Ultras Redesign

General Discussion
1

So i was thinking, the new Ultras while better gameplay wise. Smaller as they are, they dont feel strong and potent anymore … if you play COOP or Campaign you will see Ultras that look way more formidable.

Yet i also think the Ultra being the last tech unit, it basically feels underwhelming… Nothing like it does in the campaign, or cinematics. So i propose this changes…

Current Ultra

500 HP
2 Base armor
35 Damage + 3
275/250
90% size of what it used to be.
6 food
2 upgrades
Carapace +2, speed on creep.

New Ultra

3 base armor
38 Damage (so, even an unupgraded ultra, ALWAYS one shot zerglings)
625 HP
120% of size instead of 90% (this way mass spamming ultras is not efficient)
8 food !
350/300 cost
3 upgrades.
+2 armor, remove speed on creep upgrade, and add this two.

Manueverable Legs (come with a better name) 150/150 - 60s.

Allows the Ultra to walk pass zerglings/banelings (basically allow Zerglings/Banelings to pass underneath, similar to the colossus, but only apply to Zergling/Banelings)

Torrasque Strain

200/200 - 60s

Allows the Ultralisk to spend 250/200 - 9s to form a coccon and regenerate. (basically works like the campaign, BUT instead of being free, it is a toggle on/off, where if its active the ultras goes into the coccon instead of dying and is readily deployable. Cant reallly abuse it with such high price.

This new Ultra would be a force to be recon with but would have a more specifical role of being kind of the heavy cavalry of sort. You cant really throw them away but makes them more manueverable and also smaller numbers. You cant really spam them as their increased size and cost makes them not really cost efficient while assaulting bases and stuff. The torrasque strain basically only good against ghosts snipe spamming (also you can kill the coccon)

What do you guys think ?

Coccon HP 250 hp 5 armor (no melee defense upgrades or chitinous)

EDIT

Seeing That Zerg have problems against turtling Terran to finish the game, as the air assault sucks (broodlords), this new ultras would help way more, But increase cost further to 400/350 (BC Cost), and the Coccon to 300/200. This way it helps up to “finish games” and 1 or 2 should suffice in the middle game, specifically to counter stuff like Mass marines bursting your baneling nest or mass zealots or whatever. The coccon is there for a mass cheaper resuply against mass snipes to “finish it off”

2

No.

The Walk over units should just allow them to push through units. That’s a simple fix in the editor by increasing their push-pathing priority, and should just be included in the base version of the Ultra.

The rest of it is completely unnecessary, and frankly adding torasques to the game would be one of the most busted things in the game.

3

Torrasque is free…

This vertion costs 250/200 to get on coccon. Almost the same as full price. And if coccon gets killed. You lose the resources

Also its 8 food ! As for the stats…

Is a 625 hp ultra instead of 500 stronger than say 1 Ultra + 2 zerglings + 2 banes ? I dont think so…

4

When that ultra has 8 total armour it absolutely is, especially since it has 125 more HP and each attack is AOE. Not to mention as is, Ultras also get ultra speed meaning kiting is significantly less effective. On-creep speed wasn’t changed when it got the speed upgrade it currently has; it was off-creep speed that changed, and you haven’t changed that in your OP.

It completely invalidates every protoss ground unit not named the immortal or disruptor (which they already counter pretty well), and that’s not even considering the Terran units.

Are you saying each cocoon costs this much to revive it? Or for the upgrade to allow that? It’s not clear at all. The latter is definitely too strong, and the former might be feasible with a long hatch time and a significant cool-down to ensure that the unit can’t just be repeatedly placed into a cocoon before it dies.

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5

Yes, each coccon cost that to revive… DO you remember the Overmind talked about requiring energy to regenerate the cerebrates? This costing resources to bring the ultras back is fine.

8 armor is fine, its 7 armor right now… They would cost 8 food after all, and 8 armor is max upgrades… (some units like zerglings would still do 1 damage like they do now)

But now you’d need proper counters like Marauders.

Versus terran i think they’d be even weaker in some situations as ghosts would kill higher cost units

6

Ok i’d be willing to go work with that … but the cooldown is it necessary ? 250/200 each coccon seems like already quite the price …

7

I said, remove the ultra speed upgrade. So they are more tanky and a bit slower. Also the size increase makes them less spammable.

Also 350/300 8 food do seem like quite the investment for me …

8

No, what you said was this:

On creep not off creep. The ultra speed upgrade is for off creep specifically.

Yes, the Cool-down is necessary despite the price, because the cocoon can otherwise be spamable - this is a bad thing because then they literally become unkillable if you have a big enough bank and units never should be unkillable even despite the cost.

BCs have the same issue of being unkillable because they can TP away and mass repair, but that’s a whole other design issue that shouldn’t have been implemented into the game either.

Zerglings and marines both would do 0.5 damage to ultras. It was an issue back in early LotV because they had 8 armour back then - You’re drastically changing how much damage a large amount of units are doing to the Ultra by adding this additional armour point.

Assuming max upgrades, just as an example: Zealots, for instance, would do 6 damage (3 per attack) instead of 8 damage (4 per attack). Colossus would do 10 damage (5 per attack) instead of 12 damage. Literally anything that has low damage high attack-speed would be significantly impacted by the change, and anything that has 2 attacks would be doubly impacted by the change.

The numbers don’t seem that big, I know, but consider that the additional damage they lose would drastically increase the amount of hits they need to kill the unit - especially with an additional 150 HP on top of that!

Just to give you an idea of how much this would change - right now, a colossus needs, at maximum upgrades, about 42 hits, give or take, to kill an ultralisk with 500 HP. This goes up to 50 hits just by adding 1 point of armour, which is a huge increase in damage loss, and that’s without changing its HP.

If we kept the armour values and just added the HP, colossus at 12 damage would take roughly 55 hits to kill an ultralisk - assuming it didn’t get to cocoon like you suggested. But with 8 armour that’s suddenly 65 hits, a full 10 more attacks it needs to do to kill it.

You still need proper counters now! They would absolutely be stronger than they were before.

You would need 1 additional successful snipe to kill it - ultras require 4 snipes right now, and that would go to 5 with the extra HP.

It also begs the question whether morphing into the cocoon grants the cocoon full HP before the ultra is reborn as well - Zerglings to banes, Roaches to ravagers and Hydras to Lurkers all do not go to full HP until they hatch; the cocoon gives a certain armour value, but doesn’t give additional HP.

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9

How about make ultra 3 times size only made one can transport units that can also attack from it.

10

I said the coccon hp would be 250 hp with 5 armor.

The extra point of armor i know is on purpose, but in fact Marines should not be killing or even attacking ultras. And with the 8 food (and increased cost), its obviously less spammable…

i added 125 hp not 150, also the cost is 75/50 more, thats a full roach.

Is my new ultra much stronger than 1 ultra + 1 roach ? if they’d go 1 vs 2. I bet the roach + ultra would win …

I play zerg and i swear i thought it was ON creep… always read it on creep, and was just getting it "because, why not ? "

11

Zerglings, there is no balance concern, its mirror match… And Zerglings have 0 place standing up to ultras … like seriously, its like putting a Rhyno vs some Wild Dogs …

Marines would do 1 damage, not 0.5… Max upgrade Marines do 9 damage …, Marauders would do 18 damage ! Thors would do 62 damage instead of 64 …

Zealots vs ultras is already really bad …

12

They do not. They do 8 damage. 5 base damage + 1 per upgrade for a total of +3 = 8 damage.

That doesn’t answer the question at hand. The cocoon has its own HP, as does the cocoon for every zerg unit that morphs into another one. However, when you morph from one unit to another, the cocoon retains the health that the original unit has until it hatches, upon which it regains full HP. This is why I asked the question. If the Ultra goes into the cocoon and the cocoon has a full 250 HP when the ultra had say 4 hp for example, then there is no counter-play, especially when you consider that kiting actively takes you away from your target.

Circumstantial at best since that would be dependent on micro. If the roach is in melee range next to the other ultra, then yes, the new ultra would win because it does AOE damage and would kill the roach before any real meaningful damage could be done. With micro? Maybe not, but even then I cant be sure.

Thors have 2 attacks. Each does 30 damage. This means you are losing 16 damage or up to a quarter of the damage you would be doing. The question was never about thors though.

Entirely irrelevant, and also wrong. If you are in the middle of a transitional period, or need sufficient anti air, marines are still necessary as part of your composition. Even aside from that if youre transitioning into something else youre still making marines while those transitions happen. None of that is irrelevant, and all of it bears consideration.

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13

‘h**ps://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Marine_(Legacy_of_the_Void)’

They do 6 base damage

14

I stand corrected and I apologise; I’m legitimately surprised.

15

its ok, i just discovered after playing Zerg for quite a while that the ultras speed upgrade is OFF creep … thought it was ON creep (always got it because why not ?)

16

I played a game vs an ex pro player called Kawiian and it ended up being cast by pig. Pig was very upset that I went ultra speed instead of ultra armor and said the armor is the better choice. Whether it’s the better choice depends on if the terran is paying attention. If you have speed ultras off creep, you can take fights off creep and catch the terran in a move-command on his army. It didn’t work out that way that game, but frequently works. It also gives you more maneuverability in base trade scenarios, which was highly relevant that game. Basically the terran expects you to hug the creep, so with Ferrari ultras you can take fights in spots where he won’t be anticipating it.

Ergo, if you want speed or armor depends on if you want to be playing defense or offense, and that’s all it really boils down to in a nutshell.

17

i dunno, i’d almost always prioritize chitinous plating tho, even knowing the speed benefit is off creep …

18

What is armor supposed to accomplish in a base trade scenario? Movement speed affects both your ability to chase down buildings and to fight the army in a base trade scenario. Armor is useless in chasing down buildings, provides no benefit in surprise attacks (compared to a normal attack), and has no evasion benefits. It’s also substantially weaker off creep, which is a likely outcome in a base trade. The primary threat to ultras is liberators, and liberators do high base damage, meaning they counter armored units. The ability to evade liberation zones is worth far more than armor if there are liberators.

You can tell pig isn’t used to winning in wonky scenarios because he says nonsensical things like get armor on the ultras when it’s clear the speed upgrade is the right call. I have a 71% winrate in zvt this season, doing these wonky builds, but the casters will pick the one where you happen to lose and criticize every “mistake” when in reality they are viewing the game in a vacuum and really don’t knkw what they are talking about. This one is particularly bad because the goal of the game was to win with ONLY ultras – no spire.

Pigs a great caster but one of the pet peeves I have is that he criticizes players for doing the ““wrong”” thing, when in reality the situation is more complex and nuanced than he realizes. He does this a lot with Dark in particular. He is always saying Darks builds are inefficient or whatever. To some extent, it’s just you can’t do a really a complete analysis in a live game cast just due to time constraints. So really it’s the media format that’s at fault here. Generally, he’s an excellent caster with great insights. Frankly it’s a bit of a back handed compliment that he wasn’t able to figure out the best way to in win those scenarios.

19

Liba are the counter to Ultras because armor negates marines. Without it. Marines are also a counter

20

If you put that into a unit tester you’ll find its wrong. At GM level it is extremely rare for marines to beat ultras. On my stream I frequently beat 2/2 marines with 2/0 ultras. That scenario comes about as a result of a 2 base ultra rush.

Another advantage of speed is that you can force stims and then disengage, which is another non existent advantage for armor. Basically the armor assumes the opponent is going to take a bad fight. In reality they turtle & refuse to take fights unless they are good fights. Without armor he is more willing to engage but you have the power to back off and that means wasted stims. Stims and base trades become a failure condition for him because he is willing to fight the low armor ultras.

Here is what happens if you get armor. He turtles and mines the map out slowly until he has 15 liberators and 20 ghosts. At that point you could throw 500 supply of ultras at him and it would melt like butter. If you make him think he can attack, he will attack. That means he gives up his greatest tool: his defender’s advantage.