssible.
I pretty much completely agree with this.
Stalkers are incredibly fragile, and sometimes you have to engage the enemy head on (Like hes marching up your ramp with Roaches), and they are just weak. They are OK against air, and some units, but are simply crushed by the other races heavy hitting tier1.5 unit: The Marauder, and the Roach. I dunno what you could do to change them, but they feel weak. I -have- to use them because if Roaches or Marauders come out before my robotics facility is done I need something to deal with the Roaches. Even on my ramp the damage that a Stalker does compared to a marauder is embarrassing. I find myself less and less researching blink and moving away from any kind of Stalker support, especially in ZvZ because Stalkers are just terrible against Hydralisks, and aren't that good against Mutalisks.
Although in the tooltip it says "Ranged support strider", it doesn't really preform the "support" role, its a lackluster harass unit, that doesn't get its real harass ability until too late in the game to be really effective.
Edit:
Dragoons were better then Stalkers in almost every way. 20 more hull health, 20 damage vs. air and ground with +2 on upgrade, a range upgrade (Although the range was fairly poor to start) and also the same price. I'm just convinced that they would be better to have in SC2. Taking 3 shots to kill one zergling is so bad. Where as taking 2 shots to kill a zergling is reasonable.
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On October 19 2010 04:30 DreamSailor wrote:
Stalkers are incredibly fragile, and sometimes you have to engage the enemy head on (Like hes marching up your ramp with Roaches), and they are just weak. They are OK against AA,
Exactly, they are just OK. Considering they are protoss's main anti air unit they are a joke.
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Just because Blizzard thought it was too strong at one point doesn't mean it remains the case now. It still remains an undeniable fact that stalker dps/cost ratio is the lowest in the game. This was supposed to be offset by their versatility (air and ground attack) and speed (fastest "T1" unit).
However, being able to attack both cost them the ability to do either particularly well (see marine for the opposite). As for movement speed, every other non Protoss "T1" unit is faster after an upgrade (Stim, Zergling speed, Roach speed) as well as all the harassment units (Mutalisk, Banshee, Hellion, Phoenix). Taking into account creep for Zerg and Concussive Shells for Terran, and Stalkers fall farther behind.
Then there is Blink. Blink's effect is hard to quantify, however it does nothing to Stalker dps. It's major contribution is for harassment and some longevity in battle. It doesn't seem unreasonable to let Stalkers scale a bit better with upgrades seeing as they gain the least from them of all units in the game (besides already starting at the lowest dps/cost).
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On October 19 2010 04:09 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 03:51 BlasiuS wrote:
Stalkers already had +1(+1) in the early beta, it was deemed too powerful and was nerfed in beta patch 6.
They're probably not going to revert that change. MalVortex nailed this. Patch 6 was a stalker buff. And more to the point, can anyone name a unit that +1(+1) would be too powerful against? Late-game stalkers seem underpowered vs roaches, marauders, ultras, upgraded broodlords, upgraded battlecruisers, upgraded tanks, thors, collosi....pretty much every armored unit in the game. Maybe a case could be made for vikings or carriers. Maybe. On the whole tho, late game stalkers suck because their upgrades scale terribly.
With the exception of roaches, stalkers are not good vs. any of those units you named at any point of the game, nor were they meant to be. Stalkers have mobility and versatility that no other unit in the game has. You can't expect them to do equivalent DPS while having the ability to shoot air units, incredible base movement speed, and blink. Ironically, it is their versatility that misleads players into thinking they can mass a single unit to win the game, but they are easily steamrolled by any unit that is good vs. armored. Stalkers have a supporting role in SC2 and BW players have to accept the fact that they don't pack the same punch as a dragoon. Immortals exist for a reason, and that is to counter armored ground units that stalkers are so weak against. I will concede that protoss AA vs. armored unit sucks (mainly vs bc) because 1) VR nerf 2) 5x2 damage on phoenix instead of 10x1 (though this makes sense) and 3) carriers just suck. However, BCs are slow, expensive, susceptible to feedback, and very strongly countered by guardian shield, so its not like protoss don't have an answer for it.
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On October 19 2010 03:46 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 03:38 Roaming wrote:
I'd agree. But i try to remind myself in game stalkers have the lowest dps in the game for a reason. And that reason is blink. That's true, but changing their upgrades from +1(+0) to +1(+1) wouldn't change the fact that stalkers have low dps. They'd just be slightly less awful vs ultras, battlecruisers, and 3/3 masses of marauders or roaches.
Well to be honest, I don't think the extra +1 to armor'd changes enough to warrent a change. It's going to change maraders from 9 hits to kill to 8 hits? I'm almost with you if its +1/+1. It's certainly not a threat though. I think it only nets you 1 shot faster kill on maraders or roaches, and without zealots both those units hard counter stalkers.
Dragoons were better then Stalkers in almost every way. 20 more hull health, 20 damage vs. air and ground with +2 on upgrade, a range upgrade (Although the range was fairly poor to start) and also the same price. I'm just convinced that they would be better to have in SC2. Taking 3 shots to kill one zergling is so bad. Where as taking 2 shots to kill a zergling is reasonable.
Yes, but they couldn't teleport.
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On October 19 2010 04:43 Mystgun wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 04:09 kcdc wrote:On October 19 2010 03:51 BlasiuS wrote:
Stalkers already had +1(+1) in the early beta, it was deemed too powerful and was nerfed in beta patch 6.
They're probably not going to revert that change. MalVortex nailed this. Patch 6 was a stalker buff. And more to the point, can anyone name a unit that +1(+1) would be too powerful against? Late-game stalkers seem underpowered vs roaches, marauders, ultras, upgraded broodlords, upgraded battlecruisers, upgraded tanks, thors, collosi....pretty much every armored unit in the game. Maybe a case could be made for vikings or carriers. Maybe. On the whole tho, late game stalkers suck because their upgrades scale terribly. With the exception of roaches, stalkers are not good vs. any of those units you named at any point of the game, nor were they meant to be. Stalkers have mobility and versatility that no other unit in the game has. You can't expect them to do equivalent DPS while having the ability to shoot air units, incredible base movement speed, and blink. Ironically, it is their versatility that misleads players into thinking they can mass a single unit to win the game, but they are easily steamrolled by any unit that is good vs. armored. Stalkers have a supporting role in SC2 and BW players have to accept the fact that they don't pack the same punch as a dragoon. Immortals exist for a reason, and that is to counter armored ground units that stalkers are so weak against. I will concede that protoss AA vs. armored unit sucks (mainly vs bc) because 1) VR nerf 2) 5x2 damage on phoenix instead of 10x1 (though this makes sense) and 3) carriers just suck. However, BCs are slow, expensive, susceptible to feedback, and very strongly countered by guardian shield, so its not like protoss don't have an answer for it.
Stalkers are absolutely meant to be used against all of those units. Stalkers are the primary damage dealers of the Protoss force against big armored units. Zealots soak up the damage, collosi and storm take out the smaller light units, and stalkers (with immortals) focus fire down the big targets. Unless you understand that your opponent lacks the will to make air units and that you're therefore safe to go triple-robo immortal, you're going to be using stalkers for a healthy component of your damage vs armored units.
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On October 19 2010 04:51 Roaming wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 03:46 kcdc wrote:On October 19 2010 03:38 Roaming wrote:
I'd agree. But i try to remind myself in game stalkers have the lowest dps in the game for a reason. And that reason is blink. That's true, but changing their upgrades from +1(+0) to +1(+1) wouldn't change the fact that stalkers have low dps. They'd just be slightly less awful vs ultras, battlecruisers, and 3/3 masses of marauders or roaches. Well to be honest, I don't think the extra +1 to armor'd changes enough to warrent a change. It's going to change maraders from 9 hits to kill to 8 hits? I'm almost with you if its +1/+1. It's certainly not a threat though. I think it only nets you 1 shot faster kill on maraders or roaches, and without zealots both those units hard counter stalkers. Show nested quote +Dragoons were better then Stalkers in almost every way. 20 more hull health, 20 damage vs. air and ground with +2 on upgrade, a range upgrade (Although the range was fairly poor to start) and also the same price. I'm just convinced that they would be better to have in SC2. Taking 3 shots to kill one zergling is so bad. Where as taking 2 shots to kill a zergling is reasonable. Yes, but they couldn't teleport.
Stalkers can't teleport without a fairly pricey tech structure (Which fair enough unlocks templar tech and tier2 upgrades) and requires a 150/150 you may not even use to its fullest potential. Blink as been nerfed a lot on a lot of maps. Like on LT you can't blink across from mains because it was deemed "too powerful" but a terran can just send a fully loaded medivac with marauders and its ok?
Stalkers are like, (well one of the) bastard childs of SC2. They wanted to make something cool and fun, but they weakened one of the biggest core units of BW, into something cutesy and generally, less effective.
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Glad to see this issue brought up. You need stalkers throughout the game in your army for AA support, but I've always felt they become a bit of a liability as the game goes on.
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On October 19 2010 04:51 Roaming wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 03:46 kcdc wrote:On October 19 2010 03:38 Roaming wrote:
I'd agree. But i try to remind myself in game stalkers have the lowest dps in the game for a reason. And that reason is blink. That's true, but changing their upgrades from +1(+0) to +1(+1) wouldn't change the fact that stalkers have low dps. They'd just be slightly less awful vs ultras, battlecruisers, and 3/3 masses of marauders or roaches. Well to be honest, I don't think the extra +1 to armor'd changes enough to warrent a change. It's going to change maraders from 9 hits to kill to 8 hits? I'm almost with you if its +1/+1. It's certainly not a threat though. I think it only nets you 1 shot faster kill on maraders or roaches, and without zealots both those units hard counter stalkers. Show nested quote +Dragoons were better then Stalkers in almost every way. 20 more hull health, 20 damage vs. air and ground with +2 on upgrade, a range upgrade (Although the range was fairly poor to start) and also the same price. I'm just convinced that they would be better to have in SC2. Taking 3 shots to kill one zergling is so bad. Where as taking 2 shots to kill a zergling is reasonable. Yes, but they couldn't teleport.
I don't think you understand what I'm talking about.
0/0 stalkers deal 14 damage to marauders. 0/0 marauders deal 20 damage to stalkers. With zealots serving as meatshields, marauders are roughly even against zealot-stalker before upgrades.
3/0 stalkers deal 17 damage to marauders. 3/0 marauders seal 26 damage to stalkers. Because stalkers scale poorly with upgrades, the damage differential increases from 6 to 9 over the course of the game. Given equal upgrades, a battle of T1 units that is even in the early game will be easily won by Terran in the late game.
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On October 19 2010 04:51 Roaming wrote:Show nested quote +Dragoons were better then Stalkers in almost every way. 20 more hull health, 20 damage vs. air and ground with +2 on upgrade, a range upgrade (Although the range was fairly poor to start) and also the same price. I'm just convinced that they would be better to have in SC2. Taking 3 shots to kill one zergling is so bad. Where as taking 2 shots to kill a zergling is reasonable. Yes, but they couldn't teleport.
Also dragoons dealt explosive damage, so 10 damage per shot without upgrade. Both of them take 4 shots to kill a zergling.
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On October 19 2010 03:16 kcdc wrote:
Stalkers deal 10(+4 armored) base damage. While their 14 damage to armored units isn't great for cost, with micro, stalkers are intended to be a big part of Protoss's response to armored units. The obvious example is the roach where stalkers are THE early game Protoss response, and as the game continues, continue to be an important core of the army since you can't go mass immortal. Against marauders, stalkers are the primary damage dealers in the early game. And as the game continues, stalkers are intended to comprise a portion of the solution to the bigger armored units like siege tanks, battlecruisers, brood lords, collosi, carriers, and even for focus firing units like thors and ultralisks.
The problem is that stalkers are arguably unit that benefits least from upgrades in the entire game. Armor upgrades are of little use since half of their health is in shields, but the bigger problem is that their weapon upgrade only offers +1 damage to their base damage of 14 vs armored.
Consider the stalker vs roach match-up. The stalker deals 14 base damage and has 1 armor that applies to 80 of its 160 health (effectively 0.5 armor). The roach deals 16 base damage and has 1 armor that applies to the entirety of its 145 health. In the early game, the stalker is slightly weaker for cost in combat, but its greater speed and range makes it reasonably effective against the roach. In the later game, however, roaches will be fully upgraded giving them 22 damage and 4 armor while stalkers might be 3/3/0 or 3/2/1 giving them 17 damage and effectively 2 armor (since either armor upgrade applies only to half of their health). The early game matchup between the stalker's 14/0.5/160 (attack/armor/health) vs the roach's 16/1/145 is now 17/2/160 vs 22/4/145. In the early game, stalkers cede 2 points of damage and a half a point of armor to roaches. In the late game, however, stalkers cede a massive 5 points of damage and roughly 2 points of armor (depending how diligent you are with shield upgrades) to roaches. Late game roaches CRUSH stalkers regardless of micro because roach upgrades are so much more effective than stalker upgrades.
You might want be inclined to say that stalkers don't get matched up against roaches in the late game because immortals, collosi, forcefields, storms etc supplement the Protoss army, but Zerg of course has tech options open up as well. And more importantly, the stalker-vs-roach example is just one example. A similar pattern emerges with every armored unit the stalker would match up against. Before upgrades, stalkers do reasonably against every armored unit (including marauders with zealot meatshields), but as upgrades get factored in, the stalker falls far behind its counterparts.
Shouldn't weapons upgrades give stalkers +1(+1 armored) to keep them reasonably useful in the late game? It's not like Protoss has too easy of a time already against upgraded armored units like roaches, ultras, brood lords, battlecrusers, thors and tanks. They're all really freaking hard to beat in the late game....
In the case of stalkers vs. roaches, you have to take into account that the stalker is firing for 14 every 1.44 game seconds while the roach is doing 16 every 2 game secs. However, roaches cost considerably less than stalkers. Players take advantage of this with techniques like the 5 roach rush.
The real issue, is marauders. Marauders have a hefty double damage bonus against armored units. Combined with stim packs and concussive shells they are also a hard conter to zealots. This makes the only way to stop marauders outside of a choke in the early game a large number of sentries and forcefields. Because this is a very expensive option for a unit that does very little damage protoss 1.5 is utterly dominated by the marauder. We will probably see a change in some form of mechanic before the end of the balancing to make early - mid game a little easier for the protoss player especially after the last patch making terran better late game by removing the energy bar on the thor.
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On October 19 2010 04:35 Philip2110 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 04:30 DreamSailor wrote:
Stalkers are incredibly fragile, and sometimes you have to engage the enemy head on (Like hes marching up your ramp with Roaches), and they are just weak. They are OK against AA, Exactly, they are just OK. Considering they are protoss's main anti air unit they are a joke.
yeah, the fact that that we have no other anit air unit than the sentry is pretty bad since stalker damage vs light units (mutas and banshees)is damn awful.
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On October 19 2010 04:30 DreamSailor wrote:
Taking 3 shots to kill one zergling is so bad. Where as taking 2 shots to kill a zergling is reasonable.
Dragoons take 4 shots to kill one zergling.... (Explosive damage).
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On October 19 2010 05:26 crate wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 04:30 DreamSailor wrote:
Taking 3 shots to kill one zergling is so bad. Where as taking 2 shots to kill a zergling is reasonable. Dragoons take 4 shots to kill one zergling.... (Explosive damage).
Yeah I was comparing it as a direct translation to SC2. Where a Dragoon would deal 20 damage.
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On October 19 2010 04:56 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 04:43 Mystgun wrote:On October 19 2010 04:09 kcdc wrote:On October 19 2010 03:51 BlasiuS wrote:
Stalkers already had +1(+1) in the early beta, it was deemed too powerful and was nerfed in beta patch 6.
They're probably not going to revert that change. MalVortex nailed this. Patch 6 was a stalker buff. And more to the point, can anyone name a unit that +1(+1) would be too powerful against? Late-game stalkers seem underpowered vs roaches, marauders, ultras, upgraded broodlords, upgraded battlecruisers, upgraded tanks, thors, collosi....pretty much every armored unit in the game. Maybe a case could be made for vikings or carriers. Maybe. On the whole tho, late game stalkers suck because their upgrades scale terribly. With the exception of roaches, stalkers are not good vs. any of those units you named at any point of the game, nor were they meant to be. Stalkers have mobility and versatility that no other unit in the game has. You can't expect them to do equivalent DPS while having the ability to shoot air units, incredible base movement speed, and blink. Ironically, it is their versatility that misleads players into thinking they can mass a single unit to win the game, but they are easily steamrolled by any unit that is good vs. armored. Stalkers have a supporting role in SC2 and BW players have to accept the fact that they don't pack the same punch as a dragoon. Immortals exist for a reason, and that is to counter armored ground units that stalkers are so weak against. I will concede that protoss AA vs. armored unit sucks (mainly vs bc) because 1) VR nerf 2) 5x2 damage on phoenix instead of 10x1 (though this makes sense) and 3) carriers just suck. However, BCs are slow, expensive, susceptible to feedback, and very strongly countered by guardian shield, so its not like protoss don't have an answer for it. Stalkers are absolutely meant to be used against all of those units. Stalkers are the primary damage dealers of the Protoss force against big armored units. Zealots soak up the damage, collosi and storm take out the smaller light units, and stalkers (with immortals) focus fire down the big targets. Unless you understand that your opponent lacks the will to make air units and that you're therefore safe to go triple-robo immortal, you're going to be using stalkers for a healthy component of your damage vs armored units.
I would have to strongly disagree with you on this point as I think stalkers are terrible vs. big armored units like thor and ultralisk and my rule of thumb is to build as few stalkers as I can get by with (which might mean quite a lot if they are going air-heavy).
I think you can agree with me that zealot meat shield with robo units is a much better army composition vs. ground units than zealot with stalkers. The advantage that stalkers bring is that they can attack air, so you don't risk getting chased away by a few air units. Getting stalkers is pretty good insurance that you can handle most types of units that your opponent can throw at you with the drawback that it doesn't particularly excel at stopping any of them. I don't think its unfair that a unit with so much flexibility has lower DPS and relatively poor scaling compared to more specialized, situational units.
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+1 weapons makes zealots 2 hit lings and +2 makes collussi 2 hit them, since all ground toss forces get the benefits from it, it seems they would already have the +2 attack anyway
On October 19 2010 03:16 kcdc wrote:
Consider the stalker vs roach match-up. The stalker deals 14 base damage and has 1 armor that applies to 80 of its 160 health (effectively 0.5 armor). The roach deals 16 base damage and has 1 armor that applies to the entirety of its 145 health. In the early game, the stalker is slightly weaker for cost in combat, but its greater speed and range makes it reasonably effective against the roach. In the later game, however, roaches will be fully upgraded giving them 22 damage and 4 armor while stalkers might be 3/3/0 or 3/2/1 giving them 17 damage and effectively 2 armor (since either armor upgrade applies only to half of their health). The early game matchup between the stalker's 14/0.5/160 (attack/armor/health) vs the roach's 16/1/145 is now 17/2/160 vs 22/4/145. In the early game, stalkers cede 2 points of damage and a half a point of armor to roaches. In the late game, however, stalkers cede a massive 5 points of damage and roughly 2 points of armor (depending how diligent you are with shield upgrades) to roaches. Late game roaches CRUSH stalkers regardless of micro because roach upgrades are so much more effective than stalker upgrades.
i disagree; ever see a Z player use mass roach lategame?
i consider them more comparable to hydras in larger scale battles, since the ability to hit air doesnt exsist on the roach so its not got much function outside of this matchup
however; should such a scenario occur, stalkers win even w/ roach burrow tunneling to them and no observers
why? between blink, roughly equal upgraded move speeds and superior range, the stalkers will have better firing effeciency and therefore kill the roaches for cost, especially if the 200 supply limit comes into play [this is for offcreep, he cant push you there and if it is a problem youll get observers to kill the tumors and thus be able to hit the burrowed roaches above before you engage]
This spoiler is my opinion on stalkers and probably doesnt have much convincing logic, note that i am a Z player
+ Show Spoiler +it is in my belief that the T1 stalker that does less damage vs non-armoured targets is a little bit too strong compared to the hydra by cost considering the blink abilitys vast usefulness. maybe these 'weaker upgrades' balance it out more than i think, maybe the stalkers just a little overpowered even with that
if i could balance the game according to what i believe should happen, id lower their health just a touch so hydras are a bit more cost effective vs them
hell, it'd probably mean the marauder would get a slight vs armour damage nerf too, and a slightly lower marauder/roach hp to match wouldnt go astray
it might be why im not balancing the game though
On October 19 2010 04:35 Philip2110 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 04:30 DreamSailor wrote:
Stalkers are incredibly fragile, and sometimes you have to engage the enemy head on (Like hes marching up your ramp with Roaches), and they are just weak. They are OK against AA, Exactly, they are just OK. Considering they are protoss's main anti air unit they are a joke.
this problem is because the pheonix is a dedicated AA unit that doesnt really do too well at it, id say corruptors are in the same boat, building them to fight air is generally unnecessary and can bite you in the longer run
vikings i exclude here because of the massive range and the ability to make them hit ground
(the others can help vs ground but its not really practical)
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I think this is a silly argument.
A zealot doesn't get twice the benefit from attack upgrades as a stalker. It gets a very similar amount: +1. The reason this is relevant is because a stalker with +1 attack vs. an opponent with +1 armor deals the same damage as a stalker with 0 attack vs. an opponent with 0 armor. The zealot is in the same situation, he deals the same damage to opponents in general, as long as the weapon upgrades are equal to the armor upgrades.
The issue if you were to increase stalker damage to be +1 (+1) per upgrade is they would greatly outpace armor upgrades. Now, you can argue that marauders get +1 (+1), and that immortals even get +2 (+3), but I think there's an important distinction as to why. Both Marauders and Immortals are sort of "Anti-Armor" units. Stalkers aren't designed for that, in fact, I would venture to say that the patch 6 change really emphasizes this point. Stalkers are a general mobile assault unit, and the reason that there is the bonus to armored isn't to make them anti-armor focused (that's the immortal's role) but instead to make them reasonably powerful against armor without making them overpowered against light units.
Stalkers aren't at all weak units. They have 160 health, high base speed, higher base damage than a marauder, an anti-air attack, and the eventual ability to blink for 2 supply. Their high base damage means that things like high armor units don't ruin their ability to deal damage (An ultralisk with 3 base armor reduces an equal upgraded zealot to 63%, but reduces a stalker to only 78% of their potential)
Certainly an immortal is stronger than 2 stalkers against mixed ground forces, but the stalkers have the mobility, and anti-air capability that the immortal lacks.
I think it makes perfect sense that the unit with so much flexibility has lower DPS and relatively poor scaling compared to the more specialized situational units. It the flexible unit scaled as well, and had relatively similar DPS to the specialized units, there would be no need to build any specialized units. If 2 stalkers could deal the same damage at the same scaling factor of an immortal, as well as be able to shoot aircraft, blink, and run at 2.9 speed, why in the world would anyone ever build an immortal who is susceptible to air attacks, EMP, and kiting by faster, longer ranged units?
Marines and Hydralisks both have severe downsides in that they are relatively low-health, light classed units. For Terran and Zerg, these two units are the general "all-round" counterpart to the stalker. Both have relatively higher DPS than the stalker per supply, but both are less than 1/2 as sturdy as the stalker. However, I don't often hear that they should get double-sized upgrades or any other special benefits of that type.
Comparing stalkers (all-around versatile units) directly against marauders and roaches (anti-heavy-ground units) is unfair. Compare Zealots (possibly with sentry support to keep them in range) Immortals or Colossi if you want a more fair comparison. If you want to compare something directly to stalkers, compare stalkers with hydras or marines instead of roaches and marauders.
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If you want to suggest this change then I suggest you math out the number of hits required for a stalker to kill certain units which you feel it is weak against late-game then compare that to the number of hits required to kill the units with your change then examine if this will make a significant difference against other units which the stalker already fairs well against and add it to your post.
This shouldn't take more then 20-30 minutes in Excel and will provide you with concrete evidence to support your hypothesis instead of abstract theorycrafting.
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interesting idea I'd say
nevertheless the reason why earlier roaches were NOT better vs stalkers was easy to determine: force fields: put down force fields, move your army back a little and stalkers can hit while roaches can't;
range 4 has changed this quite significantly, nevertheless I haven't played enough games yet to see if this changed it indeed in favour of roaches; because the range-difference can theoretically (!!) still be exploited with force fields, especially in late-game where you should have enough sentries to force-field right through the whole army
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On October 19 2010 06:09 zeidrichthorene wrote:
I think this is a silly argument.
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Yes, I fully agree except roaches aren't anti-armor, and they especially don't counter stalkers.
This stalker-roach argumet OP makes is totally wrong. Roach balls don't work vs stalker balls for 2 reasons:
1. blink
2. range
Stalkers get a big range advantage so protoss can engage with a ton more units attacking than zerg can attack with.
Another thing - sure roaches gain +2 per attack, but realize that their attack speed is 2 and their DPS is terrible. Stalkers always have better DPS than roaches.
When it comes to micro, yes roaches can burrow, but when you're in mass situations, once the roaches burrow they can't really unburrow because there's no space. It's also really hard to burrow any units at all due to the DPS the stalkers are doing.
The reason blink DOES work is because stalkers have more health, roaches deal less damage AND have less range (making for two factors dealing less damage), and blink has a substantial range that can be used to teleport it behind the army and still very possibly attack from there.
Sure roaches cost less, but that doesn't matter because zerg can't get many more roaches than protoss can get stalkers by the time you hit mid or late game, due to supply. 50 stalkers will just stampede over 65 roaches. Sure protoss isn't maxed out yet and has less units, but zerg can't get any more than 65 roaches if he has 3 bases with standard saturation.
On October 19 2010 04:30 DreamSailor wrote:
Stalkers are incredibly fragile, and sometimes you have to engage the enemy head on (Like hes marching up your ramp with Roaches), and they are just weak. They are OK against air, and some units, but are simply crushed by the other races heavy hitting tier1.5 unit: The Marauder, and the Roach. I dunno what you could do to change them, but they feel weak. I -have- to use them because if Roaches or Marauders come out before my robotics facility is done I need something to deal with the Roaches. Even on my ramp the damage that a Stalker does compared to a marauder is embarrassing. I find myself less and less researching blink and moving away from any kind of Stalker support, especially in ZvZ because Stalkers are just terrible against Hydralisks, and aren't that good against Mutalisks.
Wow Protoss whining like mad. Stalkers win vs hydralisks 1:1 without blink and with hydra range (although they are about even). Considering both units are similar costs this is fine. Stalkers win vs mutalisks 1:1 ratio also, (unless you get into unrealistic numbers of units, such as above 50-60)
Stalkers dominate roaches without speed, and do very well against roaches with speed.
Stalkers are not fragile at all because they have good movement speed, good health, and good range. Yes they will die to marauders, but definitely not roaches.
Just because marauders are powerful (or OP) does not mean you should be yelling about how your own units are gimped, because that's not how it works. If marauder is OP, it should be fixed.
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On October 19 2010 05:27 DreamSailor wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 05:26 crate wrote:On October 19 2010 04:30 DreamSailor wrote:
Taking 3 shots to kill one zergling is so bad. Where as taking 2 shots to kill a zergling is reasonable. Dragoons take 4 shots to kill one zergling.... (Explosive damage). Yeah I was comparing it as a direct translation to SC2. Where a Dragoon would deal 20 damage.
if your going to use a fact, dont change it first; once it gets pointed out that you changed it, your whole arguemnet is discreditable
On October 19 2010 06:16 sleepingdog wrote:
interesting idea I'd say
nevertheless the reason why earlier roaches were NOT better vs stalkers was easy to determine: force fields: put down force fields, move your army back a little and stalkers can hit while roaches can't;
range 4 has changed this quite significantly, nevertheless I haven't played enough games yet to see if this changed it indeed in favour of roaches; because the range-difference can theoretically (!!) still be exploited with force fields, especially in late-game where you should have enough sentries to force-field right through the whole army
if your bringing support units into this, fungal growth them back
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On October 19 2010 04:09 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 03:51 BlasiuS wrote:
Stalkers already had +1(+1) in the early beta, it was deemed too powerful and was nerfed in beta patch 6.
They're probably not going to revert that change. MalVortex nailed this. Patch 6 was a stalker buff. And more to the point, can anyone name a unit that +1(+1) would be too powerful against? Late-game stalkers seem underpowered vs roaches, marauders, ultras, upgraded broodlords, upgraded battlecruisers, upgraded tanks, thors, collosi....pretty much every armored unit in the game. Maybe a case could be made for vikings or carriers. Maybe. On the whole tho, late game stalkers suck because their upgrades scale terribly.
stalkers are cost effective against cruisers and unseiged tanks if they have blink.
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I completely agree with you, stalkers seem too weak for their cost, and it doesn't help if upgrades are useless for them.
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Wow Protoss whining like mad. Stalkers win vs hydralisks 1:1 without blink and with hydra range (although they are about even). Considering both units are similar costs this is fine. Stalkers win vs mutalisks 1:1 ratio also, (unless you get into unrealistic numbers of units, such as above 50-60)
Stalkers dominate roaches without speed, and do very well against roaches with speed.
Stalkers are not fragile at all because they have good movement speed, good health, and good range. Yes they will die to marauders, but definitely not roaches.
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In an ideal world, where the maps go on forever and you can just micro all day, Stalkers beat Roaches 100% of the time. This isn't the case. Like I said earlier, sometimes you are -forced- to engage, you can't run and skip around all the time when hes trying to take out your nexus with Roaches, you have to sit there and try to kill them, and Stalkers do poorly.
Standard Roach vs. Stalker. in a forced engagement situation.
You will have just slightly less then 2 Roaches per Stalker.
Stalkers deal 10+4 armored-1 for Roach armor being 13 a round.
Roaches deal 16-0 for the first 80 damage, then deal 16-1 for 15 for the remaining 80.
You will approximately get 3 attack from Stalkers for every 2 Roach attacks
In a straight up one vs. one. It should be a no contest the Stalker should win. 39 damage per "cycle" (3 attacks of 13) vs. 32 damage (2 attacks of 16), then 15 after the first 80 health. Cost for Cost its 125minerals 50 gas vs. a 75 mineral 25 gas unit. 145/39 = 3.7 Cycles of 3 to kill a Roach, 4 for arguements sake, and 160/31 (average damage of a roach per cycle) of 5.1 cycles of 2 to kill a Stalker, 5 for arguements sake, because a Roach costs a fraction of a Stalker. This just shows you how cost effective roaches are, yes they can't attack air, but in a straight up fight they will have severely weakened a Stalker.
But straight up -for cost- you will have 2 zerglings with that Roach, or just less then 2 roaches per stalker.
Since this thread is talking about weapon damage scaling lets see how well roaches do.
Roaches gain 16+2+2+2 for a grand total of 22/round, Stalkers deal 10+1+1+1 = 13 +4 Armored. for a grand total of 17/Round, against armored, and 13 against everything else. Pretty significant in favor of Roaches.
When upgraded just weapons:
(17-1)X3= 48 damage per "cycle" for Stalkers. 22X2 = 44 per first 80 Health, then (22-1)X2= 42 for remaining 80. Roaches scale much better than Stalkers do. This is also stated you will have more roaches per Stalker count. We will not be taking guardian shield into account as you will be at equal gas cost (or Protoss will be behind in gas)
Edit: Kinda missed some maths:
I don't think its needed to go into Armor upgrades because Roaches gain the full benefit, whereas Stalkers only benefit on armor for the second half of their effective health. Where shield can "equalize" the damage output throughout, it costs an absurd amount for level 3 shields.
Roaches also fill the kind of "harassy" role if you choose to upgrade the tunneling claws and burrow. We won't get into that we also will not take into account blink.
This was never an "I mad" post, Stalkers are very good early game, but lose their luster a lot as soon as midgame starts. Then kind of make a comeback, not because they are excellent additions, but because you need something to take out air units. Phoenixes aren't nearly as readily available, and Stalkers are the only thing you can really pump out at a decent rate.
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Some of the arguments in this thread seem to neglect a few very important considerations. Stalkers require a significant APM investment to extract their added value compared to all other units discussed in this thread.
Comments about immortals I might agree with if robo facs cost significantly less gas, as it stands toss has to sacrifice significant resources if they want to produce anything besides immortals in a timely fashion from a robo fac.
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On October 19 2010 07:44 Hyperion2010 wrote:
Some of the arguments in this thread seem to neglect a few very important considerations. Stalkers require a significant APM investment to extract their added value compared to all other units discussed in this thread.
I hardly think thats a valid argument for the value of a unit, even if its true. Unit balance isn't based solely on 1a to see who wins.
Also as someone else had pointed out, comparisons between roach/marauder and stalker is hardly a fair comparison. Stalkers can attack air and this can't be taken for granted. They are not great against air, and they are not great against ground, but the fact that they can attack both types of units is value enough in itself to justify their relatively low damage. Most people who are complaining about stalkers being weak seem to use a stalker-only army composition. Honestly that's going to lose whether they have a +1 bonus upgrade to armored or not.
There has to be one ground unit that is the least cost-effective vs. other ground units. That just happens to be the stalker, which basically losses out to every ground unit out dollar for dollar. Toss players just live with the tradeoff that they are more versatile than most other units in the game.
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On October 19 2010 05:27 DreamSailor wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 05:26 crate wrote:On October 19 2010 04:30 DreamSailor wrote:
Taking 3 shots to kill one zergling is so bad. Where as taking 2 shots to kill a zergling is reasonable. Dragoons take 4 shots to kill one zergling.... (Explosive damage). Yeah I was comparing it as a direct translation to SC2. Where a Dragoon would deal 20 damage.
This is just silly. If they did a direct translation then they would still make it so that Dragoons do 10 (+10). Stalkers take 4 shots to kill a zergling, which is exactly the same as dragoons. Killing a zergling in two shots when a zealot requires 3 hits isn't reasonable; it's just stupid.
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On October 19 2010 09:14 koreasilver wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 05:27 DreamSailor wrote:On October 19 2010 05:26 crate wrote:On October 19 2010 04:30 DreamSailor wrote:
Taking 3 shots to kill one zergling is so bad. Where as taking 2 shots to kill a zergling is reasonable. Dragoons take 4 shots to kill one zergling.... (Explosive damage). Yeah I was comparing it as a direct translation to SC2. Where a Dragoon would deal 20 damage. This is just silly. If they did a direct translation then they would still make it so that Dragoons do 10 (+10). Stalkers take 4 shots to kill a zergling, which is exactly the same as dragoons. Killing a zergling in two shots when a zealot requires 3 hits isn't reasonable; it's just stupid.
The only big diffrence between Dragoons and Stalkers is the range upgrade the Dragoons had that made them so effective. Thats why Dragoons seemed better.
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I think the main thing is stalkers change their role late game from primary dps to support. basically once colossus and HT come out then you rely on those for big damage while the stalker is support, harass, and AA. A lot of people think the unit should have the same role all game but it doesn't need to.
The only reason I read and responded to this post is because void ray nerfs seems like toss has no effective anti-air versus armored. The Void Ray has become a joke, carriers take a long time to get out, and motherships are only used to get fans. Stalkers are great versatile units and the answer isn't "make this better", protoss needs more answers.
Stalker/Sentry/Collo deals with roach hydra due to not allowing the roaches to attack. Protoss isn't the warrior class its more of a mage that relies on spells rather than numbers or brute force. You don't need MASS immortal to fight ultras, you can abuse blink and cliff walk, add a few immortals, maybe void rays (not sure anymore), or even DT's if you can take out their overseers.
For Terran I am not sure... Marauders are pretty disgusting but zealot with armor upgrades and HT is good until they put down a PF which can't be broke.
Lets take a look at Protoss units which are rare/situational
DT
Archon
Carrier
Mothership
Void Ray
Warp Prism
These could be improved to offer some AA against armored. Interceptors need to NOT have 2 attacks and void rays need to do more damage in general now...
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the absurd level 3 shield cost is because it helps your air too, where air armour is its own upgrade
also, with current game mechanics, units with multiple attacks are better off en-masse, they wont overkill as much as say, mass thor vs mass ling
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Stalker's dont need to get buffed at the moment. They are no supposed to hard counter anything, and the reason for the cost is good range, good speed and blink research. Giving them +1 (+1) would not affect much, but i don't consider it needed as a balance change at all. (I play toss).
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On October 19 2010 09:20 Raiden X wrote:
The only big diffrence between Dragoons and Stalkers is the range upgrade the Dragoons had that made them so effective. Thats why Dragoons seemed better.
Dragoon range upgrade gave them 4+2 range, which is the same range that stalkers start with now. As I recall, dragoons were large and clumsy with terrible AI. i'd take stalker over them any day
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Agree with the OP. Stalkers do not scale well as the game goes on, not at all.
And as the void just got nerfed, they are the only late game option for anti heavy air, and they don't work that well. Maybe the void should have different air to air damage and ground damage like the battlecruiser.
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Stalkers are very bad late game. Not only for this reason but also because there so huge they have a lot of trouble forming a concave.
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There seems to be a lot of misinformation (or just bad logic) in this thread...
Firstly, if you compare roaches to stalkers, you have to consider the fact that they're completely different units (that generally fill different roles as the game moves on). Roaches don't hit air, and roaches are tanking units, NOT damage-dealers. Keep in mind that stalkers have a faster ROF than roaches, and so comparing scalability based on sheer +numbers on attack is moot (read: you have to factor in not only how much damage per shot a unit does, but how often it shoots)
So, a stalker shoots every 1.44 seconds for 10+4 damage against armored units, at 6 range. A roach does 16 damage every 2 seconds against all units, at 4 range. This means roaches do 8 DPS (everything here is in game-seconds) and stalkers do 9.7 DPS vs armored and 7 DPS otherwise.
In the end, the upgrade difference is actually very minimal; because stalkers have such a better ROF than roaches, they stay between 1.7 and 1.1 DPS better than roaches throughout. Lategame, when supply is crucial (and air units come into play) roaches stop being useful because they lack range and AA capabilities, not to mention the fact that their attack upgrade is separate from the melee and air ones, which are more crucial in PvZ than ranged, since hydras stop seeing use lategame. On the other hand, ALL protoss ground units benefit from weapons, so you see zealots, stalkers, sentries, colossus, and immortals ALL benefit from ONE upgrade, whereas the zerg player needs to upgrade air, melee, and ranged to buff his roaches, hydras, lings, and corruptors.
Protoss definitely is favored here.
EDIT: And keep in mind that those are the only units that a toss player really ever needs vs a Zerg. Phoenix are situational or build-based, and archons also benefit from weapons, so if the toss decides to go HT or DT instead of colossus, my point still stands.
Lastly, stalkers are already hard to deal with as Zerg. There is no easy answer to them early, especially when a few sentries are mixed in for FF. The only real "counter" zerg has to stalkers is mass lings, and a few zealots handle lings quite well. Stalkers are not underpowered nor do they scale badly.
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Alright, so I think that a couple people have said it here pretty much to a tee, and that is that stalkers can attack both ground and air, and roaches can attack ground only! so trying to compare roaches to stalkers is like apples to oranges. I really like what wherebugsgo said and he hit the nail on the head with the hammer.
Now in my own strategies/games I usually only have stalkers to back up the colossi, where they cannot defend against air, or if the going gets ruff throw them in front if I know I am going to "win" the battle. now on maps where it permits stalkers are like protosses mutalisks, they can go anywhere fast and harass the sh!t out of a turtleing opponent. Which is really fun on maps like Delta quadrant, or jungle basin where you can very easily blink into their natural. So IMO if your "afraid of mass roaches you should've scouted it already and been prepared with void rays, or a ground army consisting or lots and immortals to tank the damage and stalkers to attack from a "safe " distance.
Now I am no SC2 pro but that is just my own experiences
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I have no problem with a mediocre unit being versatile, however, nothing else attacks air better. Since Protoss has the hardest time swapping to deal with an air threat (Terran have reactors to double production on a building, Zerg have larva), they tend to err more towards Stalkers. If Protoss falls behind, they simply cannot recover with a strong counter unit. For example, Terran might swap a reactor over to a Starport to pop out Vikings to deal with Collosi, just as Zerg might spend a production cycle making Corruptors. If Protoss want to stop Muta with Phoenix, it's one at a time (arguably with Chrono Boost that's 1.225 at a time).
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I think the stalker is just fine as it is, the problem is the total lack of good anti-heavy-air that Protoss has seeing as the Void Ray is, to be honest, totally useless now. The Void Ray needs a total revamp if you ask me. It should charge-up super-fast for each individual attack whilst dealing no damage until charged and deal a good amount of burst damage after that cool-down. Burst damage along the lines of the Immortal but probably with a lower firing rate.
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On October 19 2010 04:21 BlasiuS wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 03:53 MalVortex wrote:
Stalkers already had +1(+1) in the early beta, it was deemed too powerful and was nerfed in beta patch 6.
They're probably not going to revert that change.
They weren't deemed to powerful, beta patch 6 buffed the stalker, by changing it from 8(+1)/+6(+1) to 10(+1)/+4(+0) as it is now. Before that change, stalkers took way too long to kill anything light on the ground - your talking about *5* hits to kill a zergling and an astounding 22 hits to kill a zealot! The small tweak significnatly improved the efficacy of the stalker on the ground, but it came at the cost of the unit scaling, which is frankly a problem. Keep in mind, many things have changed sense beta patch 6, including repeated nerfs to other viable AA armored units like the voidray. If it wasn't deemed too powerful, then why did they remove the + damage from upgrades? Why didn't they just change it to 10(+1)/+4(+1)? Because it would be too strong that's why. Blizzard doesn't make random balance changes for no reason, so statements like this: Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 04:16 MalVortex wrote:
Beta 6 buffed the stalker, the loss of scaling was random and inexplicable. don't really make sense. It wasn't random, and it wasn't inexplicable. I just gave you the explanation.
Oh and a 75 minerals 25 gas unit that has 22 damage is faster than any other races' gateway/rax units offcreep even and can also harass expos using burrow is not too strong right ? The fact that zerg nabs whine about it doesnt mean its actually strong it means zerg nabs dont know how to deal with it YET.
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I see your point... but right now Protoss is fairly balanced as a whole. If you add dps to the late game Protoss core units, you'd have to reduce something somewhere. +weapons is very strong in the protoss army... I did a breakdown awhile back:
+ Show Spoiler +Here's a breakdown of the pros to each.
Armor:
-There's a chance the Terran will have EMP, so by fortifying the HP you are soft countering ghosts.
-Stim increases attack speed, making more hits faster and increasing the effectiveness faster.
-Armor helps Templar and probes.
-DPS increase on stalkers is very minimal with +Attack.
-Synergy with gaurdian shield.
-Terran generally have more units attacking faster but for less damage.
Attack:
-Armor only effects the HP part of the units, which is generally around half of their total life.
-Marginal DPS increase for Zealots and Collosi and Immortals
-Shield are ineffective on Archons, and less effective on stalkers and sentries due to their low hp:shield ratio.
-DTs one shot SCVs with armor.
-Attack is best for blink stalkers, they are best when used to harrass the enemy base, they mostly avoid engaging in head on battles until needed, meaning they attack while not being attacked.
Overall I vote attack. While terran does attack more times in a battle than protoss, protoss shield don't get the benifit from armor. This mixed with the bonuses immortals, zealots, and collosi get make attack generally the better upgrade imo.
There will be times it would be best to go for armor. When playing versus a lot of stimmed marines or early ghosts. In most cases I beleive attack is the best option.
At the same time, immortals get +5 damage to armored units with each upgrade, and void rays are supposed to be the alternative response to armored units for protoss. Sadly, void rays are weak right now, but that's no reason to buff an already strong unit imo.
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I rly think the stalker is one of the worst units in the game.
Sure if u have rly good micro then u can do a lot of dmg with blink. but Cost for cost the stalker gets defeated by basically everything in the game - zerglings, hydra and marauder especially, but also marines and roaches... they are somewhat decent vs mutas but thats about it.
And toss is IMO very badly balanced, a protoss gateway force will lose vs zerg and terran groundforces of equal value unless u manage to pull off some good ff and have a good position.
collossi are rly bad in low number, grow ridiculously strong in high numbers and can be basically be preemptively countered by terrans reactor starport...
u are basically forced to play reactively as toss, if zerg goes FE u have to go FE to if zerg goes fast roaches u have to get immo ASAP, early terran bio pushes can basically only defended by guarding the ramp and hoping u survive until storm or collossi get out...
i play toss mostly but i play a lot of random, and i win most tvp without effort and a lot of zvp despite me having far less practice with terran or especially zerg.
Buffing the stalker would be a good way to make a toss ground force able to stand up to the other races without toss having to get tier 3 tech.
Zealots are basically good units but without charge they are so much worse. I could imagine that making charge earlier accessible would be a nice idea too.
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Compared to BW, SC2 units with an anti-air attack seem to pay some price so that they're less effective vs ground compared to units that can't attack air. In the Marine and Hydralisk case its severe fragility vs AoE. For thors its slow movement speed, and for archons its cost-inefficiency. Stalkers pay with poor scaling.
I think this is a major reason why we so commonly see ling/bling/festor, rauder/tank/hellion, zeal/immo/colo, and other ground comps that have no anti air.
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The stalker seems not meant as a massable unit, especially seeing as how shitty they were in beta. The design of the stalker seems to be as a neccesary unit to counter certain stuff but not as a strong lategame unit. I'd call it a transitional unit, they are great early on and often neccesary but you wouldn't want to mass them later on in any matchup.
If stalker attack upgrades were better it would severely weaken the use of roaches and ultralisks. Stalkers have weak upgrades on purpose imo, to not make them too strong lategame.
The stalker is already pretty unique in being the the only ground unit that can attack armored air with a bonus. If they were to get +1(+1) upgrades massive air like BC's, carriers and broodlords would be nearly useless against protoss. I think their lategame weakness is neccesary to keep certain units viable against protoss.
For use against roaches and ultra's there is the immortal obviously. Whereas stalkers get worse against roaches if both sides have equal investments in upgrades the opposite is true for immortals.
Immortals have 200 hp 100 shield and 50 attack against armored. Upgrades give +5 to that so if roaches/ultra's have 3 armor and immortals 3 attack the attack will still do 12 damage more compared to no upgrades. At the same time the shield from the immortal gets relatively more effective, ie. upgraded roaches still do 10 dmg a hit to shield regardless of having a base damage of 16 or 22. For example immortals are also quite effective against hydra's later on. A 0-0-0 immortal is about cost even against 0-0 hydra's. A 3-2-0 immortal however beats 3-2 hydra's cost effectively. The pattern you describe for stalkers is exactly reversed for immortals against any armored lategame unit and even most non-armored units, it is obvious blizzard intends immortals to be used instead of stalkers for ground based battles later in the game. Stalkers later on are only meant for their lategame AA capacity.
So I think it's actually a very neat balance blizzard created here. Stalkers may be preferrable over immortals early on because of their micro ability and general usefullness, immortals however get much much better later on as immortals benefit very well from upgrades for both players whereas stalkers do not. It's a elegant system that makes immortals a neccesity later on without forcing protoss to rush for them (as stalkers manage early on).
Against a roach/hydra user you should simply be going 2 or 3 robo bays. Immortals and colossi are great against both hydra and roach and only get better and better as you get upgrades.
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On October 19 2010 23:57 Markwerf wrote:
The stalker seems not meant as a massable unit, especially seeing as how shitty they were in beta. The design of the stalker seems to be as a neccesary unit to counter certain stuff but not as a strong lategame unit. I'd call it a transitional unit, they are great early on and often neccesary but you wouldn't want to mass them later on in any matchup.
If stalker attack upgrades were better it would severely weaken the use of roaches and ultralisks. Stalkers have weak upgrades on purpose imo, to not make them too strong lategame.
The stalker is already pretty unique in being the the only ground unit that can attack armored air with a bonus. If they were to get +1(+1) upgrades massive air like BC's, carriers and broodlords would be nearly useless against protoss. I think their lategame weakness is neccesary to keep certain units viable against protoss.
For use against roaches and ultra's there is the immortal obviously. Whereas stalkers get worse against roaches if both sides have equal investments in upgrades the opposite is true for immortals.
Immortals have 200 hp 100 shield and 50 attack against armored. Upgrades give +5 to that so if roaches/ultra's have 3 armor and immortals 3 attack the attack will still do 12 damage more compared to no upgrades. At the same time the shield from the immortal gets relatively more effective, ie. upgraded roaches still do 10 dmg a hit to shield regardless of having a base damage of 16 or 22. For example immortals are also quite effective against hydra's later on. A 0-0-0 immortal is about cost even against 0-0 hydra's. A 3-2-0 immortal however beats 3-2 hydra's cost effectively. The pattern you describe for stalkers is exactly reversed for immortals against any armored lategame unit and even most non-armored units, it is obvious blizzard intends immortals to be used instead of stalkers for ground based battles later in the game. Stalkers later on are only meant for their lategame AA capacity.
So I think it's actually a very neat balance blizzard created here. Stalkers may be preferrable over immortals early on because of their micro ability and general usefullness, immortals however get much much better later on as immortals benefit very well from upgrades for both players whereas stalkers do not. It's a elegant system that makes immortals a neccesity later on without forcing protoss to rush for them (as stalkers manage early on).
Against a roach/hydra user you should simply be going 2 or 3 robo bays. Immortals and colossi are great against both hydra and roach and only get better and better as you get upgrades.
First, the notion that giving stalkers +1(+1) would make bcs, carriers and brood lords useless is ridiculous. Second, I get that you can make immortals later in the game, but you still need a lot of stalkers. At any point past the midgame, you need to be prepared for air raids and drops. Unless you have air superiority (and since you're P, you probably don't), you need a lot of stalkers. They're already weak for cost (counter-balanced by their mobility) in the early game, but their crap upgrades make them much weaker in the late game. There's no reason that every T1 unit in the game crushes stalkers regardless of micro once upgrades start piling up. Sure, stalkers can blink, and that's great, but marines and marauders can stim (and fly since dropships are a necessary complement), zealots can charge, zerglings are crazy fast, can burrow, and get an attack upgrade to keep them relevant in the late game, and roaches get a speed upgrade, a regen upgrade, and can move while burrowed. All of the T1 units gain mobility and tactical utility as the game continues. There's no reason for the stalker's combat effectiveness to drop off so sharply compared to its counterparts.
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Im not sure if stalker should get +1(+1) updrade, i would like to see marauder get +1(+0) upgrade tho. i dont think they need to be even better building killer has the game progress.
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Stalkers are absolutely fine and people need to stop whining about them.
Versatility comes with a price. The hydralisk costs nearly as much as a stalker, can't be warped in, can't blink, requires an upgrade to get range 6, and has half as much HP. Did I mention it's slow?
Given it does about 2x the damage of a stalker.
But yes, I think stalkers ought to get +1 armored damage on upgrades. Part of the argument for that is that armor and shield upgrades are only 50% as effective on them as other units, part of it is that the protoss don't have any solid method to deal with heavy air besides the stalker. (void ray sucks).
I also don't think it'd unbalance the stalker against marauders or roaches. Roaches are already pretty effective against stalkers, especially when mixed with zerglings or hydras. And after the void ray nerf one of the best ways to deal with mass roach is a lot weaker.
It's a tweak.
People are acting like this is going to make or break the stalker when +1 upgrade damage against armored targets will be largely irrelevant.
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On October 19 2010 12:53 Darkstar_X wrote:
I have no problem with a mediocre unit being versatile, however, nothing else attacks air better. Since Protoss has the hardest time swapping to deal with an air threat (Terran have reactors to double production on a building, Zerg have larva), they tend to err more towards Stalkers. If Protoss falls behind, they simply cannot recover with a strong counter unit. For example, Terran might swap a reactor over to a Starport to pop out Vikings to deal with Collosi, just as Zerg might spend a production cycle making Corruptors. If Protoss want to stop Muta with Phoenix, it's one at a time (arguably with Chrono Boost that's 1.225 at a time).
You're forgetting:
Sentries, archons, HT.
Most toss opt not to go for templar tech OR stargates, which is usually why they get steamed by heavy air builds. Think about it. Templar allow you to throw in an AoE storm (which, if it doesn't kill, it damages and delays an attack) and then get one of the best anti-bio tanks in the game. Feedback is also quite amazing. Then, in a heavy stargate build, you already have dedicated AA available.
What heavy air do toss have a hard time countering? BC? Carrier? Void ray? Corruptor? Please. This whole "toss AA is weak" is getting annoying. Protoss can reduce incoming damage with sentries, kite mutas with Phoenix, storm and feedback with HT (battlecruisers specifically), and do AoE damage with archons. Chrono boost is on equal footing with zerg and terran mechanics; it is, arguably, better; you can use it on research too.
Zerg AA is limited to corruptors, and is the only race without an area-effect against air ability. Terran have thors and Protoss have archons and storm. However, Zerg make up for this with huge production cycles and the ability to switch between tech.
A lot of protoss units are versatile AND strong. Stalkers are your mediocre unit for everything, yes, but you have to support them with templar, sentries, etc. If you use these units you'll find that AA for protoss is surprisingly strong and effective.
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You gotta realise stalkers are not cost effective vs anything in a straight up battle. Their effectiveness diminishes as the game goes on. However they are fast, microable units, making them good for defense, scouting, and harassment. Does that sound like a unit you would want to mass?
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On October 20 2010 00:55 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 23:57 Markwerf wrote:
The stalker seems not meant as a massable unit, especially seeing as how shitty they were in beta. The design of the stalker seems to be as a neccesary unit to counter certain stuff but not as a strong lategame unit. I'd call it a transitional unit, they are great early on and often neccesary but you wouldn't want to mass them later on in any matchup.
If stalker attack upgrades were better it would severely weaken the use of roaches and ultralisks. Stalkers have weak upgrades on purpose imo, to not make them too strong lategame.
The stalker is already pretty unique in being the the only ground unit that can attack armored air with a bonus. If they were to get +1(+1) upgrades massive air like BC's, carriers and broodlords would be nearly useless against protoss. I think their lategame weakness is neccesary to keep certain units viable against protoss.
For use against roaches and ultra's there is the immortal obviously. Whereas stalkers get worse against roaches if both sides have equal investments in upgrades the opposite is true for immortals.
Immortals have 200 hp 100 shield and 50 attack against armored. Upgrades give +5 to that so if roaches/ultra's have 3 armor and immortals 3 attack the attack will still do 12 damage more compared to no upgrades. At the same time the shield from the immortal gets relatively more effective, ie. upgraded roaches still do 10 dmg a hit to shield regardless of having a base damage of 16 or 22. For example immortals are also quite effective against hydra's later on. A 0-0-0 immortal is about cost even against 0-0 hydra's. A 3-2-0 immortal however beats 3-2 hydra's cost effectively. The pattern you describe for stalkers is exactly reversed for immortals against any armored lategame unit and even most non-armored units, it is obvious blizzard intends immortals to be used instead of stalkers for ground based battles later in the game. Stalkers later on are only meant for their lategame AA capacity.
So I think it's actually a very neat balance blizzard created here. Stalkers may be preferrable over immortals early on because of their micro ability and general usefullness, immortals however get much much better later on as immortals benefit very well from upgrades for both players whereas stalkers do not. It's a elegant system that makes immortals a neccesity later on without forcing protoss to rush for them (as stalkers manage early on).
Against a roach/hydra user you should simply be going 2 or 3 robo bays. Immortals and colossi are great against both hydra and roach and only get better and better as you get upgrades. First, the notion that giving stalkers +1(+1) would make bcs, carriers and brood lords useless is ridiculous. Second, I get that you can make immortals later in the game, but you still need a lot of stalkers. At any point past the midgame, you need to be prepared for air raids and drops. Unless you have air superiority (and since you're P, you probably don't), you need a lot of stalkers. They're already weak for cost (counter-balanced by their mobility) in the early game, but their crap upgrades make them much weaker in the late game. There's no reason that every T1 unit in the game crushes stalkers regardless of micro once upgrades start piling up. Sure, stalkers can blink, and that's great, but marines and marauders can stim (and fly since dropships are a necessary complement), zealots can charge, zerglings are crazy fast, can burrow, and get an attack upgrade to keep them relevant in the late game, and roaches get a speed upgrade, a regen upgrade, and can move while burrowed. All of the T1 units gain mobility and tactical utility as the game continues. There's no reason for the stalker's combat effectiveness to drop off so sharply compared to its counterparts.
Ok I might have overexagerated about the stalkers power against air if it had +1(+1) but I still think it would be too much. It would be a pretty sick buff to stalker/colossi as by going that combo you can force your opponent to go vikings / corruptors which in turn take alot of damage from stalkers already. +1(+0) is absolutely fine really. If stalkers got +2 against armor for each up I would be too strong to just get +2 or +3 attack stalker/colossi imo.
Also one huge thing this whole analysis is forgetting:
sure stalkers get the lowest percentual DPS increase of about any unit with a attack upgrade but in the same way armor upgrades are also not really effective against stalkers. +1 attack and +1 armor on zerg/terran cancel eachother out mostly regardless of that upgrade being a +7% boost or a +20% boost or whatever. The only thing with stalkers is that it's not really effective to be ahead on upgrades as they don't benefit a whole lot from that if you are playing against armored units.
Against lots of armored units you want some immortals eventually anyway which benefit better then any unit in the game from upgrades on both sides so it all evens out.
(the only time where I want to have mass stalkers is against zergs using roach/hydra. In that case I want some robo facilities as well and mix in a few immortals/colossi anyway which benefit from upgrades very well). The whole roach vs stalker balance is fine imo, stalkers aren't needed as a counter to them except early on. After speed and some roach upgrades you SHOULD need immortals/colossi.
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I absolutely agree. Right now, just +1 doesn't keep up with the other races equivalent upgrades really. Expensive as they are (more expensive than the roach and the marauder, especially in gas), +1/+1 should be implemented into an upcoming patch. I think this will also force terran to stray from MM(M) and bioballs earlier to get other tech such as seige tanks or ghosts, resulting in overall more diverse gameplay.
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On October 19 2010 22:51 Freeborn wrote:
collossi are rly bad in low number, grow ridiculously strong in high numbers and can be basically be preemptively countered by terrans reactor starport...
u are basically forced to play reactively as toss, if zerg goes FE u have to go FE to if zerg goes fast roaches u have to get immo ASAP, early terran bio pushes can basically only defended by guarding the ramp and hoping u survive until storm or collossi get out...
So if someone guesses that you will go collossi and build the appropriate counter, your race is bad?
Maybe if you didn't go for the A-Move army every time, they wouldn't build vikings so often. Good use of force field with a decent amount of zealots can stop early - mid bio armies easily. Instead of going colossi every game against T, try going HT sometimes.
Sentries are absolutely necessary to deal with bio armies, at least until you can comfortably have a decent number of colossi or storm.
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1/0 or 1/1 is not gonna magically make stalkers less of a piece of shit that they are right now, their dps for a unit that costs so many resources is just awful.
They are just needed to not die to air or units that can kite zealots till the end of time.
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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.
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I completely agree. I've been discussing this with people for a while but no one really understood it. Stalkers become almost worthless eventually against certain compositions.
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i don't really feel like +1 +0 is the issue, what i dislike is the high cost.
tho it is "okay" since most of the time you don't need that many of them anyway.
but i always have the feeling, i pay more than it's worth..
i totally understand the arguments, and i agree that the range,speed,shooting air part should have its price, it's just that Protoss has no other option in the early game to fullfill the "range dps" role - and that's exactly where the stalker feels weak compared to T/Z units.
however, in the later stages of a match, stalker cost seems to be totally fine, aswell as their scaling with upgrades.
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Stalker is the fastest unit in the game without ups (off creep) though AND it has blink so it can focus fire most air by going under it, esp when you have colosi/HT/Archon to clear the ground under the air unit.
For late game composition, all races need a mix of units to do well, and hopefully you will have other units by the time they get massive air. Carriers, even against massives, still have high burst dps (esp when uped as much or more as their armor)
For the roach vs stalker, remember shields recharge alot faster in sc2 when out of combat, so micro without doubt gives the stalker the advantage.
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I use stalkers early game when micro is still manageable, by the late 200/200 armies I try to have as few as possible. However even in late game they can be very useful for harassment and mobility, and they're one of the few AA ground units for protoss, which basically means they'll be ubiquitous in toss army compositions. Their mobility and blink abilities are compensated for by their low DPS.
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a lot of good reasoning back and forth. i don't really know if +1 to bonus is good or not. all i know is the game is fine right now so why change it?
also, no one's mentioned this: stalkers surprisingly grows stronger in numbers. they're pretty good when at critical mass whatever that may be. think about one stalker kiting a roach. pretty effective. now then think about a whole mass of stalkers shooting their shot and then blinking away. roaches will have to run toward stalkers to engage or they would have taken a hundred plus damage.
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I used to build plenty of stalkers throughout the match and use as a bulk unit for my army but I have been forced to stop this late-game. Sure the Stalkers have versatility but late-game they are just a bit to weak and if you get pushed and have invested to heavily in stalkers there is a high risk of getting rolled.
To me the argument "but they shoot AA" is a bit flawed, just because they shot AA you cant make them to weak since that would mean you lose heavily to ground with them.
+1(+1) Would really help stalkers stay as a staple unit late-game.
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Stalkers don't scale well with upgrades relative to other units. Certainly this seems pretty obvious.
I think it's also fairly obvious that they don't have to in order to have a useful role in the protoss late game army, and protoss also seems to be doing quite well in late game situations.
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it doesn't matter if the stalker receives less benefit from +armor damage upgrades because you have the immortal. Looking at one unit individually is a horrible way to go about this, because you are never just using one unit. Look at a stalker zealot composition against pure roaches, even with hydras mixed in, it would still do better than only stalkers. You want a unit that benefits greatly from attack upgrades? then the immortal is your go to unit. You don't even have to tech that high, get a robo bay for immortals then move onto other tech if you choose. Blink, good range and fast movement speed makes this unit a versatile, all around unit to use in any composition, I've never seen a PvX game without stalkers. And something the roach and marauder don't have is the ability to attack air.
If anything we should be talking about the marauder, something about that unit just seems unfair.
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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.
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I would say in my builds I always have stalkers.. Late game or early game stalkers are great. Early game they punish a player for trying to micro against your zealots.. At late game they provide another buffer line in front of the Collosi/HTs (in addition to your Zealots) and provide AA. They are highly mobile in the mid-late stages of the game (with blink) and can harass quite nicely. I wouldn't care too much about the base statistics of unit vs. units. Your missing so much more to unit compositions if you focus on the statistics.
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On October 21 2010 16:14 Darkstar_X wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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.
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Rather than go into a "no you!~" argument of what unit scales like what, here is the raw dps scaling of every attacking unit in the game. See if you can spot the outlier!
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.
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EPT
