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I know, it seems like a silly question.
I've been playing around with Protoss (I mainly play Zerg) and, coming from the huge speed and mobility of zerglings, Zealots just seem like they SUCK.
Really, the only units that they perform well against early on are zerglings or other zealots. The main problem that I have with them is that they're just SO SLOW.
I get so frustrated when 2 marines and a marauder can kite my 4 zealots forever, even WITHOUT concussive shell. They're incapable of forming an effective surround without charge, and even with charge, they close the gap, then go right back to being kited.
It doesn't seem fair that they NEED either charge or force field to be effective at anything other than a meat shield. Zerglings and marines both are super useful throughout the whole game as damage-dealing easily-massed units that can a-move and be relatively effective. Should I really need a high-gas cost unit that requires energy and a ton of micro just to make my base unit deal damage?
How can they be used effectively? Or should I just continue to lose when I make a larger-than-average amount of zealots, and win when I just skip them and mass stalkers?
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In PvP there are only good if your enemy has many zealots, then u need them. At lest you need some to deal with his Zealots. And when he has none,.....you know?
In PvZ needed against Zerglings and later as a meatshield (never seen hydras or roaches kite them (jeah ok maybe on creep, but not in a main fight or with armed protoss backup))
And PvT, I think it's +ev to have them as meatshield, and when you have stalker backup (or colossi,or....) it's not effectiv to kite them, also in the lategame with charge, they rock.
So, i think they are not always needed, but at least some are good to have as the core unit.
The problems you mentioned will mainly only happen when you have only zealots.
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meat shields, really good meat shields. (fucking awesome mineral dump meat shields after charge upgrade)
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Zealots are amazing meat shields, and once up close to the enemy do tremendous amounts of damage, both directly and indirectly.
Overall: Zealots are a very important part of kiting. You, in a way, actually want your zealots to be kited because you can micro your stalkers in the back to do a reversed kiting onto their kiting units. As they are trying to kite the zealots, you use your stalkers to move up, shoot, move up, shoot at their kiting units receiving literally no damage to your stalkers. This works because zealots are just so robust, and works even better once they have charge as they will actually be able to deal damage along with the stalkers.
Zealots are also surprisingly good against buildings. I would rather have 10 zealots attacking a building than 10 stalkers. I don't know the exact numbers on DPS and stuff, (I hate combining starcraft and math) but I know I've won base trades with primarily zealots when they had primarily stalkers.
PvP: They are obviously good for holding off 2gates and dumb stuff like that, but stalkers are actually fairly weak against zealots especially when there's a decent amount of them. Stalkers can't kite zealots forever, and once backed in a corner or not microed well, zealots do a ridiculous amount of damage to them. Also the overall kiting technique.
PvZ: Amazing against zerglings. I need not say much more about that topic but they are also very good for taking out drones and production buildings (like stated in the overall) and are great meatshields for ultra's and even hydra's in smaller numbers.
PvT: In PvT I find myself getting more and more zealots. Marines can't do enough damage to them to effectively deal with a lot of zealots, and marauders (once pushed to a wall) can't do shit to zealots. I find myself getting charge more and more in this match up just because of how "in your face" they are against Terran Bio. Also the overall statement applies here the most. I love having those marauders slow down those zealots thinking they're winning the fight, when they don't even realize my stalkers have been shooting them the entire time. Coupled with lower life from stim means by by OP Marauders.
In simpler terms: Zealots are boss.
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No offence but imho winning games should take some effort, otherwise sc2 would be one game no one would play. You know the terran is actually microing his units to actually kite those zealots, that means he's doing what he can to not get molested in melee. Actually, it doesnt seem fair when 4 zealots beats 4 marauders and 4 marines if the terran isn't microing and this even without charge..
You really should get the "high gas" units that the protoss arsenal does provide you and don't cry about the cost as most decent toss players will have more than enough gas compared to the terran during the first 5-6 minutes. Atleast if you are using the occational chrono boost to get out more workers.
Zealots should be used as meat for your ranged units, with charge they are great for flanking, or worker line harass if you feel like investing in a warp prism or have a close proxy pylon.
I don't really see why you'd want to change over to zealots if mass stalkers are winning you games. :/
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zealots are good for a couple things
1) they only cost minerals, so basically if you are doing gas-heavy builds they provide a good meat shield to keep ranged units from focusing down your power units (immortals/collosus/etc.)
2) zealots are not good for super early game against opponents with decent to good micro (terran mainly). this is why most builds involve getting either forge/cannons for early defense, or you see only 1 gate before cyber core.
3) mid/late game, it is essential that you get charge for your zealots, there is really no way around it.
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Zealots function as an excellent mineral dump when you have excess minerals. They are high-quality cannon-fodder that will constantly need replacing, so one should always have a fair bit of Zealots in their army. They become genuinely effective once they get the Charge upgrade.
Despite the fact that Zealots are a huge micro failure, they're pretty effective against most units, and their initial slowness can be helped with proper force-field usage. Sentries and Zealots complement each other SO well (provided you don't inadvertently shield your enemies from your Zealots with FF), and as a result my armies have had much fewer Stalkers than they used to in the past.
So tl;dr always get Zealots. They are useful in pretty much every army-army situation with the exception of air and specialty units like Banelings.
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zealots are amazing, especially in PvP where everyone seems to do the same exact mass stalker/collosus build. Zealots just own stalkers, i mean 16 damage per damage cycle is pretty high compared to stalkers 10 damage or whatever it is. I've won soooo many pvp games because of chargelots. You can also go with a 3 gateway, 1 robo warp prism tactic and just own the crap outta someone with zealots. Honestly the only basic unit that beats zealots early are roaches.
If zealots came with charege they'd be WAY op.
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On December 07 2010 05:47 TheSambassador wrote:
I know, it seems like a silly question.
I've been playing around with Protoss (I mainly play Zerg) and, coming from the huge speed and mobility of zerglings, Zealots just seem like they SUCK.
Really, the only units that they perform well against early on are zerglings or other zealots. The main problem that I have with them is that they're just SO SLOW.
I get so frustrated when 2 marines and a marauder can kite my 4 zealots forever, even WITHOUT concussive shell. They're incapable of forming an effective surround without charge, and even with charge, they close the gap, then go right back to being kited.
It doesn't seem fair that they NEED either charge or force field to be effective at anything other than a meat shield. Zerglings and marines both are super useful throughout the whole game as damage-dealing easily-massed units that can a-move and be relatively effective. Should I really need a high-gas cost unit that requires energy and a ton of micro just to make my base unit deal damage?
How can they be used effectively? Or should I just continue to lose when I make a larger-than-average amount of zealots, and win when I just skip them and mass stalkers?
this is what P players have to deal with.
toss also needs a good unit comp to win, mass stalkers won't beat everything
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You have to remember that Protoss is the only race that gets 3 units out of two structures. It's obvious that protoss is intended to use all three in tandem. All 3 guys are really good at doing a single task. Super good.
What you're experiencing is a the natural consequence of how well the trio of gateways work together. Protoss in defense needs to be patient as hell, because if you send units one by one, they die horribly, but once you have that combo of units, they start overlapping a bit.
So yeah, start weaning yourself away from this notion that zealots are unintentionally bad. It's the only way to stay sane.
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They are just a mineral dump. You usually end up building them because you have to. If you are planning on getting any higher tech units (robo, stargate, templar) you are going to have a mineral surplus. So you build zealots because they keep your money low and because they tank damage. The same is true of other races.
If zerg wants to make mutas, infestors, or any hive tech unit, they are going to have to build a lot of zerglings at some point in the game. If they are not making zerglings (or roaches maybe), then they are bound to have a mineral surplus.
Terran is the only race who has two choices when it comes to mineral dumping: marines or hellions. Since every race is bound to make mineral only units at some point, hellions are great because they counter the zerg and protoss mineral dump (lings/zealots). Alternatively, they can make marines, arguably the strongest tier one unit in the game because of its usability well into late game.
Since both the protoss and terran mineral dumps (zealots/hellions) counter zerg's mineral dump (lings), Blizzard created banelings, a way for zerg to make up for the weakness of zerglings in the late game against the other races' mineral dumps.
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On December 07 2010 06:20 megagoten wrote:
toss also needs a good unit comp to win, mass stalkers won't beat everything
Well thats not the only thing, Zealots are actually pretty good versus mass marines or mass marauder, lings if you have zealot in good numbers. Its all about positioning. If you let your zealots be kited and you just a move into there stuff ofcourse theyll try to save there units. marines are equally as fast*or a bit faster wich u cant kite with* as zealot so if they want to kite they need marauders with concussive shells or they wont be able to do it for very long lol.
It all depends on numbers and what the composition is made of in late game.
Chargelots are absurdly good, Makes the enemy micro there army back without the ability of kiting . to an eventuall dead end where the zealots will kill them.
But as it is with any units composition except blink stalkers you will be needing an army composition of exacly the right amount of everything. So if you have mass zealot you should have sentrys/collossi/voidrays/phoenix, anything gas intensive backing up so the kiting doesnt work as planned.
Thats the beauty of being a toss player i guess. you really need to make your personal army composition with how you want to do in battle and what exacly you want to do..
More zealots early game mean more sentry's so if you just add 3 stalkers just for protection you will have LOTS of forcefields (wich will be the timing and micro part of such an opening)
In some builds people tend to go 3 zealot and a few sentrys to block of the ramp and get that few minerals out of the way they didnt use for sentrys and go mass stalker.
Some builds dont involve anything but stalkers (blinkstalker obv) but require allot more army microing instead of individual microing.
So what i wanted to say with this was.
Zealots wont ever be without sentry's forcefields early game (except my chargelot rush build wich is supereffective against any MMM timing push early game). Thats how protoss works 
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I'm totally aware that going mass stalkers every game is bad, and I really want to get away from it (I've only done it for about 4 games, all of which I won).
I guess the overall answer is "they suck by themselves, but they complement other units extremely well." I'm still getting a feel to protoss and how many of each unit to make, and where I could say "I just need zerglings to deal with this force" as Zerg, I can't yet say "I just need some of X and X to beat this many X guy." That'll definitely come with more experience.
As to the "you should have to do work," I guess I just feel like the differences in the micro difficulty is pretty high. Scoot n' Shoot is SO easy, and it's the same reason that mass stalkers is easy. Force fielding enough of their units in a way that lets your zealots hit them isn't the hardest thing in the world, but it's much harder than scoot n' shoot.
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Zealots are good for spending minerals on. They're good meat shields and meat walls, and they do good DPS if left alone.
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Zealots are statistical monsters, but you have to find ways to use them. Forcefield, circle your opponent, use probes to block... once you get them in their face they beat pretty much every other unit in the game :p
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vs terran bio, chargelots +2 armor = gg
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Attack with a group of zealots and stalkers behind with 1 sentry using guardian shield.
Kill an equal of units as the zealots.
Retreat with your fast stalkers
Warp in 3-4 more zealots
repeat
Continue doing this until either colossi range or storm are ready.
stop making stalkers, make only zealots, preferably with speed.
Repeat, but now dealing damage with colossi/HTs instead of stalkers.
As long as you only lost zealots, you came out ahead in pretty much any fight.
If you feel like delaying your tech, invest in a few extra sentries and cut the enemy army in half so the zealots actually get to deal damage.
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Same as everyone else. Meatshields.
I miss the speed upgrade. Charge is so lame.
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The thing I hate about zealots the most is that they r so freaking slow and that stalks are soooo fast. It leaves you with zealots barely outside your base when your stalks are already at your opponents choke lol. If you can keep them with your army they are good but ya if they go off on their own they absolutely suck. Zerg probably feels the same about hydra off creep
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On December 07 2010 07:21 Widar wrote:
Same as everyone else. Meatshields.
I miss the speed upgrade. Charge is so lame.
Yeah, i think a 150/150 speed upgrade would be better than 200/200 charge. I bet it would be used a ton more in the early game. They'd also need to cut the research time in half. Zealots are supposed to be scary. They aren't very scary when they are slower than a turtle.
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EPT
