|
On December 09 2012 03:28 pOriishan wrote:
- Thors can't be feedback-ed, but their AA isn't increased much ( 30 damage for 3/3 upgrade without AoE ).
It also attacks every 2 seconds instead of 3 seconds, its a fairly big buff verses units with Armour or when you can't splash. Of course it still won't let the Thors by themselves trade well with VRs. Tempests are somewhat countered by PDD from a Raven, thou as you kite the VRs you move out of range of it blocking Tempest shots 
|
On December 08 2012 13:37 Treehead wrote:
To do a similar analysis for Stalkers v. Voids (with a 1.5 minerals per 1 gas equivalence ratio, similar to the numbers for the banshee analysis above):
2.28 Stalkers (342/114 after 25 minerals per supply)
365 health
22.1 dps
1 Void (287/150 after 25 minerals per supply)
250 health
30 dps vs. stalkers (while charged)
18 dps vs. stalkers (uncharged)
Void takes 12.17 seconds to kill 2.28 stalkers while charged.
2.28 stalkers take 11.31 seconds to kill a void.
(Sidenote: uncharged, a void takes 20.27 seconds to kill 2.28 stalkers.)
Void does have more advantage due to being low supply, and having losing dps later in the fight - but it is a bit nonsensical to consider stalkers a counter to banshees but not to voids, based on these numbers alone. (And again, banshees can cloak).
Edit: Altered Stalker numbers, bah - musta miscalced earlier.
nice analysis, unfortunately there's one assumption that ruins it >.>
Void does have more advantage due to being low supply, and having losing dps later in the fight - but it is a bit nonsensical to consider stalkers a counter to banshees but not to voids, based on these numbers alone. (And again, banshees can cloak).
While Banshees do lose some dps later in the fight due to overkill,it is still much less than any ground unit due to being a flyer and stacking togheter,
Void rays have no overkill, while Stalkers are one of the units more affected by it... remember this bug?
Voidray instakill bug
While this has been fixed, Void rays still don't overkill (exactly like marines and siege tanks) as they don't have a projectile (the beam is entirely a graphic effect)
So while this analysis holds perfectly while the voids are less than an handful, things get quickly out of control once you start massing them,because they get better exponentially until you reach 10,67 voids; once you add the 11th void, they can kill a guaranteed Stalker every 0,5 seconds with focusfire, and every additional void still doesn't waste his firepower (so there isn't really diminishing gains from massing them)
The corresponding 24,3276 Stalkers must either a-move and lose the engagement due to spreading their fire too much,or focus fire and waste theoretically 6,4705 Stalkers firepower (probably a little less) as it takes 17,8571 Stalkers to oneshot a Voidray.
That waste is 1/4th of the Stalkers firepower, so they will theoretically lose the battle, as the tests i ran seem to show:
+ Show Spoiler +please note that these tests aren't optimal as these kind of testing requires 2 people
tests are done in the hots online unit tester, arena terrain
25 stalkers vs 11 voids
results:
1)Both a-moving with no blink ends with 6 voids surviving
2)Stalkers blinking offensively, against voids a-moving ends with 4 rays surviving (no focus fire on either side however)
3)Stalkers blinking offensively and focusfiring, against stacked Voidrays focusfiring ends with 4-5 rays surviving, hard to test this without another player to help but the voids win clearly enough (i can't unfortunately record videos T_T, if a kind soul wants to do that...)
You cannot kite charged voids as you can not walk up to them chargerays without suffering a ton of losses, you have to use an offensive blink. Once you've done that, you have fully committed to the fight, as the stalkers wipe in 12,17 seconds, so if you wanna blink out you'll be left with 4,34 stalkers, and walking out is worse than that in terms of cost-efficiency.
This is pretty much the worst case scenario for the void user, as we aren't factoring in cliffs, empty air space beneath bases, sim cities etc etc, and having a zealot support obviously helps the stargating player more than the blinking player (they will also both eventually have minerals to spare as you cannot build pure stalkers out of a base that is both mining minerals and gas efficiently, but the stargate player will have more)
As the number of units increases so does the void cost effectiveness, so, while initially you can try and bait a charge by attacking the stack and blinking out, as the number of units increases that tactic becomes unviable aswell, probably around 17,77777 void (amount of uncharged void to oneshot a stalker every 0,5 seconds).
The stargate player has also access to both oracles and phoenixes to harass, getting a much better shot at gaining map control, and he's being much more supply efficient, not to mention he has an easy path to Tempests
TLDR; The blinking player practically has to rush storm after the + or - 30th Stalker, while probably getting harassed by something akin to a slower,stronger muta-ling much less vulnerable to the hts... and that's without factoring in tempests that can snipe ht etc etc
So yes, i am worried about the voidray dominating the PvP metagame, i guess we shall see...
Sidenotes:
+ Show Spoiler +sidenote on the banshee + Show Spoiler +it is a bit nonsensical to consider stalkers a counter to banshees but not to voids Yes,in fact the stalkers are in terrible trouble against large numbers of banshees, as you'll remember seeing back in the day when 2 port terran all ins were popular... there is of course the raven tipping the odds, but you wont see many protosses winning with just stalkers against reasonable micro once the banshees have reached a good mass; the downfall of that all in is that banshees are very weak to both feedback and storm, while voids are clearly immune to feedback and require 4 full storms to go down as opposed to 2 a storm has 20 dps, so slightly less than 2,28 stalkers against voidrays, against perfectly spreaded voidrayssidenote on upgrades + Show Spoiler +
This is 0/0 calculations, the voids do however gain a tiiiiny advantage the more upgrades there are,by having more HP than shield, thus benefitting more from armor upgrades, and both void and stalkers attack upgrades are nullified by matching opposing armor upgrades.
sidenote on gas/minerals + Show Spoiler +
I disagree on gas/mineral 1:1,5 conversion rate, i would lean more towards something like 1:2 or even more.... but while a different conversion rate does help the blinking player, the stargate player gets more spare minerals and supply to add some zealots, so the numbers should + or - hold anyways
Btw, thanks Treehead for your initial analysis, as you can see i based my numbers on yours
|
Northern Ireland174 Posts
It's interesting how the voidray now matches up vs all those units. Thanks for gathering and posting detailed information on what you found, nice read.
I guess Flux Vanes is never gonna make a comeback, crackrays were funny 
|
My only questions, since it seems to be a standard unit in a lot of HotS zerg armies, is how does the void ray stack up against hydras?
|
On December 10 2012 11:38 FlyingBeer wrote:
My only questions, since it seems to be a standard unit in a lot of HotS zerg armies, is how does the void ray stack up against hydras?
Hydras will still destroy Voids for cost. The activated ability only affects armored units.
|
Of course the new void is OP. There are ninja buffs to it.
The official patchnote says:
"Prismatic Beam:
No longer charges up.
Weapon period decreased from 0.6 to 0.5.
No longer does passive +massive damage."
But actually, Voidray also gets a huge buff to +armored bonus. The old bonus is 4 and 8 (when charging up). The new is 10 and 16 (when charging up).
They beat everything anti-air on the same cost or same supply.
|
I'm excited to see what PvZ builds come from this. Not so excited to see the resurgence of PvT 3gate VR Cheese.
I seem to remember that Protoss got some kind of potential detection for Stargate tech route. I hope this is the case, because currently I can see some problems with Stargate openers beating everything but DT, which is an autoloss. I don't like build order rock-paper-scissors.
|
On December 10 2012 12:22 Acritter wrote:
I'm excited to see what PvZ builds come from this. Not so excited to see the resurgence of PvT 3gate VR Cheese.
I seem to remember that Protoss got some kind of potential detection for Stargate tech route. I hope this is the case, because currently I can see some problems with Stargate openers beating everything but DT, which is an autoloss. I don't like build order rock-paper-scissors.
Mothership core has a detection skill
|
Oh, OP, could you do some tests against Bunkers? With 1, 2, 3, and 4 Marines? This is something very important to the 3gate VR Cheese build. If 1 or 2 Void Rays, possibly with Stalker support, can kill a Bunker before SCVs can show up to repair, that could spell serious trouble for the TvP matchup.
Edit: Thank you to above poster. I remember now. Phew, that clears up the problem nicely.
|
Void Rays vs. Bunker with 1, 2, 3 or 4 marines. A charged Void Ray takes 13.5 seconds to kill a bunker--marines will each deal 90 damage in that time, so Voids will take a bunker with 1 marine with 160 health left, a bunker with 2 marines with 70 health left, and 3 or 4 marines in a bunker will kill the Void. If an SCV can arrive to repair though, that will significantly swing things in the Terran's favor, reducing the Void Ray's dps by 10 and extending the life if the bunker to 20 seconds, during which each marine will deal 138 damage, meaning even 2 marines in a bunker being repaired will be sufficient to kill the Void. Interesting, in WoL Voids took 19.8 seconds to kill a Bunker that wasn't being prepared. Meaning that effectively, the new Voids are as good vs a bunker being repaired by an SCV as the old Voids were vs an unrepaired bunker. And vs unrepaired bunkers, the new Voids kill them 6.3 seconds faster, a significant jump if you're frantically trying to send more marines or SCVs to help defend an early push before your bunker goes down.
|
United Arab Emirates439 Posts
Yeah I think Void Rays should get a nerf towards non-armored units, right now Zerg has very little good answers to them. Void Rays actually beat Mutas cost for cost - even when you get into the 20's of Mutas (where their splash is of course better). Hydras beat Void Rays cost for cost, but they lost to them BADLY supply for supply. So in the late game I have no idea how a Zerg is supposed to beat them. Yes, Void Rays are vulnerable to splash, but not as vulnerable as Hydras are...
|
On December 10 2012 12:56 ZjiublingZ wrote:
Yeah I think Void Rays should get a nerf towards non-armored units, right now Zerg has very little good answers to them. Void Rays actually beat Mutas cost for cost - even when you get into the 20's of Mutas (where their splash is of course better). Hydras beat Void Rays cost for cost, but they lost to them BADLY supply for supply. So in the late game I have no idea how a Zerg is supposed to beat them. Yes, Void Rays are vulnerable to splash, but not as vulnerable as Hydras are...
Phoenixes might be fast enough to dodge the new fungal, but Voids definitely aren't, and fungal+Hydra is quite cost efficient vs Void heavy air compositions.
|
United Arab Emirates439 Posts
On December 10 2012 12:58 awesomoecalypse wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2012 12:56 ZjiublingZ wrote:
Yeah I think Void Rays should get a nerf towards non-armored units, right now Zerg has very little good answers to them. Void Rays actually beat Mutas cost for cost - even when you get into the 20's of Mutas (where their splash is of course better). Hydras beat Void Rays cost for cost, but they lost to them BADLY supply for supply. So in the late game I have no idea how a Zerg is supposed to beat them. Yes, Void Rays are vulnerable to splash, but not as vulnerable as Hydras are... Phoenixes might be fast enough to dodge the new fungal, but Voids definitely aren't, and fungal+Hydra is quite cost efficient vs Void heavy air compositions.
Yes I addressed this in my post - Voids are vulnerable to splash, but not as vulnerable as Hydralisks. So if you go Voids and force your opponent to get Hydras, and you both go splash to counter each other, the Zerg player isn't going to trade even close to as well. I did it in the unit tester, trust me lol. It's ugly.
|
On December 09 2012 06:43 Skirmjan wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On December 08 2012 13:37 Treehead wrote:
To do a similar analysis for Stalkers v. Voids (with a 1.5 minerals per 1 gas equivalence ratio, similar to the numbers for the banshee analysis above):
2.28 Stalkers (342/114 after 25 minerals per supply)
365 health
22.1 dps
1 Void (287/150 after 25 minerals per supply)
250 health
30 dps vs. stalkers (while charged)
18 dps vs. stalkers (uncharged)
Void takes 12.17 seconds to kill 2.28 stalkers while charged.
2.28 stalkers take 11.31 seconds to kill a void.
(Sidenote: uncharged, a void takes 20.27 seconds to kill 2.28 stalkers.)
Void does have more advantage due to being low supply, and having losing dps later in the fight - but it is a bit nonsensical to consider stalkers a counter to banshees but not to voids, based on these numbers alone. (And again, banshees can cloak).
Edit: Altered Stalker numbers, bah - musta miscalced earlier. nice analysis, unfortunately there's one assumption that ruins it >.>
Void does have more advantage due to being low supply, and having losing dps later in the fight - but it is a bit nonsensical to consider stalkers a counter to banshees but not to voids, based on these numbers alone. (And again, banshees can cloak).
While Banshees do lose some dps later in the fight due to overkill,it is still much less than any ground unit due to being a flyer and stacking togheter, Void rays have no overkill, while Stalkers are one of the units more affected by it... remember this bug? Voidray instakill bugWhile this has been fixed, Void rays still don't overkill (exactly like marines and siege tanks) as they don't have a projectile (the beam is entirely a graphic effect) So while this analysis holds perfectly while the voids are less than an handful, things get quickly out of control once you start massing them,because they get better exponentially until you reach 10,67 voids; once you add the 11th void, they can kill a guaranteed Stalker every 0,5 seconds with focusfire, and every additional void still doesn't waste his firepower (so there isn't really diminishing gains from massing them) The corresponding 24,3276 Stalkers must either a-move and lose the engagement due to spreading their fire too much,or focus fire and waste theoretically 6,4705 Stalkers firepower (probably a little less) as it takes 17,8571 Stalkers to oneshot a Voidray. That waste is 1/4th of the Stalkers firepower, so they will theoretically lose the battle, as the tests i ran seem to show: + Show Spoiler +please note that these tests aren't optimal as these kind of testing requires 2 people
tests are done in the hots online unit tester, arena terrain
25 stalkers vs 11 voids
results:
1)Both a-moving with no blink ends with 6 voids surviving
2)Stalkers blinking offensively, against voids a-moving ends with 4 rays surviving (no focus fire on either side however)
3)Stalkers blinking offensively and focusfiring, against stacked Voidrays focusfiring ends with 4-5 rays surviving, hard to test this without another player to help but the voids win clearly enough (i can't unfortunately record videos T_T, if a kind soul wants to do that...)
You cannot kite charged voids as you can not walk up to them chargerays without suffering a ton of losses, you have to use an offensive blink. Once you've done that, you have fully committed to the fight, as the stalkers wipe in 12,17 seconds, so if you wanna blink out you'll be left with 4,34 stalkers, and walking out is worse than that in terms of cost-efficiency. This is pretty much the worst case scenario for the void user, as we aren't factoring in cliffs, empty air space beneath bases, sim cities etc etc, and having a zealot support obviously helps the stargating player more than the blinking player (they will also both eventually have minerals to spare as you cannot build pure stalkers out of a base that is both mining minerals and gas efficiently, but the stargate player will have more)As the number of units increases so does the void cost effectiveness, so, while initially you can try and bait a charge by attacking the stack and blinking out, as the number of units increases that tactic becomes unviable aswell, probably around 17,77777 void (amount of uncharged void to oneshot a stalker every 0,5 seconds). The stargate player has also access to both oracles and phoenixes to harass, getting a much better shot at gaining map control, and he's being much more supply efficient, not to mention he has an easy path to Tempests TLDR; The blinking player practically has to rush storm after the + or - 30th Stalker, while probably getting harassed by something akin to a slower,stronger muta-ling much less vulnerable to the hts... and that's without factoring in tempests that can snipe ht etc etc So yes, i am worried about the voidray dominating the PvP metagame, i guess we shall see... Sidenotes: + Show Spoiler +sidenote on the banshee + Show Spoiler +it is a bit nonsensical to consider stalkers a counter to banshees but not to voids Yes,in fact the stalkers are in terrible trouble against large numbers of banshees, as you'll remember seeing back in the day when 2 port terran all ins were popular... there is of course the raven tipping the odds, but you wont see many protosses winning with just stalkers against reasonable micro once the banshees have reached a good mass; the downfall of that all in is that banshees are very weak to both feedback and storm, while voids are clearly immune to feedback and require 4 full storms to go down as opposed to 2 a storm has 20 dps, so slightly less than 2,28 stalkers against voidrays, against perfectly spreaded voidrayssidenote on upgrades + Show Spoiler +
This is 0/0 calculations, the voids do however gain a tiiiiny advantage the more upgrades there are,by having more HP than shield, thus benefitting more from armor upgrades, and both void and stalkers attack upgrades are nullified by matching opposing armor upgrades.
sidenote on gas/minerals + Show Spoiler +
I disagree on gas/mineral 1:1,5 conversion rate, i would lean more towards something like 1:2 or even more.... but while a different conversion rate does help the blinking player, the stargate player gets more spare minerals and supply to add some zealots, so the numbers should + or - hold anyways
Good analysis.
I think the build order considerations are worth noting, too, though. Early game considerations (I imagine) will still be of large importance (given the strength of the 4-gate, blink stalker allins, and other early warpgate play). I don't see a way of safely adding Voids to your army without first getting a bunch of sentries. Once you've added a bunch of sentries, you can't really scout with voids without insuring their death against blink players. Or, if you go stargate, see blink with phoenixes, will Voids be available soon enough that you won't have had to already start immortal production? (I think not, but maybe I'm wrong here.)
The point is that Voids are hard to get many of early - and 11 Voids take 11 minutes of SG production (not to mention 1650 gas). Once the game goes late, there become other questions - is mass void capable of dealing with zealot/archon? Do you need Colossi? What happens if your opponent gets phoenixes? Are blink stalkers going to be able to find timings to force VRs to charge, disengage, and then re-engage 20 seconds later?
I think HotS Voids in PvP are going to be good lategame - don't get me wrong. But getting them in numbers may be harder than most people in this thread are taking into account. This is why it is analogous to the banshee - and the banshee is actually reasonable play early.
|
On December 10 2012 12:53 awesomoecalypse wrote:
Void Rays vs. Bunker with 1, 2, 3 or 4 marines. A charged Void Ray takes 13.5 seconds to kill a bunker--marines will each deal 90 damage in that time, so Voids will take a bunker with 1 marine with 160 health left, a bunker with 2 marines with 70 health left, and 3 or 4 marines in a bunker will kill the Void. If an SCV can arrive to repair though, that will significantly swing things in the Terran's favor, reducing the Void Ray's dps by 10 and extending the life if the bunker to 20 seconds, during which each marine will deal 138 damage, meaning even 2 marines in a bunker being repaired will be sufficient to kill the Void. Interesting, in WoL Voids took 19.8 seconds to kill a Bunker that wasn't being prepared. Meaning that effectively, the new Voids are as good vs a bunker being repaired by an SCV as the old Voids were vs an unrepaired bunker. And vs unrepaired bunkers, the new Voids kill them 6.3 seconds faster, a significant jump if you're frantically trying to send more marines or SCVs to help defend an early push before your bunker goes down.
So two Voids and 3-4 Stalkers can kill a Bunker in something like 5 seconds, way too little time for pulled SCVs to get there. At least one SCV will always have to be there and ready to repair or the Bunker will fall. Dunno how much mindgames the Protoss can play with running in until shields are depleted.
Yeah, this could be a problem.
|
I think your overcalculating numbers here.
2 Widow mines kill 1 voidray in 0 Seconds.
1 Widow mine kills a marine in 0 seconds
Does the high DPS of the widow mine mean they are broken?
The reason the widow mine is balanced is because the widow mine, like the voidray, has certain units or strategies that will decimate it completely.
If voidrays get too strong in the early game, im sure blizzard will find an upgrade to add.
|
Why not do the math behind Void Ray vs Thor? Seems really relevant.
|
On December 10 2012 13:43 Treehead wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2012 06:43 Skirmjan wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On December 08 2012 13:37 Treehead wrote:
To do a similar analysis for Stalkers v. Voids (with a 1.5 minerals per 1 gas equivalence ratio, similar to the numbers for the banshee analysis above):
2.28 Stalkers (342/114 after 25 minerals per supply)
365 health
22.1 dps
1 Void (287/150 after 25 minerals per supply)
250 health
30 dps vs. stalkers (while charged)
18 dps vs. stalkers (uncharged)
Void takes 12.17 seconds to kill 2.28 stalkers while charged.
2.28 stalkers take 11.31 seconds to kill a void.
(Sidenote: uncharged, a void takes 20.27 seconds to kill 2.28 stalkers.)
Void does have more advantage due to being low supply, and having losing dps later in the fight - but it is a bit nonsensical to consider stalkers a counter to banshees but not to voids, based on these numbers alone. (And again, banshees can cloak).
Edit: Altered Stalker numbers, bah - musta miscalced earlier. nice analysis, unfortunately there's one assumption that ruins it >.>
Void does have more advantage due to being low supply, and having losing dps later in the fight - but it is a bit nonsensical to consider stalkers a counter to banshees but not to voids, based on these numbers alone. (And again, banshees can cloak).
While Banshees do lose some dps later in the fight due to overkill,it is still much less than any ground unit due to being a flyer and stacking togheter, Void rays have no overkill, while Stalkers are one of the units more affected by it... remember this bug? Voidray instakill bugWhile this has been fixed, Void rays still don't overkill (exactly like marines and siege tanks) as they don't have a projectile (the beam is entirely a graphic effect) So while this analysis holds perfectly while the voids are less than an handful, things get quickly out of control once you start massing them,because they get better exponentially until you reach 10,67 voids; once you add the 11th void, they can kill a guaranteed Stalker every 0,5 seconds with focusfire, and every additional void still doesn't waste his firepower (so there isn't really diminishing gains from massing them) The corresponding 24,3276 Stalkers must either a-move and lose the engagement due to spreading their fire too much,or focus fire and waste theoretically 6,4705 Stalkers firepower (probably a little less) as it takes 17,8571 Stalkers to oneshot a Voidray. That waste is 1/4th of the Stalkers firepower, so they will theoretically lose the battle, as the tests i ran seem to show: + Show Spoiler +please note that these tests aren't optimal as these kind of testing requires 2 people
tests are done in the hots online unit tester, arena terrain
25 stalkers vs 11 voids
results:
1)Both a-moving with no blink ends with 6 voids surviving
2)Stalkers blinking offensively, against voids a-moving ends with 4 rays surviving (no focus fire on either side however)
3)Stalkers blinking offensively and focusfiring, against stacked Voidrays focusfiring ends with 4-5 rays surviving, hard to test this without another player to help but the voids win clearly enough (i can't unfortunately record videos T_T, if a kind soul wants to do that...)
You cannot kite charged voids as you can not walk up to them chargerays without suffering a ton of losses, you have to use an offensive blink. Once you've done that, you have fully committed to the fight, as the stalkers wipe in 12,17 seconds, so if you wanna blink out you'll be left with 4,34 stalkers, and walking out is worse than that in terms of cost-efficiency. This is pretty much the worst case scenario for the void user, as we aren't factoring in cliffs, empty air space beneath bases, sim cities etc etc, and having a zealot support obviously helps the stargating player more than the blinking player (they will also both eventually have minerals to spare as you cannot build pure stalkers out of a base that is both mining minerals and gas efficiently, but the stargate player will have more)As the number of units increases so does the void cost effectiveness, so, while initially you can try and bait a charge by attacking the stack and blinking out, as the number of units increases that tactic becomes unviable aswell, probably around 17,77777 void (amount of uncharged void to oneshot a stalker every 0,5 seconds). The stargate player has also access to both oracles and phoenixes to harass, getting a much better shot at gaining map control, and he's being much more supply efficient, not to mention he has an easy path to Tempests TLDR; The blinking player practically has to rush storm after the + or - 30th Stalker, while probably getting harassed by something akin to a slower,stronger muta-ling much less vulnerable to the hts... and that's without factoring in tempests that can snipe ht etc etc So yes, i am worried about the voidray dominating the PvP metagame, i guess we shall see... Sidenotes: + Show Spoiler +sidenote on the banshee + Show Spoiler +it is a bit nonsensical to consider stalkers a counter to banshees but not to voids Yes,in fact the stalkers are in terrible trouble against large numbers of banshees, as you'll remember seeing back in the day when 2 port terran all ins were popular... there is of course the raven tipping the odds, but you wont see many protosses winning with just stalkers against reasonable micro once the banshees have reached a good mass; the downfall of that all in is that banshees are very weak to both feedback and storm, while voids are clearly immune to feedback and require 4 full storms to go down as opposed to 2 a storm has 20 dps, so slightly less than 2,28 stalkers against voidrays, against perfectly spreaded voidrayssidenote on upgrades + Show Spoiler +
This is 0/0 calculations, the voids do however gain a tiiiiny advantage the more upgrades there are,by having more HP than shield, thus benefitting more from armor upgrades, and both void and stalkers attack upgrades are nullified by matching opposing armor upgrades.
sidenote on gas/minerals + Show Spoiler +
I disagree on gas/mineral 1:1,5 conversion rate, i would lean more towards something like 1:2 or even more.... but while a different conversion rate does help the blinking player, the stargate player gets more spare minerals and supply to add some zealots, so the numbers should + or - hold anyways
Good analysis. I think the build order considerations are worth noting, too, though. Early game considerations (I imagine) will still be of large importance (given the strength of the 4-gate, blink stalker allins, and other early warpgate play). I don't see a way of safely adding Voids to your army without first getting a bunch of sentries. Once you've added a bunch of sentries, you can't really scout with voids without insuring their death against blink players. Or, if you go stargate, see blink with phoenixes, will Voids be available soon enough that you won't have had to already start immortal production? (I think not, but maybe I'm wrong here.) The point is that Voids are hard to get many of early - and 11 Voids take 11 minutes of SG production (not to mention 1650 gas). Once the game goes late, there become other questions - is mass void capable of dealing with zealot/archon? Do you need Colossi? What happens if your opponent gets phoenixes? Are blink stalkers going to be able to find timings to force VRs to charge, disengage, and then re-engage 20 seconds later? I think HotS Voids in PvP are going to be good lategame - don't get me wrong. But getting them in numbers may be harder than most people in this thread are taking into account. This is why it is analogous to the banshee - and the banshee is actually reasonable play early.
Good points,however the early game considerations to be made aren't WoL's early game anymore, but HotS's.
In HotS, pylons can no longer warp in on upper ground, and the Mothership Core with its cannon is surely gonna steer the metagame towards a more macro-friendly MU, although i cannot say how much.
However, there are already stargate builds in WoL that are perfectly safe against 4 gate while not having uberrays and having to forcefully transition into robo in order to avoid a DT autoloss (for an example, see HerO's build).
For all intents and purposes, i think 4 gate is totally dead in PvP this time, maybe until much greedier builds surface.
So this pretty much leaves blink all ins, which are or are not going to be stronger than the WoL's version against Stargates openings, once more due to the interference of the MSC. Will the MSC be used to blink onto the high ground more safely? will the photon overcharge help defense more than the MSC helps offense? besides, Stargate builds have the means to try and snipe the enemy MSC, so i cannot say conclusively.
About the midgame, is the void capable of dealing with zealot/archon? well, an archon does 14,3 DPS against non-biological, while costing 5-6 stalkers worth in gas, so to really be worth it's money in damage, he needs to be able to hit a good number of voids with its splash... (he is, however, really tanky,read down for better testing)
if you're asking me if a player is able to survive a chargelot/archon all in on 1/2 bases, i dunno, however as i said the stargate player will have zealots of his own and probably also oracles, which are gonna be effective both with time warp and, kinda unexpectedly, pulsar beam doing 25dps anti-light (killing a zealot in 6 seconds, costing 24 energy)
As robo builds are in roughly the same situation or worse, i can't see chargelot archon being the end of pure stargate builds with proper simcities, imho.
About your lategame points, this is where the voidray shines the most, as it is the most supply effective unit in protoss's arsenal, costing 83 min 50 gas per supply.... in an hypotethical 200/200 battle, would you rather have 3 zealots or 2 voidrays? I don't see colossi being needed, as enemy zealots cannot just run past yours; if your opponent also has the stargates to make phoenixes, why shouldn't he build voids instead, as they build slightly faster than the 2 phoenixes needed to beat one (rread the section in the OP) and are more supply effective...
This leaves blink micro,which in HotS also requires you to snipe the mothership core, otherwise the pack of voids whose charge has been successfully baited can just recall back at home and recharge it.
It also must be pointed out that due to the MSC, stargates build can pretty much ignore all other techpaths (with the exception of zealot charge) and still have reasonable chances against dts. A Stargate making voidrays gas consumption is 2,5/s with no chrono, 3,75/s with perfect chrono(requires 2 nexus) and 3/s with half chrono (single nexus), while a warpgate making stalkers is spending 1,5625/s gas, so paradoxically 1 stargate void+2 gates with good chrono is matching a 4 gate production O.o, and i have to wonder if greedy builds could somehow stuff in either a 1 base 2 stargate build or a 1 gate fe into 3 stargate build.
Proper Archon Vs Void testing:
+ Show Spoiler +
1 Archon vs 1 Void (100/300/4 vs 250/150/3) Archon wins with 150 shields remaining
1 Archon vs 2 Voids (100/300/4 vs 500/300/6) Voidrays win, both alive with the one suffering the most damage being at either 25 or 50 hps while other one surviving with 50 shields left
5 Archons vs 5 Voids (500/1500/20 vs 1250/750/15) Archon wins with 3 left
5 Archons vs 7 Voids (500/1500/20 vs 1750/1050/21) here the things start getting pretty random based on how clumped the voids are and which units get focused down first, i've both had Archons win with 3 left and VRs win with 3 left....
basically we can say that it gets down to micro, however it must be noted that the archon has 3 range while the VR has 6
Little offtopic about the oracle:
+ Show Spoiler +
funnily enough, an oracle spending 24 energy to kill a zealots blows the phoenixes zea-killing abilities out of the water, as they have to spend 50 + shut down a phoenix to achieve that, o.O.
ps. armor upgrades on the zealots can probably force an additional attack from the oracle, thus costing 28 energy for a kill, but still......
I think i'm sounding overly critic both here and in the last post, however while i'm not worried that PvP will become some horribad mass voidrays wars, i am worried about the comeback of rock-paper-scissors as Voidrays>robo>blinkallin>Void etc, with chargelot archon fitting somewhere in between.....
or worse, the comeback of the horribad BW ZvZ T_T
Edit, @weikor
On December 11 2012 01:54 weikor wrote:
I think your overcalculating numbers here.
2 Widow mines kill 1 voidray in 0 Seconds.
1 Widow mine kills a marine in 0 seconds
Does the high DPS of the widow mine mean they are broken?
The reason the widow mine is balanced is because the widow mine, like the voidray, has certain units or strategies that will decimate it completely.
If voidrays get too strong in the early game, im sure blizzard will find an upgrade to add.
DPS only show a part of the story, that's true, however it is much easier to calculate than DPM...
besides, the void ray charge lasts 20 seconds, and properly used that's gonna last for a good 70% of the battle the void is gonna be in... besides, it's not like the VR shuts down after those 20 seconds, it still deals more than half the DPS it did before.
For istance, in a full minute a single VR is gonna do 600 damage in the first 20 seconds, then 720 in the rest of the minute to an enemy hypothetical nexus.... how much would the widow mine do, if it could attack that nexus?
You're right, but before adding a bandaid to the VR we must determine IF it breaks something, and basic math will hopefully help accomplish that
Besides, i'd rather like to see an upgrade fix for the lackluster Stalker AA rather than the VR, who has spent a lot of time being somewhat underpowered.
|
I think mass void rays arent that strong in WoL. The only time you can afford mass void rays is end game and by that time infestors + corruptor should demolish the void rays
I agree with you, void rays are not that hard to counter but they are annoying. During beta was the last time that I saw mass void rays being used. Nowadays its not that popular.
|
On December 11 2012 01:54 weikor wrote:
I think your overcalculating numbers here.
2 Widow mines kill 1 voidray in 0 Seconds.
1 Widow mine kills a marine in 0 seconds
Does the high DPS of the widow mine mean they are broken?
The reason the widow mine is balanced is because the widow mine, like the voidray, has certain units or strategies that will decimate it completely.
If voidrays get too strong in the early game, im sure blizzard will find an upgrade to add.
You aren't remotely familiar with 3gate Void Ray Cheese, are you? It's a very strong all-in that's given a lot of Terran players many problems. It's only fallen out of favor because Terrans started expecting it and got better at scouting and preparing for it. It was strong enough even when scouted, and with the Void Ray strengthened, it may be a serious concern.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
