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Please forgive me if this has been brought up recently (or at all). Searched for it and went back quite a way through the pages without seeing anything.
It seems to me that it is common knowledge of the things that are good at killing immortals. Units include marines, zerglings, hydras, banshees, voidrays. The list could go on. But what I want to discuss here is are these really is are the units listed here really a "hard" counter to the immortal? Well the air units go without saying as immortals cannot attack air. Ask yourself would 1-2 stalker really do that much better against these so called counters (assuming that they are ground units of course).
Stalker
Health:80/ Shields:80 / Min: 125/ Gas: 50/ Supply: 2/ Buildtime: 42(32)/ Cooldown(btw attacks): 144 / Unit speed: 2.953/ Unit acceleration: 1000/ Range: 6/ Attack: 10+4armored
Immortal
Health: 200/ Shields: 100/ Min: 250/ Gas: 100/ Supply: 4/ Buildtime: 55/ Cooldown (btw attacks): 1.45/ Unit Speed: 2.25/ Unit Acceleration: 1000/ Range: 5/ Attack: 20+30armored
If you look at the numbers the immortal and the stalker both have basically the same cooldown. The immortal is exactly double the price of a stalker in supply minerals and gas. Its buildtime is a little less than half of that of a warped in stalker. (By the time your robo finishes your warpgate research should be done.)
Also the Immortal does 20 damage to light targets that might not seem like a lot but two stalkers (remember 2 stalkers equal the price of 1 immortal) also do 20 damage to a light target. If the target was armored its no question that the one immortal would have done more damage than the two stalkers.
It seems to me the key differences between the two units are as follows:
The stalker is a slightly faster unit and in combination with its better range by 1 this can allow kiting. Obviously the stalker can shoot air. So if your opponent is going really heavy on air to ground units well its not like collosus would probably not be the best of options either.
Edit: Also stalkers have blink which can mean that later your immortals will have trouble keeping up however this can be supplemented with a warp prism. Bring in 2 Immortals drop them phase up warp in stalkers.
Now to discuss the relevance of adding emp into the mix.
An immortal still has 200 health left after an emp goes down and pretending that emp ONLY hit the immortals in your army and nothing else the immortal would still have more health than a single stalker which has a combined health of 160. But that doesn't happen very often if your immortal gets hit so do the stalkers right next to it. So even after EMP lands your immortal will still live longer on average (ignoring focus fire) than a stalker.
Going collosus seems to be the best early splash damage thing the toss can do but after lots of things start popping out that make collosus life miserable why not keep teching towards HT while the collosus are owning it up and once your opponent has the units out that make a collosi's life miserable you immediately start making Immortals to back up your stalkers which will not only make his viking/corruptor/"insert collosus counter here" force useless but in the case of emp your opponent unless he has alot of ghosts will be likely to target the immortals first then you can bring in or warp in templar for the storm. Once he starts to get alot of ghosts this will eat into his gas/min add hurt his ability to get more vikings out. Thus allowing your collosus to make an appearance later.
I may be completely off with this and if any of my numbers are wrong please note so and I will change them.
This is the website I pulled all of the numbers from.
http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_StarCraft_II_units
Edit: Keep in mind people I am not suggesting mass immortal as all it would take is your opponent to get air and you are screwed.
But you have the Robotics facility anyway. Why? Because you made an observer. Now as long as you aren't wanting something else out of that facility as well you might as well produce immortals too as they are as strong as 2 stalkers. Your composition will still be heavy on lots or stalkers but the immortals mixed in with them will be a nice touch.
On October 10 2010 16:00 BuzzJuice wrote:
Also Immortals don't do that well against marines (excellent against marauders), you probably need zealots and HTs to deal with it or collosi.
Remember when you immortals don't do well against marines think about how many marines you need to have to kill a single immortal. 4? plz I would put my money on the immortal. Also whatever that magic number is of the number of marines you need. Think to yourself if this immortal were 2 stalkers how much better would they have done.
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Two things:
If you stop making Colossi, they can start making medivacs in TvP or other units in ZvP, or they can pretty much win in PvP.
Stalkers are a LOT faster. They're super mobile, and with Blink they're amazing at doing little pokes.
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Immortals are not better than stalkers due to the following reasons:
1) Can not attack air
2) Higher base cost means it takes longer to start them (people really underestimate the base cost of things... ie barracks are great because they initially only cost 150 to start, then you can save up the extra necessary bit for the addon while it is building instead of having to pay up front)
3) Robotics facilities are expensive
4) They are slow and only have 5 range
As a protoss you rarely really need to worry about EMP, since a lot of terran are content just using it on your army instead of the HT in the back. Good control will mean your HT wont get hit pretty much ever.
I will say what I like to do since you touch base on it:
I usually use the 1 gas FE into 4 warpgate. Pump from the 4 warpgates with the expansion up and tech to colossus to force vikings. Get 1 colossus up then switch over to HT's. As long as you are ahead on bases and you force him to have vikings he is at a loss since he is using starports and resources on some vikings instead of medivacs or ravens.
If neither of you attack seriously so that you still have colossus when you want to make a big push with your HT's you will destroy any bio instantly through storm + colossus AE. You will destroy so badly that even if he EMP's your army you will still have a sizable victory.
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You forgot that two stalkers can do three shots and kill one ling and one more shot on another. While the immortal does 2 shots on one ling during the same time span.
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You will be able to warp in a lot more Stalkers than Immortals. By the time your economy is such that you can afford to be mass producing Immortals, you're going to have more than a 2:1 Warp Gate: Robo ratio, even more so if you're building Colossi with your Robos.
Also, you're really really breezing past the speed and range of Stalkers. That's a pretty big reason why they're a great unit.
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I think its better that you have both Immortals and Zealots in your army. Immortals might take a ton, but remember that you don't have 3-4 Robos in your base, you only have 1-2 compared to 4-6 Warpgates, hence why stalkers are used more often.
Also Immortals don't do that well against marines (excellent against marauders), you probably need zealots and HTs to deal with it or collosi.
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Immortals are a terrible unit...you build immortals because you don't have immediate access to Colossus. Immortals IMO as soon it was revealed that they couldn't shoot air, they become worthless. Sure they work but if you look at roaches and marauders, it's funny to think toss is supposed to be the most powerful race. Like most toss units they're hard to mass produce, expensive but not cost effective. I would prefer a buffed up stalker in exchange for the remove of the immortal.
HT's especially against terran mmm might seem like a great idea, but I haven't seem them work in a straight up match.
First of all Storms do crap damage, and can be dodged, and mmm can easily retreat get healed up then return. So protoss build a lot of HTs, however, HTs aren't attack units, once they run out of energy your gateway units suck by default and you have so few of them because you spent your supply on HTs. And Archons have no place anywhere it seems.
No I think the Koreans are right, Colossus is the most profitable tech route in a standard game, you just have to protect them better. That is what GSL2 is going to show us.
I think protoss is going to have a rough time to be honest, on the pro level. Us toss players might not be whiny but that will change I predict.
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The only time i really use immortals now is if its late game and zerg is cranking alot of ultra's. Otherwise i just don't bother with them. They are to slow and easily abused by quick agile units.
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On October 10 2010 16:08 KingAce wrote:
Immortals are a terrible unit...you build immortals because you don't have immediate access to Colossus. Immortals IMO as soon it was revealed that they couldn't shoot air, they become worthless. Sure they work but if you look at roaches and marauders, it's funny to think toss is supposed to be the most powerful race. Like most toss units they're hard to mass produce, expensive but not cost effective. I would prefer a buffed up stalker in exchange for the remove of the immortal.
HT's especially against terran mmm might seem like a great idea, but I haven't seem them work in a straight up match.
First of all Storms do crap damage, and can be dodged, and mmm can easily retreat get healed up then return. So protoss build a lot of HTs, however, HTs aren't attack units, once they run out of energy your gateway units suck by default and you have so few of them because you spent your supply on HTs. And Archons have no place anywhere it seems.
No I think the Koreans are right, Colossus is the most profitable tech route in a standard game, you just have to protect them better. That is what GSL2 is going to show us.
I think protoss is going to have a rough time to be honest, on the pro level. Us toss players might not be whiny but that will change I predict.
Although I prefer collusi tech, you can't just assume HTs are so terrible. HT storm damage is huge, but you have to use it properly. If you have a couple of sentries (you don't want too many as they expend the gas needed for HT) you can forcedfield the Terran ball into a bad position allowing your army to surround it AND your HT storms become so much more effective. IF your afraid of the Terran healing up why not feedback his medivacs ASAP? You can generally one shot them if they have built up energy. Furthermore, if you wan't a player to play defensively you can perform quick storm drops. A couple of warped in HTs in the mineral line can decimate workers if they aren't moved quick enough.
I don't think HT are worse, they just require a lot more control to become useful. This means you need to split them into separate control groups, keeping them far away from any immediate danger but close enough to be able to storm as soon as you command. Further, if the Terran gets ghosts you really need to be aware of any incoming EMPs by scouting ahead of your army.
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Another thing about SC2, Air units deal so much more damage. The fact the unit cannot shoot up is a much bigger disadvantage than it was in SC1.
Stalkers use Warpgates, can blink (researched) and do not have 2.25 movement speed =_=
Not to mention if you are Immortal focused, you can't have nearly as many gateways, and when you trade armies it takes much longer to replenish your army.
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On October 10 2010 16:08 KingAce wrote:
Immortals are a terrible unit...you build immortals because you don't have immediate access to Colossus. Immortals IMO as soon it was revealed that they couldn't shoot air, they become worthless. Sure they work but if you look at roaches and marauders, it's funny to think toss is supposed to be the most powerful race. Like most toss units they're hard to mass produce, expensive but not cost effective. I would prefer a buffed up stalker in exchange for the remove of the immortal.
HT's especially against terran mmm might seem like a great idea, but I haven't seem them work in a straight up match.
First of all Storms do crap damage, and can be dodged, and mmm can easily retreat get healed up then return. So protoss build a lot of HTs, however, HTs aren't attack units, once they run out of energy your gateway units suck by default and you have so few of them because you spent your supply on HTs. And Archons have no place anywhere it seems.
No I think the Koreans are right, Colossus is the most profitable tech route in a standard game, you just have to protect them better. That is what GSL2 is going to show us.
I think protoss is going to have a rough time to be honest, on the pro level. Us toss players might not be whiny but that will change I predict.
HT's dominate terran bio. Initiate -> Storm storm storm -> feedback all of their medivacs -> win. Storm does more damage than you might think too.
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Immortals are a lot better than a lot of people think, especially PvT (I assume a lot of the discussion the OP hopes for is around this match up).
While it is true that on paper the stalker is much more versatile, I think everyone's forgetting that the stalker does a massive 50 damage to the "imba" terran unit, the marauder. FF to stop a retreat path and 2-3 immortals focusing on marauders will decimate an early terran M+M.
For examples, watch IEM NY Kiwikakki vs Drewbie (I think). Kiwi goes 1 gate --> robo, with 3-4 immortals with sentry and zealot mostly and crushes the early/mid bio push. I think he loses 2 zealots total.
Find those games and take a look, cause Kiwi's use of immortal makes me think that protoss can sit behind gateway immortal pretty well and tech to something non-colossus (or even colossus).
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there's no question that, against ground you'd be better off with immortals than stalkers. Especially against light with armor upgrades... Or really against anything with armor upgrades.
Frankly I could see immortal zealot sentry doing pretty good against Terran. But the problem is getting dual robo bays going. Anyway it's all theory craft.
i guess if you went 2gate 2robo you could make it work.
You obviously have to have at least 2 gates or you'll die to early pressure. And I don't think one robo can pump out enough immortals. Might have to cut production from one gate to save up for an expo.
And if they're going air... better have a lot of sentries to shoot down banshees..
Also why are people talking about PvZ.
This is a TvP topic, nobody's using immortals to kill zerglings.
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If immortal is a gateway unit, or if robo is cheaper like 100/100, there may be more use to "mass" them in certain situation.
But as of now, they are not as great as what the op said. Because by the time you have the production facility to mass them, you might as well get col or HT or even carrier.
Considering the Immortal build time and tec tree and the fact that it cant shoot air makes it impossible to replace the stalker or sc1 dragoon.
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Maybe allow them to be warped in with gateways with an upgrade from a Robotics Bay? Immortals are pretty beefy units. This would also solve the problem of cutting Colossi Production.
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Blink is what makes stalkers so good =/
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@terranghost: thank you for these informational ^^, they are really helpful to me
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Stop spreading so much misinformation; immortals produce even faster than warpgate stalkers (64s vs 55) and storm dps is actually quite low (20 dps), it just does it in a larger area than anything else Protoss has. As long as no air is a factor, immortals are just flat out better most of the time. Protoss anti-air is just so weak that it seems more stalkers get built. Since Protoss don't really have a good "hard counter" to an air unit, they can't get behind in stalkers or risk losing a lot to being overwhelmed. Otherwise, to get good immortal production, just dedicate 100% of chrono boost to a single robo. With 2 bases, you can keep a single structure chrono boosted almost all of the time. A second robo always seems a waste from most situations ive seen.
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On October 10 2010 15:52 TheRabidDeer wrote:
As a protoss you rarely really need to worry about EMP, since a lot of terran are content just using it on your army instead of the HT in the back. Good control will mean your HT wont get hit pretty much ever.
Relying on opponents mistakes is not solid play.
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On October 10 2010 15:54 us.insurgency wrote:
You forgot that two stalkers can do three shots and kill one ling and one more shot on another. While the immortal does 2 shots on one ling during the same time span.
it takes 4 slatker shots to kill a ling
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EPT
