This article is meant to cover the issue of critical upgrades analysis as it is at the moment. The idea refers to Broodwar, and can be found adressed >>HERE<<. There were similar researches back in Beta, which can be found >>HERE<<, but sadly, they werent continued. I will try to cover this topic over time and keep the thread updated for future patches until blizzard decides thou holy grail of balance shall be found.
Changes and Edits will be listed in the second post. In the summary, the Critical Upgrades will be marked blue, and outlined, what exactly is affected. Mandatory ugrades will be marked green, as the profits are so huge that it might change the game. Uncritical upgrades are in red to make easy to differ. (Thanks to Macpo) Current underlying Patch Data is 1.3.
Could this have gone differently?
Definition
A critical upgrade is an damage or armor upgrade in the game, that changes the amount of hits the units takes to get killed by another unit.
First and foremost, I will, which common sense should cover, only research into typical matchups on the battlefield, and concentrate on low upgrades. Second, for Zerg, we calculate with the exact amount of hitpoint. Second, for Zerg, we calculate with the exact amount of hitpoints + 1 for all units but Zerglings and Banelings, due to the fact that the others in the most engagements have enough time to regenerate 1 hitpoint, as hitpoint regeneration is 1 per 3 seconds. This has its flaws, as Zerg Units regenerate Hitpoints over time, but for this article it shall be stated that the unit receives the damage in such a portion that regeneration does not come into play except the mentioned, and of course note that all Zerg Units are Bionic, and Broodlings gain on upgrades. Third, for Terran, Hellions always have Blue Flame Upgrade, and regarding Marines, we count them with 45 Hitpoints all the time. This covers unstimmed unshielded marines aswell as stimmed shielded marines, which might be the most common cases. Fourth, Protoss Shield Armor is based 0, and +1 per upgrade for every unit, and no shield regeneration will come into play, although I listed critical upgrade for the very specific use of +1 Shiel Armor on Blink Stalkers with presumption that the Shields are supposed to take all damage period. Voidray will be counted uncharged, because that would become too much of a challenge and doesnt make much sense to analyze elsewise. On addition, I will only look at Armor and not Shield Upgrade as it is too expensive to rush for. Also, Guardian Shield changes many setups obviously.
First of all, all upgrades bonus are linear, but there are cases where damage upgrades add more than 1 damage per upgrade, in which they outscale their opponents armor upgrades. This case occured concentrated on Terran Mech, why consecutive upgrades here are crucial, aswell as for Protoss Robotics-based play.
Another thing to note, is that units with high firing rate like marines, zerglings obviously profit most from additional damage and suffer from additional armor, so in these playstyles, upgrades are very crucial aswell (GSL Sidenote: MarineKing is very strong on upgrading).
The next thing I wanted to note is upgrades on harassment: I would group Banshees, Hellions, Zealots (in drops), Dark Templars and Mutalisks as main harassment units with which you be lusting to decrease the amount of hits on a worker. But as far as upgrades are concerned, only Mutalisks, and only in ZvZ and ZvP, change the amount of hits per worker, from 5 to 4. All the other units already kill the probes quite sharp, so they dont profit from upgrades anymore apart from higher overkill. Banelings though kill probes and drones with 1 hit regardless of upgrades once they have +2 Upgrades, SCVs with +3 (Thanks to Chaosvuistje)
In this matchup, the main units in the battle will be Zerglings, Roaches, Hydras, Mutas and Corrupters against Zealots, Sentries, Stalker, Immortals and Colossi. So we analyze the different setups with normal setup, damage or armor advantage and disadvantage. Zerglings against Zealots, Sentry, Stalker, Immortal and Colossi changes from normally taking 3, 6, 4, 2 and 2 hits and needing 35, 18, 36, 70 and 80 hits to kill. With Upgrade advantages, these numbers change to 3, 7, 4, 2, 2 taking and 29, 14, 29, 47 and 65 needing, and with Upgrade disadvantage, the numbers are 2, 5, 4, 2 and 2 hits to die, and they need 9 more hits against Zealots, 7 against Stalkers, 4 against sentries and 17 against Immortals. (on a sidenote, on +2 against +1, Colossis need 1 shot to kill Zerglings, and on +3, Armor gets irrelevant). The same math for Roaches gives us 11, 29, 12, 3, 6 hits to take and 10, 6, 11, 24 and 22 hits needed. On Upgrade advantage, the numbers become 13, 37, 13, 4, 6 hits to take, and 9, 5, 10, 22, 21 hits needed, and on upgrade disadvantage, they become 10, 25, 11, 3, 5 hits taken and 11, 6, 11, 25 and 24. For Hydras, the math is the following: Taking 6, 13, 9, 5 and 3 shots, and needing 14, 7, 15, 28 and 31 on original setup. With Upgrade advantage, the Hydra takes 6, 16, 9, 5 and 3 respectively and needs 12, 7, 13, 27, 29 shots, and with Upgrade disadvantage, the numbers become taking 5, 12, 8, 4, 3 shots, and needing 15, 8, 15, 30 and 33 shots to kill.
So bottom line for Ground Upgrades on Zerg is, Attack Upgrades change almost every engagement, and if going very range heavy, Carapace has huge impact aswell. For the Protoss, against Ling Heavy armies, Attack Upgrade might be nice in case you are Zealot Sentry Heavy, against Roach heavy, Armor is really important while attack doesnt change much significantly, apart from Colossi killing Roaches faster. Against Hydra heavy armies, armor doesn't change much, but attack upgrades change kill counts for all warpgate units.
Now a glimpse on air. We will only look at Muta vs Stalker, Sentries, and Corrupters against Colossi and from Stalkers. So for Mutas, its needing 19 hits for a Stalker and 10 hits for a sentry, with upgrade advantage, its 17 for Stalkers and 9 for sentries, with disadvantage its 21 and 11 for a sentry. To kill the mutas, it takes 13 shots from stalkers and 21 hits from sentries, if carapace was researched, it takes 1 shots more for a stalker and 4 more for sentries, with damage upgrades for protoss, 11 shots for a stalker and 18 shots for sentries. The Corrupter math says 19 shots for a colossi and 17 to be taken down by Stalker, on Upgrade advantage this is 17 shots to kill and 19 to be taken down, on Upgrade disadvantage it is still 19 shots to kill and 16 taking.
So Mutas and Corrupters gain strongly from attack upgrade, aswell as both upgrades for protoss against Mutalisks.
For this matchup, we concentrate on the typical Bio-Ball vs Protoss-Ball scenario, on a sidenote I will investigate a bit lategame Tanks, as this is the common way this matchup is evolving at this point in time. The Infantry Armor shall be researched first: Marines get killed by Zealots, Stalkers, Sentries, Immortals and Collosi in 3, 5, 8, 3 and 2 shots, after a Armor Upgrade, this changes to 4, 5, 9, 3 and 2, which basically means, the upgrades mainly affects Zealots and Sentries. For the Marauder, an Armor Upgrade changes their durability from 9, 10, 25, 3, 5 to 11, 11, 32, 3, 5. For the thesis for Marines can be extended to Gateway Units in General. In the Attack Department, math gets a bit rough because of Protoss Shields and different Armors. Marines take 26 Hits to kill a Zealot in general, 22 if he has Damage Upgrade advantage. It takes 34 hits to kill a Stalker before upgraded, 25 after. This general theme carries on for the Marine. For Marauders, 16 for a Zealot, 9 for a Stalker and 19 hits for a collosus change to 15, 8 and 17. So the Attack Upgrades turns out quite crucial. Last but not least, a forecast on Mech Play: Attack Upgrade on Tanks changes the amount of hits on Stalkers from 4 to 3, on Colossi from 8 to 7, and the shots on Zealots from 5 to 4.
On the Protoss side, lets first take a view on damage upgrades. Zealots take 1 less shot on Marauders, their hits on Marines remain, for Stalkers, the Marine hits stay same, while they need one less hit on Marauders, and aswell on tanks. For Immortals, the Upgrades don't change anything, Collossi take down Marauders in one less hit. So bottom line, when facing massive Marauders, upgrades can make a difference. On a glimpse to Air, we can see how Void Rays perform against Marines and Phoenixes against Tanks: 8 Shots for a Void on a Marine before Upgrades, 7 afterwards, so a +1 might be helpful. Phoenix Shots on Tanks drop from 20 to 16. To remain is how armor research changes the game. Marauder Damage does get affected only slightly, Stalker endurance does not change, while Zealots die in 1 less shot, Collosi dont take more shots. Against Marines, Zealots hold of 5 more shots, Stalkers 4, Colossi 10. Ship plating shall be viewed on aswell, 5 shots more can be taken from a Marine.
The typical matchups in this matchup that might occure from the Zerg point of view are Zerglings, Banelings, Roaches or Mutalisks against Marines, Marauders, Hellions, or Thors.
If Zerg is facing a Bio heavy play with Ling+Bling, the +1 Armor increase the amount of hits Zerglings and Banelings take to kill by a Marine by 1, so we here found our first critical upgrade. This also holds for Roaches, as the Marauder hits increase from 8 to 9, and Marine hits raise drastically from 29 to 37. The damage upgrade depends, as Melee changes Zerglings against Marines, though banelings don't get affected. Roach hits don't change on Marines and Marauders at all. Mutalisk hits on Marines don't change, but the Marines need 4 more hits on Mutas in case carapace is out.
For the Terran, the Damage upgrades lets Marines take less hits on Zerglings and Roaches, hits on Banelings dont change. Marauders hits don't change on Zerglings and Banelings, but the Roaches fall faster. On Mutalisks, you need 18 compared to 21 shots, quite a drastic difference. Armor also changes much if you encounter Zerglings, as marines remain unaffected when they counter banelings or roaches, though Zerglings take slightly more hits (9 to 11) to kill them. Marauder math doesnt change against Roaches or Banelings, Zerglings need 42 instead of 32 hits.
The whole math of course changes, if the Terran goes Mech. For Zerg, this means Armor Upgrade is crucial if you go Zerglings, as then the Zerglins survive a (sieged) Tank shot. Banelings though die anyways, but Roaches survive one (sieged) Tank shot more aswell. Aswell to note, against hellions, the upgrade doesn't change anything., regardless of blue flame. Zerglings of course profit from damage upgrades because of their attack speed as the Hellion hits decrease, and tanks take less hits, but even more Roaches as hits decrease from 11 to 10 on tanks. The Mutalisk damage might be the most important, as Zerg typically ends up high on Mutalisks, and the upgrade changes hits on tanks, and, more important, on Thors from 50 to 45. On as sidenote, as common sense might suggest, rushing for Flyer Armor doesnt make sense as it does not even change the hits on the mutas for Thors, but very well does +2 carapace lower the hits taken if Terran has no additional Upgrades.
For a meching Terran, upgrades always make sense because of the superlinear damage increase compared to armor upgrades. On 'critical' side, a damage upgrade doesnt have critical effects on ground or air. But the Armor upgrade changes things quite alot. Thors take 5 more hits from mutalisks, 2 more hits from roaches, stunning 34 more from Zerglings. Tanks sustain one more shot from roaches, 13 more against Zerglings, 3 more against Mutalisks. Even Hellions take longer to kill for zerglings.
A deep Analysis on Upgrades in PvP at the current state of the game doesn't seem to make much of a sense, as PvP is the shortest matchup in average game time and most of the time ends on 1 base. Warpgate builds at the moment are designed to kill the opponent before the game gets deep, and early Forges are build for cannon rushes. So the only cases currently that might end up in the opportunity to get upgrades seem to be Robo vs Robo builds and getting air, so I will investigate those two cases.
The first case is most likely Zealot Stalker Immortal Colossi vice versa, so we will look into that, but not looking to every matching specifically. The most interesting part might be, if one player can let his Zealots live longer, Stalkers kill faster, and both for Immortals and Colossi. So lets look into these issues: Zealots take 12 hits from Zealots, 17 hits from Stalkers, 8 from Immortals and 6 hits from colossi. Once Armor upgrades are out, it takes 12 from Zealots, 18 from Stalkers, 8 from Immortals and 6 from Colossi, so no effect at all. Stalkers on Upgrades kill Zealots now in 15 hits instead of 17, Immortals need 1 less shot, Collossi need 27 shots before upgrade and 25 afterwards. 'Naked' Immortal and Colossi analysis against Zealot, Stalker, Immortal and Colossi provides 8, 4, 15 and 8 respectively 6, 6, 13 and 13 shots to kill and 21, 25, 15 and 13 respectively 24, 27, 8, 13 to get killed. With upgrades, to kill the amount of shots they need are 8, 3, 14 and 7 respectively 5, 5, 12 and 11, to get killed, the numbers change to 23, 27, 15 and 13 respectively 27, 28, 8 and 13. So we see the Stalkers, but even more the Robo Units profit from a Attack Upgrade. On Armor Side, it slightly benefits the durability of Robo units against Gateway Units.
The second notable duel were upgrades are possible (at least for the air unit) might be VoidRay versus Stalker, so lets at last take a look at that. Voids need 17 shots before and 16 after a +1 upgrade, which means 4 Voids can take down a stalker in 4 volleys. It takes 25 shots from a Stalker to kill the Void Ray, after Armor Upgrade this gets 27. So after all, Air Weapons might change things in this engagement.
The three scenarios I will adress are Bio vs Bio, Bio vs Mech, and Mech vs Mech.
So let's see what a Damage Upgrade in Bio battles can change: unupgraded Marines need 8 hits for another Marine and 25 hits for a Marauder, with upgrade the hits per Marine drop to 7, and the hits per Marauder drop to 21. For Marauders, 5 hits per Marine remain untouched, and Marauder 7 hits drops to 6. If you research armor, the hits Marines need for other Marines increase by 1, the shots for Marauders on Marine remain untouched. For Marauders, it means Marines take 32 hits to take them down, other Marauders will not be influenced.
If it happens that a Mech army battles a Bio army, things start to differ. Siege Tanks take down Marines and Marauders with huge overkill, same goes for Hellions, so Armor Upgrades dont change much here. But to thin out the lines, Attack Upgrades are crucial for the Bio player. Marauders take 1 less hit to kill Tanks, Marine shots drop from 32 to 24. So, contrary to visual impression, the Bio army should prefer attack upgrades. For the Mech army, the following occures: Tanks and Hellions remain untouched by damage upgrades when it comes to critical upgrades, but Thors get to kill Marauders in 2 hits instead of 3 when having a damage upgrade. The Armor Upgrade on Mech changes mainly Marine hits. Marauders still take 9 Hits to take out a tank, Thors die in 23 instead of 22 shots, the Marines hits obviously get drastically effected as 8 more hits for Tanks, 20 more hits for Thors and 3 more hits for Hellions are required.
In Mech Battles, the most interesting Parts are Tanks vs Tanks and Thors, and Viking Battles for obvious reasons. As Tanks kill other tanks on Siege with huge overkill (4x(50-1) - 160 = 36), Armor upgrades do not effect this setup at all. Same math applies on Thors. But when damage upgrade is conceided, things get interested. Due to huge scaling of Siege Tank Damage, we will dig deeper into this. After one attack upgrade, Tanks kill Tanks in 3 shots instead of 4. And, as a matter of fact, once your Tanks have +2, Tanks kill Tanks in 3 shots regardless of the opponents upgrades. On a sidenote, the Thor overkill is too huge to make any reasonable conclusions. The Viking against Vikings math presents the following: Vikings kill Vikings on 5 Shots, regardless of upgrade advantage or disadvantage. And, as a bonus lolly, Cattlebruiser against Viking math as upcoming Lategame opportunity: It takes a Viking 25 shots to take down a unplated Battlecruiser, 28 shots on Level 1 plating. So it highly depends on the situation if the +1 is worth is, the effect of course raises drastically and if you can afford massive upgrades on Battlecruisers, Marines and Thors do 4x2 respectively 2 damage per shot, so Vikings are the only opportunity at all left.
The last matchup to be reviewed is Zerg Mirror. In this matchup, the common confrontations are Zerglings, Banelings and Roaches against each other, and Muta Battles. I won't investigate on Hydra against Muta unless popular demand, as mostly there is Fungal around once this happens and the critical upgrades get pointless. So first analysis on Zerglings. Against Zerglings and Roaches they need 7 and 37 hits before upgrades, and die to 7 and 3 shots, and one baneling burst. On superior upgrades, you need 6 hits to kill Zerglings and 29 to kill Roaches, and need 9 and 3 shots to die, but survive one baneling burst. If Roaches have armor, you need 50 (read: forever) hits.
As you shouldnt run banelings into Roaches, I won't touch this, so lets see how Roaches perform: You need 3 shots to kill a Zergling and 10 to kill a Roach before upgrades, with upgrades its 2 shots for a Zergling and 9 for a Roach. Once armor is out, Roaches need 11 shots on Roaches. So upgrades seem viable in every circumstance so far.
Muta against Muta rises the following: 14 shots non-upgraded, 13 when upgraded on damage and 16 when upgraded on carapace show how fragile this can turn out, but of course corrupters mess with this a bit.
Summary
ZvP
+1 Melee Upgrade: 15% less hits for Zerglings in every setup
+1 Range Upgrade: Hydras kill Zealots in 2 and Colossi in 1 less hit, Roaches need less hits for every Unit.
+1 Carapace Upgrade: Roaches and Hydras take more hits to kill, especially Roaches surviving another Immortal shot (4 instead of 3)
+1 Flyer Damage: Mutalisks need 2 less shots on Stalkers, 1 less on Sentries, and Corrupters 2 less shots on Colossi
+1 Flyer Carapace: Mutalisks sustain 2 more shots from Stalkers and 4 from Sentries, Corrupters 2 more shots from Stalkers
PvZ
+1 Ground Attack Upgrade: vs Zerglings: Hits for Zealot against Zergling drop from 3 to 2 (sidenote +2vs+1 and +3 on Colossis make Zerglings oneshots) vs Roach: 1 less hit for Zealots, 4 less for Sentries, 1 less for Stalkers vs Hydra: Hydras die in 1 less hit against Gateway units (Thanks to TheHumanSensation) vs Muta 1 less hit for Stalkers, 2 for Sentries
+1 Ground Armor Upgrade: vs Zerlings: Zealots take 9 more hits, Stalkers 7, Immortals even 17 (Thanks to Kharnete) vs Roach: Zealots take one more hit vs Hydra: Zealots take one more hit vs Muta: 2 more shots for Stalkers, 1 more for Sentries
+1 Shields Armor Upgrade: vs Zerglings: Stalkers take 4 more hits on their Shields vs Roaches: Roaches need 6 instead of 5 hits to clear Shields from Stalkers vs Mutalisks: Stalkers take 1 more hit from Mutalisks on their Shields
TvP
+1 Bio Armor: Marines and Marauders take more hits from Gateway Units
+1 Bio Attack: Marines kill Zealots in 4 and Stalkers in 9 less shots, Marauders kill Zealots in 1, Stalker in 1 and Colossi in 2 less shots
+1 Mech Attack: Tanks take 1 less shot on Zealots, Stalkers and Collosi, Hellions kill Zealots in 6 shots instead of 7, and Stalkers in 20 instead of 22 Shots. Thors kill Voidrays in 9 instead of 11 Shots (Sidenote: +3 Hellions makes kill Zealots in 6 shots, +3 Thors always kill Phoenixes in 3 Shots instead of 4, +3 Thors kill Colossi in 5 shots instead of 6, all regardless of upgrades, Thanks to Aoi_10)
+1 Mech Armor: Thors take more shots from every unit then Immortals. Hellions take 1 more hit from Zealots.
+1 Air Weapons: Vikings kill Colossis in 13 instead of 14 shots. (Thanks to Flight Bird)
PvT
+1 Attack: Marauders die in 1 less shot against Zealots, Stalkers and Collosi (sidenote: Marines dont get affected)
+1 Armor: : Zealots take 1 more hit from Marauders, Marine take 5, 4 and 10 more hits against Zealot, Stalker and Collossi
+1 Air Weapons: Marines die in 1 less hit to VoidRays, Tanks take 4 less shots from Phoenixes
+1 Air Armor: Marines need 5 more shots to kill a VoidRay, Thors need 12 shots instead of 11 to kill a Voidray.
ZvT:
+1 Armor: vs Bio: Marines take 1 more hit on Ling, Bling, 8 more on Roaches, Marauders take 1 more hit on Roaches. vs Mech: Zerglings survive sieged tank shot, Roaches survive 1 additional tank shot
+1 Melee: vs Bio: Zerglings need 1 less hit against Marines. vs Mech: Zerglings take need less hits on Tanks, Thors and Hellions (18 to 15)
+1 Range: vs Bio: Roach hits on stimmed marines without shields fall from 3 to 2 (thanks to MorroW) vs Mech: Roaches kill Tanks in 10 shots instead of 11, and Thors in 22 instead of 25
+1 Air Damage: vs Bio: does not affect Muta vs Marines or Muta vs SCVs vs Mech: Amount of shots for a Thor drop from 50 to 45
+1 Air Carapace: vs Bio: Mutas take 25 instead of 21 hits from Marines vs Mech: no effects on Thor hits (Sidenote: +2 Carapace against +0 Damage lets Mutas survive one more volley)
TvZ:
+1 Bio Armor: Zerglings need 2 more hits on Marines and 10 more on Marauders
+1 Bio Attack: Marines kill Zerglings and Roaches in less hits, Marauder kill Roaches and Hydras in less hits, Marines need 3 less hits on Mutalisks (thanks to nalgene)
+1 Mech Armor: Thors take 5 more hits from Mutas, 2 more from Roaches, 34 from Lings. Tanks take one more shot from Roaches, 13 from Zerglings, 3 from Mutalisks. Hellion take 7 more hits from Lings
+1 Mech Attack: no effects on kill efficiency. On a Sidenote, with +2 Attack lets Mutalists die in 2 Shots instead of 3(thanks to Saechiis), and Thors with +3 Attack kills Roaches with only 0 or 1 Armor Upgrade in 2 Shots instead of 3 (Thanks to Black Gun)
PvP:
+1 Ground Weapons: Colossi kill every Unit in less shots, Immortals kill everything but Zealots in less shots.
+1 Ground Armor: Robo Units take more shots from gateway Units, Robo vs Robo remains untouched
+1 Shield Armor: Stalker shields hold 1 hit longer against Stalkers and Zealots.
+1 Air Weapons: Voids need 1 less shot on Stalkers
+1 Air Armor: Voids take 2 more shots from Stalkers
TvT:
+1 Bio Armor: vs Bio: Shots for Marines to kill Marines increases by 1, to kill Marauders increases by 7 vs Mech: no effects vs Harassment: Banshees need 3 hits instead of 2 to kill a SCV (Thanks to Fjord)
+1 Bio Attack: vs Bio: Hits for Marines to kill Marines decrease by 1, to kill Marauders decrease by 4, for Marauders to kill Marauders decrease by 1 vs Mech: Hits for Marauder to kill Tanks decrease by 1, Hits for Marines to kill Tanks decrease by 8
+1 Mech Armor: vs Bio: Marauder take 1 more hit to kill Thors, Marines take 8 more for Tanks, 20 more for Thors, 3 more for Hellions vs Mech: no effects
+1 Mech Attack: vs Bio: Thor kill Marauder in 1 less shot, Tanks need 2 shots instead of 3 for stimmed Marauder (thanks to statikg) vs Mech: Tanks kill Tanks in 3 shots instead of 4 (sidenote: on +2, armor upgrades get irrelevant)
+1 Air Armor: battlecruisers take 3 more shots from Vikings
+1 Air Attack: no effects in Viking battles.
ZvZ:
+1 Melee: For Zerglings 1 less hit on Zerglings, 8 less on Roaches
+1 Range: Zerglings die in 2 instead of 3 shots, Roaches take 1 less hit
+1 Carapace: Zerglings survive Banelings, Zerglings take 1 more hit from Zerglings, Roaches 1 more from Roaches and 13 more from Zerglings
+1 Flyer Damage: Mutas need 13 instead of 14 shots to kill Mutas
+1 Flyer Carapace: Mutas take 16 instead of 14 shots from Mutas
stated Hellions as Blue Flame Hellions in Presumptions
correcting hit count for Hellions vs Zealots
correcting hit count for Thors against air
added missing hit counters for Zerglings against Protoss Armor
I will try to keep this up to date once new patches are out, and will try to take in account suggestions.
Please also feel free to correct me if I am wrong in some occasions, but provide proper proof. Layout improvement suggestions are also welcome.
And don't you guys dare bringing balance discussions in here
If this appeals and someone can introduce me into it, i can Liquipedia it, but I didn't want to add in Liquipedia stuff that hasn't survived proof of concept yet.
Also, I forgot how to add in fancy Race Icons in, so if someone can PM me, I will add this aswell.
Also, please note, these are very sterile situations. Its gets really rough once Guardian Shield, Heal and all that Jazz happens. If someone wants to provide analysis here, feel free, and i will add it.
Very useful for people who aren't aware of important upgrades, thanks for compiling this.
Edit: Scratch that lol, just tested it and it doesn't seem to be true anymore with the current tank damage, must've been when tanks still did 60 damage to everything ^^
Thors will 2 shot mutalisks with +2 Atk though instead of 3.
This is amazing. Thank you for putting all this time into such a great data table! Very, very useful information here. It'll definitely help strengthen builds based around fast upgrades and upgraded timing pushes. Awesome!
On a personal note, an analysis I would love to see is the Banshee vs Stalker matchup and what critcal upgrade points are important there. Thanks!
Two things: I see that you mentioned shield/stimmed marines vs non stimmed/shielded marines, but I'm not finding any comparison of the two, you could almost assume that those numbers might be able to be a thread of their own.
Not to turn this into a debate about sentries but I think garudian shield needs a deeper look, I know you mention it but are you accounting for it at all or counting it as a factor in only certain matchups?
Additionally with guardian shield. I had crunched some numbers a while back with marine dps to find some interesting things. For instance: 15 marines stimmed shooting at a protoss army enveloped by guardian shield, as suspected would do 30% less of their dps. However, in order to compensate for that to break even, you need 8 more marines, nearly 50% of your entire army number, then of course issues with stim, and total health pool vs incoming damage become another factor.
Though sentries are expensive compared to other units and you'd think that an investment in +1 armor would be more cost efficient than just building sentries all game; the value of sentries as a unit are two fold all game as they do damage (low as it may be compared to the rest of the protoss army) and provide force field (which in some cases reduces damage coming from units to 0.
Even though you explain it, you still should take into account the fact that Zerg units heal 1 hp immediately after taking damage, without delay, and that regen will always make a difference in all cases except a group of marines(or something else without a projectile) firing simultaneously.
That being said, I'm pretty sure I've seen a chart or something similiar a while ago, but I'm sure this is useful for the people who haven't.
Please add in that +1 attack for P makes Immortals always 3-shot Roaches
On January 26 2011 03:43 debasers wrote: How come you mark +1 armor in PvT as blue?
Ever tried to kill Zealot/Sentry type of composition with 0-0 marines and marauders when they have +1 armor?
really great job, ive seen upgrade charts like this before but never so easy on the eye
heres a critical upgrade u didnt list (cause u didnt write down for stimmed marines) +1 attack on roaches kill stimmed marines without shields in 2 hits instead of 3)
I feel like for a post on critical upgrades, you have missed alot of key facts differentiating what makes upgrades so critical. That said, I appreciate that you have done a ton of excellent work but I think there is still plenty to add. For example you don't really differentiate between +1atk and def in TvZ but +1atk is much more important then +1def. As well in TvT you didn't mention that +1 air weapons makes 1 less hit for vikings to kill vikings which is hugeee. Also for tanks vs zerg, you HAVE to get +1 atk because otherwise once lings get +1armor (which I imagine most zergs get quickly) then tanks stop 1shotting them.
On January 26 2011 03:53 statikg wrote: Also for tanks vs zerg, you HAVE to get +1 atk because otherwise once lings get +1armor (which I imagine most zergs get quickly) then tanks stop 1shotting them.
using that logic he should note armor upgrade against each critical upgrade to nullify it... +1 armor to lings is critical only when zealots are +1 etc
Most of them don't get +2 on Mutalisk armor, so they'll be taking damage of 6+1 -1 or 6+2 - 1 or 6+3 - 1 ( 120 / 6 ~ 20hits ) or like ( 120 / 7 ~ 18 hits ) or ( 120 / 8 ~ 15 )
They'll need to constantly match it to keep it ~20 hits
In a TvT, there was a guy who made a lot of tanks, but in that game, he only had +1/0 or +1/1 on his marines with no medivacs vs +3/3 with medivacs, but his units could only do 6+1 - 3 ( 4 damage a hit ) compared to the 6+3 - 0 or 6+3 - 1
His marines needed 13.75 ( 14 ) hits to kill a marine ( not including the healing factor ), while the other guy's marine only needed ( 7 hits )
It was on Xel'Naga and the upgrades definitely made a huge difference in each battle. He was losing his units at 3:1 ratio or 2:1 in that game.
32 Damage Vikings vs 0 Armor Vikings and 34 Damage Vikings vs 0 Armor Vikings both kill them in 4 hits, 28 Damage Vikings and 30 Damage Vikings both need 5 hits to kill 0 Armor Vikings
If you get +1 Armor, they need Level 3 Air Damage to keep it at 4 hits, and if you get +2 Armor, they'd always have 5 hits to kill
+2 weapons makes colossi 1-shot lings until they have +3 carapace.
+1 melee is always critical for ling use as surface area is limited. +x melee upgrades can never be made up with more lings, unlike ranged attack ups being replaced with just more of said ranged unit.
for ZvZ, lings need 7 less hits, not 8. The roach will instantly regen 1 HP after the first hit, this affects the +1 lings, but not the 0 lings and guarantees it will be in that 7 hit threshold.
+2 and +3 ranged are also highly useful in ZvZ, every upgrade always reduces hits by 1. I believe +2 carapace doesn't do anything for the most part though, so the best bang for your buck is something like +3/+1 when talking roach vs roach.
On January 26 2011 03:34 Synystyr wrote: This is amazing. Thank you for putting all this time into such a great data table! Very, very useful information here. It'll definitely help strengthen builds based around fast upgrades and upgraded timing pushes. Awesome!
On a personal note, an analysis I would love to see is the Banshee vs Stalker matchup and what critcal upgrade points are important there. Thanks!
Banshee versus Stalker analysis
for Terran: +1 on Banshee makes Stalker killed in 7 instead of 8 shots, Armor on banshee lets it take 2 more shots for Protoss: on +1 Damage Stalker lets the stalker kill the Banshee in 13 instead of 14 shots, Armor on Stalker doesnt change the amount of hits though.
On January 26 2011 03:34 Synystyr wrote: This is amazing. Thank you for putting all this time into such a great data table! Very, very useful information here. It'll definitely help strengthen builds based around fast upgrades and upgraded timing pushes. Awesome!
On a personal note, an analysis I would love to see is the Banshee vs Stalker matchup and what critcal upgrade points are important there. Thanks!
Banshee versus Stalker analysis
for Terran: +1 on Banshee makes Stalker killed in 7 instead of 8 shots, Armor on banshee lets it take 2 more shots for Protoss: on +1 Damage Stalker lets the stalker kill the Banshee in 13 instead of 14 shots, Armor on Stalker doesnt change the amount of hits though.
Thank you VERY much
On another note,
+2 Air Armor for Zerg let's Mutas take one more hit from Thors
On January 26 2011 03:44 Shikyo wrote: Even though you explain it, you still should take into account the fact that Zerg units heal 1 hp immediately after taking damage, without delay, and that regen will always make a difference in all cases except a group of marines(or something else without a projectile) firing simultaneously.
That being said, I'm pretty sure I've seen a chart or something similiar a while ago, but I'm sure this is useful for the people who haven't.
I was torn long about it but decided not to. Zerg units dont heal instantly, for example, banelings oneshot zerglings with damage 35 to 35 sharp. And i did some testing with hitting zerglings with zerglings, it takes a delay of a few seconds (unless i was drunk that day).
Additionally, I used the search function repeatidly to look out for such information and couldnt find it, so I might have missed it.
On January 26 2011 03:44 Sv1 wrote: Two things: I see that you mentioned shield/stimmed marines vs non stimmed/shielded marines, but I'm not finding any comparison of the two, you could almost assume that those numbers might be able to be a thread of their own.
Not to turn this into a debate about sentries but I think garudian shield needs a deeper look, I know you mention it but are you accounting for it at all or counting it as a factor in only certain matchups?
Feel free to open one on various marine battles :-) I tried to boil it down to rather realistic scenarios, but if I would cover every possible engagement, I can start writing a book rather than an essay.
Same goes for sentries, I didnt count them at all, as critical upgrades mechanic mostly applies on very strict compositions and very early game stages. If you can provide me with additional information, I will certainly add it.
On January 26 2011 03:53 statikg wrote: I feel like for a post on critical upgrades, you have missed alot of key facts differentiating what makes upgrades so critical. That said, I appreciate that you have done a ton of excellent work but I think there is still plenty to add. For example you don't really differentiate between +1atk and def in TvZ but +1atk is much more important then +1def. As well in TvT you didn't mention that +1 air weapons makes 1 less hit for vikings to kill vikings which is hugeee. Also for tanks vs zerg, you HAVE to get +1 atk because otherwise once lings get +1armor (which I imagine most zergs get quickly) then tanks stop 1shotting them.
It's your decision whether you value attack or defense more, for most people it might be attack, but I don't want to coach people what they should research but provide information on what upgrades do.
As I wrote in TvT analysis, Viking hits dont change on upgrades. Unless I did some math wrong there, i'll review into that. Update: Nope, double checked, +2 would change though. I will look up Unit Data again, maybe a typo.
In TvZ I've added +1 attack, but for a different reason. If you recall definition of critical upgrade correctly, it doesnt change amount of hits. That getting +1 attack leads to a correlated Nash equilibria in this case is something completely different.
On January 26 2011 04:03 Jermstuddog wrote: +2 weapons makes colossi 1-shot lings until they have +3 carapace.
+1 melee is always critical for ling use as surface area is limited. +x melee upgrades can never be made up with more lings, unlike ranged attack ups being replaced with just more of said ranged unit.
for ZvZ, lings need 7 less hits, not 8. The roach will instantly regen 1 HP after the first hit, this affects the +1 lings, but not the 0 lings and guarantees it will be in that 7 hit threshold.
+2 and +3 ranged are also highly useful in ZvZ, every upgrade always reduces hits by 1. I believe +2 carapace doesn't do anything for the most part though, so the best bang for your buck is something like +3/+1 when talking roach vs roach.
a) is already mentioned
b) does overextend the purpose of the thread
c) I must admit, I need to investigate that Investigated: the regeneration on Zerglings comes very late, seems like a locked 2 second duration. Try it out on 1 Zergling vs 1 Zerglings, the Zerglings regenerates once he is on 5 HP. Roaches due to their massive Hitpoints and Armor do very well benefit from the later regeneration, I will recompute that matchup and update it regarding Roaches. Thanks for the hint.
d) I intentionally let down higher upgrades unless they have huge impact, it aswell overextend the intention, upgrades are never bad obviously
Might want to add that +2 melee makes banelings onehit probes regardless of armour upgrades. They also 1 hit drones. Very handy for mineral line bombs :D .
On January 26 2011 05:53 CooDu wrote: Looks really good, thanks for this. I guess most of it goes without saying and experience, but good resource for newer players nonetheless.
Well, some are quite subtle or contradictory to what it might feel, and without lack of ressource its hard to keep all up in mind.
On January 26 2011 03:44 Shikyo wrote: Even though you explain it, you still should take into account the fact that Zerg units heal 1 hp immediately after taking damage, without delay, and that regen will always make a difference in all cases except a group of marines(or something else without a projectile) firing simultaneously.
That being said, I'm pretty sure I've seen a chart or something similiar a while ago, but I'm sure this is useful for the people who haven't.
I was torn long about it but decided not to. Zerg units dont heal instantly, for example, banelings oneshot zerglings with damage 35 to 35 sharp. And i did some testing with hitting zerglings with zerglings, it takes a delay of a few seconds (unless i was drunk that day).
Additionally, I used the search function repeatidly to look out for such information and couldnt find it, so I might have missed it.
Zerg regen is 1hp/3seconds, but the first HP is frontloaded. As long as the unit is at full HP and isn't getting one-shotted, it will recover one HP instantly.
This becomes important for these calculations based on a golden rule of upgrades I use. All units have a total HP value that is divisible by 5, and most have an HP value that is divisible by 10. Following this, any upgrades that either increase your damage to a factor of 5 or 10, or increase it to above a factor of 5 or 10, will reduce the number of hits it takes to kill something.
Example, going from 8 to 9 attack will rarely be useful (unless it's say, lings vs thors). Going from 9 to 10 will be extremely useful, as will be going from 10 to 11.
Armour doesn't really throw this off, because it's easy enough to keep track of your relative attack. Protoss having unequal armour/shield can make this hard, but zerg regen (despite being very important) is pretty easy to keep track of.
Much in the same way that going from 10 to 11 attack is a big deal, going from 80hp to 81hp is also a big deal (hydras, for example) and will result in surviving one additional hit. For this reason, I think you should treat all zerg units as having 1 more hp than they actually have, as long as they aren't getting one-shotted.
On January 26 2011 03:34 Synystyr wrote: This is amazing. Thank you for putting all this time into such a great data table! Very, very useful information here. It'll definitely help strengthen builds based around fast upgrades and upgraded timing pushes. Awesome!
On a personal note, an analysis I would love to see is the Banshee vs Stalker matchup and what critcal upgrade points are important there. Thanks!
Banshee versus Stalker analysis
for Terran: +1 on Banshee makes Stalker killed in 7 instead of 8 shots, Armor on banshee lets it take 2 more shots for Protoss: on +1 Damage Stalker lets the stalker kill the Banshee in 13 instead of 14 shots, Armor on Stalker doesnt change the amount of hits though.
Well since banshees shoot 2 shots per volley they wouldnt kill stalkers any faster with 7 attacks than they would with 8, so its wise to get +1 armor first if you are using a banshee-based army against a protoss trying to defend with stalkers.
On January 26 2011 04:32 kazansky wrote: d) I intentionally let down higher upgrades unless they have huge impact, it aswell overextend the intention, upgrades are never bad obviously
+2 armor is actually a big waste of money in ZvZ though, that's what I was pointing out.
3/1 Roaches will be 1 hit up on 2/2 roaches and will have actually spent 25/25 less on those upgrades!
But this is splitting hairs and getting into a MU specific situation. I would say it's something more for people to look into themselves later on when they're at the point in their game where things like this matter.
Your post is concise and well written, I wouldn't want to muck it up with details.
On January 26 2011 03:44 Shikyo wrote: Even though you explain it, you still should take into account the fact that Zerg units heal 1 hp immediately after taking damage, without delay, and that regen will always make a difference in all cases except a group of marines(or something else without a projectile) firing simultaneously.
That being said, I'm pretty sure I've seen a chart or something similiar a while ago, but I'm sure this is useful for the people who haven't.
Please add in that +1 attack for P makes Immortals always 3-shot Roaches
On January 26 2011 03:43 debasers wrote: How come you mark +1 armor in PvT as blue?
Ever tried to kill Zealot/Sentry type of composition with 0-0 marines and marauders when they have +1 armor?
I can confirm this is correct. It's an important mechanic in the muta v thor upgrade war. When thors are at +2 attack, and mutas are at +1 armor, the mutalisk reduces 1 damage for each missile. There are 4 missiles, so a total of 4 is subtracted from each volley. At +2 attack thors do 16 damage per missile, making 64 damage per volley. With -4 on each volley, one does 60 damage and two volleys do exactly 120 damage. On paper that should be enough to kill it (mutas have 120 hp). But in reality, the muta always survives with 1 hp due to instant regen.
Try it. +1 armor muta vs +2 attack thor. You can even have the thors attack at the same time, the hit point appears after the first missile hits.
On January 26 2011 04:18 Champ24 wrote: Wow, I didn't know +1 armor pvt made that big of a difference.
Thanks for doing this.
I figured this out after watching a game from hongun where he went for double forge fast upgrade style...it's insane how great armor-upgrades vs marines are. Now add guardian shield and marines literally do next to no damage.
On January 26 2011 03:44 Shikyo wrote: Even though you explain it, you still should take into account the fact that Zerg units heal 1 hp immediately after taking damage, without delay, and that regen will always make a difference in all cases except a group of marines(or something else without a projectile) firing simultaneously.
That being said, I'm pretty sure I've seen a chart or something similiar a while ago, but I'm sure this is useful for the people who haven't.
I was torn long about it but decided not to. Zerg units dont heal instantly, for example, banelings oneshot zerglings with damage 35 to 35 sharp. And i did some testing with hitting zerglings with zerglings, it takes a delay of a few seconds (unless i was drunk that day).
Additionally, I used the search function repeatidly to look out for such information and couldnt find it, so I might have missed it.
Zerg regen is 1hp/3seconds, but the first HP is frontloaded. As long as the unit is at full HP and isn't getting one-shotted, it will recover one HP instantly.
This becomes important for these calculations based on a golden rule of upgrades I use. All units have a total HP value that is divisible by 5, and most have an HP value that is divisible by 10. Following this, any upgrades that either increase your damage to a factor of 5 or 10, or increase it to above a factor of 5 or 10, will reduce the number of hits it takes to kill something.
Example, going from 8 to 9 attack will rarely be useful (unless it's say, lings vs thors). Going from 9 to 10 will be extremely useful, as will be going from 10 to 11.
Armour doesn't really throw this off, because it's easy enough to keep track of your relative attack. Protoss having unequal armour/shield can make this hard, but zerg regen (despite being very important) is pretty easy to keep track of.
Much in the same way that going from 10 to 11 attack is a big deal, going from 80hp to 81hp is also a big deal (hydras, for example) and will result in surviving one additional hit. For this reason, I think you should treat all zerg units as having 1 more hp than they actually have, as long as they aren't getting one-shotted.
The instant regeneration is simply not true as far as my tests went, I double checked it and still are not convinced of this, but i will look into further. As far as i figured, their is no frontload regeneration. The Hitpoint regenerates exactly after the mentioned 3 seconds delay. If one uses additional Hitpoint on Units or not, depends on the unit hitting and the amount of hits. I may review some of those statements though. I guess i will apply the additional Hitpoint on all units but Zerglings and Banelings as they endure those 3 seconds to gain the hitpoint.
But your "relative attack math" may be a nice rule of thumb but thats it, because of wide range of armor distribution. Aswell as 2xX attacks suffer more from armor and you cannot count them individually, plus, once Protoss is involved, the whole math gets screwed because of different Armor on Shields and Hitpoints. You dont get certain and reliable data by it. Feel free to rewrite the whole chapter and post it in here, i will check and update it if given. But let me say you, it isn't that easy as you put it.
On January 26 2011 03:34 Synystyr wrote: This is amazing. Thank you for putting all this time into such a great data table! Very, very useful information here. It'll definitely help strengthen builds based around fast upgrades and upgraded timing pushes. Awesome!
On a personal note, an analysis I would love to see is the Banshee vs Stalker matchup and what critcal upgrade points are important there. Thanks!
Banshee versus Stalker analysis
for Terran: +1 on Banshee makes Stalker killed in 7 instead of 8 shots, Armor on banshee lets it take 2 more shots for Protoss: on +1 Damage Stalker lets the stalker kill the Banshee in 13 instead of 14 shots, Armor on Stalker doesnt change the amount of hits though.
Well since banshees shoot 2 shots per volley they wouldnt kill stalkers any faster with 7 attacks than they would with 8, so its wise to get +1 armor first if you are using a banshee-based army against a protoss trying to defend with stalkers.
I am aware of that, I counted double shots as one shot. It actually applies this way.
Due to public request, I reviewed the Zerg Math with 1 additional hitpoint regenerated for units other than Zerglings and Banelings. Made Protoss Damage Upgrade even more viable in PvZ, but apart from some hit numbers changed, no big effects as the differences remained. (thankfully, that would made hell of a work worthless ) Unless I missed something. Thanks for pointing it out.
On January 26 2011 11:48 eth3n wrote: After that post last night someone should definitely add ZvP regarding zerg air armor versus P air
I am not sure if I should cover Z air vs P air, as it doesn't happen often and in the long run, either Zerg has to dismiss air anyways, or Muta count gets so superior that Protoss can't pull ahead. Correct me if I'm wrong, because I am not sure if the investment of upgrades is justified in this matchup.
On January 26 2011 11:59 Griffith` wrote: +1 air armor makes vikings very cost-effective against mutas.
Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but I have the feeling, once Mutalisks would take direct engagements versus Vikings with losses, where this comes into play, the game is so far developed that there is so much shit firing in the sky that math gets rough. But I of course can cover it if further investigation makes sense.
Any armour is great vs mutas, because the bounce turns from 9/3/1 into 8/2/0. Even +1 ground armour by itself is great for helping against muta worker harass.
On January 26 2011 15:55 TheHumanSensation wrote: Any armour is great vs mutas, because the bounce turns from 9/3/1 into 8/2/0. Even +1 ground armour by itself is great for helping against muta worker harass.
Are you sure it does 0? I believe that there isn't any 0, but rather half, but I'm not sure.... don't quote me on this.
Also, your TvZ section, for mech attack +1, is pretty crucial after the zerg gets +1 ground carapace. with +1 ground carapace, it takes 2 shots for a tank (sieged obviously) to kill a zergling (baneling?), but with +1 ground weapons, a zergling can't survive a tank shot.
minimum damage is not 1, however it is some fraction. Watch zerglings try to kill a larva (that has like 20 armor), it still kills it, but it does a lot less then 1 damage per attack.
On January 26 2011 15:55 TheHumanSensation wrote: Any armour is great vs mutas, because the bounce turns from 9/3/1 into 8/2/0. Even +1 ground armour by itself is great for helping against muta worker harass.
Are you sure it does 0? I believe that there isn't any 0, but rather half, but I'm not sure.... don't quote me on this.
Also, your TvZ section, for mech attack +1, is pretty crucial after the zerg gets +1 ground carapace. with +1 ground carapace, it takes 2 shots for a tank (sieged obviously) to kill a zergling (baneling?), but with +1 ground weapons, a zergling can't survive a tank shot.
As mentioned above, this is true, but not exactly a critical upgrade but a response to a critical upgrade (correlated Nash equlibria), thus why not mentioned. A damage upgrade always counters a critical armor upgrade (as adding at least +1 damage compared to adding exactly +1 armor) Banelings are always oneshots, regardless of armor.
The +1 carapace for lings against siege tanks nonsense needs to stop period.
In no way you'll be in a position where your 1 ling will fight a 1 sieged tank. You'll have 2/3 siege tanks and a lot of lings. In that situation: - the splash damage doesn't do 100% dmg per shot. That means that the +1 carapace saves exactly 1 ling in the group (the one targeted by the siege tank). The other lings receive mostly the same damage - Once there is 2 tanks sieged, it won't matter how many carapace upgrade you have or how many +1 attack they have they'll destroy the pack of lings anyway
Seriously in what real game situation is that a critical upgrade?
On January 26 2011 21:31 Bellygareth wrote: The +1 carapace for lings against siege tanks nonsense needs to stop period.
In no way you'll be in a position where your 1 ling will fight a 1 sieged tank. You'll have 2/3 siege tanks and a lot of lings. In that situation: - the splash damage doesn't do 100% dmg per shot. That means that the +1 carapace saves exactly 1 ling in the group (the one targeted by the siege tank). The other lings receive mostly the same damage - Once there is 2 tanks sieged, it won't matter how many carapace upgrade you have or how many +1 attack they have they'll destroy the pack of lings anyway
Seriously in what real game situation is that a critical upgrade?
Maybe in the situation "One siege Tank on cliff shoots at your lings"?
On January 26 2011 21:31 Bellygareth wrote: The +1 carapace for lings against siege tanks nonsense needs to stop period.
In no way you'll be in a position where your 1 ling will fight a 1 sieged tank. You'll have 2/3 siege tanks and a lot of lings. In that situation: - the splash damage doesn't do 100% dmg per shot. That means that the +1 carapace saves exactly 1 ling in the group (the one targeted by the siege tank). The other lings receive mostly the same damage - Once there is 2 tanks sieged, it won't matter how many carapace upgrade you have or how many +1 attack they have they'll destroy the pack of lings anyway
Seriously in what real game situation is that a critical upgrade?
Maybe in the situation "One siege Tank on cliff shoots at your lings"?
Well it kills one ling in one shot the rest survives because the splash damage doesn't do 100% of the initial damage...
On January 26 2011 21:31 Bellygareth wrote: The +1 carapace for lings against siege tanks nonsense needs to stop period.
In no way you'll be in a position where your 1 ling will fight a 1 sieged tank. You'll have 2/3 siege tanks and a lot of lings. In that situation: - the splash damage doesn't do 100% dmg per shot. That means that the +1 carapace saves exactly 1 ling in the group (the one targeted by the siege tank). The other lings receive mostly the same damage - Once there is 2 tanks sieged, it won't matter how many carapace upgrade you have or how many +1 attack they have they'll destroy the pack of lings anyway
Seriously in what real game situation is that a critical upgrade?
Maybe in the situation "One siege Tank on cliff shoots at your lings"?
Well it kills one ling in one shot the rest survives because the splash damage doesn't do 100% of the initial damage...
Well, uhm, wow. I am overwhelmed. Congratulations on not reading the OP i guess?
Definition
A critical upgrade is an damage or armor upgrade in the game, that changes the amount of hits the units takes to get killed by another unit.
On January 26 2011 21:31 Bellygareth wrote: The +1 carapace for lings against siege tanks nonsense needs to stop period.
In no way you'll be in a position where your 1 ling will fight a 1 sieged tank. You'll have 2/3 siege tanks and a lot of lings. In that situation: - the splash damage doesn't do 100% dmg per shot. That means that the +1 carapace saves exactly 1 ling in the group (the one targeted by the siege tank). The other lings receive mostly the same damage - Once there is 2 tanks sieged, it won't matter how many carapace upgrade you have or how many +1 attack they have they'll destroy the pack of lings anyway
Seriously in what real game situation is that a critical upgrade?
Maybe in the situation "One siege Tank on cliff shoots at your lings"?
Well it kills one ling in one shot the rest survives because the splash damage doesn't do 100% of the initial damage...
Well, uhm, wow. I am overwhelmed. Congratulations on not reading the OP i guess?
On January 26 2011 21:31 Bellygareth wrote: The +1 carapace for lings against siege tanks nonsense needs to stop period.
In no way you'll be in a position where your 1 ling will fight a 1 sieged tank. You'll have 2/3 siege tanks and a lot of lings. In that situation: - the splash damage doesn't do 100% dmg per shot. That means that the +1 carapace saves exactly 1 ling in the group (the one targeted by the siege tank). The other lings receive mostly the same damage - Once there is 2 tanks sieged, it won't matter how many carapace upgrade you have or how many +1 attack they have they'll destroy the pack of lings anyway
Seriously in what real game situation is that a critical upgrade?
Maybe in the situation "One siege Tank on cliff shoots at your lings"?
Well it kills one ling in one shot the rest survives because the splash damage doesn't do 100% of the initial damage...
Well, uhm, wow. I am overwhelmed. Congratulations on not reading the OP i guess?
Definition
A critical upgrade is an damage or armor upgrade in the game, that changes the amount of hits the units takes to get killed by another unit.
So the post is only theorycrafting and shouldn't be used as a reference for ingame decisions ?
Exactly. You shouldn't get the urge in the middle of a game based on the information of this thread: "Wow, i just feel my tanks now need that one hit less".
It is a information source that can be recalled, when designing a build and making decisions, on how reordering of upgrades can effect certain situations. Not a guideline "you, Sir, need these upgrades!".
As stated, these are mostly sterile situations that can have more or less influence in very certain situations. Not more, not less.
qouted from liquipedia: The sieged Siege Tank has three radii of damage levels, each of which correspond to a differing damage level. Units within .4687 of the target are dealt full damage, units from a distance of .4687 to .7812 are dealt 50% of the full damage, and units from a distance of .7812 to 1.25 are dealt 25% of the full damage.
ie, the splash does deal 100% to a small radius so a siege tank can kill multiple lings with 1 shot. Ie. it is reasonable effective to get ling carapace. Carapace is also better then attack against marines imo because as banelings & lings are melee units they tend to receive more damage then deal it. Armor is better then attack on melee units because it helps them receive less damage while they are closing in. All those lings and banelings that die before getting damage in did benefit from their armor upgrade, they don't benefit at all from an attack upgrade.
@ kazansky, nice work on this but I would have really liked to see the actual data in a more easily readable table or format. You're using way too many words which makes it too hard to look at the actual data. Also it would be much better to put differences in percentages as well, this makes it much easier for people to judge what critical upgrades are or not. In general i'd say that attack/armor upgrades that increase survivability/effective DPS by more then 15% are really good and by more then 25% are critical. Also sometimes you are ignoring stuff by simply calling everything upgrade disadvantage or upgrade advantage. For example 1 protoss armor doesn't cancel out 1 zergling attack at all. A 1/0 roach takes 10 shots to kill a 0/0 stalker, but a 2/0 roach takes 9 shots to kill a 0/1 stalker, so your statement that upgrade advantage lets it go from 11 to 9 is incomplete. The whole use of upgrade advantage / disadvantage is just quite incomplete for protoss as it would only work when P would actually get the shield upgrade which they rarely do.
On January 26 2011 22:13 Markwerf wrote: @ kazansky, nice work on this but I would have really liked to see the actual data in a more easily readable table or format. You're using way too many words which makes it too hard to look at the actual data. Also it would be much better to put differences in percentages as well, this makes it much easier for people to judge what critical upgrades are or not. In general i'd say that attack/armor upgrades that increase survivability/effective DPS by more then 15% are really good and by more then 25% are critical.
I admit that tables would have been nice and I might add this in a version 2.0, the process of this was more "lining out what upgrades do what" and then motivating it in words for further interest then naked numbers, as they can be accessed otherwhere.
A second reason is that i didnt find out a proper method yet to post data tables visually pleasing on TL.
So I choose to word the analysis a bit and just line out the facts, but once I've got a bit spare time, i might add data tables aswell.
Also sometimes you are ignoring stuff by simply calling everything upgrade disadvantage or upgrade advantage. For example 1 protoss armor doesn't cancel out 1 zergling attack at all. A 1/0 roach takes 10 shots to kill a 0/0 stalker, but a 2/0 roach takes 9 shots to kill a 0/1 stalker, so your statement that upgrade advantage lets it go from 11 to 9 is incomplete. The whole use of upgrade advantage / disadvantage is just quite incomplete for protoss as it would only work when P would actually get the shield upgrade which they rarely do.
I only conceided +1 so far unless outlined otherwise, so it stays consistent. If unit A attacks unit B, upgrade advantage means +1 vs +0, equal means +0 vs +0 and disadvantage means +0 vs +1. Further investigation might come up with additional reasonable higher critical upgrades, but its harder to cover because of what to actually compare to, but everyone starts on +0, so here the thesis always holds.
I believe I worded that out, but I might be mistaken, I will reread into.
Why exactly does 1 protoss armor not cancel out zergling attacks?
And I ignored shield upgrades completely for the very reason you mentioned.
On January 26 2011 22:13 Markwerf wrote: Carapace is also better then attack against marines imo because as banelings & lings are melee units they tend to receive more damage then deal it. Armor is better then attack on melee units because it helps them receive less damage while they are closing in. All those lings and banelings that die before getting damage in did benefit from their armor upgrade, they don't benefit at all from an attack upgrade.
This is right and wrong at the same time.
So let's break it down to blings and lings.
blings hands down benefit from carapace more than they do melee attack. +4 damage on a 1-shot deal doesn't affect much in the game, especially when talking ZvT. About the only situation +1 blings are going to benefit from is attacking stimmed marines with +1 armor and no combat shield. Any other situation, the upgrade is going to be less-than-awesome, so go with +1 carapace np.
But for the lings... You're forgetting limited surface area. If I am attacking into 10 marines with 20 zerglings, my biggest concern isn't making it to them, eventually my lings will make it there, they're fast enough. The much bigger problem is surface area to attack on. I can only fit maybe 10-12 lings on that front-side of the marine ball. No amount of carapace upgrades or extra lings is going to give me higher DPS vs the marines. Melee upgrades on the other hand, will make those 10-12 lings 20% more effective. I have effectively added 2 more attacking lings to the fight. It's hard to see the difference because marines destroy things SOOO fast regardless of armor, hp, or whatever, but melee upgrades are better than carapace upgrades in the zergling vs marine situation. The major benefit of carapace is you're also upgrading EVERY OTHER ground unit at the same time.
On January 26 2011 22:33 nalgene wrote: Shouldn't the toss units have 0/0/0 ? Including shields for their units...?
Zerglings with 0/2 needs 5 hits from 0/0/0 stalkers
Stalkers with 1/0/0 only needs 4 hits on 0/2 Zerglings
Stalkers with 1/0/0 needs 5 hits on a 0/3 Zergling
Your TvZ chart doesn't list Mutalisks as enemy units for Bio Attack( Only zerglings/hydras/roaches )
I decided not to list too many higher upgrades yet before the game is figured out more, unless there is popular demand?
And for TvZ, wow, jeez, yeah, I somehow missed that, thanks. Will add it when I'm at home again.
An analysis of Viking vs Mutalisk would be awesome too I read in a post above that +1 armor makes Vikings very cost effective against Mutas, and I would love to incorporate that into my play against Zerg if it were true. I know it would be a lot of trouble to ask to have the splash damage get calculated in too.....but if it's possible I'd love to see that numbers. Thanks!
Protoss armor doesn't cancel out +1 attack because protoss units have shields and hitpoints. +1 zergling attack effects every hit for the zerg unit whereas +1 P armor only affects the hits on the hitpoints. The example I gave is one where this is most crucial: A roach with +1 attack takes 10 shots to kill a stalker with no armor upgrades. (your data is wrong on that, the roach first does 4 * 18 = 72 damage to the stalker, then needs (180 - 72) / (18-1) = 6,3 => 7 shots for the rest). A roach with +2 attack however does take 9 shots to kill a stalker with +1 armor. Ie. while the difference is only 1 upgrade in each case it differs 1 shot.
Protoss critical upgrades are most annoying to calculate and put in a readable form because armor upgrades don't cancel attack upgrades.
Thanks a lot for this post! its really interesting.
To improve it, I would suggest that
1. you indicate the upgrades one shall NOT do. (in red for instance). For instance I discovered that +1 carapace in z v p is quite useless in the beginning. I think it's worth mentioning, cause then we have a clearer idea of what to do with our upgrades (here everything seems more or less to be green or blue, which doesn't help that much to make our choice concerning upgrades)
2. maybe indicate good timings to develop upgrades: for instance +1 melee is interesting from the beginning for a zerg; whereas carapace maybe interesting only later (for instance, as you indicate, when immortals come, in the case of roaches).
Useful overview, although I've always been curious about incorporating Shield upgrades in Stalker heavy play (with the idea that your stalkers should never receive HP damage since they will always be relying on shield regeneration)
On January 26 2011 23:12 Markwerf wrote: Protoss armor doesn't cancel out +1 attack because protoss units have shields and hitpoints. +1 zergling attack effects every hit for the zerg unit whereas +1 P armor only affects the hits on the hitpoints. The example I gave is one where this is most crucial: A roach with +1 attack takes 10 shots to kill a stalker with no armor upgrades. (your data is wrong on that, the roach first does 4 * 18 = 72 damage to the stalker, then needs (180 - 72) / (18-1) = 6,3 => 7 shots for the rest). A roach with +2 attack however does take 9 shots to kill a stalker with +1 armor. Ie. while the difference is only 1 upgrade in each case it differs 1 shot.
Protoss critical upgrades are most annoying to calculate and put in a readable form because armor upgrades don't cancel attack upgrades.
First of all, Stalkers have 80 Hitpoints and 80 Shields, so its 5,2 read 6 shots, but as you missed one shot on shields, it doesnt matter Seems like a typo, i need to correct that. I agree, it's 10 hits for +1 Roaches. I calculated Shields and Armor seperately, of course, but it's good to line this fact out nevertheless.
But as I stated, what I mean with armor advantage wording is +0 vs +1 upgrades. Period. Otherwise mentioned. Because, as stated in the general analysis, damage improvement is always at least as high as armor improvement, so there are multiple cases where +2 vs +1 and even more +3 vs +2 has drastic effects.
The problem is, it isnt sure that what upgrades rather than +0 your enemy has, as it depends on build. So its harder to get applyable situations for higher upgrades, as long as the game is not figured out the way broodwar is. Of course the upgrade math still works, and I believe you can find critical advantage for every singly upgrade in the game, the higher the upgrade, the more likely.
But it gets away from viable theory crafting in my eyes. Unless some real mainstream upgrade strategy establishes.
Although I am open minded to a discussion whether and which higher upgrades should be mentioned.
As above poster has stated, each upgrade is "critical" at some given point whether it be visible or not. Perhaps we could look deeper into specific timings and likelihoods of certain enemy upgrades, and take advantage of timings when they lack theirs. Many people shy away from getting 2-2 upgrades at a quick pace, which could provide similar timing power to 1-1 against an opponent who has also gotten his 1-1 upgrade.
On January 26 2011 23:39 Plexa wrote: Useful overview, although I've always been curious about incorporating Shield upgrades in Stalker heavy play (with the idea that your stalkers should never receive HP damage since they will always be relying on shield regeneration)
I can dig into it. When we presume Stalkers dont get HP damage, I guess we can only take a look on if Shields can sustain an additional hit. So its basically 80 with 0 and 80 with 1 armor. Regarding the investment, you should save 2 stalkers to justify it. So its 160 damage to doge, boiled down to avoided hits, I guess.
PvP Stalkers can take 5 hits from Stalkers with 10 shields left normally and 6 with 2 shields left when upgraded. It takes 6 hits for Stalkers to take down Stalker shields on 0 Armor, 7 hits with 1 Armor. Against Zealots, it takes the Zealot 6 hits (with 4 overload damage) instead of 5 hits (sharp) to get rid of the shields. Robo units dont get affected. Conclusion: Guess it depends on gamestage.
PvZ It takes Zerglings 20 hits instead of 16 to take down Stalker Shields with Shield armor, Roaches 6 instead of 5 (with 10 overload damage). For Hydras, after 7 shots they deal 4 HP Armor as shields are gone, while 3 shield remain after 7 shots. Mutalisks do 1 damage on HP after 9 shots, while when you have +1 Shield Armor, you get 10 shots without taking damage. Conclusion: Taking in regard that you might transition into Archons later which profit hugely from +damage and +shield armor, this might really have deep impact.
PvT Doesnt make any difference on Tanks, against Marauder you have a buffer of 4 shields after 4 shots compared to no shields after 4 shots, so doesnt make that huge difference either. Against Marines, you get 3 additional hits on your shields (13*6 = 78 compared to 16*5 = 80) Conclusion: Guess it depends on if you play against MarineKing
On January 26 2011 22:33 nalgene wrote: Shouldn't the toss units have 0/0/0 ? Including shields for their units...?
Zerglings with 0/2 needs 5 hits from 0/0/0 stalkers
Stalkers with 1/0/0 only needs 4 hits on 0/2 Zerglings
Stalkers with 1/0/0 needs 5 hits on a 0/3 Zergling
Your TvZ chart doesn't list Mutalisks as enemy units for Bio Attack( Only zerglings/hydras/roaches )
I decided not to list too many higher upgrades yet before the game is figured out more, unless there is popular demand?
And for TvZ, wow, jeez, yeah, I somehow missed that, thanks. Will add it when I'm at home again.
An analysis of Viking vs Mutalisk would be awesome too I read in a post above that +1 armor makes Vikings very cost effective against Mutas, and I would love to incorporate that into my play against Zerg if it were true. I know it would be a lot of trouble to ask to have the splash damage get calculated in too.....but if it's possible I'd love to see that numbers. Thanks!
I will dodge bounce because if your enemy plays correct, he focus fires one Viking so the Bounce does only hit other Vikings, and I guess due to movement chaos it wont hit the same Viking over and over: 125 / 9 = 13,8 => 14 shots against unupgraded vikings, 125 / 8 = 15,6 => 16 shots against upgraded Vikings. Although you should have in mind that you need 7 shots for a Mutalisk to kill it with massive overload damage (7 * (2*10) = 140 - 121 = 19), so the +1 damage would be as important I guess.
One variable that may screw with these numbers a bit is zerg health regeneration. A roach may be taken out by focus fire from several units at once and get zero health regen, or it may take 10 seconds to die, in which case it heals a few hit points. This could give that roach one extra shot to die depending on what unit is attacking it. The same goes for all zerg units and how long they are taking damage.
+1 Air Damage: vs Bio: does not affect Muta vs Marines or Muta vs SCVs
disagree here. When you are raiding units, picking off running marines. The ricochets doing more damage matters a lot. but I guess you are just referring to upgrades making things die in less hits from the multiples math standpoint.
Wouldn't it be better to take the analysis based on the number of seconds each unit survives, or how much longer it takes to kill a specific unit in a unit vs. unit matchup? That way, everything is more standardized (just like how we express unit damage output in terms of DPS).
Wow, this is just great. I was thinking about doing it, but it just seemed to take too much effort from a busy schedule that is already stretched thin.
On January 27 2011 01:56 infinity21 wrote: Any chance you can look at Hellions & Thor in tvp?
Sure. I guess you refer to Mech builds in TvP, so I presume that Hellions are supposed to shoot Zealots and Stalkers (per splash) and be damage sponge, and Thors are supposed to take out Stalkers, Zealots, Colossi, Void Ray and Phoenix, and I disregard EMP for this (which would have crazy impact). Immortal damage can be looked at aswell, but if you want to kill Immortals effectively, I guess 250mm cannons beats everything else. I will also take a look at +3 vs +3/+3, as it makes sense to see how metal performs endgame.
Basically: +attack on Blue Flames is awesome, on Thors nice against Air. +3 on Mech is sick. Plating on Thors and Hellions is nice. Math inside. + Show Spoiler +
Blue Flame Hellions
Standard Hits on Zealots are 7. This turns down to 6 if you have +1 vs +0 Armor. +0 vs +1 its 7 aswell. In +1vs+1 its again 7, but once you have +3 Attack, its again 6 even with Zealots on +3 Armor and +3 Shields.
Standard Hits on Stalkers are 22. With +1 vs +0 it drops to 20 hits, with +0 vs +1armor its 24 hits. One +1vs+1 its 21 hits (so 1 better than in standard), if you have +3 Attack and the Stalkers have only full armor or shield, its 18 hits for Stalkers. But it goes up to Standard 22 once Protoss has full upgrades.
Thor
vs Zealots and Stalkers, Thors need 3 shots. Period. Regardless of Upgrades. Unless you have +3 Thors against Zealots that have not +3 on both armor and shield, then it drops to 2.
Zealots need 29 hits on a Thor with similar armor to his damage upgrade because of singular increasement on both wields, one Armor Upgrade on the thor neglects 5 hits, while one upgrade advantage on the zealots grants 4 hits. For Stalkers, its same Armor vs Damage effect, with 31 hits in standard, 34 when Thor upgrade is higher, and 27 when Stalker Upgrades are higher.
Vs Colossi, Thors need 6 Shots unless they have +3 Weapons, then its 5 regardless of Armor. In taking Shots, its 15 normally and 16 on +1 plating vs +0 attack. If you dont have plating and he has +1 attack, the amount drops to 13. Colossi get overiterative damage bonus, so the +1vs+1 results in 14 hits, and on +3vs+3 its only 12 hits.
Vs Voidrays, you normally need 6 hits. But in case you have +1 Attack against no upgrades or reach +2 (regardless of upgrades), Voidrays go down in 5 shots. Taking damage was a bit rough because of the 20% damage bonus vs massive, so I took the 10/11/12/13 and made 12/13/14/15 out of it, dont know if that applies. The damage increase it always +1 on upgrades, so armor negates attack. Its 37 shots on even upgrades (without charge), 40 with advantage, 34 with disadvantage. Although I must admit, it's hard to justify these numbers as they ignore charge.
When shooting Phoenixes, again damage and armor negate themselves, and then its 8 shots on even upgrades for a Phoenix, 7 on advantage and 9 on disadvantage.
Fighting against Immortals, Armor is irrelevant. Only the Immortal attack counts, and once he has +1 Attack, Immortals always kill Thors in 8 shots instead of 9.
On January 27 2011 02:06 onbaton wrote: Stopped reading after I read this
On January 26 2011 03:16 kazansky wrote: For Immortals, the Upgrades don't change anything
Great contribution, sir!
On January 27 2011 10:15 CROSSENuUP wrote: Can you change the colors in the first post? I'm red-green color blind=[
Ouch. Not really because it would turn around the standard of the OP, but i can rephrase it for you to # for a critical upgrade, !! for huge and :: for uncritical, inside spoiler
# +1 Melee Upgrade: 15% less hits for Zerglings in every setup
# +1 Range Upgrade: Hydras kill Zealots in 2 and Colossi in 1 less hit, Roaches need less hits for every Unit.
!!+1 Carapace Upgrade: Roaches and Hydras take more hits to kill, especially Roaches surviving another Immortal shot (4 instead of 3)
!!+1 Flyer Damage: Mutalisks need 2 less shots on Stalkers, 1 less on Sentries, and Corrupters 2 less shots on Colossi
#+1 Flyer Carapace: Mutalisks sustain 2 more shots from Stalkers and 4 from Sentries, Corrupters 2 more shots from Stalkers
PvZ
Attack Upgrade: !!vs Zerglings: Hits for Zealot against Zergling drop from 3 to 2 (sidenote +2vs+1 and +3 on Colossis make Zerglings oneshots) !!vs Roach: 1 less hit for Zealots, 4 less for Sentries, 1 less for Stalkers !!vs Hydra: Hydras die in 1 less hit against Gateway units (Thanks to TheHumanSensation) !!vs Muta 1 less hit for Stalkers, 2 for Sentries
Armor Upgrade: vs Zerlings: #vs Roach: Zealots take one more hit #vs Hydra: Zealots take one more hit #vs Muta: 2 more shots for Stalkers, 1 more for Sentries
TvP
#+1 Bio Armor: Marines and Marauders take more hits from Gateway Units
!!+1 Bio Attack: Marines kill Zealots in 4 and Stalkers in 9 less shots, Marauders kill Zealots in 1, Stalker in 1 and Colossi in 2 less shots
!!+1 Mech Attack: Tanks take 1 less shot on Zealots, Stalkers and Collosi
PvT
!!+1 Attack: Marauders die in 1 less shot against Zealots, Stalkers and Collosi (sidenote: Marines dont get affected)
#+1 Armor: : Zealots take 1 more hit from Marauders, Marine take 5, 4 and 10 more hits against Zealot, Stalker and Collossi
!!+1 Air Weapons: Marines die in 1 less hit to VoidRays, Tanks take 4 less shots from Phoenixes
#+1 Air Armor: Marines need 5 more shots to kill a VoidRay
ZvT:
+1 Armor: !!vs Bio: Marines take 1 more hit on Ling, Bling, 8 more on Roaches, Marauders take 1 more hit on Roaches. !!vs Mech: Zerglings survive sieged tank shot, Roaches survive 1 additional tank shot
+1 Melee: #vs Bio: Zerglings need 1 less hit against Marines. !!vs Mech: Zerglings take need less hits on Tanks, Thors and Hellions (18 to 15)
+1 Range: #vs Bio: Roach hits on stimmed marines without shields fall from 3 to 2 (thanks to MorroW) #vs Mech: Roaches kill Tanks in 10 shots instead of 11, and Thors in 22 instead of 25
+1 Air Damage: :: vs Bio: does not affect Muta vs Marines or Muta vs SCVs !! vs Mech: Amount of shots for a Thor drop from 50 to 45
+1 Air Carapace: # vs Bio: Mutas take 25 instead of 21 hits from Marines :: vs Mech: no effects on Thor hits (Sidenote: +2 Carapace against +0 Damage lets Mutas survive one more volley)
TvZ:
!!+1 Bio Armor: Zerglings need 2 more hits on Marines and 10 more on Marauders
!!+1 Bio Attack: Marines kill Zerglings and Roaches in less hits, Marauder kill Roaches and Hydras in less hits, Marines need 3 less hits on Mutalisks (thanks to nalgene)
!!+1 Mech Armor: Thors take 5 more hits from Mutas, 2 more from Roaches, 34 from Lings. Tanks take one more shot from Roaches, 13 from Zerglings, 3 from Mutalisks. Hellion take 7 more hits from Lings
::+1 Mech Attack: no effects on kill efficiency. On a Sidenote, with +2 Attack lets Mutalists die in 2 Shots instead of 3(thanks to Saechiis)
PvP:
!!+1 Ground Weapons: Colossi kill every Unit in less shots, Immortals kill everything but Zealots in less shots.
#+1 Ground Armor: Robo Units take more shots from gateway Units, Robo vs Robo remains untouched
#+1 Air Weapons: Voids need 1 less shot on Stalkers
#+1 Air Armor: Voids take 2 more shots from Stalkers
TvT:
+1 Bio Armor: #vs Bio: Shots for Marines to kill Marines increases by 1, to kill Marauders increases by 7 ::vs Mech: no effects
+1 Bio Attack: !!vs Bio: Hits for Marines to kill Marines decrease by 1, to kill Marauders decrease by 4, for Marauders to kill Marauders decrease by 1 !!vs Mech: Hits for Marauder to kill Tanks decrease by 1, Hits for Marines to kill Tanks decrease by 8
+1 Mech Armor: !!vs Bio: Marauder take 1 more hit to kill Thors, Marines take 8 more for Tanks, 20 more for Thors, 3 more for Hellions ::vs Mech: no effects
+1 Mech Attack: #vs Bio: Thor kill Marauder in 1 less shot, Tanks need 2 shots instead of 3 for stimmed Marauder (thanks to statikg) !!vs Mech: Tanks kill Tanks in 3 shots instead of 4 (sidenote: on +2, armor upgrades get irrelevant)
#+1 Air Armor: battlecruisers take 3 more shots from Vikings
::+1 Air Attack: no effects in Viking battles.
ZvZ:
!!+1 Melee: For Zerglings 1 less hit on Zerglings, 8 less on Roaches
!!+1 Range: Zerglings die in 2 instead of 3 shots, Roaches take 1 less hit
!!+1 Carapace: Zerglings survive Banelings, Zerglings take 1 more hit from Zerglings, Roaches 1 more from Roaches and 13 more from Zerglings
#+1 Flyer Damage: Mutas need 13 instead of 14 shots to kill Mutas
#+1 Flyer Carapace: Mutas take 16 instead of 14 shots from Mutas
+1 Air Damage: vs Bio: does not affect Muta vs Marines or Muta vs SCVs
disagree here. When you are raiding units, picking off running marines. The ricochets doing more damage matters a lot. but I guess you are just referring to upgrades making things die in less hits from the multiples math standpoint.
I agree, the summary ricochet damage does grow by 2 per upgrade, which can have great influence. But this covers the idealized world of perfect focus fire et cetera, so although bounce is huge, it doesnt matter in this article.
On January 27 2011 11:30 celedorph wrote: Wouldn't it be better to take the analysis based on the number of seconds each unit survives, or how much longer it takes to kill a specific unit in a unit vs. unit matchup? That way, everything is more standardized (just like how we express unit damage output in terms of DPS).
Well, the math is additional hits times hit delay, so not that hard to gather in case you are interested in. But as mentioned above, main purpose is critical upgrades as itself as in the original article of day[9] regarding broodwar.
Good stuff! Will definitely incorporate some of this into my play.
Didn't see it in the first post, but maybe someone knows: does air carapace increase the number of shots mutas can take from static AA defense? (turrets, photons, spores)
+1 Mech Attack: no effects on kill efficiency. On a Sidenote, with +2 Attack lets Mutalists die in 2 Shots instead of 3(thanks to Saechiis)
It's a must to counter any carapace upgrades. Being 0/0 mech upgrades against 0/0/1 zerg upgrades is else very very painful. I understand it's not being included that your opponent has armor/attack upgrades, but getting this upgrade is pretty much a must as a precaution, since you are in a pretty bad shape if he gets +1 armor(and with it, you make his armor upgrades on lings irrelevant throughout the game).
# +1 Bio Armor: Zerglings need 2 more hits on Marines and 10 more on Marauders # +1 Bio Attack: Marines kill Zerglings and Roaches in less hits, Marauder kill Roaches and Hydras in less hits, Marines need 3 less hits on Mutalisks (thanks to nalgene)
Tbh I'd mark both of those as blue. The difference I felt when I started double upgrading my rines... It's insane and just makes any other units bar blings/infestors(to some extend)/ultras(to some extend) irrelevant.
+1 Mech Attack: no effects on kill efficiency. On a Sidenote, with +2 Attack lets Mutalists die in 2 Shots instead of 3(thanks to Saechiis)
It's a must to counter any carapace upgrades. Being 0/0 mech upgrades against 0/0/1 zerg upgrades is else very very painful. I understand it's not being included that your opponent has armor/attack upgrades, but getting this upgrade is pretty much a must as a precaution, since you are in a pretty bad shape if he gets +1 armor(and with it, you make his armor upgrades on lings irrelevant throughout the game).
# +1 Bio Armor: Zerglings need 2 more hits on Marines and 10 more on Marauders # +1 Bio Attack: Marines kill Zerglings and Roaches in less hits, Marauder kill Roaches and Hydras in less hits, Marines need 3 less hits on Mutalisks (thanks to nalgene)
Tbh I'd mark both of those as blue. The difference I felt when I started double upgrading my rines... It's insane and just makes any other units bar blings/infestors(to some extend)/ultras(to some extend) irrelevant.
As stated above, the issue of countering upgrades is not the topic of this thread. Its about "upgrade changes kill count of X against Y" and not "otherwise, you're in pretty bad shape" To counter any upgrades you basically look at the matchup from the other side, see if there are crucial upgrades, and then respon with your upgrade, but that is interpretation and free usage for everyone.
On the other point: I dont get what you mean. +Armor is marked blue as critical upgrade, and you said yourself that +1 Attack makes a remarkable difference, so its green. Did I do something wrong?
Thanks for that excellent post. I had been putting a lot of thought into this recently, and it's a huge help that you crunched all of this data for everyone.
On January 28 2011 04:18 Huumy wrote: Thanks for the good article. It was interesting read and will give good ideas what to uprage.
One thing I would love to see tested more is the Protoss shield uprages.
Problem with shield upgrades is that they are more expensive than armor, and most Protoss units have the same or more Hitpoints than Armor. So it only applies in very constructed cases, one of them Plexa pointed out, Stalkers, so I went on that. Archons obviously are the other. But, frankly, for every other Unit, everything Shield Armor can, Basic Armor can better (or more cost effective)
Thanks for this, Kaz - stuff like this is the reason why I love this site.
A couple comments on the following:
"+1 Mech Attack: Tanks take 1 less shot on Zealots, Stalkers and Collosi, Hellions kill Zealots in 5 shots instead of 6, and Stalkers in 20 instead of 22 Shots. Thors kill Voidrays in 5 instead of 6 Shots, and Phoenixes in 7 instead of 8 (Sidenote: +3 Hellions makes kill Zealots in 5 shots, +3 Thors always kill Voidrays in 5 Shots, +3 Thors kill Colossi in 5 shots instead of 6, all regardless of upgrades)"
First, unupgraded hellions do 14 dmg against light units, implying they would kill zealots in 11 shots, not 6. +1 would case them to do 16 dmg, implying they would kill zealots in 10 shots. (FWIW, with the blue flame upgrade, they should kill a zealot in 7 hits, and with both blue flame and +1 attack, should kill a zealot in 6 hits.)
Second, unupgraded thors do 24 dmg over 4 shots to non-light units, and void rays are non-light units (armored, actually). So, it takes 11 shots from an un-upgraded thor to take down a void ray, and 9 shots from a thor with +1 attack. (Your numbers would be correct if void rays were considered light.) Phoenixes, meanwhile, crumple after 4 shots from an un-upgraded thor, as well as a +1 thor. (Your numbers would be correct if phoenixes were considered non-light.)
Feel free to double-check my math on any of the above - I can't test anything at the moment.
There are a couple things you might want to think about regarding real game situations. I know it's hard to include everything, but a couple things to consider:
- Stimmed marauders have 105 hp, making +attack upgrades on immortals critical (and probably some other things). Maybe you should add things like this for stimmed marauders.
- In a "standard" ZvT, the Terran gets way ahead in upgrades, and by the time the zerg finishes his first upgrade for ground units, Terran is almost 2/2. If you're behind on upgrades like this, all of a sudden +1 attack looks way more attractive, as +1 attack reduces the number of attacks to kill a +2 armor marine by 3 (not just by 1 as for +0 armor marines). Because of situations like this, you may want to include critical upgrades not assuming your opponent has 0 upgrades.
On January 28 2011 05:40 Aoi_10 wrote: Thanks for this, Kaz - stuff like this is the reason why I love this site.
A couple comments on the following:
"+1 Mech Attack: Tanks take 1 less shot on Zealots, Stalkers and Collosi, Hellions kill Zealots in 5 shots instead of 6, and Stalkers in 20 instead of 22 Shots. Thors kill Voidrays in 5 instead of 6 Shots, and Phoenixes in 7 instead of 8 (Sidenote: +3 Hellions makes kill Zealots in 5 shots, +3 Thors always kill Voidrays in 5 Shots, +3 Thors kill Colossi in 5 shots instead of 6, all regardless of upgrades)"
First, unupgraded hellions do 14 dmg against light units, implying they would kill zealots in 11 shots, not 6. +1 would case them to do 16 dmg, implying they would kill zealots in 10 shots. (FWIW, with the blue flame upgrade, they should kill a zealot in 7 hits, and with both blue flame and +1 attack, should kill a zealot in 6 hits.)
Second, unupgraded thors do 24 dmg over 4 shots to non-light units, and void rays are non-light units (armored, actually). So, it takes 11 shots from an un-upgraded thor to take down a void ray, and 9 shots from a thor with +1 attack. (Your numbers would be correct if void rays were considered light.) Phoenixes, meanwhile, crumple after 4 shots from an un-upgraded thor, as well as a +1 thor. (Your numbers would be correct if phoenixes were considered non-light.)
Feel free to double-check my math on any of the above - I can't test anything at the moment.
a) When i refer to hellions I always mean blue flame hellions, it would be stupid having them around and banking upgrades on them without the upgrade with the highest payoff Yeah, i somehow switched columns, its 7 and 6, need to correct that.
b) If i am not totally mistaken, void rays are light and phoenix armored (as stated in data basis). Maybe i wrote that down wrong, then it would be obviously wrong. But I admit, i am no protoss player, so my mind didnt tickle at that. Needs review, will get reviewed within 24 hours, promise
On January 28 2011 06:44 regulator_mk wrote: There are a couple things you might want to think about regarding real game situations. I know it's hard to include everything, but a couple things to consider:
- Stimmed marauders have 105 hp, making +attack upgrades on immortals critical (and probably some other things). Maybe you should add things like this for stimmed marauders.
- In a "standard" ZvT, the Terran gets way ahead in upgrades, and by the time the zerg finishes his first upgrade for ground units, Terran is almost 2/2. If you're behind on upgrades like this, all of a sudden +1 attack looks way more attractive, as +1 attack reduces the number of attacks to kill a +2 armor marine by 3 (not just by 1 as for +0 armor marines). Because of situations like this, you may want to include critical upgrades not assuming your opponent has 0 upgrades.
I totally agree with you that some assumptions are quite arbitrary. That is why I focussed on the first upgrade available and eventual +3 effects.
I don't have the knowledge and experience and I guess nobody really has at the moment to say how the game looks when both sides play fine perfectly regarding upgrades, in, say, a year. This might be different or same as now. But because of this, I don't want to overextend the whole issue. I could of course pair up every possible unit with every possible unit and every possible upgrade combination and supply stockpiles of data on that but that would just burry the whole thread in data sheets.
I will keep this up date and while game evolves and some upgrades get standardized, further research will be done and may pay off.
On January 28 2011 07:01 Reptilia wrote: Wow, great post I didnt know +1 armor was better (than weapon) in most cases (as t)
I wouldnt neccessarily word it as "better". I more often has critical influence the way the damage levels are designed.
But this is only one part of the game, and the main argument why damage most of the time is better than armor upgrade, is that armor upgrade lets you take exactly one damage less per shot while damage upgrade lets you deal at least one damage more per shot.
thors with +3 attack twoshot roaches with 0 or 1 armor upgrades.
thors deal 30(+3) x2 damage, roaches have 145 life with 1 base armor. with 0/1 armor upgrades, a +3 thor (39 dam x2) will do 38/37 dam per single shot, and there are 4 such shots in 2 thor attacks. this yields a "twoattack-damage" of 152/148 respectively, meaning the thor will twoshot instead of 3shot the roaches.
additionally, +2 attack means that thors kill mutas faster. this means that a thor-centric mech play in tvz relies heavily on attack upgrades. but ofc the armor upgrades also are very effective on thors. in other words: to fight fully upgraded thors, roaches need at least 2 armor upgrades or they get melted.
You are right that +attack does not affect how many hits to take down a full hp marine. But you never engage full-hp marines. The most likely scenario would be stimmed marines, which have 10 less hp. And +1 ground weapons means zealots need 1 less swing.
b) If i am not totally mistaken, void rays are light and phoenix armored (as stated in data basis). Maybe i wrote that down wrong, then it would be obviously wrong. But I admit, i am no protoss player, so my mind didnt tickle at that. Needs review, will get reviewed within 24 hours, promise
Yep, it's the opposite. One of the reasons why void rays are such a pain against Terran mech. It's understandably confusing, given that even though void rays are "armored," their starting armor level is actually 0.
On January 28 2011 07:01 Reptilia wrote: Wow, great post I didnt know +1 armor was better (than weapon) in most cases (as t)
This is a misinterpretation. +1 armor is never better because of the nature of bio. So many more units are firing at one time then are taking damage, that means the attack upgrades function on far more units at a time so even if it was only 50% as effective it would probably still be better.
On January 28 2011 08:52 Black Gun wrote: one very crucial thing is missing:
thors with +3 attack twoshot roaches with 0 or 1 armor upgrades.
thors deal 30(+3) x2 damage, roaches have 145 life with 1 base armor. with 0/1 armor upgrades, a +3 thor (39 dam x2) will do 38/37 dam per single shot, and there are 4 such shots in 2 thor attacks. this yields a "twoattack-damage" of 152/148 respectively, meaning the thor will twoshot instead of 3shot the roaches.
additionally, +2 attack means that thors kill mutas faster. this means that a thor-centric mech play in tvz relies heavily on attack upgrades. but ofc the armor upgrades also are very effective on thors. in other words: to fight fully upgraded thors, roaches need at least 2 armor upgrades or they get melted.
Correct, I didn't look on that before, will be added, thanks. Although I will not change it to critical (yet) because it is too match development depending and I want to wait for a while until the game is figured out more. On a sidenote, Thor vs Mutalisks was already mentioned on Sidenote
On January 28 2011 09:25 W2 wrote: PvT stats for +attack are misleading.
You are right that +attack does not affect how many hits to take down a full hp marine. But you never engage full-hp marines. The most likely scenario would be stimmed marines, which have 10 less hp. And +1 ground weapons means zealots need 1 less swing.
As stated in Presumptions, I made Marines always 45 to cover stimmed shielded and unstimmed unshielded Marines. The more special the case gets (in this case stimmed unshielded Marines), the less this Thread is a real help because, although true, it is not a given that this will be crucial in one year, and also mentioning every single combination would blow the article up unneccessarily. I can also compute every hit counter for TvP once a EMP goes off aswell, of course, but this does not really fit the case in my eyes.
I think a look at pure hit to kill is useful but I feel like you're simplifying the mutalisks a bit too much, need to take into account the bouncing glaive worm.
No upgrades 9 + 3 +1 damage
+1 Air Weapon 10 + 4 +2
Likewise when fighting against mutas if you were to pick up+1 armour you can turn that into 8 + 2 + ~0
This is significant even for SCVs. Speak of which, an opponent who picked up +1 infantry armour and really messed up my banshee harass, pushing it up to 3 HTK.
Perhaps you could also add a simple chart which shows what % gain in weapon damage each unit gets from each level of upgrade and perhaps what % of damage loss they have against armour. Really I imagine this would just highlight how important this mechanic is for marines and zerglings.
Would this also be the appropriate place to check out which unit matchups guardian shield is a powerhouse in and when not to bother? Zealots with +1 armor and guardian shield vs marines cuts them down to 2 damage, that's alot of hits to kill.
On January 28 2011 05:40 Aoi_10 wrote: Thanks for this, Kaz - stuff like this is the reason why I love this site.
A couple comments on the following:
"+1 Mech Attack: Tanks take 1 less shot on Zealots, Stalkers and Collosi, Hellions kill Zealots in 5 shots instead of 6, and Stalkers in 20 instead of 22 Shots. Thors kill Voidrays in 5 instead of 6 Shots, and Phoenixes in 7 instead of 8 (Sidenote: +3 Hellions makes kill Zealots in 5 shots, +3 Thors always kill Voidrays in 5 Shots, +3 Thors kill Colossi in 5 shots instead of 6, all regardless of upgrades)"
First, unupgraded hellions do 14 dmg against light units, implying they would kill zealots in 11 shots, not 6. +1 would case them to do 16 dmg, implying they would kill zealots in 10 shots. (FWIW, with the blue flame upgrade, they should kill a zealot in 7 hits, and with both blue flame and +1 attack, should kill a zealot in 6 hits.)
Second, unupgraded thors do 24 dmg over 4 shots to non-light units, and void rays are non-light units (armored, actually). So, it takes 11 shots from an un-upgraded thor to take down a void ray, and 9 shots from a thor with +1 attack. (Your numbers would be correct if void rays were considered light.) Phoenixes, meanwhile, crumple after 4 shots from an un-upgraded thor, as well as a +1 thor. (Your numbers would be correct if phoenixes were considered non-light.)
Feel free to double-check my math on any of the above - I can't test anything at the moment.
a) When i refer to hellions I always mean blue flame hellions, it would be stupid having them around and banking upgrades on them without the upgrade with the highest payoff Yeah, i somehow switched columns, its 7 and 6, need to correct that.
b) If i am not totally mistaken, void rays are light and phoenix armored (as stated in data basis). Maybe i wrote that down wrong, then it would be obviously wrong. But I admit, i am no protoss player, so my mind didnt tickle at that. Needs review, will get reviewed within 24 hours, promise
Sorry for that mix up, I somehow mixed that up. I agree, for Thors against Voids its 11 normally and 9 on upgrade advantage, 12 on disadvantage. In the very unlikely case of +3 Thors firing at +0/+0 Void Rays, you pick the flying candleholder in 7 Shots. Thors against Phoenixes is 4 Shots, unless you can make more than 60 damage per Volley, which is 15 per projectile, which means +2 cannons against minor armor and shields, or simply +3 attack. Will be added, thanks for pointing out, I feel embarrassed mixing up those armor types.
On January 28 2011 19:12 Fjord wrote: I think a look at pure hit to kill is useful but I feel like you're simplifying the mutalisks a bit too much, need to take into account the bouncing glaive worm.
No upgrades 9 + 3 +1 damage
+1 Air Weapon 10 + 4 +2
Likewise when fighting against mutas if you were to pick up+1 armour you can turn that into 8 + 2 + ~0
This is significant even for SCVs. Speak of which, an opponent who picked up +1 infantry armour and really messed up my banshee harass, pushing it up to 3 HTK.
Perhaps you could also add a simple chart which shows what % gain in weapon damage each unit gets from each level of upgrade and perhaps what % of damage loss they have against armour. Really I imagine this would just highlight how important this mechanic is for marines and zerglings.
Would this also be the appropriate place to check out which unit matchups guardian shield is a powerhouse in and when not to bother? Zealots with +1 armor and guardian shield vs marines cuts them down to 2 damage, that's alot of hits to kill.
The Mutalisk bounce is a science itself and deserves some extra article maybe, I'm not planning to cover it in here yet.
Armor on SCVs is worth mentioning, thanks.
The percentage gain of Weapon upgrade is always around 10%, if you want a chart, feel free to make one And I don't want to overload the data conclusion with graphics that say the same, I'm not an economist. Unless it is wished for.
I intentionally skipped guardian shield, might be aswell topic of a seperate article.
no offense but this upgrade analysis is incredibly short sighted. these are semi-interesting tid bits of "if you didn't know," but this is hardly a guide on what critical upgrades upgrades you should get in which match up.
you only consider +1, which is silly because if you're talking about 'critical upgrades,' you want to consider things like having an upgrade advantage or disadvantage, which means considering +1 vs 0, as well as +2 vs 0 and +2 vs 1. there's actually a couple problems with this kind of analysis but to break them all down would require an entirely new guide on my part
but if you want to just talk about upgrade advantages, there's already a spreadsheet made for that:
Hit X00 indicates how many less hits you need with a given attack upgrade with that unit, 0X0 indicates how many more hits you need when the unit has an armor upgrade. i'm pretty sure that the beginning part of this spreadsheet is basically what you're trying to do with this thread but a little bit more complete?
On January 29 2011 10:14 Herculix wrote: no offense but this upgrade analysis is incredibly short sighted. these are semi-interesting tid bits of "if you didn't know," but this is hardly a guide on what critical upgrades upgrades you should get in which match up.
you only consider +1, which is silly because if you're talking about 'critical upgrades,' you want to consider things like having an upgrade advantage or disadvantage, which means considering +1 vs 0, as well as +2 vs 0 and +2 vs 1. there's actually a couple problems with this kind of analysis but to break them all down would require an entirely new guide on my part
but if you want to just talk about upgrade advantages, there's already a spreadsheet made for that:
Hit X00 indicates how many less hits you need with a given attack upgrade with that unit, 0X0 indicates how many more hits you need when the unit has an armor upgrade. i'm pretty sure that the beginning part of this spreadsheet is basically what you're trying to do with this thread but a little bit more complete?
Meh - no different than discussing opening build orders. Just because it doesn't tell you what to do throughout the game doesn't mean it's not useful in the early game. Sometimes it's worth sacrificing completeness for simplicity
It seems that you haven't done air upgrades for protoss yet in PvZ yet. I would suspect this information to be pretty vital in PvZ since most protoss are going voids/phoenix against zerg these days.
It seems to me that the problem with these kinds of analyses is that it doesn't take into account all the ways that a unit can regenerate or enter a battle with an abnormal amount of life. Armor makes marines A LOT more hardy than this would imply when they're being healed by medivacs for instance. Sure it's nice to know that under ideal circumstances my mutalisk will survive one more hit, but realistically it doesn't change anything about the fact that it's just good in general to get upgrades and to start getting them at a certain time in the game regardless.
How about attack speed? One additional attack for Immortal is not the same as an one (two, three) additional attack for stimmed Marine.
The Infantry Armor shall be researched first: Marines get killed by Zealots in 3 shots, after a Armor Upgrade, this changes to 4.
Marines take 26 Hits to kill a Zealot in general, 22 if he has Damage Upgrade advantage.
I think it should be measured not in "number of shots", but in "shots * attack cooldown".
In number of shots:
Marine deal 15% less shots on Zealot, Zealot deal 33% more hits on Marine. Therefore, +1 Armor is a critical upgrade, +1 Attack is a mandatory.
Fine, but in seconds of time:
Marine kill Zealot in 3,44 seconds faster, Zealot kill Marine in 1,2 second slower. In other words, Marine will take one shot in 1,2 additional seconds (or 5 dmg) and Zealot will NOT hit two times in lack of 3,44 seconds (or 32 dmg).
I think it should be mentioned in TvZ that +1 mech attack makes sure that zerglings/banelings die in 1 shot to siege tanks. Quite often Z will upgrade ground armor to try to make it so they get 2 shotted instead. While not amazingly important, I'd argue that it raises the importance level from "nothing" to "something"
On January 30 2011 07:18 Selkie wrote: I think it should be mentioned in TvZ that +1 mech attack makes sure that zerglings/banelings die in 1 shot to siege tanks. Quite often Z will upgrade ground armor to try to make it so they get 2 shotted instead. While not amazingly important, I'd argue that it raises the importance level from "nothing" to "something"
Tanks always kill banes in one hit, regardless of upgrades.
Oh and one quick thing:
+1 ground armor for terran means that non +1 DTs no longer one-shot scvs marines without combat shields.
On January 29 2011 13:54 Tossup wrote: It seems that you haven't done air upgrades for protoss yet in PvZ yet. I would suspect this information to be pretty vital in PvZ since most protoss are going voids/phoenix against zerg these days.
Yes, this is intentional. I want to wait if this turns out to be solid strategy or flavour of the day, because I don't want to overload data. If real Air builds have established in high level play, I will investigate.
On January 29 2011 16:18 Poiuytr wrote: It seems to me that the problem with these kinds of analyses is that it doesn't take into account all the ways that a unit can regenerate or enter a battle with an abnormal amount of life. Armor makes marines A LOT more hardy than this would imply when they're being healed by medivacs for instance. Sure it's nice to know that under ideal circumstances my mutalisk will survive one more hit, but realistically it doesn't change anything about the fact that it's just good in general to get upgrades and to start getting them at a certain time in the game regardless.
Regeneration is mentioned and disected, the purpose of the thread is not a recipe to follow in every given circumstance.
On January 30 2011 03:46 tshd wrote: How about attack speed? One additional attack for Immortal is not the same as an one (two, three) additional attack for stimmed Marine.
The Infantry Armor shall be researched first: Marines get killed by Zealots in 3 shots, after a Armor Upgrade, this changes to 4.
Marines take 26 Hits to kill a Zealot in general, 22 if he has Damage Upgrade advantage.
I think it should be measured not in "number of shots", but in "shots * attack cooldown".
In number of shots:
Marine deal 15% less shots on Zealot, Zealot deal 33% more hits on Marine. Therefore, +1 Armor is a critical upgrade, +1 Attack is a mandatory.
Fine, but in seconds of time:
Marine kill Zealot in 3,44 seconds faster, Zealot kill Marine in 1,2 second slower. In other words, Marine will take one shot in 1,2 additional seconds (or 5 dmg) and Zealot will NOT hit two times in lack of 3,44 seconds (or 32 dmg).
P.S. Sorry for my English.
I already mentioned earlier, this is not about damage increasement. The purpose is to show early upgrades that can change low digit unit battles significantly, or sniping in high battles. Damage increasement is a different field of research.
On January 30 2011 07:18 Selkie wrote: I think it should be mentioned in TvZ that +1 mech attack makes sure that zerglings/banelings die in 1 shot to siege tanks. Quite often Z will upgrade ground armor to try to make it so they get 2 shotted instead. While not amazingly important, I'd argue that it raises the importance level from "nothing" to "something"
It was mentioned within the first page of replies. What you talk about is a correlated Nash equilibria, which is interesting but nevertheless has nothing to do with the article itself. If you want to have attack upgrades to negate critical carapace upgrades, look up the carapaces.
On January 28 2011 08:52 Black Gun wrote: one very crucial thing is missing:
thors with +3 attack twoshot roaches with 0 or 1 armor upgrades.
thors deal 30(+3) x2 damage, roaches have 145 life with 1 base armor. with 0/1 armor upgrades, a +3 thor (39 dam x2) will do 38/37 dam per single shot, and there are 4 such shots in 2 thor attacks. this yields a "twoattack-damage" of 152/148 respectively, meaning the thor will twoshot instead of 3shot the roaches.
additionally, +2 attack means that thors kill mutas faster. this means that a thor-centric mech play in tvz relies heavily on attack upgrades. but ofc the armor upgrades also are very effective on thors. in other words: to fight fully upgraded thors, roaches need at least 2 armor upgrades or they get melted.
Correct, I didn't look on that before, will be added, thanks. Although I will not change it to critical (yet) because it is too match development depending and I want to wait for a while until the game is figured out more. On a sidenote, Thor vs Mutalisks was already mentioned on Sidenote
On January 28 2011 09:25 W2 wrote: PvT stats for +attack are misleading.
You are right that +attack does not affect how many hits to take down a full hp marine. But you never engage full-hp marines. The most likely scenario would be stimmed marines, which have 10 less hp. And +1 ground weapons means zealots need 1 less swing.
As stated in Presumptions, I made Marines always 45 to cover stimmed shielded and unstimmed unshielded Marines. The more special the case gets (in this case stimmed unshielded Marines), the less this Thread is a real help because, although true, it is not a given that this will be crucial in one year, and also mentioning every single combination would blow the article up unneccessarily. I can also compute every hit counter for TvP once a EMP goes off aswell, of course, but this does not really fit the case in my eyes.
But if the player has enough medivacs, they could stim ahead of time and it wouldn't really cost them anything to keep it at 55 HP prior to engaging hostiles.
On January 28 2011 08:52 Black Gun wrote: one very crucial thing is missing:
thors with +3 attack twoshot roaches with 0 or 1 armor upgrades.
thors deal 30(+3) x2 damage, roaches have 145 life with 1 base armor. with 0/1 armor upgrades, a +3 thor (39 dam x2) will do 38/37 dam per single shot, and there are 4 such shots in 2 thor attacks. this yields a "twoattack-damage" of 152/148 respectively, meaning the thor will twoshot instead of 3shot the roaches.
additionally, +2 attack means that thors kill mutas faster. this means that a thor-centric mech play in tvz relies heavily on attack upgrades. but ofc the armor upgrades also are very effective on thors. in other words: to fight fully upgraded thors, roaches need at least 2 armor upgrades or they get melted.
Correct, I didn't look on that before, will be added, thanks. Although I will not change it to critical (yet) because it is too match development depending and I want to wait for a while until the game is figured out more. On a sidenote, Thor vs Mutalisks was already mentioned on Sidenote
On January 28 2011 09:25 W2 wrote: PvT stats for +attack are misleading.
You are right that +attack does not affect how many hits to take down a full hp marine. But you never engage full-hp marines. The most likely scenario would be stimmed marines, which have 10 less hp. And +1 ground weapons means zealots need 1 less swing.
As stated in Presumptions, I made Marines always 45 to cover stimmed shielded and unstimmed unshielded Marines. The more special the case gets (in this case stimmed unshielded Marines), the less this Thread is a real help because, although true, it is not a given that this will be crucial in one year, and also mentioning every single combination would blow the article up unneccessarily. I can also compute every hit counter for TvP once a EMP goes off aswell, of course, but this does not really fit the case in my eyes.
But if the player has enough medivacs, they could stim ahead of time and it wouldn't really cost them anything to keep it at 55 HP prior to engaging hostiles.
That is true. But first, when I take in account every possibility on stim and heal, you come up with 6 different setups per matchups only for Marauder and Marines, it starts to burst the borderline and gets too specific. Second Hand, at the point where you have enough Medivacs to heal up your whole Bio Ball, they game is so far progressed that critical upgrade math isn't viable anymore from my point of view. At least not until the game is not boiled down further, too much changing at the moment in the meta-game to take these things in account yet.
On April 02 2011 20:22 Alpina wrote: +1 air attack does not give mutas +3 damage overall - that would be too good. AFAIK it gives +1, +0.3, +0.1 for each bounce respectively.
I certainly hope you're right. I've been told otherwise but i'll confirm before posting again.
On April 02 2011 20:22 Alpina wrote: +1 air attack does not give mutas +3 damage overall - that would be too good. AFAIK it gives +1, +0.3, +0.1 for each bounce respectively.
It does actually give +1 to each bounce, the way the rounding occurs.
On April 02 2011 20:22 Alpina wrote: +1 air attack does not give mutas +3 damage overall - that would be too good. AFAIK it gives +1, +0.3, +0.1 for each bounce respectively.
It does actually give +1 to each bounce, the way the rounding occurs.
Wrong, that only seems so on the first attack. The mutalisk does fractional damage if it has upgrades and the improvement is ineed +1, +0.3, +0.1
10 attacks will do +10, +3 and +1 damage with +1 attack on the bounces, the rounding down only makes the first attack do +1 +1 +1 actually.
Muta upgrades are thus not really that effective as the bounces will go to the minimum of 0.5 pretty quickl if armor is upgraded by the opponent. Especially in ZvP upgrading attack is not that great as the bounces will do 0.5 almost always anyway when guardian shield is up, in ZvT it is more effective as most terran units have a base armor of 0.
"+1 Mech Attack: no effects on kill efficiency. On a Sidenote, with +2 Attack lets Mutalists die in 2 Shots instead of 3(thanks to Saechiis), and Thors with +3 Attack kills Roaches with only 0 or 1 Armor Upgrade in 2 Shots instead of 3 (Thanks to Black Gun)"
I always think that +1 Mech Attack Tanks kill zerglings with one less shot than without the upgrade..
so in fact, i should upgrade the armor upgrades before if i go mech?
On April 03 2011 01:29 saaaa wrote: "+1 Mech Attack: no effects on kill efficiency. On a Sidenote, with +2 Attack lets Mutalists die in 2 Shots instead of 3(thanks to Saechiis), and Thors with +3 Attack kills Roaches with only 0 or 1 Armor Upgrade in 2 Shots instead of 3 (Thanks to Black Gun)"
I always think that +1 Mech Attack Tanks kill zerglings with one less shot than without the upgrade..
so in fact, i should upgrade the armor upgrades before if i go mech?
You get +1 on siege tanks to kill armor-upgraded zerglings in one shot.
With 1.4 at the gates and marching in, I'm now redoing the math on the actual patch data. Sadly, I am not able to edit my OP at the moment, so Patch 1.4 Hellion Analysis has to take point here:
Lings get shot on 3 hits by standard hellions, 2 shots with blue flames, upgrades don't change anything.
Hydras against standard hellions get killed in 6 shots, survive the 6th if they have carapace upgrade. On Blue Flame, they die after 5 hits, with or without carapace, and even 4 if +1 for Hellions is out.
Will this change anything for and against the sons of Aiur?
Zealots take 12/11/10 hits on upgrade advantage, even setup and disadvantage against standard hellions. But Blue Flame makes them die in 9 hits, even with armour, and even 8 with a +1 Upgrade.
Sentries and HTs need 6 hit to kill with standard hellions regardless of upgrades. 5 hits are neccessary, with or without armor upgrade, and 4 with a +1 advantage.
Stimmed Marines (for normal Marines see SCV Analysis) are killed in 3 shots without and 2 shots with Blue Flame, upgrades don't change anything.
Shield Marines unstimmed take 4 hits without and 3 hits with Blue Flame, +1 attack does not change this. A armour upgrade on marines however adds one additional hit.
Conclusion
Important to note is, that this conclusion does only regard the effect of upgrades on the Hellions itself and against Hellions, for further analysis, check the OP, and consider the statements regarding Hellions in the OP as outdated.
versus +1 carapace does only help against unupgraded Hellions for the workers, the Zergling hits are totally uneffected, and Hydras come so late that Blue Flame should already be out, therefore +1 Carapace does not pay itself against Hellion armies.
versus The question as always is, Blue Flame, +1 Attack, or both? For worker harassment, both together is a must to get 2-shots. If planning a defensive style and only defending, the Blue Flame is to be preferred before +1 Attack
versus Armour just for workers does not really pay off, and Zealots only profit aslong as no Blue Flame is out, for Sentries and HTs it does not make much difference.
versus +1 Changes hit counts on Zealots, with or without Blue Flame, and on workers with Blue Flame, aswell as on Sentries and HT with Blue Flame. So a combination of both is the best choice.
versus Blue Flame Hellion upgrade changes the hits against marines by 1 aswell as worker hits, but even more the hit count on Hellions. The +1 Attack Upgrade, once Blue Flame is out, does not have significant influence on the hit counters at all.
I don't like that it says marines with +1 attack kill zerglings in 1 fewer hit. They frequently don't due to health regen on the lings. 6 into 35 is 6 hits, but 7 into 35 just barely would be 5. The little bit of extra health from regen makes it require a 6th hit much of the time.
On January 26 2011 03:44 Shikyo wrote: Even though you explain it, you still should take into account the fact that Zerg units heal 1 hp immediately after taking damage, without delay, and that regen will always make a difference in all cases except a group of marines(or something else without a projectile) firing simultaneously.
That being said, I'm pretty sure I've seen a chart or something similiar a while ago, but I'm sure this is useful for the people who haven't.
I was torn long about it but decided not to. Zerg units dont heal instantly, for example, banelings oneshot zerglings with damage 35 to 35 sharp. And i did some testing with hitting zerglings with zerglings, it takes a delay of a few seconds (unless i was drunk that day).
Additionally, I used the search function repeatidly to look out for such information and couldnt find it, so I might have missed it.
They DO heal instantly immediately after taking damage, IF they're still alive. The only units that oneshot zerglings with 35 damage precisely are banes and tanks. If you took 5 +1 marines and had them attack a +0 armor ling once "simultaneously", the ling survives with 1 HP.
They DO heal instantly immediately after taking damage, IF they're still alive. The only units that oneshot zerglings with 35 damage precisely are banes and tanks. If you took 5 +1 marines and had them attack a +0 armor ling once "simultaneously", the ling survives with 1 HP.
Sometimes it doesn't though. I tried it like 20 times in the unit tester with 5 on 1 ling. Without stim, it almost never shoots simultaneously enough, but occasionally does.
It does so MORE often with stim, though not always. (Maybe about 1/3-1/2 of the time).
On January 26 2011 03:44 Shikyo wrote: Even though you explain it, you still should take into account the fact that Zerg units heal 1 hp immediately after taking damage, without delay, and that regen will always make a difference in all cases except a group of marines(or something else without a projectile) firing simultaneously.
That being said, I'm pretty sure I've seen a chart or something similiar a while ago, but I'm sure this is useful for the people who haven't.
I was torn long about it but decided not to. Zerg units dont heal instantly, for example, banelings oneshot zerglings with damage 35 to 35 sharp. And i did some testing with hitting zerglings with zerglings, it takes a delay of a few seconds (unless i was drunk that day).
Additionally, I used the search function repeatidly to look out for such information and couldnt find it, so I might have missed it.
They DO heal instantly immediately after taking damage, IF they're still alive. The only units that oneshot zerglings with 35 damage precisely are banes and tanks. If you took 5 +1 marines and had them attack a +0 armor ling once "simultaneously", the ling survives with 1 HP.
I have to disagree with you based on my tests. Unless regeneration function has changed in between, the regeneration is applied in 3 seconds intervals after the initial damage. Or you are talking about Broodwar
I have to disagree with you based on my tests. Unless regeneration function has changed in between, the regeneration is applied in 3 seconds intervals after the initial damage. Or you are talking about Broodwar
I get the impression its applied very often, but it doesn't accumulate enough to show +1 hp until about 3 seconds pass. So often things survive with "1hp" but it's really some small fraction of 1hp, and it rounds up.
I don't even think it always rounds up, just it definitely does near 0hp.
TvZ: +1 Mech Attack: no effects on kill efficiency. On a Sidenote, with +2 Attack lets Mutalists die in 2 Shots instead of 3(thanks to Saechiis), and Thors with +3 Attack kills Roaches with only 0 or 1 Armor Upgrade in 2 Shots instead of 3 (Thanks to Black Gun)
LOL ?
Tank without +1 grade will not oneshot zergling with +1 armor.
Tank with grades has more damage on banelings, lings, ultras.
This grade is very critical. But marked as uncritical. I dont know any late game timing pushes without this grade.
TvZ: +1 Mech Attack: no effects on kill efficiency. On a Sidenote, with +2 Attack lets Mutalists die in 2 Shots instead of 3(thanks to Saechiis), and Thors with +3 Attack kills Roaches with only 0 or 1 Armor Upgrade in 2 Shots instead of 3 (Thanks to Black Gun)
LOL ?
Tank without +1 grade will not oneshot zergling with +1 armor.
Tank with grades has more damage on banelings, lings, ultras.
This grade is very critical. But marked as uncritical. I dont know any late game timing pushes without this grade.
Although I've explained this multiple times before, here once again. Yes, +1 attack mitigates +1 armor. Of course. It is supposed to. But it is not a critical upgrade in terms of the definition given.
I've done some testing on the ling regeneration, its pretty weird. Sometimes, the regeneration starts with about 3 seconds delay, sometimes it starts instantly after taking damage, atleast it seems to be crafted to deny damage dealt equal to hit points from killing. I suppose I need to do more testing on some of the upgrades to make sure every statement is still accurate. At least for the given example, +1 Marines don't kill Zerglings in 5 hits anymore, thats a given.
On September 22 2011 07:37 kazansky wrote: I've done some testing on the ling regeneration, its pretty weird. Sometimes, the regeneration starts with about 3 seconds delay, sometimes it starts instantly after taking damage, atleast it seems to be crafted to deny damage dealt equal to hit points from killing. I suppose I need to do more testing on some of the upgrades to make sure every statement is still accurate. At least for the given example, +1 Marines don't kill Zerglings in 5 hits anymore, thats a given.
This is why I've often questioned why people get +1 inf weapons first in tvz, instead of +1 armor. +1 armor is crazy good for marine vs ling.
Note: All armor values are the actual armor they have, not the amount of armor upgrades. Every attack value is the amount of upgrades.
0 atk broodlord kills 1/2/3/4 armor stalker in 9 hits Note: 4 armor stalker dies on the exact HP to 9 hits so 4 armor +1 shield armor takes 10 hits
1 atk broodlord kills 1/2/3/4 armor stalker in 8 hits Note: Exactly as above, 9 hits instead of 8 when the stalker got 4 armor and +1 shield
2 atk broodlord kills 1/2/3/4 armor stalker in 7/7/8/8 hits Note: 2 atk broodlord kills full upgraded (armor+shield) stalker in 8 hits as well.
3 atk upgraded broodlord kills a stalker in 7 hits no matter what
0 atk stalker kills 1/2/3/4 armor broodlord in 18/19/21/23 hits.
0/1/2/3 atk stalker kills 1 armor broodlord in 18/17/16(due to regen)/15 hits
Note: I added "due to regen" since I see there is a discussion on how regen works, but following the rules given in the OP with it being max hp+1 then it is 16 as stated.
Full upgraded broodlord kills full upgraded stalker in 7 hits
Full upgraded stalker kills full upgraded broodlord in 18 hits