Units that sucked!

Valks have a long ass cooldown.  If what it looked like on paper was definitive, then infested terrans wouldn't suck.

In the duration of a valk's cooldown, a stimpacked marine can shoot at least 8 times, 9 times if they fired their first shots together.  That's the same 48 damage if we count 8 shots, but this is only per marine.  It's true that the valks missiles do splash damage while the marine does not, but with valk's 3 food, we'd be talking about 3 marines but with 100 minerals and 125 gas to spare.  That's 144~162 damage before the valk gets off a second round.  The splash portion of a valk's damage also suffers a much greater impact from armor damage mitigation.

A valk is also only good against lone muta swarms, a Zerg can easily evolve some into devourers.  Valk's cooldown of 64 is already very long, but it gets ridiculous after a Zerg send in some devourers before mutas.  At max of 9 spores, valk cooldown is 136, not to mention they'll fall easily to mutas and hydras after that.

Valk's really aren't that great.  Corsairs and devourers are much better.

 

I have to agree with Remy now, he's just got so much logic, damnit! I actually wouldn't be surprised if Valks were left out this time. Devourers too, I myself never use them, but that's maybe cause I never play Zerg on Island maps.

 

yeah more people should realise about valk's crappiness. come to think of it it is used less than scouts and are worse o.0 you cant humiliate people with valkyries =(

we need more experts to blurt out info for pros to consider

 

valks rape all air except carriers and battlecruisers.
48 damage base
72 damage after attack upgrade
It does not suck.

 

war wise the drone, scv, and probe are all sucky sucky.....all about SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!

 

except that they are key to you being able to win. And you build a lot of them. And it's the first thing you get.

 

you wouldnt believe this mate.....but they are one of the most useful combatants in games if you know how to use them....ironically.....
(for people who follow MSL/OSL etc etc yes i know it's obvious they're good, but this guy doesnt realise. or does he!?)

i dont know what to think of valks anymore tbh......they are useful but then they arent but then they are....tbh they do suck when singled out from the main army, especially if there are less than 3. microing against valks are so damn easy. and even though their stall sucks you gotta love how once they aim they MUST land 8 missiles. you cant flee your mutas from them like fleeing corsairs ^_^

 

War wise nothing. You need resources to fight a war.

 

You seem to be basing this on a whether an enemy will invest exclusively on air units, if that is the case, then the Valkyrie will prove to be useful. But once you dominate the skies, what then? Your opponent won't bother to waste resources on aerial units and may stick to ground (This varies on the map but not a lot of people play island maps now.) You'll have invested resources in things that will perform once or twice in the entire game! And that's what sucks about the Valkyrie.

SCVs, Probes, and Drones are actually useful in early game scouting and defense, they make great walls

 

If the enemy will no longer waste resource on air units because you have valkyries then they are doing a job for the whole game. That job is limiting the units that your opponent gets. Why do you think Russia and the US got so many nukes during the cold war? So that the other country would not use nukes against them.
And I don't get valkyries unless I've scouted and seen that they are going air. Also, I rely on siege tanks and goliaths for the base pounding and these can also deal with whatever ground they would send.

 

Terran can't afford to have a significant part of their unit supply pool tied up in something that they have no direct use for in a particular game.

Zerg can get a large number of mutas and just evolve some devourers when the need arises.  Protoss can get corsairs for their general goodness, and at least use web when there's no air around.

When going heavily into air, for every additional muta Zerg gets you can guarantee that you'll be able to put them to good use.  For every additional valkyrie that Terran gets, it just mean more and more risk and liability.  A Zerg can afford to keep getting more mutas with devourers around to overwhelm the valks, but a Terran can't keep getting more valks just to win the air war.

Terran more than any other race will always need a significant portion of their supply pool dedicated to ground troops in most cases.  And how Terran ground army works, you need to get a lot of different units to be effective.

How high a unit's base damage is doesn't tell you how useful they are.  You have to consider how a unit effects the whole picture, how they impact their race specifically as a whole, to judge their worth.

Looking at just the one part of the stats that can serve to impress is rather pointless.  If you take valk cooldown into account, a corsair does 40 explosive splash damage in the same amount of time.  Sure, it's 8 damage less than a valk, but a corsair is also only 2 food, has the web ability, is a medium unit taking less damage than a valk in most cases, and is just generally more versatile.  The valk is also one of the least maneuverable air units.

Since you want to linger on the valk's "huge" 48 damage, let me help you put everything in perspective.  Valks and corsairs deal explosive damage, only mutas deal normal.  But Valks are large, corsairs are medium, and mutas are small units.  If you take that into account, valks no longer do the 48 damage they have on paper like they're supposed to against targets they were designed to kill, they never did.

Valkyries attacking corsairs(medium) would only do 75% damage, which is only 36 if we calculate based on 48.  But this isn't accurate because it applies to each individual missile and not the entire round of fire as a whole.  I don't remeber if SC round 0.5 up or down, but depending on which, it will be 32 or 40 before armor.  Valks hitting mutas will do even less, it will be 24 per round of fire, and this is accurate because at base damage there will be no decimal values or additional armor calc.

Corsairs still hit valks for full damage, so the 40 splash per round of valk fire stands.  Corsairs also do half damage against mutas.

Mutas do less damage, but mutas aren't in the same class as valks and corsairs.  A Zerg would get devourers in on them before using mutas.  Even at base damage before upgrades, a muta will deal 80 damage at maximum potential in the time a valk attacks once.

Like I said, valks sucked like hell.

 

Okay. If you're terran and someone gets a mass of mutalisks what would you get? I get valkyries and I've never had a problem with them not being able to completely devastate the mutalisks.

 

thank you for supporting what I thought was obvious. I never new the figures, but i did know that when i build 12 valks I expected them to do some damage, and when they don't the only conclusion is that they suck. subjectively they also look gay.

I personally would rather have had wraiths be the unit with a little more defense and maybe a second set of rockets that was for air only.

yeah devourers suck as well. they are good against sairs i guess, but if i want to take down some battlecruisers, i'm thinking defiler or scourge. clearly evolution is flawed. it comes down to mass and you can't mass devourers, jut too expensive when you can go other zerg strats for a lot cheaper.

this leads me to the conclusion of what's so great about starcraft. we can complain about a units merits, but the fact that it has weaknesses leads us to other more creative strategies that make the game more interesting. maybe it's all for the best.

 

Devourers don't suck... they are support units, they reduce the armor of the target with its attack or something like that.
Valkyries are also support units. You are trying to make them main units which is not what they are.

 

what isn't a support unit, but then there is a cost associated with these support units and the return on investment isn't justified in my opinion.

 

They not only reduce armor, they decrease attack rate. The two things a unit will have to gain an advantage over another are most often superior HP/armor, and superior attack: the Devourer reduces both of those, making Mutalisks do Scout-like damage, while the enemies end up firing as if they were Siege Tanks (except without the splash!).

 

Let me clear up on the properties of devourer's acid spore attack.

Devourer acid spores don't actually decrease armor, they increase the damage received by the target to be exact. Usually this kinda mean the same thing but not in the case of mutas, but in any case there are some minor differences, although not in calculation.

When devourers attack, aside from the basic 25 explosive damage that devourers do, each attack also attaches one acid spore on the target. The spores are applied in a splash radius even though the actual damage is single target only. This makes the devourers attacks highly effective even though they have a huge cooldown of 100.

For each acid spore that is attached to a target, any and all attacks received by the target is increased by 1, each target can have a maximum of 9 spores attached on them. This means that the damage of all three bounces of any muta's attack will be jacked up considerably even though the last two bounces are often made useless by armor in many cases. This of course isn't limited to mutas, it benefits from hydras, corsair splash, archon splash, you name it.

The secondary effect of devourer acid spores is that it will slow the attack rate of the target. To be exact, each acid spore attached to the target increases the attack cooldown by 1/8 of the original value. This is just generally a good thing in itself, but as you can see the value is calculated based on the effected target's original cooldown value. This means then, the longer the cooldown a target has to begin with, the greater the adverse effect. Units that have a long cooldown, like valkyries(64) or other devourers(100), will increase the slowing effect of every spore. Each spore increases a valk's cooldown by 8 and a devourer's cooldown by 12.5, but a fast attacking unit like corsair will only have each spore increase its cooldown by 1.

The attack cooldown increase is really just a bonus effect, gravy on top if you will. The damage increase on the effected targets alone will ensure a quick mop up of anything when you bring any other units in to attack them. Even though carriers have no direct attack(thus, no cooldown) themselves, devourers will still be very effective in taking them down just from the damage increase effect.

Every four devourers focus firing on a target is also an instant 100 damage, but this is just another bonus. All in all, devourers are extremely effective anti-air units, this is only slightly offset by their somewhat high cost. But all things considered, tech and cost, devourers fit nicely into a Zerg's game.

 

Good explanation. Think they will be back?

I really think the expansion units have a high chance of coming back because they were around for less time.
They were made to correct a deficiency in each race and unless another unit is made to correct that deficiency, it would not make sense to get rid of any expansion unit.

 

Corsairs are already gone. I think valks will be gone too unless they are revamped/tweaked. Dark archons also sucked. Medics didn't really suck but they had crappy abilities other than heal that weren't even worth researching, they need improvement.

The only BW expansion units that I personally believe to be worth keeping unchanged are corsair, DT, goliath(AA upgrade), devourer, and lurker. But even corsair is already replaced by the phoenix(although this is arguably because of scout) so we'll just have to wait and see about the others.

I have no reason to believe that devourers will not return though. I think other than the ones I pointed out, the rest of the Zerg units didn't suck.