EPTStim vs Charge - Page 4
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gundream
United States229 Posts
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kasumimi
Greece460 Posts
They are useless and can be kited and die before the even deal damage against to hydras/marauders which come in the game pretty quickly. Generally speaking Gateway units hinder the protoss in both mid and late game. Lowering charge cost and making in accessible earlier will give Protoss the fresh breath they need to enter mid-game more dynamically. At high level play Protoss are probably the weakest race due to being one dimensional and heavily relying on late tech units like colossus and storm just to fight T1 and T2 armies. | ||
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tarsier
United Kingdom223 Posts
errrrrr mate, zealot speed was high tech in broodwar too and it stayed that way. charge = passive 20% faster zealot movement as well as the charge, and makes them pretty much impossible for any unit to kite except upgraded marauders. the higher tech is generally higher cost because it comes later in the game... how would you like warpgate to cost 200/200/120 ? | ||
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rS.Sinatra
Canada785 Posts
On June 05 2010 02:35 tarsier wrote: is it just me or is that OP stuck about 10 years in the past? errrrrr mate, zealot speed was high tech in broodwar too and it stayed that way. charge = passive 20% faster zealot movement as well as the charge, and makes them pretty much impossible for any unit to kite except upgraded marauders. the higher tech is generally higher cost because it comes later in the game... how would you like warpgate to cost 200/200/120 ? How would you like stim to cost 200/200 and be stuck in Engineering Bay? | ||
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milly9
Canada325 Posts
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Gedrah
465 Posts
I've won a few PvTs by attacking Tech Labs or depots with my fast Stalkers while my Zealots pressure the Marauders into remaining indoors. Done early enough, any lost structure can utterly screw Terran's ability to fight back. | ||
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rS.Sinatra
Canada785 Posts
On June 05 2010 02:42 milly9 wrote: I'm all for balance and races being different, but I don't get people saying charge is even close to as good as stimpacks. If protoss had stimpacks on zealots and it costed 400/400, I'm pretty sure we'd all get it. Imagine you could get stim zealots in 2v2 via partner upgrade... LoL @ that... I'd trade 10 health to attack move rape any tier 1 army that doesn't have banelings... Besides the point, its true.. charge is nowhere near as good as concussive or stim yet it costs more than both combined... Imagnie we could upgrade charge for 100/100 at our gateway "addon" and then get a 50/50 spell on zealots called "maim" and that would cause any unit the zealot attacks to move 50% slower... how balanced is that? and that isn't even on a ranged unit.... like the marauder... marauders are 6-ranged tanks that are a pretty broken unit to begin with. Did they just decide to put marauders in the game because they took out vultures and put firebats in the factory? Seriously? If you think about it.. thats essentially what happened. Firebats were a pretty good anti-zealot thing back in brood-war.. so were vultures... why did they do this? Oh well, what's done is done.. but now that Terran has stimmed vultures with maim attack.. can we please have something to counter it early-mid game instead of staying couped up on top of my ramp spamming forcefields at the un-ending rally point of units as you expand and build more barracks... seriously? | ||
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wishbones
Canada2600 Posts
Rather than automatically charging into the enemy. You would actually be able to charge into a battle, or charge away from a fight before encountering the enemy. You could say charge is fine, but once a group of zealots charges its not safe out there. More control over the spell that takes so much time and money to upgrade. It could be an answer to why it would take so long to get charge. | ||
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jusayO
Canada60 Posts
Zealot/Sentry is the most powerful low tier unit combo in my opinion, and I would recommend experimenting with getting hallucination before charge. Hallucinated zealots leading your army is a huge advantage against terran that is never looked at... 100 energy for 4 distractions early game is totally worth it. | ||
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Acidlineup
123 Posts
On topic> I do agree that it should be moved to cyb core and have its price reduced to 100/100. heres why> Stim and shells and really not a choice for a terran player if he wants to go bio. They are so cheap yet so effective upgrades on a allready powerfull, cheap, tanking, ranged, anti-armoured and anti-all gateway units, tier 1.5 unit. Also ppl do seem to forget the help and tips file inside the game saying that zealots are a HARD COUNTER to marauder. Also a hard counter to hydras. Without a charge they are NOT, its not even close or fair fight. Not everyone can get it and its due to its price(200/200), time to upgrade, and a special tech builduing wich is also expensive just to be EVEN with mentioned units? Once again, I agree that it should be moved to cyb. core AND its price reduced. Dark templars are another thing. Dark shrine, a building with no upgrades, is a bit odd, but its probably the best way to preserve balance. If u can get them too fast and other races have no viable detection by that time it would be game breaking. | ||
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Severedevil
United States4839 Posts
In Broodwar, Terran infantry were very threatening to Zerg, such that Zerg couldn't simply mass units of a similar tech level and expect to win an engagement. Zerg needed to fast tech a threatening, aggressive unit, to create a window to power and acquire more gas while Terran defended and teched up to Vessels. Of course, if Terran went mech, the Zerg's window was much earlier, and the early tech may bite them in the ass. In SC2, Terran infantry are very threatening to Protoss, such that Protoss can't simply mass units of a similar tech level and expect to win an engagement. Protoss needs to fast tech a threatening, aggressive unit (DT/Void Ray/Colossus), to create a window to power and acquire more gas while Terran defends and techs up to Ravens/Vikings. Of course, if Terran went 1/1/1, the Protoss's window is much earlier, and the early tech may bite them in the ass. u gotta scout | ||
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arb
Noobville17921 Posts
On June 05 2010 02:45 Gedrah wrote: Zealots have a very difficult and painful role in the early game vs. ranged units. You must learn this role and get good at applying Zealots to it. Since they can be "negated" via moving shot by high APM or reasonably skilled players, you must support them with ranged units. The Zealot exists to pressure the enemy forces and cause them to retreat or else take heavy damage. In the meantime, your Stalkers, whose attack does a decent chunk of damage despite its terrible granularity, have good range and walk slightly faster than nearly all other ground units. While Zealots pressure enemy forces, and those forces have to attack and flee from the Zealots, the Stalkers should be close enough by to shoot the retreating army. It's a dance, really, and you need about twice as many Zealots as your enemy has Marauders to force the marauders to take some damage. With Stalkers and Zealots, 1:1 vs 1 works, you'll have no huge trouble killing the 1 Marauder at this point. Marauders, being an anti-armored, high-granularity, SNARING ranged unit, however, reach critical and near-critical mass much faster than any Protoss unit. I've won a few PvTs by attacking Tech Labs or depots with my fast Stalkers while my Zealots pressure the Marauders into remaining indoors. Done early enough, any lost structure can utterly screw Terran's ability to fight back. in early game id personally say zealots are there to give weakass stalkers/sentrys free hits against marauders(against zerg they block lings from entering base etc) i mean atleast in sc1 dragoons had a decent enough attack to stand on their own to stop early rushes in sc2 you dont have that luxury with stalkers because they die when the wind blows too hard and sentries are just way too weak | ||
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zeidrichthorene
Canada83 Posts
A few things hurt melee units: 1 - Unlimited Unit Select. The fact that you can select all of your marauders as one group means that you can move them all at once, and they fit themselves into a nice ball. With this ball, you can have 15 marauders together, meaning it is simple to kite melee. You can also add other, more fragile units like marines to the mix, and they will stay protected in the mass. 2 - Balling up - The unlimited unit select results in a ball which is easily controlled. Not only can you very simply micro 30 units, the attack surface area is vastly reduced as units in the middle of the ball are inaccessible. 3 - Your melee units ball up too - This is mitigated by your own control, but using a 1-a melee ball means that you're super bunched up. Tank splash, colossus, storm, fungal growth, banelings, emp, are all risks that you run being so bunched up. In Brood War for comparison, you did't frequently have massive tightly packed groups of 20+ melee units partly due to necessity, because you couldn't select that many, but also due to AI, they just didn't force into a ball the same way unless you actually tried to get them to. 4- Your ranged units ball up as well. - Again, this is mitigated by control, but by default your ranged units are going to be in a giant ball, and many ranged units move faster than melee units, or in the case of zerg roaches act as tanks for zerglings, so they frequently attack first. A ball of stalkers or roaches starts out as a ball, and then forms itself into a very tight arc, not allowing any space for your melee units to run through without some micro. I personally find that the issues I have with melee units come from disadvantageous AI. The new AI is great for ranged units, keeping them more protected and easier to control. It is actually detrimental to melee I believe though, causing traffic issues and leading to susceptibility to splash damage. Imagine for a moment if you could only control 12 marauders at at time. It would be all of a sudden more difficult to keep a ball of 30 marauders away from zealots. Imagine if the units didn't automatically clump up shoulder to shoulder, it would all of a sudden be possible to isolate and block individual units. Imagine if your zealots/zergligns didn't immediately clump into the tightest balls possible, it may be possible to engage a tank position without skynet-like tank AI using exactly a perfect number of shots to kill your nicely clumped units without wasteage. The new surround AI is beneficial to the melee as well in a vacuum, but ultimately, the improved ranged AI gives far more benefit, and in fact I find it is even counter-productive to your own melee units when you're ranged form perfect arcs. Charge, in a vacuum, is fine as 200/200. It's very powerful in very small encounters. 3 zealots vs. 3 marauders, the zealots can charge a marauder, pin him down, and kill him quickly, this despite the fact that marauders are the "counter" to early zealots. 3 zealots vs. 6 marines is pretty much a complete pushover in favor of the zealots. However, 30 zealots vs. 30 marauders, the zealots are screwed, charge or not. Force field is a great counter to kiting, however and pins your opponents down. A quick charge and FF makes charge zealots quite powerful. Similarly lings can often swing behind a force and prevent retreat while banelings crash in from the front. Broodlings primary benefit isn't the 4 damage they nibble, but instead the fact that they keep ground units from moving easily. The same way that the AI works against melee can be used to work against ranged units kiting. Charge is one of those great ways to prevent movement of ground forces. So I'm going back and forth about a lot of random shit in this post. What is my point? My point is you can't just consider charge in a vacuum. Charge Zealots against small numbers of units is great. Charge Zealots vs. large balls of similar units is bad. Charge Zealots with Sentry support vs. large balls of similar units is great. Charge Zealots vs. a small number of Tanks is great. Charge Zealots vs. a large number of Tanks is bad. Charge Zealots vs. a force in an open area is good. Charge Zealots vs. a force where you are constricted is bad. 200/200 is not the problem with charge. The "problem" with charge is that by the time many people get it, there are conditions that make chargelots less than ideal. However, I think that making it come too much earlier (say let it come from cyber core) would make them too strong too early. Making it come cheaper from Twilight Council would not make a huge difference, because either you want to get it, or you don't. Unless they were to drop it to like 50/50, you're still going to have to weigh it's pro's and con's, and I think there would be few situations where you would get Charge with a new cost, where you wouldn't be getting it already with it's old cost. And if you're in a situation where charge is valuable, the cost is entirely worth it. Comparing it to stim is very pointless because stim is a completely different scenario. Stim is an upgrade, in my opinion, for the same reason that concussive shells is an upgrade. The idea of Stim is that you will have it if you do more than a trivial amount of bio. The cost of it is reasonably low, and it takes 140 seconds to research. The purpose of requiring stim research is in my opinion, to take away strength from marines/marauders in the very early game. In my opinion, charge for Zealots is a different can of worms, Charge is a way to give additional power to Zealots. Zealots being actually reasonably good without charge, Zealots with Charge being sort of Zealots+, while Marines without stim being Marines-. I'd say stim would be closer to Psionic Storm on High Templar or Extended Thermal Lance on Colossus. Psionic Storm is pretty much a guaranteed upgrade for HT, as is the thermal lance upgrade. You do not get any sort of bio without getting stim. Just like you're not going to get HT without Storm. You can, however, get away without getting Combat Shields. Likewise, you can get away without getting charge, or seeker missile, or hi-sec auto-tracking. So instead of saying: "Why does charge cost 200/200 when stim costs 100/100 and requires less tech" Ask the question: "Is paying 200/200, 140 seconds, and needing a twilight council for charge reasonable?" I think the answer is yes. I think 200/200 is a reasonable amount to pay for a strong upgrade considering it adds a lot of utility to your mineral dump, and I have seen strong strategies that incorporate Charge as it is. If you want to compare to stim, ask if stim is too strong at 100/100. I personally think it is not. Stim is pretty much required for any bio use, and making it more expensive means that terran players are going to be at a higher risk to early aggression, which is something protoss (along with their non-charging zealots) are actually quite good with. But saying that it's bad because charge is more expensive than stim is a silly argument. Upgrades don't fight against eachother. Races fight against eachother, and the races are different because their units are different. Why do gateways cost 150 when a barracks and tech lab requries 200/25? Why do hatcheries cost 450 and 2 larva to get an expansion and 10 supply when it only costs a protoss 400? Why can probes regen their shields ultra fast but SCVs don't regen anything without help? Why can a warpgate warp in a 2 supply zealot every 15.3 seconds with chronoboost when a barracks can only build a 2 supply marauder every 30 seconds? Making arbitrary comparisons between two completely different upgrades with no real frame of reference doesn't help anything. The only question that is a reasonable question is: "Is charge a useful ability as it is?" Players better than me think it is. I do too. | ||
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HubertFelix
France631 Posts
ZERG SHOULD HAVE NYDUS TIER 1 BECAUSE OF WARP GATE LOL ^^ .... you get it?  | ||
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rS.Sinatra
Canada785 Posts
On June 05 2010 05:00 HubertFelix wrote: The "because terran have stimpack earlier we should have zealot speed earlier" is just idiot. It's starcraft2, races are differents. ZERG SHOULD HAVE NYDUS TIER 1 BECAUSE OF WARP GATE LOL ^^ .... you get it? Just no. The fact that by the time Charge upgrade is complete you may be too far behind for it to matter, is the problem. Not the fact that you can't come up with proper facts to support an argument. Please don't post garbage in my thread. | ||
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Apolo
Portugal1259 Posts
On June 05 2010 04:56 zeidrichthorene wrote: Imagine if the units didn't automatically clump up shoulder to shoulder, it would all of a sudden be possible to isolate and block individual units. Imagine if your zealots/zergligns didn't immediately clump into the tightest balls possible, it may be possible to engage a tank position without skynet-like tank AI using exactly a perfect number of shots to kill your nicely clumped units without wasteage In Age of Empires 2 there were buttons for that, when siege catapults that deal splash damage were in the field, we could spread out the units to somewhat minimize the effect. In this case it's the third button from the left at the bottom. It could definitely help zerglings and zealots, but i don't know if that could be too much too handle for terran and screw up balance. ![[image loading]](http://img202.imageshack.us/i/aoe2rareapparition.jpg/) | ||
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clickrush
Switzerland3257 Posts
On June 05 2010 05:00 HubertFelix wrote: The "because terran have stimpack earlier we should have zealot speed earlier" is just idiot. It's starcraft2, races are differents. ZERG SHOULD HAVE NYDUS TIER 1 BECAUSE OF WARP GATE LOL ^^ .... you get it? what the hell? nydus worm tech is theoreticaly faster than warpgate tech. nobody wants it that fast but it would be possible to get it about 1min before gates are finished. and if you expand as Z then your only about 1min behind before gate finishes. actually you showed a very good example of balance. as Z you can choose if you want to go for a very fast network for major harassment or if you want to stick with an expansion and get your macro going. As P, if you need a Zealot heavy mid game composition then you absolutely need charge. iam fine with this. but until the time you get there, your opponent (whether its Z or T) will have reached critical masses. charge would be insanely overpowered if available at lower tech. as it is now, you get it right at the time when zealots would become almost useless without it. so it actually should cost far less. now you even have to build a extra building before you can get it. this is not the case with any infantry upgrade T or Z can get. this needs to be counterbalanced. blizzard actually understands this type of balance. this is why they gave speed as default to the ultra, they reduced infantry upgrades for T and they merged upgrades for the roach. charge should not cost more than 100/100. | ||
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mols0n
Canada388 Posts
Imo it should be reduced to 150/150 | ||
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NATO
United States459 Posts
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dogmeatstew
Canada574 Posts
On June 05 2010 06:01 Duelist wrote: In Age of Empires 2 there were buttons for that, when siege catapults that deal splash damage were in the field, we could spread out the units to somewhat minimize the effect. In this case it's the third button from the left at the bottom. It could definitely help zerglings and zealots, but i don't know if that could be too much too handle for terran and screw up balance. There's 2 buttons for this in SC2 as well... left and right mouse buttons... select and move... I appreciate this takes alot more work than hitting a hotkey to spread but its stuff like this that makes starcraft an excellent rts with a very high skill ceiling. I've been spending way to much time watching streams lately and players like NonY do in fact spread their zealots into as much of a line as they can before attacking... Also I think if you attack farther away they ball less because they all try and go in a straight line towards the a-move point but I havn't really checked that scientifically... Edit: I propose adding speed enhancement to the charge upgrade. It doesn't have to be as big as in sc1, but this would definitely make zealots more viable lategame, as they could actually retreat, be more mobile, and not always get stuck behind stalkers when you a-move. IIRC it does? 20%? | ||
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