Roach/Hydra melee attacks usefull?

So i'm sure everyone knows that the Roach and Hydralisk have melee attacks. But I always assumed that it was just eye candy and had no practical value.

But then i noticed that the damage done by their melee attack is actually un-effected by the Sentry's Guardian shield (which reduces incoming ranged attacks by 2).
Something i never knew, and may be usefull sometime. No?

And the Hydra's melee attack will bypass the Raven's Point Defence Drone.
Yet the Roach and Hydra benifit from range attack upgrades regardless of if they are attacking with melee or ranged attacks.

.....Makes Zealot/Sentry alot weaker then it should be.

didnt know this... it can be useful sometimes but its def not a huge game changer.. the hydras and roaches have large surface area and how often do u see them surrounding their targets?

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Originally Posted by MajinX

didnt know this... it can be useful sometimes but its def not a huge game changer.. the hydras and roaches have large surface area and how often do u see them surrounding their targets?

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Probably not gonna happen very often. But maybe it'll happen more often now that we know?
I think they should use melee attack upgrades while attacking with melee. Makes sense, yeah?
That or Blizzard should patch it so they do the same damage regardless.

Anyways, here's a video showing how Hydra/Roach melee damage actually makes a difference:
(keep an eye on Zealot shields)
Attachment 1715

I don't think it will have that much use. . . Because you really rather want to be kiting the zealots but FF will prob corner you off anyways.

The only real use I can see for this is too maybe burrow/unburrow roaches underneath the zealots/sentry army and surround that way?

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Originally Posted by GGsmung

I don't think it will have that much use. . . Because you really rather want to be kiting the zealots but FF will prob corner you off anyways.

The only real use I can see for this is too maybe burrow/unburrow roaches underneath the zealots/sentry army and surround that way?

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A smart protoss player won't have a big percentage of zealots if you have roaches. It's more likely that he or she will have a stalker ball with some colossi or immortals. This is definitely helpful as the protoss player will try to use forcefields to split your army and make the ball engage your untis more efficiently. Going underneath the stalkers helps get better positioning for some early damage. I believe this is essential so that your army is fully engaged and this is a slight bonus of doing this.

Good find. +rep

Uhhhh....I thought everyone knew this. Especially toss and zerg players. Making roach/hydra melee attack depend on melee ups makes things a lot more complicated. Plus i would think most zergs don't want their roach hydra all the way up front trying to do melee damage. Hydras are pretty slow. Basically doing that means they're considering the hydras dead unless they kill everything. Plus imagine hydras running forward to melee attack marines to bypass PDD.....not a pretty sight.:P

Side note: Quick google search revealed a TL thread from like august. Hence my thought that everyone knew about this (especially P and Z).

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Originally Posted by Woland

A smart protoss player won't have a big percentage of zealots if you have roaches. It's more likely that he or she will have a stalker ball with some colossi or immortals. This is definitely helpful as the protoss player will try to use forcefields to split your army and make the ball engage your untis more efficiently. Going underneath the stalkers helps get better positioning for some early damage. I believe this is essential so that your army is fully engaged and this is a slight bonus of doing this.

Good find. +rep

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I was talking about early game, ex: when the protoss goes 3gate-expand he will be making lots of sentries and some zealots (he'll be using guardian shield, roaches will use their melee attack when they are unburrowed underneath them so guardian shield will be useless, what the thread was about). . . He won´t have colossi immortals and a stalker ball so early in the game and he prob will have a obs already if he's going robo.


And yes burrow is quite effictive vs FF as you can just burrow under them. . .

Only time I see it is when I see some Roaches or Hydralisks into some miners and they're close enough to melee. For the rest, like Zealots and such, I'm too busy focusing on the battle.

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Originally Posted by JackhammerIV

Uhhhh....I thought everyone knew this. Especially toss and zerg players. Making roach/hydra melee attack depend on melee ups makes things a lot more complicated. Plus i would think most zergs don't want their roach hydra all the way up front trying to do melee damage. Hydras are pretty slow. Basically doing that means they're considering the hydras dead unless they kill everything. Plus imagine hydras running forward to melee attack marines to bypass PDD.....not a pretty sight.:P

Side note: Quick google search revealed a TL thread from like august. Hence my thought that everyone knew about this (especially P and Z).

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I knew they had melee attack, I just thought it is considered as range, with just different animation.

I use it alot with roaches against another Zerg, its roaches are a great meat shield against a mass speedling with the hydras in the middle, but thats the only time i actually see my roaches go melee, unless im using 2 to block off a ramp from a early ling rush

i knew this from before but never consired any real effects of it, becuase i doubt there are any significant effects in real situations.

the idea of hdyras going melee as to not triger PDD's is beyond far fetched as they are so fragile units, and all it takes is a few hydras (or other ranged units) to be at non-melee range and teh PDD will do its work anyway.

as for roaches vs guardian shield, though roaches are much tougher than hydras, you still certainly prefer using their rage, espeicaly against zealots... even in situations where this happens to matter, lie in some sort of burrow ambush agaisnt stalker+sentry, the actual effect of guardian shiled not working isnt very significant in the roach case; 16 damage isntead of 14 ....

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Originally Posted by GGsmung

I was talking about early game, ex: when the protoss goes 3gate-expand he will be making lots of sentries and some zealots (he'll be using guardian shield, roaches will use their melee attack when they are unburrowed underneath them so guardian shield will be useless, what the thread was about). . . He won´t have colossi immortals and a stalker ball so early in the game and he prob will have a obs already if he's going robo.

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Yeah, this is really the situation i was thinking about (minus the burrow).
I've gone early zealot sentry vs. Roaches many times before (useing FF to force them to engage my Zealots). But now that i know that guardian shield does nothing in this situation i'll save my energy for more FFs.

Other then that I can't really see any of this being usefull except for extreme late game where everyone is out of minerals and every unit counts and melee damage vs PDD or GS might save the day.

wow, didn't know about a melee attack, I always thought the hydra just had different animation when in melee range!

Yeah, hydras would much rather run away from a PDD than into it, and the time it takes your hydras to run into enemy units, rather than firing, probably nullifies any advantage of the Guardian Shield, although hydras do shoot very quickly.

Nonetheless you have a great point with guardian shield, I never realized that that was the case, though I suppose it should be. I don't think melee upgrades should affect their melee attack, but it's cool that you can actually use the roach's melee attack strategically. I can just picture pros running their roach ball into the opponent's stalker/sentry to nullify Guardian Shield. Of course, there would still be plenty of forcefields around, so I don't think that's much of an issue.

Why this much fuss?

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Originally Posted by RamiZ

I knew they had melee attack, I just thought it is considered as range, with just different animation.

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This. It's just an eye-candy, AFAIK The attack keeps all the properties it has, it just changes to a melee animation.

Now if you ask me I would add more visual effects/eye-candy like this to SC2.
Like Adding the old SC1 stabbing animation to zealots attacks, but to make it interesting it would be for successful charges that hit a foe, that would make sense wouldn't it? Of course, the animation should be accompained by the classic Zealot grunt sound. (at 0:41)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGFYjqOw_as

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Originally Posted by Josue

Why this much fuss?

This. It's just an eye-candy, AFAIK The attack keeps all the properties it has, it just changes to a melee animation.

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It does one other thing. It changes the attack from being ranged to being melee. Which is what got everyone excited since two abilities PDD and guardian shield are for "ranged" attacks. And apparently very few of us actually knew this and that it meant melee animation roaches didn't get a damage reduction from guardian shield.

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Originally Posted by Josue

Why this much fuss?


This. It's just an eye-candy, AFAIK The attack keeps all the properties it has, it just changes to a melee animation.

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Did you read the thread? It doesn't just keep its properties. It actually counts as a melee attack....except it uses range upgrades.
It's NOT just a change in animation which apparently Blizzard said it would just be.

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Originally Posted by Carsickness

Did you read the thread? It doesn't just keep its properties. It actually counts as a melee attack....except it uses range upgrades.
It's NOT just a change in animation which apparently Blizzard said it would just be.

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Sorry I didn't pay too much attention... so is it confirmed? but.... then it's a bug! they said it should be just a change in the animation nothing else! This should be reported!

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Originally Posted by Josue

Sorry I didn't pay too much attention... so is it confirmed? but.... then it's a bug! they said it should be just a change in the animation nothing else! This should be reported!

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Uhhhh you really need to read the whole thread. Like i mentioned before. This was all in a TL thread back in August. Someone would have reported the bug at around the same time. It doesn't change a whole lot. Zergs always have a habit of moving their units forward as they shoot anyways if they can. Plus they always try to focus down stalkers, sentries, immortals and colossus first before dealing with any zealots. Plus moving roaches or hydras close enough to try to exploit this "bug" would end up sacrificing a lot of units only for the front lines to have their attack changed from ranged to melee. Then they'd need to step forward again if enemy units are not in melee range.

So overall this doesn't really change much unless you have like roach speed, engage on creep and purposely rush in just to surround enemy units with roaches. Zergs were already using burrow and burrow move roaches to pop up right under enemy units anyways. It's not like knowing this zergs will get the bright idea of trying to surround a sentry, stalker, colossus ball with roaches to use melee attack animation. Considering the roach range forcefields work better by just stopping most of them from attacking.

Hydras with PDD was mentioned already before.:P

In big battles, it gives your front row of hydra/roach just that little bit more dmg.... better than nothing, but not very significant.

In small battles, you would rather be kiting the zealots than going into melee range. Burrowing and popping up under a pure stalker army isn't gonna make much difference coz they will just blink and kite as best as they can.

So all in all, not an ability that you can actually utilize. Its just cute to have.