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I've noticed that questions about researching Protoss shield upgrades get asked every once in a while. But there are no definitive explanations on why it isn't done much. Some say to never get them, or only get them after all the other upgrades have been exhausted. In fact, outside of "when there's nothing left to upgrade", I haven't heard a rational to research them. Which of course makes me wonder - are there any good times/situations to get Protoss shield upgrades?
First, though, I should look at the reasons why they are not gotten often. As I see it, there are three common reasons.
Reason #1 - prohibitive cost + Show Spoiler +Denoting price as minerals/gas: - The shield upgrade levels cost 200/200, 300/300, 400/400. The total for all shield levels is 900/900.
- The ground weapons, ground armor, and air weapons levels all cost 100/100, 175/175, 250/250. The total for any single tech path is 525/525.
- The air armor levels cost 150/150, 225/225, 300/300. The total for all air armor levels is 675/675.
It is clear the shield upgrades are much more expensive than any other upgrade. Purchase all 3 shield upgrades and only Ground Weapons Level 1 (1000/1000 total), or get all 3 ground weapon and all 3 ground armor upgrades for an extra 50/50 (1050/1050 total).
Reason #2 - usefulness + Show Spoiler +Most Protoss units already have some amount of armor, so gaining armor upgrades increases that edge. Going from 0 to 1 is less "good" than going from 1 to 2 (and from 2 to 3 and so on). The reason is that the linear change in damage reduction causes a nonlinear change in the percentage of damage reduction. This has been highlighted by others, but I will outline it here.
Take the marine, for example. It does 6 damage. Against Zealot shields, it does the full 6 damage. Against Zealot health points, it does 5 damage (Zealots have 1 armor). That is a 17% damage reduction (as compared to the full damage to shields). Now you have the choice of buying either Ground Armor Level 1 or Shield Level 1. If you buy the shields, you reduce damage to their shields by 17% (from 6 to 5). If you buy the armor, you reduce damage to their health points by 20% (from 5 to 4). Therefore, the armor upgrade is better proportionally.
However, some units break this concept. For the same percentage-based reasoning, any unit which receives more than +1 damage per upgrade (Roach/Thor/Immortal) or does splash damage (Siege Tank/Collossus/Ultralisk) reduces the benefits of armor and shield upgrades in general. Particularly units like the Thor, which are more likely to do overkill than have to shoot an extra shot due to armor concerns. Against these units, damage upgrades are typically better, except where there are specific breaks in the number of attacks needed to kill/be killed.
Important to remember against Terran, the shield upgrade is very fragile and it is the only forge upgrade that can be removed with a spell (Ghost's EMP Round). In fact, the Ghost can remove all the shields from the following units with 1 EMP: Probe, Zealot, Sentry, Stalker, High Templar, Dark Templar, Observer, Warp Prism, Immortal, Phoenix, Void Ray. If that feels like a lot of units, turns out, it is. The only units that have any shields left are Colossus, Carriers, Archons, and Motherships. So unless you are going heavy on these 4 units (which is very cost prohibitive) or micro High Templar to neutralize Ghosts, shield upgrades can be very risky against a good Terran player who checks what upgrades you are getting. And getting High Templar or Archons can trigger even a poor player into getting Ghosts as an obvious "counter".
Reason #3 - timing + Show Spoiler +Upgrading shields spends time the forge could be using to upgrade something else. In many high level games, which involve timing pushes, those pushes are often based on attacking just as a particular upgrade is finished. Weapons and armor upgrades cost less, so you can start them sooner and have a slightly larger force than you would have with a shield upgrade push.
All that being said, I still think that there are situations when getting the shield upgrade is useful. If you tend to play a balanced Gateway/Stargate style, the Shield upgrade affects both units. In this sense, it is cost effective to get one upgrade that covers both sets of units (not to mention Phoenix and Void Ray have no base armor, so shield upgrades are just as strong as armor upgrades). Even more so if you get units that are good at harassing and/or have strong shields relative to health points. Stalkers, Dark Templar, and Void Rays all fit this description. They aren't used much, but Carriers can also benefit from shields more than armor. Or specifically, their Interceptors do. Interceptors do not heal when they return to the Carrier. And they have 0 base armor. So upgrading their shields provides the same percentage damage reduction as armor upgrades, while increasing their survivability better as they can regenerate shields while stowed away. And on that same tech path, Motherships, with their huge 350 shields, obviously benefit from additional shield levels. As a bonus, shield upgrades also work on buildings, so using cannons as defense becomes a little safer as well.
Viability in matchups:
PvZ - The Archon, dealing bonus damage to biological units, becomes stronger and can handle Zerglings and Mutalisks better. Additionally, with the strengthening of Protoss air builds, the appeal of getting one 200/200 upgrade that works for ground and air units, rather than separate 100/100 (ground armor) and 150/150 (air armor) defensive upgrades may catch on. Phoenix can survive longer against Mutalisk due to reduced bounce damage, and the ability to kite and recharge shields becomes even better.
PvP - Without focusing on any critical breakpoints, a shield-upgraded Protoss player could do harass attacks, designed to "wound" the other player. By damaging the health of several units then running away, the shield-upgraded player will be better off, even if taking health damage as well. Repeated wounding attacks like this, over time as additional shield upgrades are researched, can be a viable way to pressure with fast units like Stalkers while creating an advantage over armor upgrades.
PvT - Clearly the most dangerous matchup to get shield upgrades. But there are situations where it still makes sense to get them. For example, look at a typical marine-tank Terran. Immortals work well against the tanks, but are fragile against marines. And once their shields are down, they become fragile against the tanks as well. But by strengthening shields, they can last much longer.
Analysis of Immortal shield vs Marine attack upgrades:+ Show Spoiler +Shield vs +3 Infantry Weapons = ~12 attacks
Shield vs +2 Infantry Weapons = ~13 attacks
Shield vs +1 Infantry Weapons = ~15 attacks
Even Upgrades = ~17 attacks
+1 Shield vs Infantry Weapons = 20 attacks
+2 Shield vs Infantry Weapons = 25 attacks
+3 Shield vs Infantry Weapons = ~34 attacks
+4 Shield vs Infantry Weapons = 50 attacks*
+5 Shield vs Infantry Weapons = 100 attacks*
*Only possible with the Sentry's Guardian Shield ability, which acts like +2 shield/armor from ranged attacks.
Getting +1 shields while under Guardian Shield, makes the Immortal's shield survive twice as many attacks from Marines as non-upgraded shields. This could be very useful in games where Immortals are needed to tank the damage from siege cannons.
These excellent threads go into much more depth about the critical upgrade matchups:
[G] Critical Upgrade Analysis Upgrade Analysis Data
Summary: Shield upgrades are not bad when gotten for a purpose. I think that they will see use as defensive/harass upgrades for a more macro-oriented player, rather than for offensive/timing upgrades.
Also, enjoy the punny title.
EDIT #1: Thanks to everyone for the positive feedback. Greatly appreciated.
EDIT #2: On January 29 2011 16:48 Validity wrote:
shield upgrades don't affect hardened shields iirc
True and false. The shield upgrade is applied first, so when taking damage greater than 10, the damage is reduced to by the shield upgrade, then reduced to 10. There is no difference.
However, for all damage less than 10, the shield upgrade does work (because Hardened Shields don't even activate). I used Marines in the example because they are often used to quickly drain an Immortal's shield so Mauraders/Siege Tanks/Thors can finish the job. Since their damage is less than 10, the shield upgrade will lower their damage to shields (that is, the Marine's 6 damage will become 5 damage with +1 Shields). This means an Immortal can take more shots before losing the critical Hardened Shield. Also note that the Sentry's Guardian Shield is applied after Hardened Shield, so an Immortal only takes 8 damage from attacks of more than 10 damage (Hardened Shield reduces the attack to 10, then Guardian Shield subtracts 2 more). This only works for ranged attacks. Notice how important having Sentries mixed with Immortals can be.
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Very well written and insightfull. Ill try to keep these facts when doing my ups!
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very well written...needed this to understand more about the shield upgrades
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shield upgrades don't affect hardened shields iirc
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Sheild upgrade seems only useful against zerg. Versus terran, it seems like a waste of resources.
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Thanks for sharing! And wow, did not know that Guardian Shield reduced all ranged attacks by 2?!?! Holy eff. I was sure it was 10% or 20% for a long time! Now that I think about it, that was way back in the Beta wasn't it? xD
Anyways yup thanks for making this post. I like Shields more so I get them, but haven't thought about it too much. I do like to use air units and harass a lot though so I guess it's fitting that I get Shield upgrades  .
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Might be interesting to see shield upgrades with something like Tyler's blink stalker build vs zerg (where the usual response has to include lings and maybe hydras which are both low dmg/high rate of attack units)
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The thing which is very important, is the fact that shields regenerate. A shield upgrade helps an indefinite amount, while an armor upgrade helps to a limited amount, unless you have a terran buddy. This is extremely important if you are going for a blink stalker build since you would usually blink your stalker away before it takes much damage, allowing for the shields to regen.
Do not get me wrong, I'm not saying that shields>armor, but rather that it's situational. I personally get armor, since blink micro is quite difficult
Edit: Okay, you have mentioned it, but I guess I want to elaborate on it more
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On January 29 2011 17:00 Zrana wrote:
Might be interesting to see shield upgrades with something like Tyler's blink stalker build vs zerg (where the usual response has to include lings and maybe hydras which are both low dmg/high rate of attack units)
I'm assuming you are talking about the 4-gate all-in blink stalkers. There's no resources to spare in the build, nor is it worth delaying the push to get a shield upgrade (or any upgrade).
A good rule of thumb for any beginning protoss players is don't even think about shield upgrades until you have 2 forges and are already at 2/2 for weapons/armor, which means late game. The 200/200 cost for +1 shields is too prohibitive early and mid-game (consider that the cost the same as the colossi range upgrade), and you can't really reap the benefits of it earlier in the game since most likely you will have a small, mostly ground-based army.
The reason why I consider the above a good rule of thumb is with 2 forges (you should always aim to get 2 forges late game in all matchups), if you go straight to 3/3 weapon/armor, 1 forge suddenly becomes useless as you can research only 1 lv of a particular upgrade at a time. But if you stagger it after 2/2, by going 3 weapons + 1 shields, then 3 armor + 2 shields you avoid this. Plus +1 shields IMO I feel is better than +3 armor in most cases for the cost since at those levels the shield upgrade is cheaper than the armor upgrade.
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Something else you might want to add. Shields are not affected by any attack modifier (correct me if I am wrong). So stalkers f.e. will only take 10 damage on their shields against marauders, instead of the 20 when they are down.
This should change the math, since aside from zerg most units from the other races got a modifier.
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On February 27 2011 22:03 Fluxx wrote:
Something else you might want to add. Shields are not affected by any attack modifier (correct me if I am wrong). So stalkers f.e. will only take 10 damage on their shields against marauders, instead of the 20 when they are down.
This should change the math, since aside from zerg most units from the other races got a modifier.
This isn't true.
Though on an interesting (pointless?) note, if an attack breaks the target's shields, both shield reduction and armour reduction apply.
For example, say you have a stalker with 5 shields left and full life. You have 3 points in shields and 3 points in armour. A marauder hits the stalker. Usually, the hit would do (20-3) 17 damage, but because the attack breaks the shields, both armour and shield penalty get applied, causing the hit to deal (20-3-(3 upgrade + 1 base)) 13 damage instead.
As I said it's probably pointless but it's a tiny added extra benefit to having the shield upgrade.
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There is another reason why people like armor over shields: most units have more health than shields. The zealot for example, who is designed to take a lot of punishment, has twice as many hp as shield. Which means that, even given all other things equal, upgrading armor will be twice as effective as upgrading shields. The only unit with more shield than health is the archon, but since you won't be seeing him untill lategame anyway, you might as well postpone the shield upgrades untill then.
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On February 27 2011 22:03 Fluxx wrote:
Something else you might want to add. Shields are not affected by any attack modifier (correct me if I am wrong). So stalkers f.e. will only take 10 damage on their shields against marauders, instead of the 20 when they are down.
This should change the math, since aside from zerg most units from the other races got a modifier.
this is not true
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Three reasons I see to take shield early: air ground based play, harrassement and the fact that shield regenerates.
Shield will benefit all your units, so if you want to go for some air+ground army, it will actually be more cost effective than ground armor + air armor (200/200 vs 250/250+free cybs for something else).
When harassing, you often take damage until your shield is down and then back. So having more of it makes harassement more succesfull.
The third one is self explicit.
As for spells, I'm not sure but I think storm, fg and all that stuff don't take armor into account, so saying that shield is the only upgrade that can be removed with a spell is not quite really right.
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On February 27 2011 23:12 levelnoobz wrote:
As for spells, I'm not sure but I think storm, fg and all that stuff don't take armor into account, so saying that shield is the only upgrade that can be removed with a spell is not quite really right.
There is no mechanic in sc2 that allows anything to ignore one armour type but factor in another. It's either ignore everything (Snipe) or ignore nothing (unit attacks).
As it stands, Psionic Storm ignores all armour. Most spells work like this.
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On February 27 2011 23:12 levelnoobz wrote:
Three reasons I see to take shield early: air ground based play, harrassement and the fact that shield regenerates.
Shield will benefit all your units, so if you want to go for some air+ground army, it will actually be more cost effective than ground armor + air armor (200/200 vs 250/250+free cybs for something else).
When harassing, you often take damage until your shield is down and then back. So having more of it makes harassement more succesfull.
The third one is self explicit.
As for spells, I'm not sure but I think storm, fg and all that stuff don't take armor into account, so saying that shield is the only upgrade that can be removed with a spell is not quite really right.
That will probably greatly benefit void ray/colossi.
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In addition, I think the other two important things to consider are the shield to health ratio of the units and whether or not you are engaged in hit and run tactics or all out engagements.
I think a lot of the reason for favouring amour/attack upgrades over shields is that they improve the dynamics of big engagements.
Zealot: 50 shields 100 health
Stalker: 80 shields 80 health
In big battles where I am trading armies, we can assume that both shields and health will be burnt through. For zealots, shield upgrade only applies to 1/3 of the total HP (shield +health) while for stalkers it only applies to 1/2. For an upgrade that costs double, it is simply not worth it in the short term.
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This sure makes shield upgrades seem a lot better, maybe I'll start using them now.
The longer you can keep a unit alive the more you will benefit from upgrading shields. The armor reduces damage by amount x during the unit's life. That is because life does not regenerate, however, shields does. This mean you could potentially reduce infinite damage if you keep your unit alive forever which is why this upgrade is good for shorter encounters where your units don't lose all of their shields.
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Thank you for correcting me on the armortype reduction, I was not 100% how it worked.
However by reading what everyone has brought up in this thread, getting shield upgrades might be good if you go a defensive fast expand build with sentries backup. Into mass blink stalker play, or immortals.
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Shield upgrades are the best in PvZ, where it is most likely that you have air units + ground units as well as Archons, and less Zealots. It is also more common to only have a single forge for an extended amount of time, and rushing to 3-1. You can then add a second forge and research armor/shield simultaneously.
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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)
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The shield upgrade combined with Guardian Shield looks like it could be really solid for timing pushes with Immortals. That table with the attack round differences for Marines vs. Immortals is eye opening. ~9 more attacks before Hardened Shield fails is substantial. If they have +1 attack, it's still 5 more rounds. Did I read that correctly?
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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You forgot an important reason in this thread:
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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Units have more hp rather then shields. Immortal for example, 200 hp and only 100 shield. So the armor upgrade is really nice, if you get down the marauders in time marines can't even think of shooting at a guardian shielded immortal as they deal no damage at all.
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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I suppose if you're planning on going without colossi from the get-go getting shields could be good as your secondary upgrade if you have two forges, but the cost is very prohibitive, and archons don't really support the whole hit and run style required for shields being very useful.
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great read. did not know that protoss shields actually don't receive the armor bonus, only when the shields run out and the hp bar starts to take hits does the armor upgrade actually come into play. amazing!
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i can imagine cases where it's better to do shield upgrades.
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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Stalkers, designed to hit and run, are given the 80 shield points they need to do that effectively. When you are using them shield upgrades are pretty good, especially because attack upgrade is pretty trivial for stalkers
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I feel your immoral analysis was a bit misleading. The question was "You are going to get an upgrade. Should you get shield instead of armor?". You only followed the fight between the immortal and marines up to the point that the shields when down. However, immortals even without their shields take more hits to kill than a fully shielded stalker, so just writing it off as dead is a mistake. In fact, they have 1 base armor, so against marines, they take less damage per hit without their shield on.
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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(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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Hmm that's very interesting.
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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.
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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Against a marine, a photon cannon effectively has 175, 200 and 225 shields with respective shield upgrades.
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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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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Mutalisk don't have a "real" AoE, it is rather a succession of three individual attacks. It does not deal damage to everything in a given area. That's how I would interpret it, anyway.
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On March 01 2011 04:05 Kaitlin wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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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I am not a high level player, but it seems to me that shield upgrades reward really good micro. As such, only high level players will be able to reap full benefit from upgrading shields instead of armor.
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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If Protoss air builds become more popular, then Shield upgrades will be more economical since they benefit both Air and Ground units. Also, often overlooked is the fact that shield upgrades also benefit Protoss buildings which can help somewhat against expo snipes and make any cannons you make sturdier.
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Purely theory crafting, but if you were to forge FE vs zerg into stargate play, which is getting reasonably popular, getting an early +1 shield could be extremely useful. It would certainly change the gas timings, since you will need an extra 200 gas super early for the upgrade to be done in time to hold off early pressure (Not to mention the number of CBs that would have to be dedicated to it, since it takes nearly 3 minutes of game time to get out an upgrade). I'd say an extra cannon or two is probably much more affective, but if someone wants to come up with a build with it, I'd like to see it.
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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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After getting pissed off, excited, and flattered at the same time that TT1 used my opener against Nada in the GSL world champs team I decided to look into a double forge variation that involves a 1-2-1 timed attack. Its like Tylers build, but its a little more immortal centric and it gets +1 shields at the cost of 1 rank of attack to achieve the same timing. I'll post a guide if its any good ~ mid masters
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On April 07 2011 07:23 Jonas wrote:Show nested quote +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.
This was my point, only with different emphasis. It takes micro skill to engage with your units, do damage, then back off without taking any hull damage. Most people don't even bother.
1A syndrome will benefit more from armor upgrades than shields, but a good player who puts effort into keeping units alive will get more benefit over the long term from shield upgrades.
Pretty much every protoss unit except the zealot has enough shields to benefit more from the shield upgrade if they are kept alive for more than 2 engagements.
Phoenix and Blink Stalker just happen to be the fastest units, so they are the easiest to keep alive from one fight to the next. Other units are slower, so it is harder for them to disengage from a fight and survive. (in other words, it takes more skill to keep slower units alive)
Shield Upgrades reward good micro and tactics/strategies that keep units alive.
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Your section on usefulness makes no sense. Increasing percent damage reduction means nothings. A probe with +1 armor is shot by a marine, the armor absorbs 4 total damage. With +1 shield, same thing, 4 damage absorbed. In fact it is my opinion that it is better to get +1 shield before +3 armor percisely because adding 1 to armor and 1 to shield do the exact same in terms of damage reduction, but you will save 75/75.
However and important point is is many units HAVE LESS SHIELDS THEN LIFE.
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On April 07 2011 08:45 indigoawareness wrote:
Your section on usefulness makes no sense. Increasing percent damage reduction means nothings. A probe with +1 armor is shot by a marine, the armor absorbs 4 total damage. With +1 shield, same thing, 4 damage absorbed. In fact it is my opinion that it is better to get +1 shield before +3 armor percisely because adding 1 to armor and 1 to shield do the exact same in terms of damage reduction, but you will save 75/75.
However and important point is is many units HAVE LESS SHIELDS THEN LIFE.
Not quite. While percent reduction per se doesn't matter, it does in some sense. Specifically: An upgrade reduces by 1 damage per hit. If you already have some armor, you take more hits, so you get more reduction. For example, a stalker starts with 1 armor and 0 shield armor, so it takes a ling 80/5=16 hits to remove the shield and 80/4=20 hits to remove the hp. So the armor upgrade will give a greater benefit in terms of the number of hits to kill the unit from full life.
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The effectiveness of -1 dmg is determined by the current amount of damage inflicted. This is the main reason why +1 armor is better than +1 shield, because many units start with 1 natural armor.
Similarly, going from +2 to +3 armor is going to be way more beneficial than getting +1 shield.
Another way to think about it is as follows: even for units that have equal health/shields (e.g., stalker), the 1 natural armor means that they effectively have more health than shields, which make armor ups more effective.
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I like the part talking about how well sentries compliment immortals, didnt really understand it until i read this. Thanks!
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Regarding Mutas, the bounce scales terribly in a way that means that +1/+1 armour/shields is significantly more powerful than +2/+0.
Muta attack deals 9/3/1, with +3 attack it becomes 12/4/1. The first point of armour on any unit will reduce the net damage dealt by 3, whereas the next two points (three at max attack upgrade) only reduce net damage dealt by 2, and all points of armour past that only reduce net damage by 1.
Unless you plan to keep a sentry for guardian shield around everything at all times, I think getting the first shield upgrade is the strongest possible upgrade to get as long as the zerg gets at least one muta. Helps that shields applies to everything to help out with the whole 'net damage' thing, too.
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This is something i never have understood
Shield upgrades are basicly way better then armour upgrades if hp and armour for both would be the same even if shields would not regenerate
The reason for this is that you will only profit from the armour upgrade once your shield is down (in situations where you fight till death) wich does not happen in every engagement while you will always profit from the shield upgrade
There are some twists like emp ,immortal shield, the base armour nearly all protos units have wich makes an extra armour upgrade often more efficient then a shield upgrade and the difference in healthpoints between shields and armour
Still am realy suprised that all thoose twists make the armour upgrade "better" (since i realy never see or hear about a pro researching shields first)
Personally i think shield armour is extremely underrated though am only gold lvl player
maybe there are more reasons why people dont research it, am still puzzled with it
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United States7483 Posts
Shields for protoss units recharge, hit points don't. If your unit survives any engagement, the shields reduce damage dealt over the course of that units life for more. The more fights the unit survives, the more efficient shield upgrades are.
Shield upgrades also make archons freaking awesome at tanking damage, and of course it's good when you're going air+ground units together. I tend to get shield upgrades in PvZ.
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Well if the numbers in the OP don't paint the picture.
1 marine shooting an immortal w/ +1armor upgrade + guardian shield takes 1:30 gametime to kill the immo
1 marine shooting an immortal w/ +2 armor upgrade + guardian shield takes 3:30 gametime to kill the immo.
Protoss shields are always at 0 base for this reason because you want to hit 5 total armor with guardian shield ASAP against terran in this bio-based metagame.
Now whether or not getting 1 shields before your + 2 attack is better in PvT isn't entirely clear and it really kind of depends on the nature of the game. If you will be using blink stalkers to poke, then the 1 shields seems to be worth it... if you are deathballing it up with colossus instead you might want the +2 attack. Ill be doing a 2-1-1 upgrade scheme into 3-1-3 over the next couple weeks to compare and contrast.
Vs. Zerg I can only see shields as useful if you are using air. or mass blink stalker. Immortals dont benefit the same way from it in this matchup.
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Thanks for making TvP harder 
If Toss starts doing this EMP is really gonna be a must in TvP when using Marine Tank Against Immortals.
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EPT
