Upgrading armor vs. weapons first?

[Todie]

you are making too big unbased generalisations tear:

its all sitautional: low tier units will not benefit much from armor upgrades in the face of ani mass units such as colossi, ST's or banelings - its really the oposite, as they are so fragile to those thigsn (+aoe spells) regardless of armor - tehrefor its often better to have attack ups on them, to let them deal significant damge before whiped out.

secondly, your detail-examples are partialyl plain wrong: a zealot deals 8 dmg +1 per upgrade, x2 .. that means armor counts twice, meaning armor ugprades for the zealots oponent is exactly of equal value as the zealots attack 'grade.. further, presume zealot vs roach where the roach gets benefit of one attack 'grade or one armor 'grade. 18 damage per attack or reducing zealots damage from 8-2x2 to 8-3 x2 ... this is by no means an obvious call, it may even favour armor, considering that would bye roaches some time to micro (move away or burrow) when running low on HP.

[Perfecttear]

You can skip the zealot,armor aplies per attack,and zealots get 1 damage per attack(2 attacks)...

Yeah but you need to have both level 3 shields and level 3 ground armor to compensate the level 3 weapon upgrade, which is not very likely or eficient

[Rogueleader89]

Faction definitely plays into this as well... with zerg, armor seems to be a generally better choice early on as it effects all of their ground units (while your weapon choice only effects ~half) and most of your units have short or melee range until higher tiers so you aren't as likely to get extra use out of weapon upgrades when your opponent is approaching/retreating, terran i would go with weapons since, as others have mentioned, early game at least they have a lot of smaller damage dealers and upgrading the weapon on all of your marines/marauders is certainly going to mean more than upgrading armor (especially considering that they are all ranged units and thus are likely to get hit less than they fire since they will fire at approaching and fleeing units, same applies to tanks though armor could be better for thors). Protoss really could go either way, but, at least in sc1, i go weapons first due to zlots 2 hitting lings then and possibilities of goon micro (presumably the zlot thing is similar in sc2 looking at stats), though i suppose ideally shields would actually be the best upgrade since they effect everything (though sc1 shields didn't seem nearly as improved as weapons or armor and certainly cost more so there was reason against it, no idea how that works in sc2).

As to which to go first.. probably weapons on all but zerg since weapons will help every t1/1.5 unit you have with terran and toss while armor will help every unit you have at that time with zerg (since with weapons you'd have to pick between improving ling or roach).

Wow typed a lot more than i thought i would.... so in short, yeah its situational, but faction plays into it as well.

[warrior6]

it depends on the unit. i dont have the beta so im gonna go by broodwar. look at the siege tank for example you could up its armor by +1 or you could up its damage by +5. seems like a no brainer which is better

[Perfecttear]

you are making too big unbased generalisations tear:

its all sitautional: low tier units will not benefit much from armor upgrades in the face of ani mass units such as colossi, ST's or banelings - its really the oposite, as they are so fragile to those thigsn (+aoe spells) regardless of armor - tehrefor its often better to have attack ups on them, to let them deal significant damge before whiped out.

Yeah i said that armor upgrades are only usefull early game and in timing atacks. They are almost useless lategame compared to damage ones as you even stated

Why would you want to invest in geting an +1 armor when you can get +2 damage or more in most cases.

I only upgrade armor upgrades when i alredy upgraded the damage ones, and it's far more cheaper to upgrade armor ones. ( tier 3 upgrades cost almost twice as much as tier 1) As a terran when playing bio i upgrade tier 1 and tier 2 damage upgrades first and only then i usuly research tier 1 armor, since it takes some time before you have acess to tier 3 upgrades

[rdragon87]

Weapons! DPS faster. Or at least that's my logic, probably not the soundest.

[ManjiSanji]

To me, I would think, at least for earlier on (which games don't seem to last too incredibly long, from all the replays I've seen), armor keeps a unit alive longer, which might allow them to get a few extra attacks out. A Zergling that can attack 2 extra times is more worthwhile than a a weapon upgrade that increases their damage from 5 attacks by +1.

It really is hugely situational, though. My thought is early on, melee units would gain more total damage benefit from living longer, and ranged units would benefit from the attack bonus more.

[Bisso]

Im not as mathematicly oriented as the others but here's my opinion:

I always go with casters, especialy with protoss, sentry and HT. And it always starts with some Zealots so I tend to go more with Armor (shield first of course) at start. Zealot benefit from shield armor upgrade in starting games against other tier 1 units. So I just go with this. IMO

[Perfecttear]

To me, I would think, at least for earlier on (which games don't seem to last too incredibly long, from all the replays I've seen), armor keeps a unit alive longer, which might allow them to get a few extra attacks out. A Zergling that can attack 2 extra times is more worthwhile than a a weapon upgrade that increases their damage from 5 attacks by +1.

Not realy. A +1 weapon upgrade is much bether choice for zerglings that an armor upgrade , zerglings are dps units. A zergling that can kill his target in 3-4 atacks faster is more worthwile than an armor upgrade that increases it's armor by 1. Zerglings die by 2-3 atacks to most units, regardless of their armor. And if you kill your enemy faster he does less damage in return to you. (see what i did here )

An +1 armor upgrade would only pay of more for zerglings compared to an damage one if you would be atacking workers only, who also have only 5 damage. And only in that case the upgrades would be comparable, since an +1 damage upgrade would increase their dps by 20% and and an +1 armor upgrade would decrease the damage taken by 20%.

[Todie]

again: in ling vs zealot, not lagging behind in armor compared to protoss attack 'grades is important, else they'll kill you in 2 hits instead of 3