EPTIf you take for example good ball of stimmed marines vs zerglings then you need million of zerglings to kill that and I am not exaggerating here.
well the good news is you only need 500k supply for 1 mil speedling
Melee unit effectiveness in SC2 - Page 2
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chonkyfire
United States451 Posts
If you take for example good ball of stimmed marines vs zerglings then you need million of zerglings to kill that and I am not exaggerating here. well the good news is you only need 500k supply for 1 mil speedling | ||
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Deleted User 108965
1096 Posts
On March 08 2011 02:56 Techno wrote: The zealots still kill the units in front of the forcefields. This fact is way too significant to ignore, especially in PvT. And doubly so in the early game. forcefields play a different role in pvt than they do in pvz most of the time. in pvt forcefields are used to keep the terran army from kiting as well as split the armies depending on the situation. in pvz force fields are used almost exclusively to split the army in half, where tyler's explanation comes into play. | ||
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Dominator1370
United States111 Posts
Rather than try to make melee units particularly effective in large engagements, I think we need to consider if large engagements need to happen with melee units. It's a fairly basic principle of military tactics that if your opponent has a number of vulnerable points, you can split your army up to attack multiple vulnerabilities, thus forcing your opponent to either split up their forces as well or concede the loss of whatever you are attacking. Effective use of multi-pronged attacks is a fairly potent way to attempt to dictate engagement size. So, it's reasonable, in theory, that a player with a lot of units good in small engagements (like melee units) could attempt to force their opponent into smaller engagements, rather than crashing deathballs into each other. The important question that I think needs to be answered here is why this kind of play isn't more common. Maybe it's just me, but things like Speedling counters or warping in a few Zealots for harassment aren't nearly as prevalent as I would expect. It could just be that the best players in the world are doing it wrong, but my instincts tell me that there are some complications, on the surface at least. One complication that comes to mind immediately is building placement. Good sim city can be a huge deterrent to any kind of melee-based offense. This also has huge implications on early game aggression with melee units, but I guess that's a topic for another day. Interestingly enough, the kind of multi-pronged aggression that does occur most commonly (drop play with MMM) isn't particularly deterred by good building placement. The availability of base defense is likely a factor as well. The ability to throw down a Planetary Fortress, warp in a round of units wherever you need them, or the like drastically reduce susceptibility to small aggressions. Of course, I think the biggest point is the number and criticaliy of vulnerable locations. Both good building placement and available defense help restrict which locations can be considered vulnerable, of course, but it goes further than that. Games are starting to get bigger and longer, but for much of Starcraft 2's brief existence, games didn't get big and spread out. That probably hasn't helped encourage the idea of melee-based counter play in the current meta-game, but I don't think games getting bigger is going to be some kind of magical solution. Players may wind up typically having 5 or 6 expansions in future games, but If you're not making many more than 75 ish workers, you don't need to be mining more than 3 or so for minerals at any given time, so the amount of active high-value targets isn't going to change much. You can harass an expo being used just for gas, but that really lacks the oomph to be critical. Of course, the tech structures are perhaps the most critical vulnerability, but those don't necessarily have to be very spread out. Your opponent can always consolidate most of their vulnerability to one location and the use most of their army to defend it, which invalidates the idea of small melee-based aggression. Of course, the flip-side of the previous point is that the majority of YOUR vulnerabilities are likely to be consolidated to a relatively small number of locations. If your opponent is capable of pushing towards the majority of your tech structures with a single large army, you don't really have the luxury of splitting your army, unless you can win the base race. How you win the base race against a few Planetaries at mining bases and some Barracks floating to disparate corners of the map, I'm not really sure. So, again, to reiterate, I'm not sure how to fix melee units. There are a lot of factors in play that touch some pretty fundamental aspects of the game. If someone has the answer, though, I'd love to hear it. | ||
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
On March 08 2011 03:03 Bagi wrote: Thats odd, because I see ultralisks all the time in the lategame ZvT. In fact, I've lost to them twice today at 3400 masters. Smart tech switches between ling/bling, ultras, mutas and even broodlords can totally screw over any terran player in the lategame. But yeah, I guess they are a terrible unit if all you do with them is A-move them into 10+ tanks. Yeah, I'm a zerg at 3k1 master in eu and I use them a lot against terran, but it does not mean that they are good. The terran can crush them so hard with some marauders, and marine actually do decent against them if you have upgraded the attack. But most of the time, a good zerg will switch between broodlord, to force vikings, and ultra. Most of the terran player out there just don't do marauders, they make some tanks, and a marine ball. You also have to take into consideration that ultralisk is more or less the only unit that can take down a planetary fortress in the entire zerg arsenal, and taking PF down take a huge part in ZvT late game. I think zealot are good, just lack some durability mid/end game (not early because lol 4gate), and zergling need a dps upgrade (lower cost adrenaline gland in Lair would be good) because they do absolutly NO damage at some point against medivac marine, while ultra need, I think, something to help them hit more and being less useless on 75% of the maps. | ||
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Bagi
Germany6799 Posts
On March 08 2011 03:16 WhiteDog wrote: Yeah, I'm a zerg at 3k1 master in eu and I use them a lot against terran, but it does not mean that they are good. The terran can crush them so hard with some marauders, and marine actually do decent against them if you have upgraded the attack. But most of the time, a good zerg will switch between broodlord, to force vikings, and ultra. Most of the terran player out there just don't do marauders, they make some tanks, and a marine ball. You also have to take into consideration that ultralisk is more or less the only unit that can take down a planetary fortress in the entire zerg arsenal, and taking PF down take a huge part in ZvT late game. Thats pretty much the problem with marauders, they can be rendered completely useless with a tech switch. If the zerg has upgraded armor, even 3-3 marines cannot scratch ultras, you have to rely on tanks to kill them. Then it becomes a game of "did I build enough tanks and protect them well enough from mutas". And even if you have enough, bad positioning or getting caught even partially unsieged can really screw the terran over. Ultras rarely turn the game around, but they can be a good tool to punish the terran for going too marine-heavy, or built too many vikings against brood lords, etc etc. I think they are in a good place in this matchup, perhaps a bit too lackluster against protoss. What comes to killing a PF I think broodlords do a pretty good job there. | ||
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dave333
United States915 Posts
I know blizz nerfed melee/buffed range because they thought pathing would improve the melee a lot, but that's totally not true. The clump effect really makes melee a lot worse. Also they made everything a wall in this game, which weakens them even more. | ||
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whatthefat
United States918 Posts
From BW to SC2, zerglings have the same hit points and damage, while marines have gained 5 hit points, 1 range, and I believe their cooldown has also decreased relative to the zergling. | ||
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morimacil
France921 Posts
I mean, its pretty obvious looking at BW that zerglings were meant to be strong. They start out super effective, then they get a bit worse as the balls get bigger, and then dark swarm and crack makes them good again in the lategame. While in SC2, they start off bad, get decent with speed, then get bad again as the ball grows larger. And then in the lategame, adrenal glands doesnt really help, since instead of greatly buffing the dps of a dps unit that could be protected by ultras and defilers, it now slightly buffs the dps of a unit that isnt really used for dps much, and cant really survive in the lategame. So well yeah, they are way way worse now, but looking at it objectively, it seems that they werent intended to actually be good at anything else than being fast units in SC2. If the designers had intended for them to actually be good dps unit, the iconic units of the zerg swarm race, then they would have actually made them good at least at some point of the game. Marines have gotten stronger while zerglings and zealots have almost identical stats. And thats wrong. Marines have gotten way way stronger, with the extra life, the combat shields, the better stutterstep, the smart firing that never overkills, and better support with medivacs that can both heal and transport, and so on. Meanwhile, lings have not been kept identical, their dps was nerfed, speed research time was nerfed, adrenal glands were nerfed, dark swarm doesnt exist anymore, and so on and so on. | ||
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chonkyfire
United States451 Posts
On March 08 2011 03:39 dave333 wrote: Zerglings are so weak now. You used to be able to slam a dozen cracklings into a marine drop. Now rine drops consist of 8 combat shield stimmed rines against weaker cracklings; it's an ugly sight. I know blizz nerfed melee/buffed range because they thought pathing would improve the melee a lot, but that's totally not true. The clump effect really makes melee a lot worse. Also they made everything a wall in this game, which weakens them even more. How can you say a unit that does around 15 dps fully upgraded at .5 supply cost is "weak" 3/3 cracklings are just as good, if not better than 3/3 marines | ||
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whatthefat
United States918 Posts
On March 08 2011 03:49 morimacil wrote: And thats wrong. Marines have gotten way way stronger, with the extra life, the combat shields, the better stutterstep, the smart firing that never overkills, and better support with medivacs that can both heal and transport, and so on. Meanwhile, lings have not been kept identical, their dps was nerfed, speed research time was nerfed, adrenal glands were nerfed, dark swarm doesnt exist anymore, and so on and so on. I'm talking about base stats only. If you look at base stats, the zergling is the same, and the zealot is very nearly the same (10 less shields in SC2). There has been some rescaling of attack rate: Cooldowns (BW -> SC2, normalized by dividing by zergling's cooldown) Zergling: 1 -> 1 Zealot: 2.8 - > 1.7 Marine: 1.9 -> 1.2 N.B. Searching through previous threads I haven't been able to verify whether cooldown includes attack animation duration in BW. If anyone is sure, it would be nice to know. | ||
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Alphasquad
Austria505 Posts
in zvp none uses more than a few zealots and as 20 zerglings wont do shit vs protoss forces even without forcefields 5 zealots will fail against roaches and hydras immediately and most of all its the nature of those zerg units which do the same damage against everything unlike marauders if they would receive buffs they would be quite overpowered as they cost mineral only and i think one overpowered mineral unit is enough in this game | ||
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xbankx
703 Posts
On March 08 2011 03:16 WhiteDog wrote: Yeah, I'm a zerg at 3k1 master in eu and I use them a lot against terran, but it does not mean that they are good. The terran can crush them so hard with some marauders, and marine actually do decent against them if you have upgraded the attack. But most of the time, a good zerg will switch between broodlord, to force vikings, and ultra. Most of the terran player out there just don't do marauders, they make some tanks, and a marine ball. You also have to take into consideration that ultralisk is more or less the only unit that can take down a planetary fortress in the entire zerg arsenal, and taking PF down take a huge part in ZvT late game. I think zealot are good, just lack some durability mid/end game (not early because lol 4gate), and zergling need a dps upgrade (lower cost adrenaline gland in Lair would be good) because they do absolutly NO damage at some point against medivac marine, while ultra need, I think, something to help them hit more and being less useless on 75% of the maps. They aren't supposed to do high dps. It is same as broodwar if you are still doing zergling only when medics came out of course lings aren't cost effective. The key in both games is baneling and lurkers. Both force terran to split his ball increase surface area thats when the lings are supposed to do damage. | ||
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Toadvine
Poland2234 Posts
It's also very clear that Zerglings received a significant attack speed nerf relative to BW. I'm actually having some trouble figuring out what their exact dps was in BW, but the relative cooldown numbers do not lie. On March 08 2011 03:50 chonkyfire wrote: How can you say a unit that does around 15 dps fully upgraded at .5 supply cost is "weak" 3/3 cracklings are just as good, if not better than 3/3 marines Any unit is good when it has +3 attack against a target with no armor upgrades. Well, any unit except the Stalker, but your argument is terrible. A 3/3 Zergling with adrenal does 13.5 dps vs a 0/0 marine. A 3/3 Zergling does 8.5 dps vs a 3/3 Marine, while the Marine does around 10 dps in return. Considering the limitations of melee I've outlined in the opening post, the marine is strictly superior. On March 08 2011 04:09 Alphasquad wrote: ultralisks are definitely fine and will cut through any protoss cound composition without heavy immortal play and most important as they knock down forcefield they open the way for full damage of lings and other zerg units in zvp none uses more than a few zealots and as 20 zerglings wont do shit vs protoss forces even without forcefields 5 zealots will fail against roaches and hydras immediately and most of all its the nature of those zerg units which do the same damage against everything unlike marauders if they would receive buffs they would be quite overpowered as they cost mineral only and i think one overpowered mineral unit is enough in this game I play Protoss, and whenever Ultras are used against me, they absolutely fail unless the Zerg has a huge advantage and just runs me over with superior numbers. They're not very fast off creep, can be kited pretty well, especially with Blink, and Colossi just nullify them by walking up cliffs. I also don't even remember the last time I've seen them used to any success in a high-level game. Emphasized the last sentence of your post for entertainment value though. | ||
NonY
8751 Posts
On March 08 2011 02:56 Techno wrote: The zealots still kill the units in front of the forcefields. This fact is way too significant to ignore, especially in PvT. And doubly so in the early game. The zealots usually don't kill anything in front of the force fields. They mostly just absorb damage and maybe do a little bit of damage. Absorbing damage done by units behind the force fields is a waste. It's almost always better to get gas sooner and build a composition that is heavier on gas. Extra minerals can go to cannons, probes, and new expansions to get more gas. All ranged units + force fields just has way way more synergy against zerg than zealots + force fields. And I clearly wasn't talking about PvT. Marauders change that dynamic. | ||
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Raiznhell
Canada786 Posts
It would be way too easy for Zerg to just seal a game by using 28 larva after a battle and just rally zerglings. You could only have 3 larva at a time per Hatch in SC1 you can have 7+ now in SC2. | ||
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Blacklizard
United States1194 Posts
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FeyFey
Germany10114 Posts
So all in all Blizzard balanced out balled ranged units pretty good against meeles, but aoes had to be made so weak that you don't die because the opponent has aoe and melee. So even if people dislike this damage shifts, its more balanced then it was in bw hehe. | ||
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evanthebouncy!
United States12796 Posts
In bw I think units are stronger but you need better micro. Here units are weaker but there's no micro, so in a sense if you buff them then they'd become hurp derp strong. Zergligns are fine I think... Ultras need a speed buff, in bw they move as fast as zergling and the point of ultra/ling is mobility which I don't see here... get rid of the splash, bring back the speed. | ||
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Mjolnir
912 Posts
I'm no pro but I think Ultras are hugely overrated. To me, they're the unit you make to either: a) win a game you've already won b) delay a loss when you're already losing I've been watching a lot of "top player" streams lately and I have yet to see Ultras be used so effectively that they're worth the investment. They're easy to kite, easy to block, and a handful of Archons or Immortals can make a wall that superior numbers of Ultras just hit and die. I get the whole "Oh, but they tank so much damage" argument but with all the "+dmg to armored" in the Protoss or Terran balls of doom - I wonder how much extra damage they're really tanking. Besides, do we really want a unit that costs so many resources just to "tank damage?" Usually I see players react to Ultras like this: "Oh, Ultralisk... here it comes!" Scoot and shoot until the Ultra is 50% or less hp and they can run no further - at which point they hold and kill it. Awesome. | ||
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Dalavita
Sweden1113 Posts
On March 08 2011 02:52 GhostFall wrote: I do believe the zergling is too weak. Not the zealot. Zerglings in SC1 beat zealots 3 vs 1 and marines 1 on1. In SC2 zealots beat 3 zerglings and 1 marine beats 1 zergling. Zerglings played a big role in the ability for zerg to pressure early. In starcraft 1, zerglings would beat terran and protoss units in small numbers, but lose in large numbers. As more units appeared on the field, there would be less surface area for the zerglings to melee in. More marines = better ball. more zealots = better wall and no surround. In starcraft 2, zerglings lose to terran and protoss units in both small and large numbers. Speedlings in SC2 are pretty damn good against everything except for zealots in small numbers. 30 speedlings vs 15 marines, the lings win. I'm not sure how higher numbers are, but at those numbers, the lings are still stronger. | ||
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