Why is it common to get ground armor upgrades before you upgrade shield?
Isn’t shield upgrade a much higher priority than ground armor?
Because, the extra 50/50 resource expotentially benefits more than ground armor, since if you get oracles, that will benefit it. If you have blink stalkers, retreating regenerates shield points, and shield is affected first then hit points. Cannons, buildings, and all army compositions benefit it.
Armor upgrades doesn’t benefit archons or immortals. Shield upgrade also helps conserve shield battery energy, since reduction of shield points means less energy required to regenerate shield. Like, I never actually get armor upgrades.
Why do most protoss players still focus on ground armor upgrade?
I’m not M or GM, but it’s because the units that do the most tanking have more health than armor (zealots, immortals) and health damage can’t be healed, where shield damage will be restored regardless of unit. The cost makes a bigger difference than you’d think, especially when it’s earlier in the game, and most units start with health armor by default, and since the increase in armor is always one per upgrade, you may as well buff the higher health pool’s, that can’t be repaired, armor that starts with default armor and is also cheaper. Shield armor is only really effective late game when other upgrades have been completed, or to improve the defense of your cannon/battery when going skytoss against zerg runbys earlier on.
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I agree with the user above me. I’m a master protoss. Other point being that most protoss units have initial ground armor. So take a marine that does 6 damage. Protoss with 1initial armor reduces marine damage by 1/6. After armor upgrade the marines do 4 damage each or a damage reduction of 33%! Highly critical in that aspect…plus everything he said about sheild regeneration etc remains true as well. Also keep in mind in most games going two tech paths is sometimes impossible unless you actually get a good macro game (most games seem to only last 10 minutes or so) which means while sheild does benefit air as well. Air is an entirely different tech tree so that your judgement. However…if you know your opponent wont rush (lmao…as if) and you know you going straight Archon/void ray/immortal or chargelots then sheild would do you better. (This scenario wont happen at high levels as they will never let you sit idol enough to comfort ability wanna skip the armor upgrade.
Hope it helps!