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On December 14 2012 20:34 Hattori_Hanzo wrote:Show nested quote +On December 14 2012 19:56 Decendos wrote:On December 14 2012 19:33 Hattori_Hanzo wrote:On December 14 2012 19:14 doggy wrote:On December 14 2012 13:57 BronzeKnee wrote:On December 14 2012 12:37 imEnex wrote: The widow mine is either really effective or useless. That's how the unit just works. Yep, it is a gimmick. Like a Cloaked Banshee or Dark Templar rush. Either you show up and do tons of damage, or you get shut down because your opponent was prepared and are now behind. There isn't much of an inbetween. The thing about the Widow Mine is that the Burrow is just half of the gimmick, the other half is the way it does damage. It does huge damage, but then nothing for 40 seconds... So either it changes the game with said damage, or you've wasted your resources. True, but compare the resources you need to spend on them to banshees or dts, its just too low of an investment. Theyre incredibly strong in the early game, and against air harass as well. Especially vs mutas There's enough solutions posted in the last three weeks to deal with widow mines and still go muta. - Point man muta - Overlord sac If you still want to enjoy ZOMG MUTAS OWNZ J00 TROLLOLOLOL, feel free to stick with WoL, you won't be missed. yeah those suggestion that tell you to walk in overseerspeed above ground and tell you to sac 1 muta = 100 gas for 1 mine = 25 gas. and those suggestion that also dont tell that ling bling muta is EXACTLY the same as in WoL while not only widow mine as a counter is new in HOTS but also: medivac healing buff, medivac speedbuff, hellbat raping lings, widow mine raping lings, blings and mutas. so mutaplay would be way harder to do even if widow mine wouldnt hit air, hell even if widow mine wouldnt exist at all ling bling muta would be a lot harder to play because of MMM and hellbat. You make it sound like its the Terran's fault for Zerg wanting to use outdated builds. I'm sure roach/speedling mid-game BO works real well with oracles out. *sarcasm*
rofl. well thought out argument. so you dont want mutas ever to be used again in ZvT. thats a good argument lol :D
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I still think it would be much better as an actual mine that sacrificed itself when it detonates with a lower supply cost. Either a cheap mine for 1 supply or something like zerglings, that you get two for 1 supply.
The current model doesn't make sense as it's just a movable turret and not a mine at all, plus it doesn't balance well with regards to detection. You NEED detection to get rid of the mine now, making one mine delay the third base from zerg too much, plus a mine in front of a wall is too good against zerg early on. Against protoss on the other hand mines just absolutely suck because you trade 1 for 1 at most gaining a small gain but you often just lose the mine without doing anything at all, plus making mines removes your ability to be aggressive at all which is crucial for terran against protoss.
I'd much rather see mines costing 75/50 but you would get two, they would however just die upon detonation doing slightly less damage than now. They would be better against protoss because you're mine often gets killed there anyway plus they would not be as rediculous against zerg early on because you could actually detonate them with lings. Of course a couple changes would be needed, for example hallucinations wouldn't detonate them anymore, but overall it would be a much better design. Making it weaker against zerg early on and buffing it against toss while also retaining some lategame use is what they need. Lower supply is only way to do that.
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On December 14 2012 21:35 Markwerf wrote: The current model doesn't make sense as it's just a movable turret and not a mine at all, plus it doesn't balance well with regards to detection. You NEED detection to get rid of the mine now, making one mine delay the third base from zerg too much, plus a mine in front of a wall is too good against zerg early on.
Against protoss on the other hand mines just absolutely suck because you trade 1 for 1 at most gaining a small gain but you often just lose the mine without doing anything at all, plus making mines removes your ability to be aggressive at all which is crucial for terran against protoss.
Board control is the point of a tunneling rocket shooting robot. By your complaint, the unit is successful in its purpose. Congratulations, now deal with it, like Terran dealt with EMP nerf, mana back on Thor nerf, medivac acceleration nerf, etc
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On December 14 2012 21:35 Markwerf wrote:
The current model doesn't make sense as it's just a movable turret and not a mine at all, plus it doesn't balance well with regards to detection. You NEED detection to get rid of the mine now, making one mine delay the third base from zerg too much, plus a mine in front of a wall is too good against zerg early on.
Ok, I grow tired of this argument. There is no armed forces in the world that would not LOVE to have a reusable, remote controled land mine that they could move on its own. Two of the largest problems with landmines are deploying them and cleaning them up after. SC2 is in the fucking future where the mine no longer needs to be deloyed, it deloys itself.
And the US army would call it a mine, not a burrow rocket launcher or some other dumb name.
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i think the mines should be able to move while burrowed
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It would be very hard to balance since the way you proposed it early game you should be able to kill the spidermines with good micro but only a limited amount of units, that will force the spider mine to have a fairly small amount of hp resulting in them being pretty bad lategame since the damage output of a deathball is so high unless you grant the mines an upgrade for lategame, I don't think they are gonna be useful.
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If we want to see how mines can be useful and why they are not useful now, we should look at how they were useful in brood war:
In brood war, mines were planted by vultures and were mostly used in the TvP matchup. Protoss could get observers and it was very easy for them to clear out mine fields. This was not surprising to the terran and it didn't really hurt him that much; the whole point of mines were to slow the advance of the protoss army so that the terran could reposition their slow mech army to confront the protoss in a favorable way. Mines in BW were pretty much disposable.
In HotS, mines are not planted by a unit and are instead a unit themselves that takes up production time and supply. When mines die, it hurts the terran. Production time and resources are lost. The mines are harder to clear out in the early-game because of when they can be produced and their stats, but then become pretty trivial to clear out as the game goes on and higher-tech armies are produced.
The problem is that the widow mine is currently suffering from an identity crisis. If it was supposed to be an army deterrent/mech spacing unit like the spider mine of BW was, then it HAS to be laid by a unit. Mech is already slow to ramp up and taking up valuable factory production time is not good, especially when you have to replace them when they are killed. If they want to keep it as a space control unit for mech, they really need to decide what they are going to do with the hellion, because if they give it the ability to lay mines it will be able to do way too much.
The other identity of the widow mine right now, is an anti-air unit. Since the thor is so bad as mech anti-air, widow mine was added to help with that. However, widow mines anti-air is not good for the game because it is a stealth unit that deals splash damage and air units always clump up. Not to mention its just a wierd mechanic for an air unit because you when you engage you have to burrow your widow mines underneath the attacking air.
I really think that Blizzard has designed themselves into a corner with this one. If they add something like the goliath to deal with mech's anti-air problems then people will complain they are making the game too much like BW, and if they make the widow mine able to be laid from a unit, they will also be making the game too much like BW. So they are stuck in this awkward middle-ground with the widow mine making it a pretty bad unit :/
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That's why the 1sec burrow upgrade is so important to allow WM to scoot out of a potentially bad engagement. Such as BLs escorted by an overseer.
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On December 15 2012 03:18 Plansix wrote:
And the US army would call it a mine, not a burrow rocket launcher or some other dumb name.
The US Army would come up with the most retarded official name you could imagine, like Self-Deploying Automated Explosive Distributor or SDAED. And then the people using it would come up with an affectionate but somewhat ironic nickname, such as calling the robot "Binky." The rest of the military will come up with a normal name for it like Widow which becomes commonplace. And the people it is being used against would give it a name drenched in the blood of those who fell to it, and the rage and fear of facing unfair, uncounterable economic, technological, and military hardware like "spiderbomb" or "manhax."
Anyway, as said earlier, the mine is having an identity crisis about whether it wants to be a lurker or anti-air.
The best way to resolve this problem is to make the mine the lurker (and not hit air units), and to add a terran unit that attacks air units, and is made from the factory. 100% this is the ideal solution, and it was part of the original idea of the Warhound that it would attack air units. At some point it became a mechanical marauder, and was overpowered and boring as hell, and got cut.
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Many of these points could apply to other cloaked or burrow type units as well. For example DTs, very strong until the opponent gets detection then pretty weak.
I don't think that by itself is a problem, but the fact that you can lose your whole army from the splash damage they do is. If they lower the splash and it mostly strong single target damage vs "big" units it can be balanced.
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On December 15 2012 06:50 ledarsi wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 03:18 Plansix wrote:
And the US army would call it a mine, not a burrow rocket launcher or some other dumb name. The US Army would come up with the most retarded official name you could imagine, like Self-Deploying Automated Explosive Distributor or SDAED. And then the people using it would come up with an affectionate but somewhat ironic nickname, such as calling the robot "Binky." The rest of the military will come up with a normal name for it like Widow which becomes commonplace. And the people it is being used against would give it a name drenched in the blood of those who fell to it, and the rage and fear of facing unfair, uncounterable economic, technological, and military hardware like "spiderbomb" or "manhax." Anyway, as said earlier, the mine is having an identity crisis about whether it wants to be a lurker or anti-air. The best way to resolve this problem is to make the mine the lurker (and not hit air units), and to add a terran unit that attacks air units, and is made from the factory. 100% this is the ideal solution, and it was part of the original idea of the Warhound that it would attack air units. At some point it became a mechanical marauder, and was overpowered and boring as hell, and got cut.
+1
Exception is my belief, Widow mines NEED to hit air, all three races in HoTs now have fast flying things of doom that can come out early enough to roflstomp the mineral line.
T: banshee, medivac drop (okay drops don't exactly shoot) P: Oracle, phoenix, DTs, warp prism Z: muta, nydus, overlord drop.
Given that it takes at least three bases AND 15 in-game minutes to have a decent uninterrupted production rate, if widow mines can't shoot air, a meching Terran HAS TO have a decent marine count to hold off, mass muta/bling multi-prong (lol, good luck with that). Which is why WoL Terrans have great difficulty going mech due to a HUGE "KICK ME" window in the early-mid game.
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On December 15 2012 14:56 Hattori_Hanzo wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 06:50 ledarsi wrote:On December 15 2012 03:18 Plansix wrote:
And the US army would call it a mine, not a burrow rocket launcher or some other dumb name. The US Army would come up with the most retarded official name you could imagine, like Self-Deploying Automated Explosive Distributor or SDAED. And then the people using it would come up with an affectionate but somewhat ironic nickname, such as calling the robot "Binky." The rest of the military will come up with a normal name for it like Widow which becomes commonplace. And the people it is being used against would give it a name drenched in the blood of those who fell to it, and the rage and fear of facing unfair, uncounterable economic, technological, and military hardware like "spiderbomb" or "manhax." Anyway, as said earlier, the mine is having an identity crisis about whether it wants to be a lurker or anti-air. The best way to resolve this problem is to make the mine the lurker (and not hit air units), and to add a terran unit that attacks air units, and is made from the factory. 100% this is the ideal solution, and it was part of the original idea of the Warhound that it would attack air units. At some point it became a mechanical marauder, and was overpowered and boring as hell, and got cut. +1 Exception is my belief, Widow mines NEED to hit air, all three races in HoTs now have fast flying things of doom that can come out early enough to roflstomp the mineral line. T: banshee, medivac drop (okay drops don't exactly shoot) P: Oracle, phoenix, DTs, warp prism Z: muta, nydus, overlord drop. Given that it takes at least three bases AND 15 in-game minutes to have a decent uninterrupted production rate, if widow mines can't shoot air, a meching Terran HAS TO have a decent marine count to hold off, mass muta/bling multi-prong (lol, good luck with that). Which is why WoL Terrans have great difficulty going mech due to a HUGE "KICK ME" window in the early-mid game.
Even still, mech is laughable in the late game if you survive that horrendous early/mid game. Super turbo medivac makes you not want to mech anymore due to medvaic just flying straight into your base. You need twice the number of turrets. Zerg has the viper which is damn good against mech and lastly but not least we got protoss....yup dont even need to explain anything here.
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On December 15 2012 15:01 SheaR619 wrote:
Even still, mech is laughable in the late game if you survive that horrendous early/mid game. Super turbo medivac makes you not want to mech anymore due to medvaic just flying straight into your base. You need twice the number of turrets. Zerg has the viper which is damn good against mech and lastly but not least we got protoss....yup dont even need to explain anything here.
I've seen Avilo use WM to good effect by positioning 3-4 WM at the flanks or vikings on patrol.
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On December 15 2012 15:09 Hattori_Hanzo wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 15:01 SheaR619 wrote:
Even still, mech is laughable in the late game if you survive that horrendous early/mid game. Super turbo medivac makes you not want to mech anymore due to medvaic just flying straight into your base. You need twice the number of turrets. Zerg has the viper which is damn good against mech and lastly but not least we got protoss....yup dont even need to explain anything here. I've seen Avilo use WM to good effect by positioning 3-4 WM at the flanks or vikings on patrol.
Well I think your refering to TvT and ya I know those are the solution but with the medivac buff mech became much harder since mech got nothing. I am not saying that due to the medvaic buff it became unviable in tvt but because of the medivac buff, mech is less viable now or harder to pull off.
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On December 15 2012 04:47 Xanbatou wrote: If we want to see how mines can be useful and why they are not useful now, we should look at how they were useful in brood war:
In brood war, mines were planted by vultures and were mostly used in the TvP matchup. Protoss could get observers and it was very easy for them to clear out mine fields. This was not surprising to the terran and it didn't really hurt him that much; the whole point of mines were to slow the advance of the protoss army so that the terran could reposition their slow mech army to confront the protoss in a favorable way. Mines in BW were pretty much disposable.
In HotS, mines are not planted by a unit and are instead a unit themselves that takes up production time and supply. When mines die, it hurts the terran. Production time and resources are lost. The mines are harder to clear out in the early-game because of when they can be produced and their stats, but then become pretty trivial to clear out as the game goes on and higher-tech armies are produced.
The problem is that the widow mine is currently suffering from an identity crisis. If it was supposed to be an army deterrent/mech spacing unit like the spider mine of BW was, then it HAS to be laid by a unit. Mech is already slow to ramp up and taking up valuable factory production time is not good, especially when you have to replace them when they are killed. If they want to keep it as a space control unit for mech, they really need to decide what they are going to do with the hellion, because if they give it the ability to lay mines it will be able to do way too much.
The other identity of the widow mine right now, is an anti-air unit. Since the thor is so bad as mech anti-air, widow mine was added to help with that. However, widow mines anti-air is not good for the game because it is a stealth unit that deals splash damage and air units always clump up. Not to mention its just a wierd mechanic for an air unit because you when you engage you have to burrow your widow mines underneath the attacking air.
I really think that Blizzard has designed themselves into a corner with this one. If they add something like the goliath to deal with mech's anti-air problems then people will complain they are making the game too much like BW, and if they make the widow mine able to be laid from a unit, they will also be making the game too much like BW. So they are stuck in this awkward middle-ground with the widow mine making it a pretty bad unit :/
I agree with you completely.
I started a topic about my views on the widow mine yesterday, but a mod decided it wasn't a good topic for discussion (lol) and moved it to blogs.
The design progress of the widow mine has been all over the place. It started out as a quite good concept as a high area damage one-time-use mine. The problem was the countdown timer of 10s , lol. The intentions was to make it ineffective as a combat unit while also not being massable to prevent abuse. The 2 supply and 10s timers helped in this regard.
Now it mostly makes sense to only use mines as a combat unit, especially in the later stages of the game. A lack of a clear design and enough confidence and resolve to push the unit where it needs to be has caused the mine to end up where it is currently.
In the following discussion to my 'blog' post I came with a clear suggestion how to improve the widow mine. Here it goes:
I will follow Blizzard's intentions to have it as a standalone unit. This means it has to be able to move itself and relocate. I will give the unit 0 supply but make it cost 50 minerals each with a 40s build time from a factory. This prevents early mine abuse and requires the player to invest in extra factories for mine production. This balances out the 0 supply. It can be reactored. The mine is now a suicide unit, does hit cloaked unit but no longer hits air units. The single target damage is removed but the splash damage is increased to 100 to all units, even friendly, within a 2.5 radius. The range is reduced to 3. The first enemy unit that comes within 5 range of a mine is lit up with a red laser dot and a buzzing sound it heard but the mine is not revealed. This gives the unit cool charateristics and warns the enemy to avoid the mine. The attack is a bit delayed so you get the chance to split units or put the targeted unit close to an enemy unit.
The 0 supply cost makes minefields away from your army viable now. In fact, the increased splash damage makes you think twice about having mines with your army.
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The widow mine being easy to deal with even with detection is simply not true. I don't know if your playing against GMs, but I would love to see how you deal with widow mines in their current state against GM. They are insanely good in the late game.
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I agree with what the OP says, but I feel like he is also overcomplicating this issue. The fact of the matter is the entire concept of the widow mine is imbalanced. (I am a zerg player so the only matchup I care about / am talking about is ZvT) People are saying things like "the widow mine is a positional control unit". But really what the widow mine is a counter to everything that is zerg. corruptors trying to defend broods from vikings..make widow mines, Muta harass... make widow mines... Mass Ling...make widow mines...zerg trying to take a fast third without gas... make widow mines.. The ONLY situation in TvZ where make widow mines is not at least part of a good solution is if zerg was going mass overseer hydralisk with the range upgrade, which would get destroyed by everything else the terran has....
Its almost like Dustin Browder was making a list of every complaint that Terran players have ever had about TvZ and then was like hey why dont we just make one unit that fixes everything for terran players.
Now I am not denying that there are ways to micro and beat widow mines etc.. but isn't this the same discussion we had about the infestor.... people were like "its not that infestor is so overpowered its just that there was no downside to just building a mass amount of infestors in any situation no matter what". Isn't that exactly what the widow mine is now..that no matter what the situation is, (in tvz) getting widow mines
If you dont agree with me, before you just flame my post, please watch some pro terran players (like ryung) use widow mines, and watch how every single game he plays is heavily influenced by whether or not he has widow mines with 20 kills on them.
Do other zerg players agree with me? Am I crazy? I feel like this unit is just as overpowered as the infestor, except there is no micro required to use it except for burrowing it and unburrowing it.
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Widow mines give a Thor based army some splash, and can soften up the air enough to allow Thors to clean up an air composition. Widow mine also allows Thors to retreat from a position without getting chased down and picked off. I don't think a tank heavy composition properly leverages the mine mechanic because you can't retreat fluidly, and you can't screen the mines while they are getting into position without taking massive friendly fire. Thors do really well with a pack of mines leading an aggressive move.
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In order to be effective, positional units have to be STRONG. You are trading mobility and flexibility for absolute strength.
People who complain that units like BW siege tanks, or mines in HOTS are very effective against lots of things simply don't understand that you don't actually have to attack directly into these units. Widow mines are useless if you just don't go near them, and they are useless if you have the forces to clear them up if there are no supporting enemy units.
This is mitigated somewhat with the burrow upgrade, when terran players can actually run mines quite close to enemy units and burrow, but I think this should be changed.
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On December 17 2012 12:21 ledarsi wrote: In order to be effective, positional units have to be STRONG. You are trading mobility and flexibility for absolute strength.
People who complain that units like BW siege tanks, or mines in HOTS are very effective against lots of things simply don't understand that you don't actually have to attack directly into these units. Widow mines are useless if you just don't go near them, and they are useless if you have the forces to clear them up if there are no supporting enemy units.
This is mitigated somewhat with the burrow upgrade, when terran players can actually run mines quite close to enemy units and burrow, but I think this should be changed.
Lol just dont go near the widow mine he says. The point is the widow mine HAS flexibility and mobility (with the upgrade), they can attack air and ground, so they dont need any support at all after they are burrowed. Spider mines in bw were positional control units, but they could be taken out with detection and air units, so they required that you use them in an intelligent way with support or else they could just be cleaned up no problem. Once a widow mine is burrowed in HOTS, on its own there is no way it is just dealt with easily. Even if you have detection and (keep in mind the only thing that is cost effective that zerg has to deal with widow mines is hydras with range because they outrange mines) units to deal with it, it still requires a lot of care and attention. This effectively means that zerg does not have any kind of decent answer to widow mines until well into lair tech, while the widow mine is available much much earlier than that.
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