Immortal & VR: too much of hard-counter?

[Norfindel]

It seems to me like there are some problems with this units. They're too specific, and would be difficult to use in some common situations. For example:

Immortal
This expensive unit is meant to be countered by low-tier units. It's very powerfull against armored units, but it's attack is much less effective against non-armored, only 40% effective. In an scenario where there are many units in battle, it's very difficult to force the Immortals to attack the armored units, unless there are obvious candidates within range, like Siege Tanks and Colossi. But in a battle against lots of smaller units, like mixed infantry, or Roaches mixed with other units, it's a different story. The slow movement speed doesn't helps.
It's shield mechanic is very interenting, but once the shields are gone, the unit will follow.
Basically, when there's a mixed army, it's shift-attacking all the armored units, or accept the randomness of what it's shooting at.

Void Ray
This unit is intended to destroy armored units and buildings, and is hard-countered by light anti-air units when charged, and by everything with and anti-air attack when uncharged. It's not even good against armored units when uncharged, unless you have enough of them to lose few until they get charged. This is too drastic, as the unit is quite useless when uncharged and very powerful when fully charged, at least vs armored/buildings.

What do you think?

[TheEconomist]

With the shift key, telling an Immortal to attack armored units is very easy,

[Raif]

For me I think the void ray is an awesome and fear striking unit, yes they have there vulnerability like all units have. And it is no longer the mass and win kind of unit that it tented to be in the beginning. I find them quiet hard to counter when they are covered by blinking stalkers.
I look at the hard counters for what units a shall attack what with. no matching them up against each other 1v1.

For the Immortal, it is a hard unit to get in the sweet spot, but if you get it there it is awesome.
And for me it is not meant to countered by tier 1 units, but it dose a great job of countering the marauder, not that I want to match them 1v1

[Warsaw]

I've been playing Protoss and I find the Immortal is pretty fine right now. Small units take them down fast enough. As for having void rays and immortals that is a lot of resources. A player should have their base teched enough to safely counter it. I can see how they can make a deadly combination, but a good player should of been scouting or something. They shouldn't be totally off guard and be like "ZOMG IMMORTALS AND VOID RAYS IMD OOOMED" ya know. The void ray its self is a good unit, but the immortal really only works against hard hitting units so it's not the same story.

And about the immortal shift attacking armored units. I'm pretty fine with that. Thats its roll.

[SlickR]

They are good enough, though I think the immortal bonus damage against armored could be reduced a bit.

Void-rays are good.

[0mar]

Immortals are kinda cool, but they can be more of a liability than an asset against Terran. On paper, it looks like it counters tanks/marauders pretty hard, but in actuality, they have a difficult time dealing with marauders and almost never reach the tanks due to the meatshields in front (eg marine/hellion/marauders). So in actuality, you are doing yourself a disservice by building immortals against Terran mech.

The marauder vs immortal dynamic is especially egregious. Marauders beat immortals for better than cost once you hit critical mass, which is around 12 or so. Throw in stim and you can easily take out 1.2x to 1.4x the cost of immortals. Versus a decent player who microes his marauders, going zlot/immortal is the worst decision you can make. Immortals are too slow to catch kiting marauders while zealots will never do any damage because of concussive shells.

[Maxa]

One thing I've noticed is that immortals tend to fare poorly in larger games.

In a 1v1 or 2v2 game, a few immortals can be very potent; in 3v3 or 4v4 games, though, you see them much more rarely (Aand you basically never see massed immortals the way you see massed void rays). I suspect that this is because (1) mobility becomes more important on larger maps, which places the cumbersome immortals at a disadvantage relative to stalkers and other units (including stim-packed marauders), and (2) the meat shield problems 0mar mentions above are even more pronounced in larger engagements. In an all-out 3v3 battle, it can be very difficult to maneuver your immortals so that they are effective.

By contrast, VRs seems to handle the jump to larger games fairly well, even before you take into account their strong speed upgrade.

[Warsaw]

Immortals are kinda cool, but they can be more of a liability than an asset against Terran. On paper, it looks like it counters tanks/marauders pretty hard, but in actuality, they have a difficult time dealing with marauders and almost never reach the tanks due to the meatshields in front (eg marine/hellion/marauders). So in actuality, you are doing yourself a disservice by building immortals against Terran mech.

The marauder vs immortal dynamic is especially egregious. Marauders beat immortals for better than cost once you hit critical mass, which is around 12 or so. Throw in stim and you can easily take out 1.2x to 1.4x the cost of immortals. Versus a decent player who microes his marauders, going zlot/immortal is the worst decision you can make. Immortals are too slow to catch kiting marauders while zealots will never do any damage because of concussive shells.

My last vs. Terran game went that way. I should of gotten stalkers to support my zealots. Should of just grabbed the zealot and stalker upgrades. He only had a marauder army. But yeah, kiting marauders are kind of a pain. And by the time I was building my immortals to try and help with marauders it was to late.

[hyde]

In 1v1, if you allow your opponent to "mass" Immortals and Voidrays, something is wrong.

Even then ,you should not be "Surprised" and have an arsenal of marines ready to go.

I'll admit, it does take a bit of work due to the charge-ing mechanics, you will have to fight macro with micro unfortunately...just a matter of hit-n-run tactics and/or factor in some vikings into the equation.

But seriously, the amount of gas required for mass voidrays and immortals seems like a huge gamble for any 1v1.
Most protoss players I encounter in 1v1 love to mass stalkers with immortal support.
I don't see many void rays.

1v1 platinium

[Cotcan]

If you play against protoss they usually mass void rays. Why? In mass they can't really be stopped expect by equal to mass light anti air and good microing.