Phoenix

"We are the wings of justice!"

- Protoss Phoenix pilot

The Phoenix is a protoss air unit in StarCraft II.

Overview
The Phoenix is a deadly spacecraft that is rapidly replacing the older Scouts and Corsairs in the role of fighter for the protoss. Phoenix patrols are a common sight on the outer rim of protoss territory, where they sweep deep space for alien threats. The twin ion blaster armament of a Phoenix is highly suited to air-to-air combat.

Sophisticated and lethal as the phoenix may be, all too often a patrol squadron will find itself heavily outnumbered by zerg or terran enemies. To overcome this weakness, phoenix pilots have developed a dangerous counter-ploy. A phoenix pilot can unleash a short-lived storm of destruction by overloading its warp field through the ship's ion blasters. The area-effect discharge is devastating and can destroy a large number of enemies at once, but it comes at a price: in the aftermath the phoenix is left temporarily powerless and crippled. Wary foes have learned to flee a phoenix overload and return moments later to destroy the helpless craft. In turn phoenix pilots have begun to use staggered discharges to catch their enemies in a web of destruction. These desperate tactics are frowned upon by protoss commanders, but have become tacitly accepted as a necessity.

Game Unit
The Phoenix is very good at destroying air units such as mutalisks. It is also an effective counter unit for for Vikings, Banshee, mutalisks and the void ray. However, it is weak against strongly-armored units such as the battlecruiser, carrier and corruptor.

The Phoenix can move and attack simultaneously.

The phoenix banks when it turns.

Strategies
The Phoenix can lift anti-air units like the queen with the Anti Gravity ability rendering them vulnerable and helpless against void rays or other Phoenix.

When grouped with void rays, the two ships complement each others' weaknesses and become a formidable fleet, with void rays firing at heavily-armored targets while Phoenixes fire at poorly-armored targets.

Development
Originally, the Phoenix was capable of attacking both air and ground targets, but became an air-to-air unit as of March 2008.

The Phoenix's speed and sensor range were upgraded at the fleet beacon. They were called Gravitic Thrusters and Apial Sensors. They have since been canceled.


 * Overload
 * This ability could previously damage all nearby enemy air units but was scaled down before BlizzCon so that it could attack only eight nearby air units. This also left the Phoenix unpowered for some time and thus vulnerable to attack.
 * A group of Phoenixes allowed use of Overload to be rotated between ships. The group would always have powered Phoenixes to cover unpowered ones, either with normal fire or by using Overload.
 * Overload had a cooldown timer. It could damage cloaked units, making it a "soft counter" against cloaking air units such as Banshees.
 * It was removed by the beta.

Quotes

 * Main article: Phoenix quotations