3 Zealots coming in at 300 mineral / 0 gas / 6 supply You only need a gateway to make a zealot. As tier 1 as it gets. A gateway costs 150 minerals.
1 Ultralisk coming in at 300 mineral / 200 gas / 6 supply A tier 3 unit which needs hive (150/100 for lair + 200/150 + hive) and a Ultralisk cavern for 150 / 200.
Now I guess the idea was to make the ultralisk strong versus armored units with this patch. But with the splash / cleave damage nerfed it's not effective at all even vs clumped up zealots / stalkers / marauders etc. (which wasn't even mentioned in the patch notes, what's up with that?). The healthpool was also reduced so significantly, is it really worth it teching up to ultras if they're countered so hard by tier 1 units? The zealots can just stand in front of the stalkers and the rest of the protoss army and just block off the ultras from doing any real damage to the vulnerable units. They don't even need immortals to fight the ultralisks.
So how would the ultralisk fare against a terran armored army then? Not very well, stimmed mauraders & marines that are actually micro'd will kill off ultras very, very, EXTREMELY quickly. Not to mention that we still have the issue of ultras not doing any damage on fast moving targets, not sure if this is a bug or intended:
I actually kind of liked the patch 11 / 12 ultralisk, it was a decent unit to pump out when you had a lot of extra resources and you wanted to finish off your opponent. Especially since the roaches weren't nearly as supply efficient towards the late game army when you want to pack as much punch as you can within the 200 supply.
I'm really happy about the force field breaking however, that is exactly what the ultralisk needed, but unfortunately after trying out the ultralisk in patch 13 I think it's a nerf.
before anyone says the ultralisk only lost because the zealots were microed so as to not receive splash damage
i tested 3v1 where all 3 zealots took splash damage from every attack and the outcome was the same. the zealots took more damage (1 red, 1 barely yellow)
but still 3 zealots > 1 ultralisk
*EDIT*
On May 23 2010 22:09 Jugan wrote: Wait so you're saying you get to micro your zealots, but the ultra can't micro itself into a better position?
Ultralisks were pretty sick against long limbo lines of zealots with 100% splash but now they'll be considerably worse against those, and a bit better against stalkers.
I was saying ultra were going to be imbalanced, however seeing the massive splash nerf I see that they were actually making ultras worse.
Upgrades and a real situation will make a massive difference. In reality they'll still be very effective against zealots and are not going to be needed to counter zealots anyway, since roach hydra is already really effective vs them. They should help a lot against stalker/sentry balls.
EDIT: Hmm, did they ninja slow down the attack? It just seems slower than it was. might be game speed or something.
Why don't they just change the speed upgrade to the completely necessary thing it was in BW, an upgrade that made the unit actually fast. And also, since the unit is now 450 life, 4 supply would be better. Remember in BW, you wouldn't want any units, even zealots, near your unupgraded ultra (speed or extra armor).
I used ultras one game in patch 12 when I had a 200 army supply for a while and map dominance. My opponent was turtling so hard that I just spawned larvae for a while and then threw all my hydras and lings at him and instantly spawned 160 food of maxed upgrade ultras. Sadly, they did not take out all his bases (wow~!) and I had to get broodlords.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/9906/ultrasucks.jpg)
