EPT1: Heavy Phoenix play (they can retreat so easily, they almost always reheal their shields)
2: Blink Stalkers (If you ever see a stalker with red hp but full shields, you'll know it worked)
[G] Protoss Shield Upgrade Defense - Page 2
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Mr.Minionman
United States164 Posts
1: Heavy Phoenix play (they can retreat so easily, they almost always reheal their shields) 2: Blink Stalkers (If you ever see a stalker with red hp but full shields, you'll know it worked) | ||
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Raygun
348 Posts
I'm really tentative about upgrading shields vT for anything other than timing attacks though, due the threat of Ghosts. They seem to be worth considering for long term vZ and vP play though if you're going with an air/ground build. | ||
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Markwerf
Netherlands3728 Posts
most Protoss units have more hitpoints then shields.. Except for the archon each unit ground unit benefits significantly more from armor then from shield so that's another reason armor is more popular. Overall it doesn't matter much though as armor is in turn usually much worse then attack as well. Only in PvT are armor and attack somewhat even. When using air + ground like in PvZ i still get 3-1 first. Then after that I get level 1 shield before level 2 armor, a part of the reason there is that the shield tech is faster then armor at that point. Level 1 armor is still much better then level 1 shield though. | ||
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FeyFey
Germany10114 Posts
On the other hand shield upgrade is a nice thing for the immortal as well, if your opponent uses marines only to attack your immortal to bring down shields, while the marauders go after your stalkers or zealots, the shield upgrade buys you a lot of time that way or forces to use his marauders on your immortals. Another example is blink stalkers, shield upgrade is way better for em. But shields will mostly be a cheese upgrade(suprises the opponent and gives you an advantage that way) or a get it since you have time. Or the i got ahead early game now its time for the tripple forge heavy gateway play. | ||
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PD
Norway66 Posts
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rebuffering
Canada2436 Posts
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familyguy123
92 Posts
1) as ForTheDr3am pointed out, PvZ you are likely to use both ground and air. 2) if you plan not on a headlong confrontation, shields are probably better. for instance if you were going to do blink stalker raids... | ||
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Evoshadow
United States88 Posts
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brainpower
United States233 Posts
Here is a run down of a protoss +1 x timing attack (the protoss gets ahead in upgrades and attacks with it) with an immortal vs pure marines. (on a side note, does armor take affect on hits that do damage to both shields and health? For these numbers I chose to assume that it does not apply.) no upgrades: 17 hits to lower the shield, with 2 left over going to health 40 hits to remove the health Total 57 hits. +1 shield (no GS): 20 hits to remove the shield 40 hits to remove health 60 hits total +1 armor (no GS): 17 hits to remove shield with 2 left over going to health 50 hits to remove health 67 total hits No upgrades (with GS): 25 hits to remove shields 50 hits to remove HP 75 total hits +1 shield (with GS): 34 hits to remove shield with 1 left over going to health 67 hits to remove health 101 total hits +1 armor (with GS): 25 hits to remove shields 100 hits to remove health total of 125 hits. As you can see, the cheaper armor upgrade is more effective than the shield upgrade. The rather surprising result is that if you had to decide whether to spend your money on a sentry for guardian shield or the shield upgrade, you would get 5 times the bonus life expectancy (15 extra hits with GS compared to 3 from shield) and save 100 gas by building a new gateway just to build the extra sentry. If that isn't a demonstration of how expensive shield upgrades are, I don't know what is. However... several months ago a I saw a similar analysis of stalkers with +2 armor vs +1 armor, +1 shield against zerglings, and the 1/1 was actually more affective. Its a bit on the late side or I'd probably make a new topic comparing +1 shield to +2 armor, but that can wait for another day. | ||
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Eiviyn
United Kingdom169 Posts
(on a side note, does armor take affect on hits that do damage to both shields and health? For these numbers I chose to assume that it does not apply.) Yes. Think of armour as being a sponge that soaks hits as they hit the relevent layer. You have 10 shield points left, but (hypothetically) 25 shield armour. You get hit for 50. 25 of that gets soaked immediately, and the remaining 25 go through. After 10 points of damage are dealt, you reach the unit's life. This unit just happens to have 25 life armour too. There are 15 points of the attack left, which aren't enough to break the threshold so the damage to the armour is negated. The same applies if the unit has 1 point of shield left. The 50 damage attack will be reduced twice, to 1 total. So why is this important? It's not, really. It makes most calculations concerning "How many hits do Protoss units take to die to marines?" a little wrong when including shield armour and life armour, but not much more. If you want to test this yourself, open the editor. Find stalker in the data editor. Give it 25 life armour and 25 shield armour. Slap down a siege tank and a stalker in the terrain editor. Have the tank shoot at the stalker. The tank hits will do 25 damage. First hit will take the stalker to 55 shields/80 life. Next, 30 shields/80 life. Next, 5 shields/80 life. Now, the magic shot. Next, 0 shields/80 life. Next, 0 shields/55 life. Continue as expected until death. | ||
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brainpower
United States233 Posts
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Telenil
France484 Posts
On shield upgrades, I'd like to point out that they are a very valid alternative to air armor. You usually reasearch air weapons over air armor at the cyber core, because air armor is more expensive (150/150 vs 100/100) and overall less effective. As explained, ships benefit a lot from shield upgrades since they have the ability to hit and run, and tend to survive their first engagement - you can have air weapon and shield research in parallel, in case it matters. Sure, shield is a bit more expensive, but if your ground unit also gain some benefit, why not going for it? I practically never go for shields when I'm on pure ground, but if often get 1 shield when I have a ground/air mix (versus zerg or terran). | ||
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cnaphan
Canada8 Posts
Against a zergling, 180, 210 and 240 shields. Against a zealot, the difference would be less and against anything else, even less. It's not really an argument to get the shield upgrades, but only to note that photon cannons are significantly beefier against T1 units if you do upgrade shields. Against marines and lings, there is an overall body/shield health increase of about 8-10% per shield upgrade level above their attack upgrade level. It should also be noted that, through the course of the game, a portion of shields will be regenerated, whereas body damage is never regenerated. From that point of view, it is more desirable for shields to be damaged than body, and thus, for damage done against shields to be minimized. It's a small thing but for units that harass like Phoenixes and Void Rays, it is worth noting. | ||
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Kaitlin
United States2958 Posts
On March 01 2011 00:27 Telenil wrote: Since we're talking about GS and immortals, note that guardian shield (the sentry one) does not apply to siege mode shells, so don't expect it to reduce siege damage to 8 on immortals. It works against tank in "move" mode, but not against pure AoE damage - it doesn't work against colossi either. Is this right ? Because I know Guardian Shield eliminates the "bounce" of Mutas, which is AoE, is it not ? edit: I just checked in Unit Tester. GS does not reduce Seige damage to 8. Hmm. | ||
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Telenil
France484 Posts
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TNine
United States46 Posts
On March 01 2011 04:05 Kaitlin wrote: Is this right ? Because I know Guardian Shield eliminates the "bounce" of Mutas, which is AoE, is it not ? edit: I just checked in Unit Tester. GS does not reduce Seige damage to 8. Hmm. Are you sure that has to do with the damage type? I was under the impression that Guardian shield worked before Hardened Shield, so Guardian Shield is only useful when the Immortal is getting hit by damage of 11 damage or less. | ||
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MilesTegM
22 Posts
Reading some of the many threads on this topic, it becomes clear that armor upgrades protect a unit slightly more than shield upgrades in a single engagement. (for us low level players, armor will help us stay alive more than shield upgrades) However, every time a unit survives a fight and allows its shields to regenerate, they gain "interest" on the investment of a shield upgrade. They go into the next fight with more damage protection. (Were as, armor upgrade only counts once for each point of health lost.) Eventually, that will add up to having more units on the field. Over time, with good micro, the shield upgrade will pay for itself in units saved. This means a larger army AND more efficiency with minerals and gas.(as opposed to having more unit output which only increases numbers on the field, but costs more, leading to mining out with fewer units) Because of this, shield upgrades have the potential to surpass the benefits of damage and armor upgrades over the course of a longer game. But this will only happen if the shield upgrade is gotten early and the player uses a play style that emphasizes keeping units alive to let their shields regenerate. As for the PvT EMP problem, I see a lot of replays where people just tank the EMP and try to win the ground fight. Sometimes they actually succeed. Obviously, if this is how you plan on dealing with EMPs, then the armor upgrade is the way to go. I have a few idea that I hope the higher level players will weigh in on: 1. When using HT, spot the ghosts with an observer, and shift queue the feedback when out of range. the HT will move in range, and the terran only has a short time to spot it and get the EMP off. (I think I have seen Huk doing this) 2. Use Hallucinated HTs as decoys to get the terran to waste EMPs 3. Use DTs as Ghost assassins. Shift queue attacks on all the Ghosts in a ball. It forces him to either use an emp, use a scan, or get ravens. (ravens + ghosts= a lot of gas) 4. Use a small group of phoenixes to hunt new ghosts as they travel from the base to the main army. If the marine count is low, you can lift ghosts right out of the marauder ball. | ||
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Sevenofnines
United States167 Posts
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brainpower
United States233 Posts
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Jonas :)
United States511 Posts
On February 28 2011 00:03 Mr.Minionman wrote: I research shields for 2 reasons only: 1: Heavy Phoenix play (they can retreat so easily, they almost always reheal their shields) 2: Blink Stalkers (If you ever see a stalker with red hp but full shields, you'll know it worked) Pretty much this. Unless your units are constantly losing their shields and then regenerating them then it will always be better to research regular unit armor. | ||
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