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What do you guys think about getting shield upgrades after +1 attack, instead of armor upgrades?
The reasoning I would argue for them is that when facing mutas you will be skirmishing against them quite a bit. The mutas will avoid a direct, drawn out battle. So wouldn't shield upgrades be more beneficial than armor, they heal so the benefit will be larger (the more you keep wounded units alive the greater the benifit), and when they poke cannons at your minerals then run from storms it will help more because the cannon will recharge. When blinking against ling surrounds it will help the stalkers that survive and heal their shields but have low health more than an armor upgrade. Lastly, when you do inevitably produce archons from spent HT's, the huge benefit they get is obvious. The cost decreases to shield upgrades in the last patch brought this to mind.
The only real case in which I think armor is of greater benefit is for zealots because they have a larger portion of their total life as health and not shields.
Another question I have is in regards to the bounce shot behavior of the muta attack. Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't the attack bounce damage work like this 9/3/1? Now, I know that a normal attack cannot be reduced to 0 due to armor (for example an ultra with 5 armor takes a minimum of 1 dmg from an attack, even if it is a 5 dmg attack). Does this rule apply to muta's bounce attack?
For example if I have some stalkers and 1 sentry vs a muta flock. I use guardian shield and have +1 shield upgrades. Will the muta damage be 6/1/1 or 6/0/0?
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Thank you very much for that guide! I really appreciate your effort, clear communication and structure of this post  Cheers buddy
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Awesome guide!
This has been a big concern for protoss for a while now.
Finally a concise, good response has been heard.
10/10
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Wow this is such a cool guide, I always thought pheonix were a decent counter to mutas. This will surely help a lot of people. Appreciated.
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On December 02 2011 08:52 Reborn8u wrote:
What do you guys think about getting shield upgrades after +1 attack, instead of armor upgrades?
The reasoning I would argue for them is that when facing mutas you will be skirmishing against them quite a bit. The mutas will avoid a direct, drawn out battle. So wouldn't shield upgrades be more beneficial than armor, they heal so the benefit will be larger (the more you keep wounded units alive the greater the benifit), and when they poke cannons at your minerals then run from storms it will help more because the cannon will recharge. When blinking against ling surrounds it will help the stalkers that survive and heal their shields but have low health more than an armor upgrade. Lastly, when you do inevitably produce archons from spent HT's, the huge benefit they get is obvious. The cost decreases to shield upgrades in the last patch brought this to mind.
The only real case in which I think armor is of greater benefit is for zealots because they have a larger portion of their total life as health and not shields.
Another question I have is in regards to the bounce shot behavior of the muta attack. Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't the attack bounce damage work like this 9/3/1? Now, I know that a normal attack cannot be reduced to 0 due to armor (for example an ultra with 5 armor takes a minimum of 1 dmg from an attack, even if it is a 5 dmg attack). Does this rule apply to muta's bounce attack?
For example if I have some stalkers and 1 sentry vs a muta flock. I use guardian shield and have +1 shield upgrades. Will the muta damage be 6/1/1 or 6/0/0?
it would be 6/1/1 as 1 is the lowest it will go afaik, the general reason why shield upgrades werent done in the past was due to the enormous cost, but now its feasible, it might be worth trying out, ive been thinking of a 2/0/2 (2attack 2 shield) bink stalker timing recently that would be ridiculously strong with proper blink micro, and so far it seems like it is a very good investment for me
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How do you deal with zergs that pick off all the observers with overseers? I find it extremely hard to defend against since you lose all kind of map control and have no idea where lings or mutas is coming from. You can't really wall off every base since it will take forever for your blink stalkers to go from base to base and putting down 6+ cannons to defend against lings isn't something you always can afford.
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On December 02 2011 08:52 Reborn8u wrote:
What do you guys think about getting shield upgrades after +1 attack, instead of armor upgrades?
The reasoning I would argue for them is that when facing mutas you will be skirmishing against them quite a bit. The mutas will avoid a direct, drawn out battle. So wouldn't shield upgrades be more beneficial than armor, they heal so the benefit will be larger (the more you keep wounded units alive the greater the benifit), and when they poke cannons at your minerals then run from storms it will help more because the cannon will recharge. When blinking against ling surrounds it will help the stalkers that survive and heal their shields but have low health more than an armor upgrade. Lastly, when you do inevitably produce archons from spent HT's, the huge benefit they get is obvious. The cost decreases to shield upgrades in the last patch brought this to mind.
The only real case in which I think armor is of greater benefit is for zealots because they have a larger portion of their total life as health and not shields.
Another question I have is in regards to the bounce shot behavior of the muta attack. Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't the attack bounce damage work like this 9/3/1? Now, I know that a normal attack cannot be reduced to 0 due to armor (for example an ultra with 5 armor takes a minimum of 1 dmg from an attack, even if it is a 5 dmg attack). Does this rule apply to muta's bounce attack?
For example if I have some stalkers and 1 sentry vs a muta flock. I use guardian shield and have +1 shield upgrades. Will the muta damage be 6/1/1 or 6/0/0?
-Minimum damage is 0.5.
-The logic of shield upgrade being more helpful for units you keep alive only applies if they take hull damage, and in that case it depends on how much hull damage they took compared to shield damage, e.g. if they just took 10 points of shield damage and that unit regens to full it doesn't matter if they had armor or shield upgrade.
-I usually tend to go +1 weapons, +1 armor, +2 and +3 weapons, then +1 shield vs mutaling.
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On December 02 2011 07:35 stokes17 wrote:
Yo dood, Sick ass guide seriously, Your point about taking an early third totally busted my skull, very smart thinking sir. I also really like your explanation for why HT> Archon, completely agree. But i have one question:
Can you give any advice on how to aim your storms vs muta ? (yea obviously have flyer spotter assist thingy on) Do you try and just storm where they are, or do you try and lead them? Do you blanket the area to get the dmg out as fast as possible or do you storm slower but as precise as you can. I understand that this is kinda a detailed micro question( even GSL pros have a hard time making storms connect on muta), but I just feel like my storms are extremely bad and would like them to not be that, so any advice would be sick.
Thanks for being an awesome contributor to the community RSVP!!
I used to try to lead them, but sometimes the zerg player pulls back the mutas just in time and you miss completely. So now I always target where the mutas are, I'd rather have the guaranteed damage at the cost of an extra potential 20 damage if the zerg isn't paying attention.
In big engagements when you are storming everywhere I'd err in favor of blanketing the area to get the damage out as fast as possible, reason being that usually the mutas are targeting your HT anyway so you don't have too much time to get all your storms out.
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Canada35 Posts
im in midmasters and i usually go FFE---> 1 stargate harass with 2-3 void and very light amount to phoenix
when i see zergs try to counter by hiding spire and then bursting with 7-9 mutas at a time, even though it might catch me off guard some times (when i fail to scout), i find that i can still add on an extra stargate while pumping phoenix from the first and still keep up with the muta numbers even if they are commiting to massing mutas (but you do need VERY careful pheonix micro). Eventually i max out with blink stalkers phoenix and 4-5 collosus off 3 bases and just go kill him
i found this way of dealing with mutas to be fairly effective and easier than going HT, but ive never seen anyone mention this, what do you think? does this strat fail against higher level zergs?
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Thank you very much for this guide, i was having such issues dealing with mutas and this has really made my day ;D
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On December 03 2011 14:12 NtsenG wrote:
im in midmasters and i usually go FFE---> 1 stargate harass with 2-3 void and very light amount to phoenix
I also do this, except I usually don't go voids I go for a few pheonix to pick off ovies and harass drones. It just reminds me of bw days, when toss would FFE into stargate corsair vs zerg.
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Oh man you have saved me from being demoted to plat. I was at about 10% winrate verse zergs - even the platinum ones - and now i am crushing nerd face again. THANKYOU!!!
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I'll add another thankyou for this post, I was suffering from some bad decision making versus a muta/linging player. Being able to recite this advice has helped me so so much.
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On December 03 2011 11:26 coL.rsvp wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2011 07:35 stokes17 wrote:
Yo dood, Sick ass guide seriously, Your point about taking an early third totally busted my skull, very smart thinking sir. I also really like your explanation for why HT> Archon, completely agree. But i have one question:
Can you give any advice on how to aim your storms vs muta ? (yea obviously have flyer spotter assist thingy on) Do you try and just storm where they are, or do you try and lead them? Do you blanket the area to get the dmg out as fast as possible or do you storm slower but as precise as you can. I understand that this is kinda a detailed micro question( even GSL pros have a hard time making storms connect on muta), but I just feel like my storms are extremely bad and would like them to not be that, so any advice would be sick.
Thanks for being an awesome contributor to the community RSVP!! I used to try to lead them, but sometimes the zerg player pulls back the mutas just in time and you miss completely. So now I always target where the mutas are, I'd rather have the guaranteed damage at the cost of an extra potential 20 damage if the zerg isn't paying attention. In big engagements when you are storming everywhere I'd err in favor of blanketing the area to get the damage out as fast as possible, reason being that usually the mutas are targeting your HT anyway so you don't have too much time to get all your storms out.
Ok, Thank you so much for answering!!
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Love this thread. One thing to also think about is warp-prisming in 4 dt's if you scout the spire early and sniping it. They kill it faster than an overseer can morph and more often than not (in mid masters eu) zerg tend to build it behind the mineral line in their main. I never bother with this if i open 1stargate harass though, because there will allready be 3 spores at each base and i doubt it would work.
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Id rather get 1-1-1'd all day by terrans than play 1 single shitty game against this style. Im seriously considering switching to terran because this style takes so much less skill from the zerg side to pull off compared to the protoss side.
This guide is great and has helped me, but what do you do if you have defended perfectly taken no probe damage no nothing...mutas literally do no damage at all. And they safely take every base on the map and load em up with 500 spines/spores....with stalker/ht/archon/chargelot and even a mothership i wasnt able to do shit. He had infestors and some roaches with brood lords in addition to his muta ball. Theres just no way to break soooo many spines/spores cant even warp prism elevator because each base has so many. Pretty ridiculous, I dont even fathom how people in masters and grandmasters can deal with the 800 freaking spines and spores :/ Do I have to try to hit a timing before a transition and just kill the main and hope they leave or?
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thank you rsvp! I used to flounder helplessly against muta builds but I just played a pretty solid muta/ling + baneling player and won handily. throughout the entire game I imagined reading this guide in my mind, and it really helped me get a gameplan and keep my head where it needed to be.
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I really like your analysis that you SHOULD NOT create Archons without using up the energy on them. Often, there is a bad tip on the loading screen from Blizzard. But that one is so true.
The thing about Phoenixes is something more people need to realize. It's unfortunate that so many people hear that Phoenixes are good against muta and then BOOM they just try to out-air-macro a zerg. It's very hard to do, even if you blow all your chrono on your stargates.
I've also always struggled with the third base. I like that you have this philosophy of getting it up BEFORE blink and BEFORE the muta ball gets too big.
I like the point on the observers. I've just never even thought of that for some reason, even though it's an obvious point. Pylons always get picked off and it never occurred to me to spend gas on observers because they are gas heavy. But, of course, once you get 2 bases it's not that bad (only 75 I believe). So yeah I endorse that.
Cannons are very underused, people! Cannons are not only an early game investment against a roach all-in! While that is what they are useful for a lot of the time, they can also be a great boon in the late game when it takes a long time to get from base to base. Always, always, always have some cannons at your expos late game. And not only in PvZ.
The point on immortals is nice too. I like that recommendation.
Finally, I just want to add that if you can use the speed-upgraded warp prisms in an effective way to snipe not only workers but important tech structures, you can set the zerg back in such a huge way. Sniping a spire that's got upgrades going is SO worth losing a few zealots. If it's too dangerous to send the WP in, don't sacrifice it, but killing some DTs or Zealots is SO good if you can stop an armor or attack upgrade. The only way to make mutas viable for direct confrontations is a huge upgrade army. Punish them for having a huge amount of mutas, because they suck in direct confrontations, and keep up on your upgrades ALWAYS. Just like your point on expos, upgrade early and often.
Thanks for the good guide, helps a lot.
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Awesome guide! Thank you!
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As a Zerg player, I approve of this thread.
Well-written and now I know how to exploit Protosses who don't heed this advice >:D
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EPT
