That first encounter next to the gold half his ultralisks were stuck behind the hydra wall. If Morrow just bothered microing that a little better; walking the hydras to the side, it would have been so much better.
ZvP useless if he has 2 or more immortals, or the capacity to produce them, but very bad vs immortal-less compositions too. Does well vs Colossi-sentry only composition
ZvZ very badly outranged and outmicroable by roach-hydra but it's useless because of the Broodlords, they are fat and the broodlings will prevent them from moving forward
ZvT can be useful if you go to Broodlords after midgame, have 5 bases and try to army trade with the T, who will win the battle, preferably with mostly vikings left, then roll out 15 of them and it can be game ending unless the T survives with a decent enough force to rush into your nat/main/crutial exp and do terrible terrible demage, and snipe lonely ultras as they pop
Yep, useless pretty much in my eyes
they were better before the Blizz guys screwed up their splash, then nerfed it back to be worse then originally, and players didnt react well enough to them, but nowadays it's pretty lame idea to get ultras unless you're in an unloseable spot
@OP - You have actually decreased the SC2 community's knowledge of the game with your horrendous misinformation about Ultras, by posting (as others have said) an ancient video of Ultras from beta. Your post is so bad as a result, I wish admins would close and bury this thread so people will not accidentally watch that video and decrease their knowledge of the game.
What you should have done is download a unit tester map and test out Ultra's yourself, making your own video, not lazily linked the first Ultra video you found from YouTube without checking the date. Wow.
the thing about ultralisk is that unless you have a pack of stimmed marauders or some immortals, they take forever to kill... a single ultra is equal to about 4 roaches in cost, and survivability, and speed, and damage, but it doesn't lose a quarter of it's damage for every ~150 hp it loses and it isn't instagibbed by splash (splash will kill 4 roaches like their total hp pool is practically 145).
it's the same as battlecruiser though... it's a gamble to invest in them unless you have suitable support units and already dominate the game.
theoretically, mutalisk to gain advantage and then transition into muta/ultra is a killer strategy. since the units good against ultralisk are dire against mutalisk.
Absolutely no. They seem horrible in all pro-games I've seen. They're too big, so they block each other always and only two or even one can attack at a time in some narrow places, So only a small portion does damage while others just sit there and take it. Despite all upgrades, they still seem to melt easily and most importantly they are melee, any ranged units like thors or colossi seem to be simply better. Either way, I'd love if they would be buffed a little so people would use them more, but doesn't seem like that's happening any time soon. I only use them for fun, when I know I've won.
The fact that they are pretty horrible atm beside from very very specific scenarios (Geo.Rion has given a very fitting description imho) doesn't stem from the unit itself but rather the support it needs to stay viable.
Ultras alone are very easily countered, and the units you'd need to actually make them useful are extremly gas-intensive as well - Ultra/Infestor/Hydra (and so'd be Ultra/Muta/Broodlord) is a scary combination of units, but just not affordable with less then 5 minings bases of gas, while even the lategame lineups of other races are easier sustain since their mineral-dump units stay awesome when upgrades are involved.
I find it unfortunate that at this stage in SC2 we are still discussing ultras in this manner. Ultras, in my lowly opinion, really shouldn't be considered from a pure ultra composition (same with other ultimate units like BC, carrier, broodlord). The enormous benefit of FG with ultras, ling surround, muta support, or more situational tanking (breaking turtles as a last resort) uses of ultras are the important considerations.
Their size is a negative for obvious reasons, but also a positive for tank and col. splash.
Personally, I VERY rarely use them. If they have marauders you don't want to mass ultras, and if they have marines then I'd just get 80 banelings anyway... so why would I want ultras?
Ultras are pretty damn good against gateway units (especially when it's sentry heavy), you just need a good composition of units in order to take down the gateway units. Other than that i'd go broodlords 99% of the time
I love how everyone forgets how utterly dominating SC2 ultralisks are in comparison to BW ultras.... I mean seriously, Ultra ling was made to be a speed composition, not a damage composition, just like it was in Broodwar. As nam nam said, Ultralisks are great in small unit encounters, so striking from multiple positions to thwart large army confrontations is how ultralisks were meant to be used!
vs terran you really really really need infestors to make them super good... problem is that both infestors and ultras eat up gas so it'll be hard to support it
Yes and no, it's already been mentioned but Ultras are very situational and rarely cost effective. In direct combat they just funnel and fail hard. I've watched some TLO replays where he has a big advantage but then loses because he goes Ultras. You know a unit is bad if they can cause TLO to lose.
Then again, to their credit, I have won one game thanks to producing Ultras. My opponent(T) got sloppy and separated his tanks and bio and my 4 Ultras just happened to flank his group of 5-6 undefended tanks. I was able to pull out a win by mopping up his bio with a few remaining blings/lings/ and surviving ultras.
So you almost have to get a great flank against a unit that is slow and hard countered by Ultras (siege tanks and colossus come to mind). Otherwise, I've rarely ever seen Ultras paying for themselves.
On January 18 2011 02:29 ShatterZer0 wrote: I love how everyone forgets how utterly dominating SC2 ultralisks are in comparison to BW ultras.... I mean seriously, Ultra ling was made to be a speed composition, not a damage composition, just like it was in Broodwar. As nam nam said, Ultralisks are great in small unit encounters, so striking from multiple positions to thwart large army confrontations is how ultralisks were meant to be used!
BW ultras cost 2 less supply, are much smaller, faster, don't die as fast, and are cheaper. Lings were also much better in BW, they dealt more damage, and survived longer. Ultraling could go toe-to-toe with most army compositions even without dark swarm.
In SC2, they seem best for reinforcing once your main army is destroyed. They get killed so quickly by marauders and immortals, it's ridiculous.
The ultralisk have a very important role in the zvt match up. To be able to attack and kill an PF expansion you need ultras to take down the PF. Banlings cost to much, to be the only thing to kill it. With some ultras it is so much better and they tank the dmg quite well. They are not superb, but when you want to take down a PF expansion fast and effective you need the ultras.
I feel like ultralisks were in a great place before the patch that "fixed" their splash damage.
If they would just bring back the headbutt against buildings (and buff it so it's worth having) and leave the splash against units like it was at release, the ultralisk would actually be useful against the armies it's designed to be useful against (stalker balls, mass thors, clumps of armored units like roaches, etc.).