Can there really be "meatshields" in SC2?

[Andrew]

lol I thought u ment meat shield as in you take a marine or something hostage and force them to take damage until it dies lol XD

[Norfindel]

What made people want to shoot ultralisks in Brood Wars rather than the zerglings who dealt the real damage?

That's the point, you won't. Ultralisks made pityfull damage next to the mob of Zerglings, but how do you tell your units to attack the Zerglings? You can't, so it's a meatshield. I bet that units, unless attacked first by another unit, target the unit with the highest attack within range first. Thanks to retard pathing, sometimes melee units will completely ignore the Zerglings even if they completely surround the Ultralisk (thus, no path to attack him).

[GnaReffotsirk]

My thoughts on a meat shield is something that can take long periods of damage, but deal a less damage during that period. They soak up damage, but cannot do damage much.

In sc2, I can see a CC dying to 8-10 marauders in a few seconds. 4 dts eat up a hatchery in a blink.

And it feels like browder wants players to lose an army's total damage by forcing focus fire on high-HP, high damage dealing units (like the thor) or suffer the consequence.

I favor not this route, since there's a huge tendency of certain units reaching critical mass.

[PraetorKoronis]

That's the point, you won't. Ultralisks made pityfull damage next to the mob of Zerglings, but how do you tell your units to attack the Zerglings? You can't, so it's a meatshield. I bet that units, unless attacked first by another unit, target the unit with the highest attack within range first. Thanks to retard pathing, sometimes melee units will completely ignore the Zerglings even if they completely surround the Ultralisk (thus, no path to attack him).

This isn't exactly true...you can simply NOT select the ultralisk?

Micro your marines back and then open fire--some lings will be hit and killed easily.

This micro maneuver should also draw LINGS up, rather than ultralisks, because lings move much faster. Indeed, if both speed upgrades are finished, the lings will definitely chase the marines faster and thus the meatshield has been effectively cast to the side.

[unentschieden]

"Tanks" don´t exist in SC like they do in MMORPGs since the opposition is sentient and there is no independent "aggro" system. What exists however is bad matchups of units. High HP don´t neccesserly mean high survivability, it means however that certain matchups go into your favour, just like being lot´s of units with little HP.

The Ultras issue isn´t that it´s a Tank in a world where Tanking doesn´t work but it´s a High-Techunit whose counters are lower Tech. Marauders and Sentrys are on the field before Ultras are even available.

[Pandonetho]

That's the point, you won't. Ultralisks made pityfull damage next to the mob of Zerglings,

And also 2 shot killed marines. Yeah, that's definitely pitiful compared to a Zergling mob of Zerglings, but not pitiful all in the actual sense of the word.

Micro your marines back and then open fire--some lings will be hit and killed easily.

Not that easy seeing how it requires the use of stim to do this properly without getting killed while trying to move back. Not to mention medics just love to get in the way of your own infantry units thanks to the bad pathing, and it also costs 10 HP to do it.