Quote from Cha05Walkingthey only catch up after a long while they could throw arrows at your speartons maybe 3 4 times before u actually get close enough to attck them, and since archers are slower then shdows and speartons while you go after my archers my shadows can catch up to them and your archers will not catch up for quite a while
Quote from ShadowGeneralChaosFinally someone with the same opinion as me ;) Oh and: It seems that we are the only one who believes in shadows.....
Quote from Cha05Walkingdas cool
Quote from Cha05Walking6 bars doesnt go very far when they've lost two and they're poisoned and their opponents faster than them
and two was an estimation i dont know for sure
Quote from FailingAtFailingChaos, I don't think you understand the point of having melee units with your ranged units. Your melee units absorb damage FOR your ranged units. The only ranged unit that doesn't need this is the giant, but the giant can only hit one unit at a time and is easily rushed so it needs splash damage like a magikill or more units to compliment it.
Back to the topic, Shadowrath would be HORRIBLE tanks for ranged units, when the go invisible, enemy projectiles will go right through the shadowrath and a volley or two will devastate your ranged units, leaving you with only shadowrath as effective units. Which screws you over even more if they have albowtrosses.
AGAIN! Shadowrath are for "hit and runs" and assassinations. They are not very good as direct combat units compared to speartons.
Quote from WyrmspawnI'm not so sure; while the spearton archidon formation uses the spearton to tank damage for archidons, there is no set rule that says you can't just go pure guerilla warfare with shadowrath hit and run and archidon kite...
That would take one helluva good micro to pull off though. Probably works on the largest map, but hard to pull off when there is more pressure.
Quote from jerryttShadowrath are not good as an army. its as simple as that.
1. shadowrath in shinobi travel slower than most units. So hitting and running archers and speartons is not as simple as you think.
2. if you want your shinobi to actually hit, you would have to go run straight into archer fire and kiting, lose several along the way, get to a point several feet ahead of their army, THEN you can activate shinobi and actually hit something. with half of your shadowwrath left that is. If you can get to me befoer my wall too
3. I can just charge you with my speartons+archidons. Your shadowwrath and archer army wont have enough health to survive the encounter. this is because since shadowrath and speartons are roghly equal in combat, adding archidons to the mix which do MORE damage (percentage wise) to shadowwrath would tip it drastically in my favour. If you tried to even it out by chasing my archidons, I would do the above.
4. Shield bash. Some people use it ( I do too occasionally) A few people are good with it. Pros can sometimes (its somewhat difficult to time, and nothing is certain) stun a retreating (or charging) shadowwrath
leaving it frozen like a stuck pig. You would be suprised to see how fast a group of shadowwrath dies when full on assauted by both speartons and archidons.
While a shaddowwrath archidon army looks good in theory, (hit and run ftw and all that)What happens if running doesnt stop them from getting to you?
Quote from WyrmspawnThis argument seems to have invaded my thread on archer-spearton versus flier spearton. I wish to re-poste what was there here.
And now, my reply to jerrytt:
1: Why can't you just go past the speartons and attack the archers? Sure, shield bash should stop us, but shadowrath have been shown to be fast enough to dodge shield bash before. Again, like I said, this would require one good micro; I can see Wyzdom pulling it off for sure, but yeah, when you're at his level you don't need this strategy anyway.
2: Who says you must shinobi before you reach the archers? Even without shinobi, the shadowrath can run past speartons and attack archers. Simply put your shadowrath not in a vertical line, but a horizontal one. You might lose one shadowrath doing so, but I don't really see 20 archers holding their own against more than 3 shadowrath.
3: Now, the charge would be very difficult to deal with: The only strategy I can use against this is to turtle in advance, dividing your shadowrath into two groups; one attacks, one rests up. The other one gets back from its mission to heal up, your other group is healed up and ready to go.
Of course, if the enemy has too many archers, this might prove difficult to pull off, in which case we go to plan B, available only to micro-masters (sadly, not me):
When the enemy charges, charge right past them as if to attack their statue. If they retarget, they will have their archers in front of their spearton, while your own archers are firing at the backs of their spearton.
If the enemy is surprised, and hopefully he will be, it will take him some while to make up his mind whether to continue their spearton charge towards your archers or to retarget to your shadowrath. If he does the former, kite while your shadows kill his archers.
If he does the latter, well, you haven't used shinobi yet, have you? Just sprint towards his base before turning back and shinobiing past his speartons to attack his archers again.
4: Don't worry, I know how a stunned shadowrath is useless; I play shadowrath myself very often. The trick is to never let a shadowrath attack a spearton in shield wall mode. If the enemy has hidden their archers behind their spearton, your archers can be out of range of theirs while they rain arrows on their spearton. When their spearton charge, your shadowrath shall go shinobi and beat them all, leaving their archers open to attack.
I know, I know, all of these strategies require a whole load of micro to pull off; however, if you manage to be this micro master, you could probably use this strategy very effectively.
Quote from Wyrmspawn@jerryt: Nobody says the shadowrath must be kited. You can try kiting shadowrath anytime; the shadowrath will just micro behind your archers when they fire and then attack. Even assuming that you somehow suck so much at micro that your shadowrath get killed, you would have killed the speartons with archer kite and it will be an archer battle.
4: I never mentioned shinobi; shadows don't need shinobi to one-hit a spearton. What the shadows should do, is just use the general attack and shinobi different speartons. HP drain + shadow superior damage + archers raining arrows on them = speartons dead, shadows highly damaged by enemy archers but alive.
Quote from jerryttHow the hell does microing shadows have anything to do with chasing archers? does microing somehow give it more speed? or are you trying to dodge arrows? Have you even tried that before? now your just sounding like a noob. You may be able to dodge the foirst volley at a long distance, but any closer to max distance all arrows will hit. jeez. AND I THINK I CAN KILL YOUR SHADOWWRATHS BY KITING FASTER THAN YOU CAN KILL MY SPEARTONS BY KITING. even if i had 10 archers kiting, I could easily 2 shot a shadowwrath. And after some testing I found that I could get about 6 hits in before they even catch up to me. 3 shadowwraths dead. "microing" whatever the hell your talking about doesnt help.
poison does so little to speartons its kinda pathetic. maybe after 30 seconds It could take 1 bar off. I think the battle would take less than 30 seconds considering how LITTLE health you have.
Heres a little fact to tell you how fast I can kill you. 20 arrows kills a shaddowwrath. 45 kills a spearton. You might want to put shinobi into the equation, which does about 25% to a spearton. Now thats 33 arrows. Still ALOT more than It takes to kill you. After that we start attacking and losing health at about the same rate FROM attacks. But arrows do more damage to YOU than to speartons.
I should just stop talking. Maybe it works for you at whatever rating you are, but at high levels its a joke.
Quote from jerryttHow the hell does microing shadows have anything to do with chasing archers? does microing somehow give it more speed? or are you trying to dodge arrows? Have you even tried that before? now your just sounding like a noob. You may be able to dodge the foirst volley at a long distance, but any closer to max distance all arrows will hit. jeez. AND I THINK I CAN KILL YOUR SHADOWWRATHS BY KITING FASTER THAN YOU CAN KILL MY SPEARTONS BY KITING. even if i had 10 archers kiting, I could easily 2 shot a shadowwrath. And after some testing I found that I could get about 6 hits in before they even catch up to me. 3 shadowwraths dead. "microing" whatever the hell your talking about doesnt help.
poison does so little to speartons its kinda pathetic. maybe after 30 seconds It could take 1 bar off. I think the battle would take less than 30 seconds considering how LITTLE health you have.
Heres a little fact to tell you how fast I can kill you. 20 arrows kills a shaddowwrath. 45 kills a spearton. You might want to put shinobi into the equation, which does about 25% to a spearton. Now thats 33 arrows. Still ALOT more than It takes to kill you. After that we start attacking and losing health at about the same rate FROM attacks. But arrows do more damage to YOU than to speartons.
I should just stop talking. Maybe it works for you at whatever rating you are, but at high levels its a joke.
Quote from WyrmspawnLook, time to act your age. Insulting me isn't changing the fact that you have, once more, ignored the points I made and proceeded onwards to make your own. Doing some polite debating with you is remarkably similar to playing chess with a pidgeon; I could be the greatest chess grandmaster in the entire world, but the pidgeon will just knock over the pieces, shit over the board, and strut about proudly, assured of its victory.
Now, I shall assume that you will, for once, read through this.
The shadowrath micro does not give it more speed; what it does is make it rush into the midst of the archers. We don't have to try to dodge arrows; we just have to get into range without allowing the archers to kite more than twice. The good thing about shadowrath are that they are very difficult to out-micro, which means that you can only beat them if they choose to fight you in open combat or if you use enough attacks on them to one-hit them.
Still reading? Good. Now, the shadowrath shall counter the kite by going into the middle of archer mass, slightly past it, even, before attacking. Each time, I assume that the 4 shadowrath shall kill 2 archers, while the remainder of the archers can only kite once before they get attacked again. You are assuming that whoever is using the shadowraths will allow them to be kited.
Now, for the speartons attacking your archers; kite until they are at your base. Best thing would be to kite with the attack and defend buttons, as they allow you to retain manual control over your shadowrath. Just watch the red dots and the black dots on the mini-map instead of checking between two areas. Since the enemy will have to micro his archers into kiting, he will have no time to micro his spearton like you are doing with your shadowrath.
Again, although the shadowrath have less health, their shinobi alone can take off 2 bars from a spearton, making them apparently equal; but their fixate ability shall make them more dangerous than the spearton in a small cluster. In a cluster, the shadowrath won't have to move from combat, while the spearton cannot use their shield wall to block one shadowrath from attacking the archers.
And here's a fact for you as well; a bunch of shadowrath are better at combat than a bunch of spearton. When the shadows are bunched, they don't have to move, which allows their fixate ability to rise to 5X damage pretty quickly.
Quote from WyrmspawnLook, time to act your age. Insulting me isn't changing the fact that you have, once more, ignored the points I made and proceeded onwards to make your own. Doing some polite debating with you is remarkably similar to playing chess with a pidgeon; I could be the greatest chess grandmaster in the entire world, but the pidgeon will just knock over the pieces, shit over the board, and strut about proudly, assured of its victory.
Now, I shall assume that you will, for once, read through this.
The shadowrath micro does not give it more speed; what it does is make it rush into the midst of the archers. We don't have to try to dodge arrows; we just have to get into range without allowing the archers to kite more than twice. The good thing about shadowrath are that they are very difficult to out-micro, which means that you can only beat them if they choose to fight you in open combat or if you use enough attacks on them to one-hit them.
Still reading? Good. Now, the shadowrath shall counter the kite by going into the middle of archer mass, slightly past it, even, before attacking. Each time, I assume that the 4 shadowrath shall kill 2 archers, while the remainder of the archers can only kite once before they get attacked again. You are assuming that whoever is using the shadowraths will allow them to be kited.
Now, for the speartons attacking your archers; kite until they are at your base. Best thing would be to kite with the attack and defend buttons, as they allow you to retain manual control over your shadowrath. Just watch the red dots and the black dots on the mini-map instead of checking between two areas. Since the enemy will have to micro his archers into kiting, he will have no time to micro his spearton like you are doing with your shadowrath.
Again, although the shadowrath have less health, their shinobi alone can take off 2 bars from a spearton, making them apparently equal; but their fixate ability shall make them more dangerous than the spearton in a small cluster. In a cluster, the shadowrath won't have to move from combat, while the spearton cannot use their shield wall to block one shadowrath from attacking the archers.
And here's a fact for you as well; a bunch of shadowrath are better at combat than a bunch of spearton. When the shadows are bunched, they don't have to move, which allows their fixate ability to rise to 5X damage pretty quickly.