More HotS Speculation - the Warhound

This blog is going to be the same flavor as my previous one about the Mothership Core, viewable at: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=344435 . In essence, I’m going to do some basic theorycrafting on a HotS unit that caught my eye. This is not meant to draw any conclusions from really, just state the potential that is there, and guess at how it might play out. Again, this is for entertainment, so try not to take anything about the unit or my thoughts too seriously. It is Friday, after all (here in the US, at least).

I found there were a ton of people who were interested in engaging in speculation about the Widow mine, but almost no one discussed much about the Warhound – which I thought was one of the more interesting units.

Warhound – Armored, Mechanical
Requires Factory w/ Tech Lab

Minerals: 150
Gas: 75
Supply: 2
Build Time: 45
Health: 220
Base Armor: 1
Speed: 2.81
Attack Damage: 23
Attack Range: 7
Attack Delay: 1.3
Ability – Haywire:

Autocastable

Does 30 damage to a single target at range 7 with a 6 second CD. Does not interrupt the Warhound's regular attack.

There’s a number of things interesting about the Warhound that make it interesting, so let’s just start it off at the top.

1. The warhound is a terran unit that breaks the current mold. If we think of a “backbone” unit as something which can be a main component of your army without giving glaring weakness (such as most tier 1 units, whereas tier 2 and above tend to be units which can’t stand on their own in most fights for reasons of either fagility, mobility, or notable strategic flaws), then Terran’s current “backbone” consists primarily of biological units, which is to say, units which one can amass fairly quickly and incredibly cost efficiently – but which are not terribly supply efficient and which become vulnerable as the opponent is able to gather more and more AoE damage. At 2 supply, dealing 17.7 dps (+5 vs. mech with Haywire), and having a beastly 220 health – this is probably the strongest “backbone” type unit in the game for supply, with the Immortal being the only unit I can think of off the top of my head which comes close (and let’s be honest, most people build Immortals not as backbone units, but as niche “counter” units).

2. The warhound is still reasonably cost effective. Compare three Warhounds (525/225 after supply), and five marauders (625/125). In a health comparison, The Warhound comes out slightly ahead, 660 vs. 625. In a dps comparison, the warhound also comes out ahead at 53.1 dps (+15 vs. mech) against 33.5 dps (+33.5 vs. armored). Looks great, right? Up until stim, I’d agree – at which point the five marauder dps shoots up to 50 dps (+50 vs. armored). The other big drawback about Warhounds, in comparison to marauders, is that their production facility costs an additional 100 gas – and even though the Warhound as a unit translates resources into health and dps faster than the marauder as a unit, the added cost of a factory means that initially you’ll produce a bit less.

3. At a current range of 7, the warhound has a slightly higher range than any other “backbone” type unit. As anyone knows from watching stalkers and marines, this combined with the warhounds high speed make it ideal for a hit and run style of play – and against anything slow with a range of 5 or lower (slow hydras, slow roaches, slow zealots,Marines/Marauders without stim) , sufficiently good micro can prevent almost all damage the warhound would take.

4. The warhound is beefy and mobile. This is the only type of repairable “backbone” type unit – other than the Battle Hellion, which is also new to HotS. This makes them especially dangerous when accompanied by workers, because repairing an old warhound is so much more cost effective than making a new one. But they’re also stalker speed. Previously, terran only had units which were beefy (thors/BCs) or mobile (MMM, banshee, hellion). The closest thing they had previously was the marauder, and the speed fueling its mobility (stim) came at the cost of a large chunk of its beefiness.

5. The warhound completely revamps TvP. Currently, TvP works like this: both players expand most of the time, but as army sizes grow, a bio Terran must make sure Protoss isn’t able to get too big of an army, or they’ll get overwhelmed with one big push and be unable to amass an army again in time. Other non-bio late game plays tend to be weak to mobility and Templar, so having Colossi/Stalker/Templar, as well as Chargelot/Archon/Templar both do well when they are able to max and remax. At 200 food, storm isn’t going to do anything against warhounds. Even if they weren’t too fast, they’d be too fat. Roaches are hard to use storm against – and they only have 145 health. Archons are terrible against a fast non-bio unit with range. And though it remains to be seen, I don’t imagine Colossi will have much luck being cost efficient, either (again, thinking of lategame Colossi v Roach).

What does protoss have to deal with warhounds when both armies are maxxed? Two units who almost never see play in lategame PvT – the Immortal and the Void Ray. Chargelots will probably be what most protoss want to use, even though on a supply basis, warhounds win blind and without any micro – they have more health and do more dps – but cost-wise zealots can wreck havoc on warhounds (and warpgate makes leveraging that cost-effectiveness more a reality for toss than terran, as they don’t have to wait for build times and then aggregate their forces manually. And never forget that if Terran loses the warhound army it spent so long building, it’s going to be a long while before another one comes out to play.

The biggest downside of lategame warhounds, it seems to me, is that it may be hard to get to the maxxed scenario with warhounds. It’s like maxxing on Vikings – you can do it, but the things take a long time to make and the structures which make them take a lot of resources to build.
And what about effects on the early game? Without having done it, I’d guess you could time a push slightly later than 2-rax to hit with reactored marines, 2 warhounds and a small pile of SCVs to repair. Sounds like pretty threatening pressure to me – and one that comes too early for Protoss to have zealot charge or immortals (more than 1, anyway). It even will look just like a 1-1-1 when protoss comes to scout it.

6. Slightly less relevant, but it’s also worthwhile to note that the warhound may make a good accompaniment to hellion harassment. It’s similarly mobile, faster than slow roaches and with 3 more range, and with a large enough range to deny creep spread. The question is how effectively they/hellions can stand up to speedlings – that’s one I know I won’t be able to answer until release.

It’s way too early to draw conclusions or talk balance, but it it’s never too early to get excited. Right now, I’m excited for what the warhound could do for Terran. I’m also intrigued by their implementation of this unit. Maybe they’re just starting the warhound out strong and then toning it down. But if not, is it possible that they’re acknowledging certain circumstances where cost-effectiveness or supply effectiveness seems null – and a “backbone” unit just really needs both? Will they apply this knowledge to the alteration of any WoL units?

MCDayC United Kingdom. June 16 2012 01:55. Posts 11807

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how do we know the warhound is mobile? I haven't played HotS but from the videos it looks fairly slow to me, and not able to keep up with hellions.

VERY FRAGILE, LIKE A BABY PANDA EGG

recklessfire United States. June 16 2012 02:12. Posts 354

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On June 16 2012 01:55 MCDayC wrote:
how do we know the warhound is mobile? I haven't played HotS but from the videos it looks fairly slow to me, and not able to keep up with hellions.

warhound speed is 2.81

stalker speed is about 2.9

ZeromuS Canada. June 16 2012 02:26. Posts 8287

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On June 16 2012 02:12 recklessfire wrote:

Show nested quote +

warhound speed is 2.81

stalker speed is about 2.9

That is scary. I mean, if it can outrange with a faster attack and almost the same speed, how the heck does protoss engage a terran, like ever.

Stalkers are fast, but fairly weak in the dps department as thats the tradeoff for speed and blink. What exactly is the tradeoff for the warhound?

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Treehead June 16 2012 02:43. Posts 998

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On June 16 2012 02:26 ZeromuS wrote:

Show nested quote +

Don't forget that Stalkers can shoot up and Warhounds can't.

Also, as I laid out in the blog, warhounds are much harder to amass. Know how you can get a stalker from a warpgate (which costs 150/0 and requires a cyber core costing 150/0) in 32 seconds?

Warhounds are built from a factory with tech lab addon (costing 200/125, taking 25 additional seconds to build due to addon, and requiring a barracks which costs 150/0) in 45 seconds. The tradeoff is that you either get them real slow or you spend a ton of money on buildings.

YoureFired United States. June 16 2012 03:39. Posts 729

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Warhounds still scare me from a design perspective. They're like roaches - fast, beefy units that dish out damage. I feel like there's just not that much micro potential in them, as now you just get a line of battle hellions, a line of war hounds and attack just like a roach/hydra army.

Carpe natibus

SnipedSoul Canada. June 16 2012 03:43. Posts 1686

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It would be cool to work out a build that starts out bio centric using drop harrass until you have 3-4 bases then making a big switch into warhound/hellion/viking once the Toss deathball of doom starts developing.

I would have preferred changes to make siege tanks better in lategame TvP, but the warhound looks like it could make non-bio centric play possible.

Jimmy Raynor June 16 2012 03:57. Posts 843

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I hope they remove the thor and give warhound anti air. Building armory and then 300/200 for a single thor is too much investment, and air units are one of the main problems of mech. Warhound could be a great addition to mech if it replaces the thor.

zhurai United States. June 16 2012 04:03. Posts 5555

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On June 16 2012 03:39 YoureFired wrote:
Warhounds still scare me from a design perspective. They're like roaches - fast, beefy units that dish out damage. I feel like there's just not that much micro potential in them, as now you just get a line of battle hellions, a line of war hounds and attack just like a roach/hydra army.

that's the point.

they are adding a move type units to terran (when like... almost all of terran's units atm are all micro based, no matter what low level players think about terran) to diversify their play

Last edit: 2012-06-16 04:03:17

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Treehead June 16 2012 04:08. Posts 998

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Roaches don't have frontloaded damage that make disengaging/re-engaging incredibly strong. There's micro potential here (at least where mechanical units are involved - especially once their opponent knows warhounds are going to try to do this, and plans to protect the mechanical units and then block his path out. It might have an attack/health pool like a roach, but don't a lot of units?

Vindicare605 United States. June 16 2012 08:44. Posts 6485

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Warhounds SHRED stalkers.

Your best bet as a Protoss for dealing with them is Zealots and Archons because neither are affected by their bonus damage.

Protoss Air-Units in general are also going to be great vs Mech because the Warhound lacks anti-air capability and Terran mech will have to rely greatly on Vikings for Anti-air.

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Treehead June 16 2012 09:38. Posts 998

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On June 16 2012 08:44 Vindicare605 wrote:
Warhounds SHRED stalkers.

Your best bet as a Protoss for dealing with them is Zealots and Archons because neither are affected by their bonus damage.

Protoss Air-Units in general are also going to be great vs Mech because the Warhound lacks anti-air capability and Terran mech will have to rely greatly on Vikings for Anti-air.

Archons are definitely not good against this version of Warhounds. One archon does less dps than one warhound to non-bio - and it has a lot less health per cost, too.

RedMosquito United States. June 16 2012 09:53. Posts 277

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i say throw the warhound out and buff the tank. sc2 doesnt need another a move unit. warhound seems like another maraduer type unit. i swear dustin browder must hate tanks or something. maybe cuz they take skill and positioning to use?

bundo Canada. June 20 2012 02:43. Posts 113

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can the warhound still shoot air or is vs ground only now and they kept the thor?

Elvin June 20 2012 05:42. Posts 135

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Ability – Haywire:

Autocastable

Does 30 damage to a single target at range 7 with a 6 second CD. Does not interrupt the Warhound's regular attack.

Can this ability shoot air units? (like voidrays and phoenixes which are mechanical)

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