Seeing as the Beta has been down for much too long, I've been playing around in unit tester maps a great deal. As I was doing so, I noticed some CRAZY things. Things that almost make me want to switch to protoss they are so awesome. And they all include Void Rays.
Void Ray Trick #1) Lets take a look at Void Rays for a second. Void Rays are very interesting, because the damage that they do has no cooldown. When they attack, they do instant damage. In other words, if you micro a Void Ray back an forth between 2 targets, and click faster than the ticks would usually be ticking on a single target, you can do double damage. More than double damage in fact, it scales with how fast you click. By doing this, you can see in this video that you can kill 2 Hydras as quick with 2 Void Rays as you can kill 1 Hydra with 2 Void Rays. And this is with my terribly lagging stone age computer (which lags even more with Fraps running).
IMPORTANT NOTE : You can only faze while uncharged with the Void Rays. After testing, fazing seems to be more effective than charging as long as you are fighting multiple targets, but it is also possible to charge THEN faze. It is certainly more powerful when you reach critical mass of Void Rays, as you will see in the next video.
I like this trick so much, that I'm going to call it "Fazing". Don't fix this Blizzard. I know it doesn't make sense, I just want something named after me. In fact, I'm going to become a world famous caster just so I can one day call this "Fazing" (if anyone ever uses it).
Void Ray Trick #2) Another trick that these terrifying units can do, is vaporize an entire army in about a second. Since there is no cooldown on their attack, once you reach a certain critical mass (The amount of HP that the enemy units have / 3-4), you can shift attack all the enemy 1 by 1, and watch as the units die literally as fast as you can click them due to no time between target damage. Even better, if you can see them before they get in range, you can click the entire army - and watch as they get vaporized in a fraction of a second as the Void Rays get in range. Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration, but it's certainly faster. This works best against units that are outranged by Void Rays. Like unranged Hydras. Or workers. They can't even do damage.
I uploaded these 2nd videos in non-HD. I don't need a 20 second video that less than 100 people will watch to be in 720p. Hehe.
Video #1 - 8 Void Rays against 50 workers. 1a2a3a attack move style. (Kill time, ~20 seconds from engagement to total probe death)
Video #2 - 8 Void Rays Against 50 workers. Attacks queued. (Kill time, ~11 seconds from engagement to total probe death)
This is a significant difference, as damage is essentially doubled. The probes have much less time to run when they are dying twice as quickly. It would definitely be harder to click them while they are moving, but I'm sure the top progamers would have no problem with it . This is also exceptionally powerful against marines.
Pretty awesome find, sounds like something they'll eventually patch about if they hear about it though. Either way, nice micro trick. L3 voids with fast hands would be raw-some. Thanks :D
e-- also way to have a concise youtube video. that's so under-appreciated; that couldve been a 1:30-2+ minutes video with you introducing the concept and explaining it blah blah then doing it one at a time. i love something that's to the point.
Some small things I noted from watching the video, your testing on local ping, so it might be harder to pull that kind of fast switching when your playing online due to the higher ping. Also, the un-microed rays went up to medium charge (indicated by the energy graphic at the source of their beam) while the microed rays stayed at low charge.
Although if your in a situation that gives you the luxury to fully charge your rays first (destructible rocks), THEN microing them to do fast switching, that will do a lot of hurt.
Balance wise I personally feel its pretty situational, all we can do is test it out in an actual match or see if any of the pros use it to gain a significant advantage in what would be a losing scenario.
I like it! I want more of this stuff, this is what seperates the man from the boys. Keep it! I may regret it one day, playing Zerg but everything that involves extraclicks for an edge is a good thing imo.
Cool. I kind of hope they don't patch it. In a way, its actually balanced. You need at least two units to do it, and they wont charge up if you faze, as opposed to if you just leave them focusing.
I'm pretty sure this will get patched. Early game the first trick will make a big difference compared to the normal usage of viod rays, therefore i'm pretty sure it will be OP in the right hands.
EPT
. This is also exceptionally powerful against marines.
