|
Last night I had a bit of an epitome. I was thinking about ways to make gateway units more viable against MM, and I got thinking about upgrades.
Typically in early-mid game PvT (pre colossi/storm) you will encounter marine heavy forces, often with marauders. The zealot becomes a very key unit in this scenario since it absorbs damage and forces the terran player to move back while you stalker/sentry/immortals can do damage. When your wall of zealots dies, it exposes the squishy stalkers to MM fire (which tears them up ridiculously fast).
Guardian shield provides somewhat of a reprieve from stimmed MM instantly melting your zealots by granting an additional 2 armor. This makes a significant difference, reducing marine damage from 5 to 3, a 40% reduction.
Now, as far as upgrades go, I started to think about which is going to be a better option for dealing with MM (with combat shields & stimmed once). The performance differences are as follows:
(Keep in mind that this isn't accurate to an in game scenario since I'm not taking into account multiple unit types attacking simultaneously).
BASELINE (No upgrades)
Zealot vs Marine: 3 hits
Zealot vs Marauder: 8 hits
Stalker vs Marine: 5 hits
Stalker vs Marauder: 9 hits
Immortal vs Marine: 3 hits
Immortal vs Marauder: 3 hits
+1 Attack
Zealot vs Marine: 3 hits
Zealot vs Marauder: 7 hits
Stalker vs Marine: 5 hits
Stalker vs Marauder: 8 hits
Immortal vs Marine: 3 hits
Immortal vs Marauder: 2 hits
Summary:
+1 attack is nearly useless vs marines (unless were talking combinations of 2 zealot hits + 1 stalker hit), marginally effective for stalker/zealot vs marauder, and of huge benefit for immortal vs marauder.
BASELINE
Marine vs Zealot: 29 hits
Marauder vs Zealot: 17 hits
Marine vs Stalker: 30 hits
Marauder vs Stalker: 9 hits
Marine vs Immortal: 57 hits
Marauder vs Immortal: 21 hits
Guardian shield:
Marine vs Zealot: 47 hits
Marauder vs Zealot: 22 hits
Marine vs Stalker: 47 hits
Marauder vs Stalker: 10 hits
Marine vs Immortal: 92 hits
Marauder vs Immortal: 25 hits
So obviously guardian shield is a huge boon, but then when you add in +1 armor with guardian shield....
Marine vs Zealot: 63 hits
Marauder vs Zealot: 22 hits
Marine vs Stalker: 60 hits
Marauder vs Stalker: 10 hits
Marine vs Immortal: 113 hits
Marauder vs Immortal: 25 hits
Summary:
+1 armor in combination with guardian shield drastically increases the durability of protoss units against MM.
There are probably some mistakes due to rounding in those numbers, but I don't have excel handy to make a spreadsheet so thats as good as it gets.
I'm new to protoss and I just realized this the other day. Makes a huge difference against early game MM. Obviously this means I will be upgrading +1 armor before attack vs MM. I'm really curious about builds which include an early forge in order to maximize the effectiveness of tier 1.5 against terran. If you are fast expanding (1gate) vs T it doesn't seem reasonable to get a really early +1, and with 1 base colossi you are going to want the gas anyways. What do you guys think? I'm not exactly a PvT scholar, but I haven't really seen any forge FE builds.
|
Yep TvP would be even harder if Protosses actually thought about their upgrades instead of automatically opting for +1 weapons.
With +1 armor and Guardian Shield it takes 50 Marine shots to get through a Zealot's HP only (not including shields).
|
It's very common for protoss players to get armor before weapon upgrades against terran bio. It helps your zealots stay alive longer to let your colossus and/or templars do the damage.
|
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Marine
I'm not sure if when you're talking about guardian shield it is supposed assumed that you already have +1 armor, but marines do a base damage of 6 not 5. So normally, guardian shield reduces from 6 to 4.
EDIT: It would be awesome if you added colossus to the data (# of hits to take down marine/marauder) since colossus plays a huge role in DPS.
|
On November 15 2010 07:14 slam wrote:http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/MarineI'm not sure if when you're talking about guardian shield it is supposed assumed that you already have +1 armor, but marines do a base damage of 6 not 5. So normally, guardian shield reduces from 6 to 4.
Zealots have 1 base armor
|
On November 15 2010 07:15 Nadagast wrote:Zealots have 1 base armor
o.0
How did I never notice that...
damn. I feel like an idiot now. xD
|
On November 15 2010 07:10 Wr3k wrote:
+1 Attack
Immortal vs Marauder: 2 hits
Summary:
+1 attack is of huge benefit for immortal vs marauder.
If they get +5 dmg against armored, how can they kill marauder if he has 125 hp?
edit: from 2 hits that is
|
On November 15 2010 07:23 Debeli wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2010 07:10 Wr3k wrote:
+1 Attack
Immortal vs Marauder: 2 hits
Summary:
+1 attack is of huge benefit for immortal vs marauder.
If they get +5 dmg against armored, how can they kill marauder if he has 125 hp? edit: from 2 hits that is
Stim costs 20 hp
|
Russian Federation798 Posts
On November 15 2010 07:23 Debeli wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2010 07:10 Wr3k wrote:
+1 Attack
Immortal vs Marauder: 2 hits
Summary:
+1 attack is of huge benefit for immortal vs marauder.
If they get +5 dmg against armored, how can they kill marauder if he has 125 hp? edit: from 2 hits that is
I assume because terran stim before each fight?
Anyway +1 attack will just cancel this out if worst comes to worst. But good idea
|
Funny way to look at things, what if i have a medivac, that is also a valid assumption -.-'
|
your calculations for number of hits required to kill protoss units are wrong, because armor doesn't apply to their shields. +armor is probably still better, but armor upgrades not applying to shields does make them worse
|
PvT:
-go for +1 armor first when you're going vs T bio with an anticipated transition into colossi, then +1 attack (should finish when colossi start coming out), then alternate.
-if you're going zealot templar against bio with almost no robo, get +2 armor before +1 attack. by then you should have a second forge and can start the attack upgrades.
early gateway vs bio, the armor is important, because bio attack values are small but rapid, so the -1 in damage is a big deal.
robo vs bio, attack is important, because colossi and immortal attack values are huge, each +1 upgrade = +2/+5 for immortals and +2*splash for colossi
mass zealot + storm, armor is important for zealots to tank while storm deals the DPS. again, its against bio, each -1 in damage is a higher and higher percentage in damage reduction, especially with GS, and since you'll have an early twilight to get to templar, you can start +2 armor earlier.
PvZ:
-get +1 attack if you are keeping up pressure and he's showing lings. if he goes roaches, you can start robo units and your +1 attack will be huge with immortals and colossi
-get +1 armor if you are playing defensive (reasonably early expo) and he's probably going straight to mutas. alternate with attack, so you have good attack upgrades in the late game for immortals vs ultras.
+1 attack while early pressuring forces zerg to either keep up upgrades, get his lings 2shotted by your zealots, or transition to roaches. which allows you to get robo and make use of that huge multiplier on robo upgrades (see PvT above)
+1 armor while defending prepares you for mutaling, which both do small, rapid attacks = each -1 in damage reduction is a high percentage.
PvP:
attack. colossi.
edit: the "how many hits does it take herp derp" line of reasoning is really flawed. 99% of the time there's a mixed unit composition and/or medivacs in PvT. even in PvZ you will not get pure anything unless you are doing blink stalkers.
|
How often are your zealots in range of that guardian shield? Almost never, sentrys like to sit back with the stalker ball, if you move them in range they will get sniped. so that guardian shield ends up not benefiting the zealots at all
|
The data you gathered isn't really that useful, since typically you will have a mix of units, and it won't just be one type of unit vs. one type of unit.
So if you have one Zealot and two Stalkers attacking a stimmed Marine for instance,
Base:
16 + 10 + 10 = 36 dmg (Marine still alive)
+1 weapon
18 + 11 + 11 = 40 dmg (Marine dead)
(not saying that your conclusion is wrong, just that your calculations aren't as conclusive as you seem to think.  )
|
On November 15 2010 07:33 lao wrote:
edit: the "how many hits does it take herp derp" line of reasoning is really flawed. 99% of the time there's a mixed unit composition and/or medivacs in PvT. even in PvZ you will not get pure anything unless you are doing blink stalkers.
Obviously, but I'm not going to write a program to calculate the exact results. This serves as a good enough example.
|
On November 15 2010 07:38 shingbi wrote:The data you gathered isn't really that useful, since typically you will have a mix of units, and it won't just be one type of unit vs. one type of unit. So if you have one Zealot and two Stalkers attacking a stimmed Marine for instance, Base: 16 + 10 + 10 = 36 dmg (Marine still alive) +1 weapon 18 + 11 + 11 = 40 dmg (Marine dead) (not saying that your conclusion is wrong, just that your calculations aren't as conclusive as you seem to think. )
I'm aware that I'm not taking into account attacks from multiple unit types, but I don't see what you are getting at with what you just wrote. Marines w/ combat shield have 45 hp after a stim.
Perhaps you mean that with +1 attack 2 zealot hits and one stalker hit kill a marine, whereas without +1 they don't.
|
My point is that since you're not taking into account attacks from multiple unit types, your calculations don't really reflect what happens in the real game and are not that useful.
EDIT:
Yes, in the situation I describe, +1 attack actually makes a difference. And there are other situations where that's also true. So +1 attack is not as useless as looking at "one unit vs. one unit" makes it seem.
And I just noticed that Marines have 45 hp and not 50. So my example is actually bad. Whoops.
|
+1 armor and guardian sheild will of course increase the durability of terran units, no shit sherlock...
User was warned for this post
|
Well, of course theres the whole "But what about compositions" arguement. But bottom line is that if a protoss goes forge FE against terran, they should get +1 armor against bio (which is standard basically, whens the last time you saw pure mech lol), NOT +1 weapons, which was the original point trying to be made.
|
On November 15 2010 07:47 OriginalBeast wrote:
+1 armor and guardian sheild will of course increase the durability of terran units, no shit sherlock...
He's enlightening those of us who may not have realized that such a drastic change is present when the two overlap.
If you don't have anything insightful to post, please refrain from posting it.
I did not realize how drastic of a change it was when using both, I'll definitely be sure to get an early +1 armor from now on. Never really thought about the early ups vs Terran for some reason O_o
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
