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I've been searching and reading over several topics about EMPing and dodging them or effectively dealing with them as Protoss, and none really seemed to answer my question.
As Protoss, without really changing tech trees or unit compositions, is it possible to (almost) negate the effect of EMP?
I just played a game, (i'll upload the replay after class) in which I was macroing up pretty heavily, and I saw MM. I decided to engage a bit and toy around but he pushed out with two ghosts, and would EMP my army, and if I tried to run away, he'd just stim and kill off half of my retreating army.
Now would the correct response been to engage? (If I had full shields, I could've easily beaten his army)
Or should I just have turtled until I teched to colossus?
As spread out as my units are, 2 EMPs seem to still effect more than half of my army, because it is still fairly early in the game, where I don't have TOO many units.
What do other Protoss players do when you get EMPd?
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Dont get EMP'ed.
High Templars with amulet storm the army and feedback the ghosts before the EMP goes off.
It's a micro battle
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have some backup sentries
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On January 21 2011 07:23 Vaethin wrote:
Dont get EMP'ed.
High Templars with amulet storm the army and feedback the ghosts before the EMP goes off.
It's a micro battle
I'm talking about early to mid game where Templar tech isn't even done.
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From personal experience, I have ~2 observers constantly scouting his army, and if I see a ghost coming in for the EMP's, I move my army and prepare to either feedback the ghost(s) or snipe it.
I think it really boils down to good micro, scouting, and game sense. Attempting to deal with ghosts as Protoss may seem difficult, but that's how Terran users feel when they're up against HT and Colossi.
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On January 21 2011 07:26 JerKy wrote:
From personal experience, I have ~2 observers constantly scouting his army, and if I see a ghost coming in for the EMP's, I move my army and prepare to either feedback the ghost(s) or snipe it.
I think it really boils down to good micro, scouting, and game sense. Attempting to deal with ghosts as Protoss may seem difficult, but that's how Terran users feel when they're up against HT and Colossi.
Hmm, that stems a pretty good option. Now that observers are cheaper, could I spam observers and force him to EMP my little floaty scouts?
Because I had one out already, but he EMPd it. :o
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How quickly did you bring out your Observer? How quickly did the Ghosts come out? He likely has few Marauders with fast Ghosts, so I'd suggest you turtle up on 2 bases and wait until you have Colssus tech before engaging. Even with EMP, a mostly Marine army loses to Colossus.
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This can be difficult to deal with, but here are two things I try to do:
1) If you have Colossi and decent positioning, you can usually still do plenty of damage to him, EMP or no. Just go for the battle.
2) If you're way out of position, or the EMP really gets your higher tech units, just forcefield and retreat. Always have a few sentries in different sections of your army for that purpose.
If he EMPs everything and steam-rolls you, welcome to how Terran and Zerg feel vs storms. It's just part of the game.
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Blazinghand
United States25557 Posts
EMPs are strong against clustered units with energy or units that are shield dependent, such as Immortals, Sentries, and High Templar.
A couple suggestions when dealing with EMP:
- Have your Sentries pop Guardian Shield before the engagement starts, so that the EMP doesn't stop the Guardian shields, just the FFs to come. If you don't feel like you can land FFs before every Sentry is EMPed, maybe hallucinate some spare immortals to make extra EMP targets and use your energy for something good
- If you must have many Sentries, Immortals, or High Temps, spread them out so that he can't catch all your EMP-able units in one go.
- Zealots aren't heavily damaged by EMPs, and with charge they are effective against the bio army likely to accompany Ghosts.
- Collosi aren't heavily damaged by EMPs, and with lances they are effective against the bio army likely to accompany Ghosts.
- EMPed High Templars are basically useless, so make the EMPed ones into Archons. Although Archons are, erm, use-impaired (or differently abled, as some may put it) against bio armies with concussive shell, they spread your army, making you less susceptible to EMP, they deal decent damage to bio when they do get there, and are far more useful than energy-less high Temps.
- Archons are also huge targets for EMP. Good news: It will take 3.5 EMPs to de-shield them. Bad news: They are not very durable without shields
- Don't try to Feedback ghosts unless you're sure he won't EMP you first, as EMP has more range than Feedback; instead, just burn your energy on storms if you can get that close without him EMPing your templar.
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If I see very quick EMP with a lot of barracks, I go for quick colossus. If you do this you need some way to keep the Terran from flanking your colossus, and since they have quick ghosts you can't rely on force fields, so hugging walls and getting a lot of gateway units is necessary.
I never plan to stay on colossus the entire game, so I slowly make my way towards templar tech, and don't usually get more than four colossus the whole game.
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Another thing to think about, Ghosts cost 150 gas, that's 6 Marauders. His army is likely going to be much more marine heavy and much more vulnerable to Colossus.
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Blazinghand
United States25557 Posts
On January 21 2011 07:53 hardethanolninja wrote:
Another thing to think about, Ghosts cost 150 gas, that's 6 Marauders. His army is likely going to be much more marine heavy and much more vulnerable to Colossus.
He could also be cutting tech to pay for the ghosts. Maybe he has no tanks, medivacs, thors, banshees, vikings, etc. He might have fewer +ground attack grades, or just fewer mineral-intensive units as a result of taking his gasses earlier while on 1-2 bases before saturation. Terran can't just include ghosts in the army for free.
Teching to and building 3 ghosts with Reactor is 150/50 + 100/100 + 450/450 = 700 minerals, 600 gas. (or 600/500 without reactor). Take advantage of his weakness during the ghost investment period, especially if he's delaying shells or stim by harassing with stalkers and avoiding taking hull damage, or whatever pressure you can think of.
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An early ghost + MM push means that you should be going for collossi, not templar. If you are already commited to the twilight council, chrono out charge. EMP does not affect zealots too badly, and if you can maintain a decent army size and position well, your chargealots with stalker support should be able to take out a MMG composition. Later game when you already have templar out, play defensive and warp in new templar as existing templar get EMP'd. Focus on making him waste EMP's and don't overcommit (I like sending out single HT+ a few support units on their own. It sort of forces the terran to either waste an EMP on a small # of units, risk losing his ghost as he tries to snipe the HT, or risk getting a MM counter ball stormed. Late late game you should have both HT and collossi and it becomes much more difficult for a terran to both get your collosssi with vikings and your HT with EMP, and you should be able to supply a near infinite stream of HT warping in 1 at a time to storm the terran player.
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What, no mention of the Phoenix? Using Graviton beam, you can disable the ghosts. With fewer Phoenix, you can shut them down for a bit. With larger numbers, you can snipe them off pretty quickly. There's a very good chance you'll lose many Phoenix in the process. But at least you won't get hit by EMP, or at least you'll force premature EMPs on the phoenix.
If it's too difficult getting enough Phoenix in there, you can try hallucinating a few to soak up hits. However hallucinated Phoenix are pretty obvious to spot, as they all spawn at 50 energy.
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About people saying it comes down to micro
Feedback has range 9
Storm has range 9
FF has a range of 3
EMP has range of 10
So terran has the advantage
This may or may not be worth anything but alot (not all) of terrans stim their bio units into battle. Ghosts don't have stim so they get left behind, therefore the HTs can get a bunch of storms before the ghosts arrive and same goes for sentries (less so because of their shorter range).
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Blazinghand
United States25557 Posts
I think that it's not reasonable to expect that you'll feedback ghosts by clicking specifically on their tiny unit before they use their AoE spell on you unless you're absolutely sure you got the drop on your opponent.
One trick with Phoenixes picking up ghosts (assuming they don't just melt to the terran AA) is to make sure they're standing above the ghosts, so that any EMP on Phoenixes also EMPs the ghosts.
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Spread your units out so he has to use multiple emps to hit any of your army, this also helps to get a great surface area when you do eventually engage as well.
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I've been trying alot of builds for ghostplay lately and I have been having more success now when the timing hits better. I usually attack around 9 minutes with 2 ghosts maybe 4-5 marauders and a bunch marines (2 rax with techlab and 2 without addons). If the protoss defends the top of the ramp at that time I'm having a fair chance of ending the game there. Most of the times colossos isnt out at that time.
The 4 gate has been fended of successfully due to have 1 ghost out EMP:ing at the wall preventing most from going all in (even if i think that a good 4 gate breaks the wall since i probably just have 4-5 marines, 1 ghost, 1 marauder at that moment.
I think in theory it's about microing over open areas to defend this push that brings me fortune Also early protoss preasure might give longer time for colossos to finnish.
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Someone should make a show about this...
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On January 21 2011 11:47 valheru wrote:
About people saying it comes down to micro
Feedback has range 9
Storm has range 9
FF has a range of 3
EMP has range of 10
So terran has the advantage
This may or may not be worth anything but alot (not all) of terrans stim their bio units into battle. Ghosts don't have stim so they get left behind, therefore the HTs can get a bunch of storms before the ghosts arrive and same goes for sentries (less so because of their shorter range).
FF does not have range 3, at least in this context of from how far away it can be cast. I'm pretty sure it's 9. The FF itself is 3x3.
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On January 21 2011 07:43 Blazinghand wrote:
EMPs are strong against clustered units with energy or units that are shield dependent, such as Immortals, Sentries, and High Templar.
[*]Archons are also huge targets for EMP. Good news: It will take 3.5 EMPs to de-shield them. Bad news: They are not very durable without shields
They're also huge targets for snipe, if anyone actually uses it.
If you've got sentries in your army would it be viable to hold them back and use them to block the enemy army off if yours gets EMP'd?
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This is a realization that it took me a long time to actually realize even though it seems quite obvious. When thinking about ghosts versus templars, each of the two units is vastly superior to the other one when defending.
Ghosts have multiple advantages on templar when protoss is trying to engage, and templars are potentially the best protoss unit in the game when used defensively.
Its not as subtle as the usual defenders advantage, the units are actually quite noticeably way way worse when used while attacking. Ghosts are almost useless if you are using them against templars while trying to push a protoss position. Not just because stationary defensive templar can stay perfectly spread out and you still have to get within range of them to emp them, but also because even if you magically emp all of them, 6 new ones are warped in and storm and the ghosts have no energy to emp again and now the ghosts all die and are a massive investment that just disappeared.
But if protoss is pushing spreading templar when trying to reach a position is really hard, not only do they get clumped and emp'd together they are so much easier to emp because you can kite back and emp in front of the templar and they will actually walk into the emp in the millisecond it takes between clicking and the emp going off.
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Blazinghand
United States25557 Posts
On February 16 2011 12:08 Arkanor wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2011 07:43 Blazinghand wrote:
EMPs are strong against clustered units with energy or units that are shield dependent, such as Immortals, Sentries, and High Templar.
[*]Archons are also huge targets for EMP. Good news: It will take 3.5 EMPs to de-shield them. Bad news: They are not very durable without shields
They're also huge targets for snipe, if anyone actually uses it. You can't snipe Archons, as they are not biological.
On February 16 2011 12:08 Arkanor wrote:If you've got sentries in your army would it be viable to hold them back and use them to block the enemy army off if yours gets EMP'd?
I think in general, against EMPs, you want to keep your energy and shield-reliant units, including sentries, templar, phoenixes and immortals, spread out enough to avoid all being EMPed. Keeping the spellcasters back in particular would be helpful.
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Some tactics that I have used is to split my army, and use one half as bait for EMPs. Once they are EMP'd, pull them back, and have my fresh half army (Zealots w/ Leg Speed are great for this) intercept the MM Ball.
Then bring back in the EMP'd force (typically your ranged attackers) to complete the attack. That way the T army has focus on your non EMP'd units, and you should be able to mop up.
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EPT
