I find them versatile and use them all the time regardless of composition. Is it wise or no?
They are OK. A little bit hard to use, but if you have micro to spare they’re doing their job pretty good.
Blackhammers:
A single Blackhammer is great in any ground army for the +5 Armour buff (the buff doesn’t affect air). I find the anti air capability lacking compared to other options available.
Emperor’s Shadow:
Good as long as you have something in front that can tank - either a lot of troopers and/or Aegis Guard.
They are awesome. Obviously it’s working for you fine, so it’s a great idea.
They’re both great support units but imo the blackhammer seems underpowered.
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There’s a really great series of reviews that you can find if you google Mengsk Royal Guard review that summarises well the strengths and weaknesses and definitely taught me a few pointers about effective use. All that I would say about the series is that perhaps Sky Furies are better than credited if used correctly.
Thx for the info. The review is two years old, had it been adapted to patch changes such as Prestige?
That said, he wrote them wonderfully.
I did a mono build with them once. using like 80+ ghost academies to enable mass missile spam. not really a super effective idea but still fun.
Using 2 is even better since they can also benefit from the buff if another is nearby, IIRC.
edit: My bad, they do not.
Emperor’s shadows are definitely useful, but Blackhammers not so much. Whenever I used them in the past, they would get swarmed by smaller units like zerglings, wrecked by anti-armor, or Yamato’ed to oblivion. Top that all off with a sluggish movement speed and you have a massive waste of vespene gas.
It’s probably the second-worst royal guard, behind the viking.
Kind of the point of Blackhammers are that they make “smaller units” irrelevant. Blackhammers themselves have 3-6 Armour depending on rank and are normally slow enough that they stay behind your army and give your troopers such a big Armour boost that tier 1 unit damage should be reduced to just a tickle.
How many zerglings can a flame trooper with 6 Armour kill? Answer: a lot.
Could be worth doing Armour upgrades for troopers - Flame Troopers take double damage from zerglings with full Weapon upgrades with 0 Armour upgrades compared to 1.
A pair of rank 3 Blackhammers with 11 Armour and 1050 HP should be a veritable wall against anything except Yamato’s. Against Yamato’s you can try some Intercessor micro as they can still tank 4 shots?
Just read the Blackhammer review and 2 things I notice:
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The writer references +3 Armour aura while in game it is +5 making it even more worthwhile.
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The writer says that blackhammers can’t benefit from the aura which is something that I haven’t tested whether having 2 blackhammers allows them to give eachother the aura.
I gave them a try again, and yeah I didn’t realize that their +5 armour was actually kinda useful. My mistake was trying to mass them. But I still think they’re the second-worst royal guard.
The +3 was before buff, the buff also extended range (used to be 3 radius, basically just right around them since it’s from center of hitbox, now 5). I don’t believe they provide the buff to each other, though I haven’t tested the new version, old version they couldn’t get close enough together.
I’d say that they’re the worst RG unit personally but RG units as a whole are amazing and include some of the best units in COOP.
Sky Furies are amazing on Void Launch for instance, no other RG need be built.
1 Blackhammer should be a given on any composition that includes Troopers and I often even build it as my second type of Royal Guard (after Aegis Guard obviously).
So… is it worthwhile to build 2~4 academy for nukes? Given the chance, I’d have 4~8 Earthsplitter for their CD, but do I need Contaminated Strike for crowd control when I can mass nuke with Shadow?
I think the answer is that if you’re on Brutal or below then it doesn’t matter, it’s not that hard.
If you’re on B+ or above then it’s map specific, this conversation prompted me to play Mengsk P2 in a game as I hadn’t played it for a while and I didn’t build either ESOs or Shadows but that just seemed to suit me on that map against a particular composition, wasn’t even necessarily the best but it got us through so doesn’t matter?
I definitely think I need to practise some mass nuke micro though to see of I can get the value out of it >>
BHammer is an always must for me because the +armor aura is just too good. I feel shadows are good vs. protoss or zerg because of their immolate and EMP.
Blackhammners makes Aigis Guards get 9 whooping armor so they are very much worth it
Emperor Shadows, just like High Templars, counters most stuff that otherwise would kill your troopers in most inhumane ways.
Killing Vipers/Ravens/High Templars, stunning Reavers, Siege Tanks, Battlecruisers, you can deny a whole lot with just 1 emp.
Blackhammer and Shadows are always good. Blackhammer providing additional armor to your ground units, plus having a very good anti-air attack when sieged gives them a solid role.
Shadows are excellent against every composition in the game, just because of the Immolation and EMP. Immolation can tear through biological units, whereas EMP can murder anything with Energy, deplete Shields, and even stun Mechanical units. They’re exceptionally good vs things like Battlecruisers and Hybrid Dominators.