See title. I usually uses rocket troopers as anti-air, but then something dawned on me: Sky Fury survives better, tanks for Intercessor/Witness/Pride, and levels quickly to 3 in P2 without needing to upgrade like Troopers. Too frequently I saw enemy came with multiple AoEs (storm, Reaver, etc) and Troopers just drop like flies, especially in maps like Void Launch where Amon would send ground army, killing off my Rocket Troopers quickly before they could shoot down the air units that come with the shuttles.
Of course, ideally I’d have a CD ready to intercept the waves, but I’d like to ponder the possibility of using Sky Fury instead of Rocket Troopers in P2, or at least be of support.
Sky Furies are good in void launch since shuttles are massive units which they do bonus damage against. They’re also good against sky protoss/terran or anything with a capital ship in it. I don’t really recommend them against zerg air though. I think lifted siege breakers, blackhammers, and shadows with immolation on auto-cast do better.
Edit: If you like to deathball I suggest not researching the bonus movespeed so they don’t speed off into their doom.
You can always use Blackhammers as well (all around pretty good AA from ground). Emperor’s Shadow’s Immolation is usually very under-used, but great against zerg flyers.
If your only choices were left as Sky Fury vs Rocket Troopers, then definitely (as P2) Sky Fury will help you out a lot more.
That said, your options are so plentiful that using PoA works too. You’ve already mentioned the Shock Division with Intercessor (but if those aren’t working for ya).
For starters, you should always get Weapon upgrades even if you don’t build a single Trooper as it affects Dogs of War.
Anti-air options:
Rocket Troopers: susceptible to splash and overkill as you are aware but good DPS. Better to build mixed machine gun/rocket trooper squads to avoid the overkill problem.
Blackhammer: pretty bad anti-air. Even against air I’d only ever build 1 except in exceptional circumstances.
Emperor’s Shadow: can be used to burn down light zerg waves which can be combined with a single Blackhammer and a Shock Division against light zerg air.
Emperor’s Shadows nukes: a single Shadow can rapid fire nukes to delete clumped up air waves. Getting 10 nuke silos is pretty good for this.
Shock Division: one of these does such massive splash and stuns that it’s a great option to build just 1 (and always have 2 Intercessors to heal your bio and pick up the Shock Division if needed)
Sky Fury: great against massive units and super hard to kill with conventional weapons. However, against Terran they will cop Yamatos and against Protoss Carriers you will have to manual target them to hit the Carriers and not the Interceptors. Every time they switch between ground and air (or vice versa) they get a massive damage boost so use this regularly.
Pride of Augustrad: mobile, wave deleting spellcaster. Terrible auto-attack. 3 of these is a great number to teleport around the map for wave deleting purposes. 1 is great for the aura. 2 is great if waves aren’t causing problems.
Dogs of War/Nuclear Annihilation: you get so much mandate you should try to keep both of these abilities on cooldown though usually it is better to use these to push objectives rather than delete waves.
Contaminated Strike: hitting waves with CS breaks the pathing and prevents them from ever attacking your base. Against air comps you can still build 10ish Earthsplitter Ordinances and keep them empty to have something to do with all the extra mandate.
Hwat?? Hyou must be kidding… especially if you’re okay using multiple Tactical Nukes as a comparative…
The amount of investment in SEs to use nukes… the micro… you are okay with that but BHs are bad I mean they aren’t superb but compared to SEs… they are a lot better at AA.
I mean, yes, each Blackhammer needs to be Siege and unsieged for each engagement and does very mediocre anti-air DPS against anything with any boosted Armour value.
In contrast you can run your 1 Shadow forward, activate Labrynthine Cloak, Rapid fire target all your nukes in front of the advancing wave and then run back to your army. Repeat when the nukes next come off cooldown (in the meantime use your other wave deleting tools).
They’re not that bad, they’re notable for being splash, and out of the 2 heavily armoured air units only the BC is an issue for them.
Plus you only need a few of them, again thanks to the splash, so it’s only a couple seige clicks for an engagement. Also they’ve got a rather silly powerful anti-ground attack as well.
What they are easily outdone on is relying on them for base anti-air, waves they’re not that hard to use. And, granted, there’s some mutators that hit them particularly hard.
Rockets, honestly. Sky Furies are way too frail, even with the 50% dodge chance and Phoenix Protocol. Rocket Troopers also have WAY more damage density and DPS than Sky Furies.
Right… this is much easier than pressing a button to siege up in a massive area…
As oppose to no need to wait and still have top bars, with Blackhammers.
I think you’re vastly over-estimating Shadows and under-estimating Blackhammers. Though this isn’t about either.
Sky Fury is where it is at on P2 for sure imo. [Yes, but between 2 super frail choices of Fury vs Rocket, Fury in P2 has more value… and it’s not like you can’t have both either, before we all get carried away xD]
But, like Sprite said, Sky Furies as sooo frail. They’re great for sniping objectives, and on VL, but I’d much rather roll with Tanks or Blackhammers for P2 AA otherwise.
Or Shadows versus mass Muta, they’re great there.
Mass Tankivac is SUCH a fun meme build, omfg. I love watching stuff like Tempests crumple over like wet paper bags because of it.
My AA of choice on P2 is Shadow/Hammer. EMP/Pyro Blast + Overwatch Mode can just murder entire air waves so fast. Easier than nuke micro, too, as you can take a defensive position.
Ever since Raynor stole the Hyperion, Mengsk made sure nothing would ever escape his air space again.
Btw, does that glitch still work with the Blackhammer? The one where you can put the siege button on rapid fire and create multiple siege zones? I’ll have to try that when I get home…
Sky Fury (+vs Massive, +hard to kill with normal attacks, -vulnerable to spell damage)
Blackhammer (+splash damage, +vs Light, -vs Armoured (-47% DPS vs BCs, -35% DPS vs Carrier/Tempest in OWM))
Want to particularly draw attention to the fact that Sky Fury have, I think, the highest DPS in the game against massive enemies while under transformation buffs @178.5 DPS vs Ground and 186.38 DPS vs Air. Closest competitors would be Sovereign BC at 130 DPS, Blackhammer (vs Ground) and Raid Liberator (vs Ground) at 102.5 DPS. When adjusting for supply the only thing that beats it is a non-P2 Sky Fury I assume?
As others have mentioned, Sky Fury dominates in Void Launch. So fun to mass them there, one of the only late game armies than can comfortably clear the skies without spawn camping.
I mean they aren’t superb but compared to SEs… they are a lot better at AA.