Watching iNcontroL's stream a couple hours ago, he attempted to elevator 3 sets of units into a Terran's base but it took too long and it didn't work. After watching that I was pretty sure you could simply put the Prism into Phase mode and, due to the range of load/unload, load units into the Prism from the low ground and unload them onto the high ground instantly.
Now, this isn't particularly hard to realise but it seems like it's something that's been pretty overlooked. It's slightly different to Dropship and Overlords elevators because the Warp Prism is in Phase mode and you normally only have one Prism whereas you'll generally have a lot of Dropships and Overlords. It functions similar to shift+queue blink I suppose, but way more micro intensive.
Pulling this off, especially if the opponent sees it going on, does require a lot of actions so it won't be easy to perform quickly and efficiently until you get practiced at it, but it's definitely easier and much faster than a standard elevator trick. You also get the benefit of warping units in at the same time, making this much stronger than any other type of elevator.
Here are some screens illustrating how it works:
Dedicated to iNcontroL in all his hair-whippingly glorious modelbody ownage, owner of the best stream in TL, I hope this proves to be as effective for you as you were looking for and maybe you can start experimenting with the idea more.
I thought this trick was already known. Somebody did it to me once and since then i've been using it on occasion. Well, i guess now everybody knows hehe
I've seen it being done in the last TL open. But I don't know who or what game. I just remember because the commentators didn't know it could be done and were well surprised.
I think it can work very well if you do it like this: Set warp prism on hold position. Make sure your army reaches it one-by one. Command your complete army to be picked up by the warp prism. Then select the warp prism and hold down the key for "drop".
On February 28 2011 19:22 graNite wrote: I think it can work very well if you do it like this: Set warp prism on hold position. Make sure your army reaches it one-by one. Command your complete army to be picked up by the warp prism. Then select the warp prism and hold down the key for "drop".
Can someone with high apm make a VOD?
No need to put it on Hold Position, you just put in in Pylon mode (or whatever it's called) and load them up and drop them on the high ground. Haven't tried it yet but that's the way Hasu did it.
It certainly is an impressive trick when done quickly. Hasuobs is the most recent example of it being done which I can remember in his TSL3 qualifier game. It's easiest to park the prism in pylon mode and when done correctly can make any Gateway+Immortal push much scarier.
On February 28 2011 19:22 graNite wrote: I think it can work very well if you do it like this: Set warp prism on hold position. Make sure your army reaches it one-by one. Command your complete army to be picked up by the warp prism. Then select the warp prism and hold down the key for "drop".
Can someone with high apm make a VOD?
No need to put it on Hold Position, you just put in in Pylon mode (or whatever it's called) and load them up and drop them on the high ground. Haven't tried it yet but that's the way Hasu did it.
Is it possible with "Hold Position" ? (Asking because you could do this with Overlords and Medivacs then.)
On February 28 2011 19:22 graNite wrote: I think it can work very well if you do it like this: Set warp prism on hold position. Make sure your army reaches it one-by one. Command your complete army to be picked up by the warp prism. Then select the warp prism and hold down the key for "drop".
Can someone with high apm make a VOD?
Wow sounds strangely impressive, going to 1base elevator some noobies on ladder if this works
On February 28 2011 19:22 graNite wrote: I think it can work very well if you do it like this: Set warp prism on hold position. Make sure your army reaches it one-by one. Command your complete army to be picked up by the warp prism. Then select the warp prism and hold down the key for "drop".
Can someone with high apm make a VOD?
No need to put it on Hold Position, you just put in in Pylon mode (or whatever it's called) and load them up and drop them on the high ground. Haven't tried it yet but that's the way Hasu did it.
Is it possible with "Hold Position" ? (Asking because you could do this with Overlords and Medivacs then.)
I tried to do it with hold position in the unit tester and it didn't work as well because the hold position is canceled when you clicked on where you want to unload. You could make it work if you had really good mouse precision and clicked right underneath the medivac/overlord every time to minimize its movement. However, its MUCH faster with a warp prism in phasing mode (because the warp prism doesn't move no matter where you click.)
I think the real use of this tactic is going to be elevating entire colossi death balls with a single warp prism while the colossi provide cover fire or to do an early push against a fast expanding player. Seems like a very scary tactic to bypass static defenses and could completely negate forcefields on the ramp.
Click on the overlord / medivac when you choose your unloading position, it makes it drop while continuing on it's current course of movement (which is in the case, hold position). This is also how you do the mobile drops.
On March 01 2011 06:55 NinjaDrone wrote:I think the real use of this tactic is going to be elevating entire colossi death balls with a single warp prism while the colossi provide cover fire or to do an early push against a fast expanding player. Seems like a very scary tactic to bypass static defenses and could completely negate forcefields on the ramp.
It wouldn't make sense to elevator anything much larger than a 30 food army, it would just take too long and I highly doubt it would be effective at all. If you're in a lategame situation you should probably have blink anyway, so you can just use that to hit and run rather than some clumsy elevator gimmick.