Roach/Hydra melee attacks usefull?

[Todie]

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 ....

[Carsickness]

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.

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.

[dustinbrowder]

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

[MulletBen]

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.

[Josue]

Why this much fuss?

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

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

[JackhammerIV]

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.

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.

[Carsickness]

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.

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.

[Josue]

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.

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!

[JackhammerIV]

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!

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

[masakari]

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.