Introduction: I've been reading through the threads and comments on the widow mine, especially regarding the new patch. A lot of players are complaining about the viability and even questioning the function of widow mines. In fact, a lot of people are outraged. Therefore, I decided to write up this discussion on how terran space control is being treated in HotS, and the things I think Blizzard really should look into.
I'm sure everyone was just as surprised as I was in the past few patches (8, 9, and 10) by the odd changes to the raven and the widow mine. In addition, I was really surprised that the tank didn't get any attention, in spite of the complaints of siege tanks that have been popping up since they were nerfed into the ground in WoL. In the midst of an all-buff patch (Patch #8 minus the infestor), the tank was ignored.
Taking a look at the siege tank and their fundamental weaknesses, we find about 3 major problems: 1) Tanks cost 3 supply and 150m125g. They are super expensive in terms of both supply and cost. This means that you can only slowly build up a tank count, and that your tank count will ultimately be lower. 2) Tanks do 35 base damage. This is pitiful for a space control unit. Having such low damage, slow attack speed, and small splash means that you need around 4+ tanks to control any space at all. 3) Tanks are very immobile, so they need some kind of support unit. They don't do well when things get close, and they obviously have problems against air.
So why haven't they addressed these things? They've made all kinds of changes, including the insane medivac buffs and the awkward seeker missile change, but they have still yet to even tweak tank damage by even 5 damage.
Since the inception of HotS, there has been this kind of ambiguous role Blizzard is trying to fill. The IDEA was to give terran better space control and ways to defend against harassment well. The shredder was the first incarnation of the widow mine, but was far too powerful in mineral lines. So it was scrapped and the widow mine replaced it as a 2 food exploding mine that took way too long to get into position. Then Blizzard decided to make mines reuseable since they came out of the factory as a factory unit and because they were 2 supply. In addition to the new missile attack, Blizzard gave widow mine small splash and huge single target damage. In its final and latest incarnation, it was again reduced to cost/supply inefficient.
As we look at the problems and odd changes that the widow mine has gone through, we can pinpoint its problems to a few things: 1) The supply cost is too high. The biggest difference between the spider mines in BW and the widow mines in HotS is that spider mines cost 3 mines to 75m0g and 1 supply while widow mines cost 75m25g and 2 supply. In other words, you could make 6 spider mines for every 1 widow mine. In addition, you also didn't have dead supply hanging around on the map in BW. 2) Widow mines take far longer than spider mines to set up. widow mines have to be made out of the factory (2 at a time max) and then must be transported to the area where they need to set up, and then be burrowed. 3) Widow mines have a very short range. They are easily outranged by things like stalkers, colossus, marauders, and hydralisks. 4) They are too random at the moment. They do single-target damage and do not allow the player to target a specific unit. As a result, you can either end up killing an immortal or a zealot depending on what came near it first.
There are a lot of problems with this unit, and I think it's quite clear that Blizzard doesn't know which direction to take it either. They are saying that they are trying to dance a thin line between balance and overpowered, but I think they are honestly lost on the overarching idea of WHAT THE HELL this unit is supposed to actually do.
Space Control is defined as: "Something providing zone/board control makes it dangerous to go within a certain area." (Credit to DemigodcelpH). In HotS, terran space control is shared between tanks, widow mines, and planetary fortresses.
Analyzing the 3 forms of space control, we have: 1) Planetaries with a ton of health, a slow attack, and fairly large splash 2) Tanks with average damage and moderate splash damage 3) Widow mines with huge single target damage and almost no splash
In the end, plantaries take a ton of time to get up safely, so most space control generally relies on tanks and their synergy with widow mines. The only problem is that there isn't a lot of synergy. If tanks are overtaken by groups of zerglings, burrowing widow mines on your tanks just helps them die faster. If your widow mines are being covered by your tanks, they will shoot A(1) missile and then die to splash. If some or all of the mines covering your tanks fire a missile, they are deactivated for the remainder of the engagement and useless supply. All that being said, tanks and mines seem fairly unstable together. In a way, widow mines and tanks overlap roles too much; both do a fair amount of single target damage and some splash, but the tank has a longer range.
I'm going to start with a disclaimer. I'm only a diamond-level player, I don't claim to be the greatest player ever or have the best game knowledge ever. I'm taking some things I haven't talked about in this thread into my considerations, including how balancing units would affect different matchups, how things could possibly be broken, etc. Here it is:
SWAP THE ATTACKS OF TANKS AND WIDOW MINES: GIVE TANKS SINGLE TARGET DAMAGE AND MINES TONS OF SPLASH
Widow mine: 75m/0.5-1 supply, 35s build time. 75 health -Takes 3 seconds to burrow, 1.5 second attack delay where widow mine is revealed (and vulnerable to attack). -60 damage to single target, 45 damage splash, 2.5 radius splash with only 1 splash zone, 25s cooldown -Range 5 -Attack is player-targetable, ait units targetted, cloaked units untargetable. -(allow drilling claws upgrade to reduce burrow time to 1s)
Siege tank: 150m125g/3 supply, 45s build time, 160 health -70 flat damage to single target, 40 damage splash, 0.8 radius splash -Range 7 (13 in siege mode) -changing between siege and tank mode takes 5 seconds
This allows tanks to better handle threats like ultras and infestors while still staying fairly balanced against smaller units. In turn, the widow mines can deal with units that close the gap well as well as deal with runbys a little more easily, acting essentially like burrowed banelings. While they will not be as potent against harassment like banshees, oracles, or hellions, all other problems can be solved with turrets and good building/unit placement. Widow mines will be cheaper and feel easier to mass and create minefields; cleaning up minefields will still take time, but won't be incredibly risky. Microing units like stimmed marines and mutas will be possible as long as the player is paying attention (and in some cases, stimmed marines or speed roaches could actually kill off mines while simply a-moving).
There is a question in mind that asks, "Where will this put thors?", and I honestly don't know. But I feel, in order to correct the synergy between widow mine and tank, the attacks need to change and slight changes to burrow/transformation times are needed to adjust for the power of the attacks.
I would like to hear some feedback in general on the mine, the tank, and the roles they play together. I know it's a long read, but it's really okay to just skim through. Tell me what you think!
Normally I dislike it when people post ideas for major unit or balance overhauls. Unless they are a pro-player or blizzard employee, there's not much reason to care what they think. But it is fun to discuss ideas. So at the risk of seeming hypocritical, I am going to post ideas for major unit and balance overhauls. Bear in mind that I am not a pro-gamer or a blizzard employee, and there is not much reason to care what I think...
1. Siege Tank - I think it's fine the way it is. It's a strong and affordable tier 2 unit. Increasing its damage would turn it into a tier 3 unit, and reducing its supply or cost and it would be OP (think 1 supply roaches).
2. Widow Mine - I agree that there is something wrong with the widow mine. It feels like a catch-all unit. Let's compare it to a burrowed baneling:
Banelings must be detonated manually, requiring skill. Mines detonate automatically requiring zero skill.
Banelings are inefficient when used on single targets, therefore you must choose your targets wisely, requiring more skill. Mines basically one-shot everything plus deal splash. The recent decrease in single target damage makes them more like banelings in that they are [slightly] less efficient when used on single targets now. Meaning that there is some added risk to using them, where before, there was little risk because you were almost guaranteed at least one kill.
Banelings have to be within melee range to detonate and you can only use them once. Mines have a ranged attack and can be used as many times as you want.
Banelings only attack ground units. Mines can attack ground and air units (thankfully not cloaked units anymore).
Basically, mines are way better than burrowed banelings in every single category. This explains why they cost so much more. My point here, is that if you reduce the cost or supply of the mines, you simply MUST nerf the hell out of it.
Suggestions: Get rid of the widow mine completely and give spider mines to the reaper. This would give added usefulness to the reaper, as well as allow for some space control. The new spider mines could have increased range and attack both ground and air targets but would be consumed after one use. It would be a free unit in terms of resources and supply, but the downside is that you must train a new reaper to obtain more mines.
Reduce raven auto-turret from 50 energy to 25 (why are they more energy than infested terrans anyway?). That way players could spam auto-turrets to control space in combination with tanks and mines.
Add a new upgrade for the viking to make it viable when in mech form. This would fill the role of the now defunct warhound. While this would not be a "factory" unit, it would fit nicely into a mech composition which is what the warhound and widow mine were meant to do.
I realize that making these changes basically means that Terran gets no "new" units. And that might be a problem for some, but I think that terran has enough units already, they just need to be tweaked to make them more fun to use.
The problem with tank not getting attention it is a very very fragile unit. A few points of damage or life can be a game-breaker because of the unit's role. I guess we will see how it unfolds but I really wish the tank was just more beastly, especially against P. Perhaps another Fusion Core upgrade for them? I don't know.
Tank is garbage unit in HOTS. It gets countered by just about every unit. With widow mines and battle hellions there are 0 reasons to build siege tanks in HOTS.
I'm a P player here, but I am 100% behind the idea of buffing mech and will talk a little bit about TvP. I feel it's for now quite fragile because of that damn immortal...
My ideal game ? A game where the defender has a strong advantage and positionnal play has a lot of importance. You win by strong macro and big multitasking by defending and harassing a lot a lot. So a lot of skirmishes around the map as you slowly overcome your opponent, hurting his macro. SC2 is far from there (yet?).
Therefore, I am advocating big buffs to the tank. Hell, tanks should be scary ! I am not supposed to a-move 6 immortals into them and ruining everything... I should try to play with mech's weakness: immobility, avoiding them to harass expansions where tanks aren't, while expanding crazy myself... and then suffering harass myself with hellions/mines, etc. I don't quite now how to explain this and maybe I sound stupid, but this comes from the heart guys :D
On the other hand... in BW T bio was muredered by the biffy P units. Don't get me wrong, I would be very happy if T can mech or go bio, both being viable. But the fast is that bio now just destroy protoss in mid-game without AOE. So we see a lot of turtling, less harass, etc. and this leads to less interesting games.
The problem is, that nerfing for example the marauder is shutting down T bio. So the "design flaw" is more on the P side... that's why I'd make drastic changes to this race that don't feel... well... that don't feel "protoss" or just well designed. Something like make the stalker damage bonus to light and not vs armor, swap sentry and immortal in robo. Yes, immortals T1.5, but nerfed a lot. Etc, etc. and THEN, we will be able to see a viable mech + viable bio.
CONCLUSION: please please buff the hell out of tanks. Remake P almost from scratch. Thanks.
Maybe Stalkers should do full damages to everything and not just armored. Like the ultralisk. This way, protoss doesnt rely too much on AoE. They can weaken the colossi by changing the way it works. This is a change like the ultra buff so that zerg doesnt rely too much on the Broodlord.
Then, blizzard can buff tank since 1 1 1 wont be as strong as before. And nerf immortal : remove this godamn hardened shield ! It's broking the game !
From my point of view, a strategy game doesnt rely only on skill but also you need to be smarter than your opponent, so people is missing the fact that the widow mines doesnt require skill to be used, they need intelligence. A good placement, to bait enemy units on to a minefield, etc...
On December 21 2012 16:37 YoungNV wrote: Suggestions: Get rid of the widow mine completely and give spider mines to the reaper. This would give added usefulness to the reaper, as well as allow for some space control.
The thought of Bio with space control viable units gets me hard. The problem is that there would then be no downside to playing bio vs anything and mech would be redundant.
I'd prefer to see mines added to mech and bio, but with different uses on each. Mech mines would offer viable cheap AA and support for tank controlled areas and bio mines would be tailored for light AoE with little to no single target damage to compliment all bio being single target damage.
Perhaps add mines as an upgrade on tech labs; factory for mech and barracks for bio. Researching barracks lab'd mines would add mines to barracks production units and factory research to factory units.
Will never happen. But just thinking about bio with positional play and area control is awesome.
Suggestions: Get rid of the widow mine completely and give spider mines to the reaper. This would give added usefulness to the reaper, as well as allow for some space control. The new spider mines could have increased range and attack both ground and air targets but would be consumed after one use. It would be a free unit in terms of resources and supply, but the downside is that you must train a new reaper to obtain more mines.
Reduce raven auto-turret from 50 energy to 25 (why are they more energy than infested terrans anyway?). That way players could spam auto-turrets to control space in combination with tanks and mines.
Add a new upgrade for the viking to make it viable when in mech form. This would fill the role of the now defunct warhound. While this would not be a "factory" unit, it would fit nicely into a mech composition which is what the warhound and widow mine were meant to do.
1) I think the reaper carrying around mines is a cool idea, but reapers take so long to build. Not to mention that early-game TvT would be ruined even more than it already is by reapers lol. Maybe if the idea had come into being before all the buffs to reaper, it would have been valid, but I just don't think it would work anymore.
2) Agreed. I don't see players using auto-turret still though lol. I'd rather set up point defense drones in an area as a space control "screen" (as well as floating scout) or save all my energy for seeker missile.
3) I've heard this idea quite a bit and I think it's actually a really good one. I don't think anyone can argue that vikings could ever be overpowered in mech form when you compare them to how much better marines are. I'd be up for a straight up buff even; forget upgrades.
On December 21 2012 17:30 Kiro21 wrote: The problem with tank not getting attention it is a very very fragile unit. A few points of damage or life can be a game-breaker because of the unit's role. I guess we will see how it unfolds but I really wish the tank was just more beastly, especially against P. Perhaps another Fusion Core upgrade for them? I don't know.
I was thinking about that. I think it would be nice to have a fusion core upgrade for tanks to keep them strong into the lategame. Unfortunately, I think that now, in conjunction with the caduceus reactor upgrade moved to fusion core as well, you could depend on marine/tank all the way through to the lategame, which would actually just make the game really stale. You wouldn't need a lategame transition. If they were to get an upgrade, it couldn't be damage, it would have to be something like the Shaped Blast from campaign (40% less damage to friendly units).
On December 21 2012 18:18 Wayem wrote: Hi,
I'm a P player here, but I am 100% behind the idea of buffing mech and will talk a little bit about TvP. I feel it's for now quite fragile because of that damn immortal...
My ideal game ? A game where the defender has a strong advantage and positionnal play has a lot of importance. You win by strong macro and big multitasking by defending and harassing a lot a lot. So a lot of skirmishes around the map as you slowly overcome your opponent, hurting his macro. SC2 is far from there (yet?).
Therefore, I am advocating big buffs to the tank. Hell, tanks should be scary ! I am not supposed to a-move 6 immortals into them and ruining everything... I should try to play with mech's weakness: immobility, avoiding them to harass expansions where tanks aren't, while expanding crazy myself... and then suffering harass myself with hellions/mines, etc. I don't quite now how to explain this and maybe I sound stupid, but this comes from the heart guys :D
On the other hand... in BW T bio was muredered by the biffy P units. Don't get me wrong, I would be very happy if T can mech or go bio, both being viable. But the fast is that bio now just destroy protoss in mid-game without AOE. So we see a lot of turtling, less harass, etc. and this leads to less interesting games.
The problem is, that nerfing for example the marauder is shutting down T bio. So the "design flaw" is more on the P side... that's why I'd make drastic changes to this race that don't feel... well... that don't feel "protoss" or just well designed. Something like make the stalker damage bonus to light and not vs armor, swap sentry and immortal in robo. Yes, immortals T1.5, but nerfed a lot. Etc, etc. and THEN, we will be able to see a viable mech + viable bio.
CONCLUSION: please please buff the hell out of tanks. Remake P almost from scratch. Thanks.
This is a very insightful post. I think it's interesting to look at the TvP matchup and say that the problem isn't terran, but the way protoss is designed, and therefore the way terran has to deal with it is flawed. It's certain that protoss could be a better race with complete overhauls, but we're far far into SC2 and can't change that, though. I DO agree with you though. And I definitely think tanks should be scary for everyone; (as of right now, tanks are not nearly as frightening as banelings, which tells you something).
On December 21 2012 18:29 drkcid wrote: From my point of view, a strategy game doesnt rely only on skill but also you need to be smarter than your opponent, so people is missing the fact that the widow mines doesnt require skill to be used, they need intelligence. A good placement, to bait enemy units on to a minefield, etc...
Not every unit in SC2 needs micro
EDIT: dont compare widow mines with banelings.
I would say the biggest design issue with the widow mine right now is that there's no such thing as "good placement" with the range and unpredictability of the widow mine. It's actually not a missile turret. Or a mine, really. It's honestly a unit that you just burrow in an area your opponent MIGHT come and then forget about, WHICH IS FINE for free mines. But not mines that eat up 2 supply and a bunch of gas.
Or you can do the huge offensive mine thing. Which is not bad, but not all that interesting either.
Its seems like from when I play p v z that majority of terrans have been trying to implement a bio widowmine build. It doesnt work very well since chargelot amd storms melt everything. Widow mines need to find there place, it suppost to be a set it and forget it, not an offensive unit like in the early betA
This thread should really be under hots TvP mech thread. anyways of all the mech units widow mines have the least versatility and the least transitional value early to mid to late game. Mech lacks a core army and now with the war hound gone his hasn't addressed this with anything but battle hellion mode. I'm a huge supporter for trying to keep hellions as the core army unit and the main mineral dump but come late game they're only used as harassment units. (I'll be it very effective ones) the biggest hole in mech at this point is the core unit late game. It needs to be replenishable versatile and not immobile. The only late game unit that's versatile is the Thor in that UT has aa. What it lacks is well everything else. It's not a Cote unit it's a long range high supply gas heavy splash damage armored unit. Sound familiar? From into late game it has little value for aa anyways. the Thor is a shitty tank. I know they operate completely differently but lets face it, it's not as effective as the tank and it's out of the mid game. Btw I love mech to death. I believe the fact that every unit had two "modes"proves it has capability and promise to be well rounded and versatile. Anything to fill the role of a core unit whether it be adjustments to the hellion, landed Vikings, the war hound again, Thors and their strike cannons, or any combination of those can put it in it's rightful place. the last thing mech fails at is it's shockingly stark transition from hellions into Vikings. This goes for TvZ as well. The Vikings are not versatile however effective. And the timing fit the transition is not a choice or tactic. Is determined by the opposing player. Any alteration to Thors it my dream the alteration of ravens into science vessels cutoffs help smooth the transition. Is not impossible. The war hound did exist once and the seeker missile has changed enough to change the strike cannon. Not to mention tank damage has been Nerf ed for the past four and a half years. The viable versatile vivacious mechanical composition is out there. You just have to dream it.
i really dont think buffing tank in any way is the solution, tvz mech in its current form is doable / fine, viper is kinda hard with its cloud also being able to be used against mech but dmg wise its okay, its just tvp that is a problem and the tank dmg buff would solve it but would cause problems in other matchups, like tvt u will never see anything else then mech, i dont think a game where u ve to go xyz or else its bad is good game design
Reasonable suggestions. In the HotS the tank is perhaps the worst unit in the game. I've gone on and on about the benefits of proper board control in this game, so I'll keep it short.
Fix the tank (which will directly contribute to making mech actually playable) and not only will you have a more fair game, but you will see the quality of SC2 games jump up immensely.
Why do people keep suggesting that they give the mine to the reaper? Do people not realise how much extra production terran would even need as mech and how many totally useless units we'd have in our armies just for mines?
i dont think a game where u ve to go xyz or else its bad is good game design
That happens in TvP already. Also buffing tank damage won't make bio completely unviable, nor would it make them too powerful in TvZ. Those are massive, massive misconceptions coming from people who don't understand how to deal with a higher damage tank. Due to vipers, zergs can completely negate larger damage tanks so that's a non issue. They also have locusts to soak up hits and broodlords which destroy tanks.
Terran can drop everywhere, split well and flank the mech army so they can deal with a mech army by just going a lot of maraduers. Bio is already terrible against a properly upgraded mech army in position, higher tank damage won't make a difference.
On December 21 2012 16:37 YoungNV wrote: Normally I dislike it when people post ideas for major unit or balance overhauls. Unless they are a pro-player or blizzard employee, there's not much reason to care what they think. But it is fun to discuss ideas. So at the risk of seeming hypocritical, I am going to post ideas for major unit and balance overhauls. Bear in mind that I am not a pro-gamer or a blizzard employee, and there is not much reason to care what I think...
1. Siege Tank - I think it's fine the way it is. It's a strong and affordable tier 2 unit. Increasing its damage would turn it into a tier 3 unit, and reducing its supply or cost and it would be OP (think 1 supply roaches).
2. Widow Mine - I agree that there is something wrong with the widow mine. It feels like a catch-all unit. Let's compare it to a burrowed baneling:
Banelings must be detonated manually, requiring skill. Mines detonate automatically requiring zero skill.
Banelings are inefficient when used on single targets, therefore you must choose your targets wisely, requiring more skill. Mines basically one-shot everything plus deal splash. The recent decrease in single target damage makes them more like banelings in that they are [slightly] less efficient when used on single targets now. Meaning that there is some added risk to using them, where before, there was little risk because you were almost guaranteed at least one kill.
Banelings have to be within melee range to detonate and you can only use them once. Mines have a ranged attack and can be used as many times as you want.
Banelings only attack ground units. Mines can attack ground and air units (thankfully not cloaked units anymore).
Basically, mines are way better than burrowed banelings in every single category. This explains why they cost so much more. My point here, is that if you reduce the cost or supply of the mines, you simply MUST nerf the hell out of it.
Suggestions: Get rid of the widow mine completely and give spider mines to the reaper. This would give added usefulness to the reaper, as well as allow for some space control. The new spider mines could have increased range and attack both ground and air targets but would be consumed after one use. It would be a free unit in terms of resources and supply, but the downside is that you must train a new reaper to obtain more mines.
Reduce raven auto-turret from 50 energy to 25 (why are they more energy than infested terrans anyway?). That way players could spam auto-turrets to control space in combination with tanks and mines.
Add a new upgrade for the viking to make it viable when in mech form. This would fill the role of the now defunct warhound. While this would not be a "factory" unit, it would fit nicely into a mech composition which is what the warhound and widow mine were meant to do.
I realize that making these changes basically means that Terran gets no "new" units. And that might be a problem for some, but I think that terran has enough units already, they just need to be tweaked to make them more fun to use.
Mines should be used with mech. Reaper is a bio unit and doesn't function with mech. Reapers on the otherhand should be redesigned to make it a better allround unit (while still a good harass unit). Somewhat similar to the role mutalisks have for zerg players). Turret problem is that you can't place the goddamn turrets anywhere. FIx this problem before reducing its energy. Viking suggestion is okay'ish, but our main problem is that mech needs something to counter immortal. Every mech suggestion post should have a suggestion regarding this problem.
First thing that should be noted about the Siege Tank is that the BW Siege Tank did 35 base damage too (technically 70 base damage, but it was reduced to 35 against small units like Marines, Zerglings, and notably, Zealots). That is most likely not the problem. Rather, the issue is primarily the 3 supply and the counter units like the Immortal. The 3 supply can be changed easily without adversely affecting any matchup (Tanks do not dominate any matchup, and indeed are rarely seen outside of TvZ where they are made obsolete by the Broodlord and the 1-1-1 where supply cap is not an issue), but the counters are something else entirely. It is difficult to just remove them from the game, so what needs to be done is that Terran units need to be changed so that they can handle the counters. The two big-issue units right now are the Immortal and the Broodlord. The Immortal may be possible to address via Ghostmech, so I'd leave it for now (it's also absolutely critical for defending the 1-1-1). The Broodlord is more difficult. The closest thing it has to a counter is the Viking, which is handled well by Infestors and Corruptors, and Broodlords can destroy Siege Tank defensive positions so fast that it's still a major problem. I believe a better way to handle the situation is to continue the Thor's quest towards becoming a dedicated anti-air platform, and allow Strike Cannons to target air. This will allow the Terran to resist Broodlord offensives more effectively, and better protect the Tank.
Someone has mentioned giving Spider Mines to Reapers. I think this is a great idea. Bio doesn't benefit from defensive positional play enough to start working Reapers into the main builds, and so we'll primarily see Reapers limited to Mech and extreme lategame gambits. Besides, Widow Mines are rapidly becoming mini-tanks, which is stupid.
On December 22 2012 19:14 {ToT}ColmA wrote: i really dont think buffing tank in any way is the solution, tvz mech in its current form is doable / fine, viper is kinda hard with its cloud also being able to be used against mech but dmg wise its okay, its just tvp that is a problem and the tank dmg buff would solve it but would cause problems in other matchups, like tvt u will never see anything else then mech, i dont think a game where u ve to go xyz or else its bad is good game design
If I may explain: my suggestion is a buff to the tank that would just make it better for single target damage. The splash I suggest is greatly reduced, meaning that the tank would only hit like 2-3 stalkers at a time or maybe 4 zealots/marines/banelings.
Biggest problem in TvP mech is the immortal/chargelot/archon mixture. Zealots will melt under the AoE of mines + hellions while the improved single target tank would chew through the archons and immortals better. While there is still the problem of dealing with the immortal's shields, mech fares a lot better with a tank that can actually be scary against ground units.
The reason why this doesn't affect the other matchups is because 1) small units that are already 1-shotted by tanks would still be 1-shotted and 2) the limited splash radius lowers the overall damage it does, meaning marines/lings don't get raped hard by a few tanks. In addition, the splash damage I suggested is slightly not enough to kill a marine.
On December 22 2012 19:31 Qikz wrote: Why do people keep suggesting that they give the mine to the reaper? Do people not realise how much extra production terran would even need as mech and how many totally useless units we'd have in our armies just for mines?
This is true. Another reason why, although giving mines to the reaper feels like a cool idea, might not work. Although...it would transition into ghostmech a lot better.
On December 22 2012 21:46 Acritter wrote: First thing that should be noted about the Siege Tank is that the BW Siege Tank did 35 base damage too (technically 70 base damage, but it was reduced to 35 against small units like Marines, Zerglings, and notably, Zealots). That is most likely not the problem. Rather, the issue is primarily the 3 supply and the counter units like the Immortal. The 3 supply can be changed easily without adversely affecting any matchup (Tanks do not dominate any matchup, and indeed are rarely seen outside of TvZ where they are made obsolete by the Broodlord and the 1-1-1 where supply cap is not an issue), but the counters are something else entirely. It is difficult to just remove them from the game, so what needs to be done is that Terran units need to be changed so that they can handle the counters. The two big-issue units right now are the Immortal and the Broodlord.
This is an interesting point. I suppose with the introduction of tempests and vipers, there's really no reason why tank supply can't be lowered at this point and made more viable in the lategame. HOWEVER, to say that it has no effect on a 1-1-1 or early game pressure is wrong, I think. With only 2 supply instead of 3, you could easily squeeze out an extra 3-4 marines because of the supply not taken up by tanks. In fact, this might translate to an extra 100m+ buildup because you need less supply depots. Minor effects, but they are there.
The Protoss death ball is more mobile than mech's death ball meaning the Protoss had more opportunities to abuse mistakes. The widow mine was meant to be a counter part to the tank to smooth out the edges of tank war fair. It makes it harder to dance around the terran blinking were it hurts. If the widow mine doesn't do substantial damage then it doesn't pose enough of a threat to allow the tanks to unseige and maneuver.
I have no idea what I'm talking about, so I'll need somebody to tell me if my idea is idiotic or ingenius. But um.
If the problem T mech faces is zealot/archon/immortal, then why not...
Remove the immortal. Compensate with other buffs (or another new unit)
Afaik (and I might be horribly mistaken) they'll just need buffs to handle roaches against Z, and something to make PvP more interesting (since you won't be able to go immortal against stalker anymore)
I would like to see siege tank's range and damage increased. As for the widow mine, reduce its supply to 1, cost to 50 minerals, and balance accordingly. This would solve a lot of the problems with mech.
Agree with the OP. The #1 reason why terran isn't satisfy to play is because it has devolved into a deathball army instead of a positional army. The only 2 units for space control: tanks and mines, are totally shit at actually controlling space.
I'm a P player here, but I am 100% behind the idea of buffing mech and will talk a little bit about TvP. I feel it's for now quite fragile because of that damn immortal...
My ideal game ? A game where the defender has a strong advantage and positionnal play has a lot of importance. You win by strong macro and big multitasking by defending and harassing a lot a lot. So a lot of skirmishes around the map as you slowly overcome your opponent, hurting his macro. SC2 is far from there (yet?).
Therefore, I am advocating big buffs to the tank. Hell, tanks should be scary ! I am not supposed to a-move 6 immortals into them and ruining everything... I should try to play with mech's weakness: immobility, avoiding them to harass expansions where tanks aren't, while expanding crazy myself... and then suffering harass myself with hellions/mines, etc. I don't quite now how to explain this and maybe I sound stupid, but this comes from the heart guys :D
On the other hand... in BW T bio was muredered by the biffy P units. Don't get me wrong, I would be very happy if T can mech or go bio, both being viable. But the fast is that bio now just destroy protoss in mid-game without AOE. So we see a lot of turtling, less harass, etc. and this leads to less interesting games.
The problem is, that nerfing for example the marauder is shutting down T bio. So the "design flaw" is more on the P side... that's why I'd make drastic changes to this race that don't feel... well... that don't feel "protoss" or just well designed. Something like make the stalker damage bonus to light and not vs armor, swap sentry and immortal in robo. Yes, immortals T1.5, but nerfed a lot. Etc, etc. and THEN, we will be able to see a viable mech + viable bio.
CONCLUSION: please please buff the hell out of tanks. Remake P almost from scratch. Thanks.
signed in today to say this post was great
ive always thought that the way terran vs protoss went in broodwar swas a much better experience for the players for example, the tanks in WOL aren't as good but sc2 is a lot different. if you play mech in WOL and it goes to like a 2 hour + game where terran kills all of his scvs and make like pure tank viking raven and just WAITS it can be impossible for protoss to break and the game just doesn't feel strategical. on the other hand, in the early game (i consider being 200/200 with 30+ tanks and 2/2 or 3/3, still early game in mech tvp if you are playing it correctly) if you are unsieged in an engavement ever.. its over. you lose. all the meticulous unit positioning, building placement, scouting for the 1-3 base cheeses, etc it doesn't matter because you weren't aware of where his chargelots where for one army movement. what i mean by unsieged, is 100% of your tanks arne't fully sieged and ready to fire when he engages. i have fond that even a few unsieged tanks can be the difference between life and death
everything in sc2 seems to be balanced around protoss like you say. from map design, to stim timings, to production rate, etc. IIRC stim timings were initially nerfed moreso because of tvp than tvz (with creep, speedlings, queens, stim timings are meh, whereas concussive + stim can kill infinite gateway units pretty much)
i haven't watched a recent tvp and really been surprised with how it opened. it's pretty much a 1 gas hellion drop or 1rax fe > 2 more rax or 3 more rax and a coinflip marine push. unfortuntaely in my tvp's on the beta, it has gone this way as well. caduceus is too powerful, and a move in the wrong direction. instead of being an upgrade that gives terrans the ability to play in the late game, i feel like this is basically just going to be used to rinse and recycle MMM armies against protoss and eventually overwhelm them with no intention of lategame play. between tim warm and storm, it seems impossible to deal with late protoss armies now. time warp is going to be extremely powerful, i think it's time the siege tank was viable in tvp, even if bio is needed to support them. mech isn't going to work. it doesn't work in wings of liberty because of the siege tank. why not even try a small buff to theM? great post man
On December 21 2012 17:30 Kiro21 wrote: The problem with tank not getting attention it is a very very fragile unit. A few points of damage or life can be a game-breaker because of the unit's role. I guess we will see how it unfolds but I really wish the tank was just more beastly, especially against P. Perhaps another Fusion Core upgrade for them? I don't know.
Indeed, and you have to consider all the counter to tanks in HOTS
Blinding cloud (now affects mech unit, hello 1 range siege tanks) Abduct
and Tempests
this is in addition to the regular ole counters to tanks. They feel very lack luster compared to their BW counterpart
On December 21 2012 17:30 Kiro21 wrote: The problem with tank not getting attention it is a very very fragile unit. A few points of damage or life can be a game-breaker because of the unit's role. I guess we will see how it unfolds but I really wish the tank was just more beastly, especially against P. Perhaps another Fusion Core upgrade for them? I don't know.
Indeed, and you have to consider all the counter to tanks in HOTS
Blinding cloud (now affects mech unit, hello 1 range siege tanks) Abduct
and Tempests
this is in addition to the regular ole counters to tanks. They feel very lack luster compared to their BW counterpart
this is why I think ravens should get the medic ability i forgot what its called but the one that clears status ailments
an AOE version you can cast over the tanks or something. a nerfed irradiate could be awesome as well. put it on a speed boosted medivac and fly in the brood cloud
On December 21 2012 17:30 Kiro21 wrote: The problem with tank not getting attention it is a very very fragile unit. A few points of damage or life can be a game-breaker because of the unit's role. I guess we will see how it unfolds but I really wish the tank was just more beastly, especially against P. Perhaps another Fusion Core upgrade for them? I don't know.
Indeed, and you have to consider all the counter to tanks in HOTS
Blinding cloud (now affects mech unit, hello 1 range siege tanks) Abduct
and Tempests
this is in addition to the regular ole counters to tanks. They feel very lack luster compared to their BW counterpart
this is why I think ravens should get the medic ability i forgot what its called but the one that clears status ailments
an AOE version you can cast over the tanks or something. a nerfed irradiate could be awesome as well. put it on a speed boosted medivac and fly in the brood cloud
Ravens that clears status ailments? Sounds odd, sounds better if the medibacks are the ones who creates "clean" auras to avoid status ailments, a skill switch: heal biological units or negates status ailments (Blinding cloud, fungal ¿?)
I'm a P player here, but I am 100% behind the idea of buffing mech and will talk a little bit about TvP. I feel it's for now quite fragile because of that damn immortal...
My ideal game ? A game where the defender has a strong advantage and positionnal play has a lot of importance. You win by strong macro and big multitasking by defending and harassing a lot a lot. So a lot of skirmishes around the map as you slowly overcome your opponent, hurting his macro. SC2 is far from there (yet?).
Therefore, I am advocating big buffs to the tank. Hell, tanks should be scary ! I am not supposed to a-move 6 immortals into them and ruining everything... I should try to play with mech's weakness: immobility, avoiding them to harass expansions where tanks aren't, while expanding crazy myself... and then suffering harass myself with hellions/mines, etc. I don't quite now how to explain this and maybe I sound stupid, but this comes from the heart guys :D
On the other hand... in BW T bio was muredered by the biffy P units. Don't get me wrong, I would be very happy if T can mech or go bio, both being viable. But the fast is that bio now just destroy protoss in mid-game without AOE. So we see a lot of turtling, less harass, etc. and this leads to less interesting games.
The problem is, that nerfing for example the marauder is shutting down T bio. So the "design flaw" is more on the P side... that's why I'd make drastic changes to this race that don't feel... well... that don't feel "protoss" or just well designed. Something like make the stalker damage bonus to light and not vs armor, swap sentry and immortal in robo. Yes, immortals T1.5, but nerfed a lot. Etc, etc. and THEN, we will be able to see a viable mech + viable bio.
CONCLUSION: please please buff the hell out of tanks. Remake P almost from scratch. Thanks.
signed in today to say this post was great
ive always thought that the way terran vs protoss went in broodwar swas a much better experience for the players for example, the tanks in WOL aren't as good but sc2 is a lot different. if you play mech in WOL and it goes to like a 2 hour + game where terran kills all of his scvs and make like pure tank viking raven and just WAITS it can be impossible for protoss to break and the game just doesn't feel strategical. on the other hand, in the early game (i consider being 200/200 with 30+ tanks and 2/2 or 3/3, still early game in mech tvp if you are playing it correctly) if you are unsieged in an engavement ever.. its over. you lose. all the meticulous unit positioning, building placement, scouting for the 1-3 base cheeses, etc it doesn't matter because you weren't aware of where his chargelots where for one army movement. what i mean by unsieged, is 100% of your tanks arne't fully sieged and ready to fire when he engages. i have fond that even a few unsieged tanks can be the difference between life and death
everything in sc2 seems to be balanced around protoss like you say. from map design, to stim timings, to production rate, etc. IIRC stim timings were initially nerfed moreso because of tvp than tvz (with creep, speedlings, queens, stim timings are meh, whereas concussive + stim can kill infinite gateway units pretty much)
i haven't watched a recent tvp and really been surprised with how it opened. it's pretty much a 1 gas hellion drop or 1rax fe > 2 more rax or 3 more rax and a coinflip marine push. unfortuntaely in my tvp's on the beta, it has gone this way as well. caduceus is too powerful, and a move in the wrong direction. instead of being an upgrade that gives terrans the ability to play in the late game, i feel like this is basically just going to be used to rinse and recycle MMM armies against protoss and eventually overwhelm them with no intention of lategame play. between tim warm and storm, it seems impossible to deal with late protoss armies now. time warp is going to be extremely powerful, i think it's time the siege tank was viable in tvp, even if bio is needed to support them. mech isn't going to work. it doesn't work in wings of liberty because of the siege tank. why not even try a small buff to theM? great post man
Thanks for your kind answer ! I'll risk a reply myself about bio T.
In beta and early SC2, even under torture I wouldn't have said that protoss had an edge over terran. But now... bio is really as you say "rinse and recycle". From the 10' mark to the end game, the T composition doesn't change that much... while P gains full range collo, storm, now maybe time warp, etc. and, making abstract of T, P and balance (we could very well be at 50% here), we end in a classic "race versus the clock" in RTS, which is really not that exciting to watch. It waters down the differences between players and more simply the general excitement provided by the games. To make it worse for SC2, I have the personal feeling that TvP is curently the most interesting MU to watch...
I don't think that everything was balanced around protoss on purpose, but the fact is that chronoboost, warpgates, immortals may be interesting but are also game breakers.Think about WG a second: immensely powerful if you go for an early rush. So the units coming out from it can't be as biffy as in BW or the game is broken. Warping dragoons with range ? Let's be serious... so if you go macro, the concept of WG just... hurts you as your initials units will be worse than what they would be if warpgate tech didn't exist. So you need to turtle. Hold, hold, hold. Then look at your clock. Congratulations, you deflected the initial push and a drop. You win. Problem is, nerfing early bio isn't really the best idea as the core army is basically the same throughout the game. That's why I feel that the new medivac is for example a good idea... but it MUST comes along a protoss redesign so our beloved aliens don't get smashed early game. Mothership core, however, encourages more turtling. Fighting mid game is still not viable but you can turtle easier to enter a slightly more harder end game. Don't know how this will turn out in practice, but we are still faaaar from our dynamic and back and forth game we want...
Back to the tank. If a protoss redesign as I'd like would happen (hint: it won't), then T would have a hard time holding early aggression from "better" gateway units. That's why they need something to control the map. Either go bio and be on equal footing with the protoss to skirmish early on the map ... or go mech... and use something that can provide a control and harass to not get outexpand immediately. Spider/widow mines anyone ?
Of course, this doesn't take into account TvZ and PvZ. Any thought on how a buffed tank would allow TvZ ? Well... we're in beta, are we not ? Isn't it the time to try stuff like this ?
First of all, great post. This should be posted on Bnet forums to raise awareness of the core problems mech inherently has, especially with the current state of siege tank. The most prominent cause of this is the pitiful siege tank damage which is the root of terran's weakness in defense and often why it is better to deathball them for maximum effectivness. This is also related to another interesting post someone wrote which stated that 'tanks are clumped for the reason to maximise output', which again, discourages space control, since the unit themselves or a few of them offer far too little damage output to really invest in as defense. This is obviously weakened further by blinding cloud which greatly improves the trade inefficiency for tank heavy compositions. With that in mind, buffs are mandatory to encourage better positional play and at the same time help meching users achieve parity in their ability to trade versus the new anti-tank host units like the viper and buffed ultra.
With comments relating to the removal of immortals, i believe it's too far fetched, since Protoss would literally crumbled vs any reach pressure or the infamous Stephano roach max. As it currently stands Protoss needs a very strong anti-armoured unit to defend against a critical mass of roaches, while VRs are good at this task, having 1 viable tech route would just force stargate play every game vs Zerg. Buffing gateway units may not be the right way to go since the warp in mechanic would make TvP unplayable, and as such, they should focus on fixing Terran units instead, since there are obvious weaknesses such as the Tank for one.
Terran really is going to need some kind of buff in the future, may it be mech, or bio. Right now as a Terran player, I feel as if I never can get an "advantage" over my protoss counterpart.
Midgame? MSC negates most midgame pressure with the purify ability. So I think this "advantage" terran had, is now gone mid game against P.
On December 27 2012 00:44 VPVanek wrote: Terran really is going to need some kind of buff in the future, may it be mech, or bio. Right now as a Terran player, I feel as if I never can get an "advantage" over my protoss counterpart.
Midgame? MSC negates most midgame pressure with the purify ability. So I think this "advantage" terran had, is now gone mid game against P.
I don't know how it stands with mech.
Mech (using siege tanks) doesn't work at all right now. There has been some success with thor/hellion timing attacks, but no solid way to play this matchup with mech. Bio is good, if not better than before, but it ends up being the same deal: get a bunch of expansions up in the midgame, trade MMM armies until the game ends.
On December 26 2012 23:59 Novacute wrote: First of all, great post. This should be posted on Bnet forums to raise awareness of the core problems mech inherently has, especially with the current state of siege tank. The most prominent cause of this is the pitiful siege tank damage which is the root of terran's weakness in defense and often why it is better to deathball them for maximum effectivness. This is also related to another interesting post someone wrote which stated that 'tanks are clumped for the reason to maximise output', which again, discourages space control, since the unit themselves or a few of them offer far too little damage output to really invest in as defense. This is obviously weakened further by blinding cloud which greatly improves the trade inefficiency for tank heavy compositions. With that in mind, buffs are mandatory to encourage better positional play and at the same time help meching users achieve parity in their ability to trade versus the new anti-tank host units like the viper and buffed ultra.
With comments relating to the removal of immortals, i believe it's too far fetched, since Protoss would literally crumbled vs any reach pressure or the infamous Stephano roach max. As it currently stands Protoss needs a very strong anti-armoured unit to defend against a critical mass of roaches, while VRs are good at this task, having 1 viable tech route would just force stargate play every game vs Zerg. Buffing gateway units may not be the right way to go since the warp in mechanic would make TvP unplayable, and as such, they should focus on fixing Terran units instead, since there are obvious weaknesses such as the Tank for one.
Thank you. You're absolutely right; I think Blizzard really needs to look at how wimpy the tank is and give it a huge buff by the next patch. Just a few damage points would make the tank much much stronger. I worry about lowering the supply a little just because it can make early attacks much stronger; people have this wrong belief that a 1 supply reduction would not affect the early/mid game, but it would actually make a huge difference.
On December 21 2012 17:30 Kiro21 wrote: The problem with tank not getting attention it is a very very fragile unit. A few points of damage or life can be a game-breaker because of the unit's role. I guess we will see how it unfolds but I really wish the tank was just more beastly, especially against P. Perhaps another Fusion Core upgrade for them? I don't know.
Indeed, and you have to consider all the counter to tanks in HOTS
Blinding cloud (now affects mech unit, hello 1 range siege tanks) Abduct
and Tempests
this is in addition to the regular ole counters to tanks. They feel very lack luster compared to their BW counterpart
this is why I think ravens should get the medic ability i forgot what its called but the one that clears status ailments
an AOE version you can cast over the tanks or something. a nerfed irradiate could be awesome as well. put it on a speed boosted medivac and fly in the brood cloud
This is interesting. The ability you're referring to is restoration, and it would be an interesting thing to add to the game. I actually see no reason not to put restoration in, except that there really isn't room for it currently; ravens already have 3 abilities which are semi-useful (Blizz needs to redesign seeker missile again and fix turrets, but that's something else entirely) and medivacs really don't need another ability.
While I'm here, I'll just throw out something I thought of: what if factory had a support spellcaster? We know that lategame ravens are good and everything, but what if we had a midgame spellcaster that could "heal" mechanical units (with the same rate as upgraded medivac) and cast restoration? Would that not solve a lot of mech problems? If they had that, it would almost be okay to nerf mines into the ground and make them minerals only for 0.5 supply. Just an idea, throwing it out there if anyone wants to discuss it.
The basic reason why Terran is weak late game is that their tech tree is so impoverished. There are essentially only three Terran tech structures- the Barracks, the Factory, and the Starport (and the Fusion Core for BCs as an extension). This means it is possible to get the highest tech Terran units very early in the game compared to Zerg and Protoss. The possibility of rushing them thus limits their strength when rushed, and in their effectiveness with limited numbers. And because their effectiveness is limited, they are not that useful to build in large numbers. Both the speed and low cost of Terran tech structures (due to how few of them there are) means terran high tech units have to be less strong than Zerg and Protoss high tech units, which take longer and cost more in terms of tech to acquire.
Additionally, the linearity of the Terran tech tree detracts from their late game strength. With the exception of the Ghost Academy all Terran tech expenditures are required to unlock the next tech requirement. This means you cannot spend resources selectively to only unlock a particular tech option. You are spending more to unlock a variety of options, and the strength of each is reduced by the flexibility of choosing others, or using them in concert. For example, the 1-1-1.
Ideally Blizzard would consider rethinking the structure of the Terran tech tree to require Terrans spend more resources, and slow down the rate at which you can get high tech terran units, and buff them. They should also add more tech facilities, such as the Academy or Science Facility, which will cause Terrans to spend more resources on specific tech choices, and which are scoutable, and which unlock target researches a Terran might wish to use to upgrade specific units.
Then, straight up buffing mech and starport units will make them viable. Because they will be out later, and cost more to build, and they can justify being stronger without rushing being too good.
On December 27 2012 15:17 ledarsi wrote: The basic reason why Terran is weak late game is that their tech tree is so impoverished. There are essentially only three Terran tech structures- the Barracks, the Factory, and the Starport (and the Fusion Core for BCs as an extension). This means it is possible to get the highest tech Terran units very early in the game compared to Zerg and Protoss. The possibility of rushing them thus limits their strength when rushed, and in their effectiveness with limited numbers. And because their effectiveness is limited, they are not that useful to build in large numbers. Both the speed and low cost of Terran tech structures (due to how few of them there are) means terran high tech units have to be less strong than Zerg and Protoss high tech units, which take longer and cost more in terms of tech to acquire.
Additionally, the linearity of the Terran tech tree detracts from their late game strength. With the exception of the Ghost Academy all Terran tech expenditures are required to unlock the next tech requirement. This means you cannot spend resources selectively to only unlock a particular tech option. You are spending more to unlock a variety of options, and the strength of each is reduced by the flexibility of choosing others, or using them in concert. For example, the 1-1-1.
Ideally Blizzard would consider rethinking the structure of the Terran tech tree to require Terrans spend more resources, and slow down the rate at which you can get high tech terran units, and buff them. They should also add more tech facilities, such as the Academy or Science Facility, which will cause Terrans to spend more resources on specific tech choices, and which are scoutable, and which unlock target researches a Terran might wish to use to upgrade specific units.
Then, straight up buffing mech and starport units will make them viable. Because they will be out later, and cost more to build, and they can justify being stronger without rushing being too good.
I'm going to be honest with you and say that I'm think this post is just completely, flatout, wrong.
1) Terran units are really good, most of them. The only terran units that might be misconstrued as bad are the reaper and the tank. And even then, terran has way better units than zerg or protoss (BC/thor is still, straight-up, the strongest army in the game). 2) Terran gets probably the latest tech out of any race. In order to survive, terran has to rely on a lot of low-level units until they can get the infrastructure up to support bigger units. Zerg does the same, but can cut corners with units and get tech up much faster (and let's be honest, zerg gets the fastest tech in the game). 3) Terran already spends the most money on their tech structure:
This is not including the cost of vital upgrades such as stim, CS, concussive shells, ghost upgrades, medivac upgrade, and 3+ upgrade classes.
4) Quite honestly, the difficulty terran has is not in the strength of its factory or starport units, but with smooth transitioning and bad space control. Terran cannot easily transition into a mech-heavy army from a bio-heavy army or vice versa, but neither can they afford enough space control to make transitions more smoothly.
In addition, the terran tech tree is anything but streamlined. The 1-1-1 is a nice medium as far as tech trees are concerned, but it really only has one purpose, and that is to be aggressive. If 1-1-1 aggression fails, there is no smooth transition; the cost of transitioning to a heavy bio game or a mech game is too great, and the time cost is even greater.
Therefore,
5) Terran just needs better space control in order to work with the high costs of infrastructure as well as the time delay of producing units 1 (or 2) at a time. They can still have their early aggression timings and midgame bio pushes, but lategame situations will feel smoother and rely more on positioning and expansion management rather than unit control with the subset of terran units you've committed to in the beginning of the game.
SC2John, you are correct about Terran production being expensive. But Terran easily has the fastest and cheapest tech. If you want to rush any particular item in the entire Terran arsenal, it can be obtained faster than almost anything available to Protoss or Zerg.
Suppose you want to get a Banshee, as opposed to a flock of Mutalisks.
Let us begin the counting at the point where the basic unit's facility is produced. Technically Terran must construct a Supply Depot first and this builds in parallel for zerg. However the Spawning Pool is also 50 minerals more expensive, and typically Zerg will construct a hatchery first, so an exact comparison is somewhat academic.
Spawning Pool (65s), Lair (80s), Spire (100s) = 245 seconds = 4 minutes, 5 seconds.
Even if you include the depot production time of 30 seconds, it still only adds up to 3 minutes 25 seconds- a whole 40 seconds before spire. Furthermore, spire is a dead-end. Infestation Pit leads on to Hive. Terran has, with this 2 minute 55 second build sequence, become able to produce literally anything in their tech tree except Ghosts and BCs. It is unsurprising that a rush of this form is effective- because if ANYTHING in the entire Terran tech tree is effective at rushing it becomes available, with the exceptions of Ghosts and BCs.
My point is that if the Terran possessed a unit of Broodlord, Infestor, or Colossus grade, then it would become available far quicker, and cheaper, than those units are available for Zerg and Protoss. Terran units are strong, don't get me wrong. But a Banshee is strong at the time it hits the field. If it were impossible to get a banshee until 2 minutes after they can presently be made, the Banshee in its present state would not be very useful. The fact that they can be acquired so quickly and so cheaply means they must be stoppable at the time they can be created. They must be weaker than a unit that only needs to be stoppable as it hits the field multiple minutes later, and after greater tech expense.
Case in point- Reaper nerfs from ages long past. The Reaper was only problematic because of how early it could be created. The unit itself was actually not very strong, except because of how early it was available it could do damage without the enemy being able to effectively deal with it. Locking it behind an Academy would have solved the problem, but instead they nerfed the unit into the ground.
And this entire discussion is to say nothing of cost per supply, which makes units like Infestors so strong, as they allow Zerg to spend a huge amount of resources to create a strong army that exists all at once, rather than having supply-inefficient units that must be maxed, sent in to die and inflict casualties on the enemy, and be replenished to repeat the process. Pretty much every Terran unit is rather cheap per supply. Even Thors are only 50 minerals and 33 gas per supply. Terran's most expensive units are Ravens and Reapers, and are not terribly useful in a straight up fight.
In my opinion, Terran higher tech structures should be increased in build time and/or cost, and perhaps require additional facilities with costs and build times of their own to construct some of their units. And then buff those units. Units like the Siege Tank, Thor, Banshee, and Raven are good candidates for gaining an additional tech structure, or for increasing the base cost of their production facility. I also think the Academy structure in BW served an important function as a dead-end research tech structure that hides Medics unless resources are spent to get stronger bio. A player going right for mech does not need to build it right away, but will not have powerful infantry.
On December 27 2012 19:48 ledarsi wrote: SC2John, you are correct about Terran production being expensive. But Terran easily has the fastest and cheapest tech. If you want to rush any particular item in the entire Terran arsenal, it can be obtained faster than almost anything available to Protoss or Zerg.
Suppose you want to get a Banshee, as opposed to a flock of Mutalisks.
Let us begin the counting at the point where the basic unit's facility is produced. Technically Terran must construct a Supply Depot first and this builds in parallel for zerg. However the Spawning Pool is also 50 minerals more expensive, and typically Zerg will construct a hatchery first, so an exact comparison is somewhat academic.
Spawning Pool (65s), Lair (80s), Spire (100s) = 245 seconds = 4 minutes, 5 seconds.
Even if you include the depot production time of 30 seconds, it still only adds up to 3 minutes 25 seconds- a whole 40 seconds before spire. Furthermore, spire is a dead-end. Infestation Pit leads on to Hive. Terran has, with this 2 minute 55 second build sequence, become able to produce literally anything in their tech tree except Ghosts and BCs. It is unsurprising that a rush of this form is effective- because if ANYTHING in the entire Terran tech tree is effective at rushing it becomes available, with the exceptions of Ghosts and BCs.
My point is that if the Terran possessed a unit of Broodlord, Infestor, or Colossus grade, then it would become available far quicker, and cheaper, than those units are available for Zerg and Protoss. Terran units are strong, don't get me wrong. But a Banshee is strong at the time it hits the field. If it were impossible to get a banshee until 2 minutes after they can presently be made, the Banshee in its present state would not be very useful. The fact that they can be acquired so quickly and so cheaply means they must be stoppable at the time they can be created. They must be weaker than a unit that only needs to be stoppable as it hits the field multiple minutes later, and after greater tech expense.
Case in point- Reaper nerfs from ages long past. The Reaper was only problematic because of how early it could be created. The unit itself was actually not very strong, except because of how early it was available it could do damage without the enemy being able to effectively deal with it. Locking it behind an Academy would have solved the problem, but instead they nerfed the unit into the ground.
And this entire discussion is to say nothing of cost per supply, which makes units like Infestors so strong, as they allow Zerg to spend a huge amount of resources to create a strong army that exists all at once, rather than having supply-inefficient units that must be maxed, sent in to die and inflict casualties on the enemy, and be replenished to repeat the process. Pretty much every Terran unit is rather cheap per supply. Even Thors are only 50 minerals and 33 gas per supply. Terran's most expensive units are Ravens and Reapers, and are not terribly useful in a straight up fight.
In my opinion, Terran higher tech structures should be increased in build time and/or cost, and perhaps require additional facilities with costs and build times of their own to construct some of their units. And then buff those units. Units like the Siege Tank, Thor, Banshee, and Raven are good candidates for gaining an additional tech structure, or for increasing the base cost of their production facility. I also think the Academy structure in BW served an important function as a dead-end research tech structure that hides Medics unless resources are spent to get stronger bio. A player going right for mech does not need to build it right away, but will not have powerful infantry.
I don't agree with much of this post, but I will say that I kind of like the idea of later tanks. It seems counter-intuitive, but I see where you're going with it; having tanks later in the tech path means you can put buffs on it that you couldn't do before, such as making it 2 supply and reducing the build time to 30 seconds.
I don't think this is necessary for the banshee because its role is purely harassment, which it shines at. Thor and Raven are already far away in terms of tech and impossible to gain too early due to the gas costs of both; in addition, they're both already sturdy units that don't need any straight-up buffs.
But yes, later tanks would be interesting. But widow mines would have to be buffed like mad to save terran from potential all-ins that the tank would normally save them from (in particular, thinking of the roach timings TvZ and blink all-ins as well as a plethora of 1-1-1's in TvT). Then you run the risk of widow mines becoming overpowered in conjunction with bio and early stim timings. Maybe worth testing, but I think a simple siege tank buff would actually just be better.
Wow, that's kinda screwed up. I imagine it happens because the zergling passes into the left widow mine range first, out of it before it can attack, which then switches it to the right widow mine, then it exits the range before being attacked.
Should also mention that the AI responsible for not overkilling prevents the 2nd mine from activating until the 1st can't attack.
Indeed, tanks need some buffs because it costs a lot for small efficience and space control. They're still terrible in TvP... There has to be a problem when you see HOTS terrans going bio again and again...
I think a lot of talk about counters is a bit short sighted in this thread. Counters go beyond unit compositions but relate to styles of play.
BW mech was a cost efficient group that needed a lot of care and attention. This group took a lot of time to get momentum and was very vulnerable to being chipped away. That's why it was reasonable- necessary for protoss to always be one base ahead. Eventually they would have chipped enough to buy enough time to get many bases to throw tech and economy at the terran. Alternatively, the terran defended well and with a lot of care to get good position choked the protoss to certain doom.
Bio; A high damage uber mobile composition necessarily shouldn't have the same space holding capabilities as mech. If Bio-mech constricts the ability of the opposing player to expand then the opposing player must have a more powerful "counter" composition for there to be parity.
On December 28 2012 12:05 Sabu113 wrote: I think a lot of talk about counters is a bit short sighted in this thread. Counters go beyond unit compositions but relate to styles of play.
BW mech was a cost efficient group that needed a lot of care and attention. This group took a lot of time to get momentum and was very vulnerable to being chipped away. That's why it was reasonable- necessary for protoss to always be one base ahead. Eventually they would have chipped enough to buy enough time to get many bases to throw tech and economy at the terran. Alternatively, the terran defended well and with a lot of care to get good position choked the protoss to certain doom.
Bio; A high damage uber mobile composition necessarily shouldn't have the same space holding capabilities as mech. If Bio-mech constricts the ability of the opposing player to expand then the opposing player must have a more powerful "counter" composition for there to be parity.
Quite honestly, the problem with mech and terran, and I'll be brave enough to say it - SC2 in general - has nothing to do with unit counters or styles of play or even balance. The first and foremost problem is lack of space control opportunities, which in turn create deathball armies, which in turn force deathball armies to be the only thing possible to stop a deathball army, which in turn means that SC2 is a game made up completely with unit counters.
As it is, the deathball syndrome caused by lack of space control means that pure bio is the strongest unit composition that you can possibly make (including the new hellbats). Improving tanks and the way widow mines are used is the first step toward improving terran as a race, not just in making mech more viable.
On December 28 2012 10:57 a176 wrote: someone help me out here
And I do enjoy this immensely lol. Yeah, widow mines are not really as responsive as spider mines were...would be nice to see Blizzard work on the physics of the widow mine to prevent things like speedlings and chargelots from waltzing over them like they're not there. Probably need to add overkill and give widow mine a much shorter cooldown.
I like this thread because I love to play Mech as T, but seriously, the Immortal is not worth mentioning in any discussion about mech.
Mass tank can beat mass immortal (there's a thread on it somewhere and that's pure tank vs pure immortal, eg: no ghosts which every mech army desperately needs) and mech in general is not beatable on the ground cost-effectively as Protoss OR probably Zerg (hard to say with Zerg because I normally don't use a pure ground army as Zerg).
I'm talking about WoL here of course, but I don't see any significant changes to this in HotS, EXCEPT: You just heard me say tank-based armies are not beatable on the ground, unfortunately though, your opponent can circumvent your defences or build air units. You can't afford to spread out or get extra anti-air because of the cost in gas and supply of the tanks (and their worthlessness in small numbers vs Toss especially). HotS makes skytoss better, mutas better, introduces abduct (an awesome ability but it further negates tanks) and gives infestors more range (why?). Meaning fighting mech is easier than ever.
Anyone who says that tanks beat immortals is completely out of their gourd. In real games, immortals absolutely obliterate tank based play. I cannot even believe this is up for debate.
Protosses with enough immortals will happily A-move into tank lines and CRUSH them. It is so one-sided that the Protoss doesn't even have to get cute with flanks, warp prisms, or even trying to micro to get tanks to shoot a particular target. They just blindly A-move in and straight up defeat tank lines.
Ghosts help massively to deal with the hardened shields. However apart from the EMP the ghost is not useful in the slightest, and the need for them does cut into your already pathetic maximum tank count due to them being 3 supply each. However, honestly, I would rather have infantry, or thor+hellion, or be sky terran.
You cannot attack quickly with tanks, you cannot retreat with tanks, you will suffer massive casualties when attacked, and there is no way to rebuild them quickly enough to avoid losing the game when you do suffer serious losses. There's too many different ways Protoss can cheaply cripple or straight up murder your tank count even if it is already a huge amount of supply and resource investment. I'd rather have MMM and Ghosts to deal with the Templar, and Vikings to deal with the Colossi. It's cheaper, has higher HP per cost and supply (and medivacs), has higher damage per cost and supply (and stim), and much greater movespeed and versatility, especially anti-air. It gives you great mobility and map control, lets you expand safely and defend by moving your entire army to defend rather than posting defenders that just get killed for free and aren't a part of your main army in the meantime. And MMM beats pretty much everything except those two Protoss splash dealers- Colossi and HTs.
Furthermore, you are going to make Ghosts and Vikings either way, so I'd rather have MMM+VG than mech+VG. The only difference is you EMP the HTs instead of the Immortals, and the Vikings shoot Colossi instead of Skytoss units.
The widow mine just isn't working in its current form. Its a cool idea but I don't think it'll ever be completely balanced because of the binary nature of its usage. Spider mines worked because they were free in a sense. Widow mines are a commitment which relies on your opponent making a really big mistake. If they do not make this mistake, they easily take out a huge amount of supply.
However I don't think the widow mine should be completely given up on. Personally I like the idea of widow mines and siege tanks working together to hold space but I think 3 things need to happen:
1. Late game tanks need dramatically more damage than they currently have. Add the shaped charge upgrade to the fusion core which increases single target damage. 2. Widow mines should have a single target high damage attack when burrowed. 3. Widow mines should be able to lay spider mines ala vultures, at 25 minerals a pop.
Widow mines are only effective in large enough numbers to cut into your tank count. Having spider mines will deal with the Immortal syndrome - Protoss can no longer a move into tank lines.
On December 28 2012 10:57 a176 wrote: someone help me out here
And I do enjoy this immensely lol. Yeah, widow mines are not really as responsive as spider mines were...would be nice to see Blizzard work on the physics of the widow mine to prevent things like speedlings and chargelots from waltzing over them like they're not there. Probably need to add overkill and give widow mine a much shorter cooldown.
Widow Mines arent even as fun to watch as the "eeek ... a Spider Mine just unburrowed ... run away run away" slapstick comedy that arises from their whole mechanics and movement. Spider Mines also required some skill and could be used "offensively" by riding your Vultures into the enemy lines to burrow the mines there. You can do the same with Widow Mines, BUT the control for that is much easier and you dont have a Vulture to risk at the same time.
On December 28 2012 20:07 Evangelist wrote: The widow mine just isn't working in its current form. Its a cool idea but I don't think it'll ever be completely balanced because of the binary nature of its usage. Spider mines worked because they were free in a sense. Widow mines are a commitment which relies on your opponent making a really big mistake. If they do not make this mistake, they easily take out a huge amount of supply.
However I don't think the widow mine should be completely given up on. Personally I like the idea of widow mines and siege tanks working together to hold space but I think 3 things need to happen:
1. Late game tanks need dramatically more damage than they currently have. Add the shaped charge upgrade to the fusion core which increases single target damage. 2. Widow mines should have a single target high damage attack when burrowed. 3. Widow mines should be able to lay spider mines ala vultures, at 25 minerals a pop.
Widow mines are only effective in large enough numbers to cut into your tank count. Having spider mines will deal with the Immortal syndrome - Protoss can no longer a move into tank lines.
1. Not only late game tanks ... at 35 base damage there probably is a timing where they wont even kill a Zergling with one shot (when Zerglings have 1 armor and Tanks 0 attack upgrades). They also need to deal damage equally well against every type of unit, because it is already reduced for the splash and having some units take close to zero damage from such an expensive unit is a joke ... and a bad implementation of rock-paper-scissors.
2. Widow Mines are a lackluster and boring unit, which should be replaced by the funny squealing Spider Mine ...
3. TERRIBLE idea, because you can just spam the skill if you have the resources for it.
Bonus shield damage (Emp shell upgrade) will solve the problem!!! Tanks will be strong enough in early game. Immortal timings become important. Since Emp shell upgrade for tanks will make immortal less viable. Thors will be able to hit collosus. Protoss will have to tech switch to air while holding with immortals and drop.
Are you guys trying Widow Mines, Mass tanks and thors? Running a bunch of widow mines with the almost instant dig is pretty good. (if they were less supply it would be better) but if the army doesnt move back then it does a lot of damage. or if they focus the mines, use your tanks to focus fire the problem makers. If they do run away from the mines then you can re-position. Its not perfect but I see it being pretty effective so far
On December 28 2012 10:57 a176 wrote: someone help me out here
And I do enjoy this immensely lol. Yeah, widow mines are not really as responsive as spider mines were...would be nice to see Blizzard work on the physics of the widow mine to prevent things like speedlings and chargelots from waltzing over them like they're not there. Probably need to add overkill and give widow mine a much shorter cooldown.
Widow Mines arent even as fun to watch as the "eeek ... a Spider Mine just unburrowed ... run away run away" slapstick comedy that arises from their whole mechanics and movement. Spider Mines also required some skill and could be used "offensively" by riding your Vultures into the enemy lines to burrow the mines there. You can do the same with Widow Mines, BUT the control for that is much easier and you dont have a Vulture to risk at the same time.
On December 28 2012 20:07 Evangelist wrote: The widow mine just isn't working in its current form. Its a cool idea but I don't think it'll ever be completely balanced because of the binary nature of its usage. Spider mines worked because they were free in a sense. Widow mines are a commitment which relies on your opponent making a really big mistake. If they do not make this mistake, they easily take out a huge amount of supply.
However I don't think the widow mine should be completely given up on. Personally I like the idea of widow mines and siege tanks working together to hold space but I think 3 things need to happen:
1. Late game tanks need dramatically more damage than they currently have. Add the shaped charge upgrade to the fusion core which increases single target damage. 2. Widow mines should have a single target high damage attack when burrowed. 3. Widow mines should be able to lay spider mines ala vultures, at 25 minerals a pop.
Widow mines are only effective in large enough numbers to cut into your tank count. Having spider mines will deal with the Immortal syndrome - Protoss can no longer a move into tank lines.
1. Not only late game tanks ... at 35 base damage there probably is a timing where they wont even kill a Zergling with one shot (when Zerglings have 1 armor and Tanks 0 attack upgrades). They also need to deal damage equally well against every type of unit, because it is already reduced for the splash and having some units take close to zero damage from such an expensive unit is a joke ... and a bad implementation of rock-paper-scissors.
2. Widow Mines are a lackluster and boring unit, which should be replaced by the funny squealing Spider Mine ...
3. TERRIBLE idea, because you can just spam the skill if you have the resources for it.
I could see 3. working if it basically the Widow Mine's only ability was freezing for 3(1 with upgrade) seconds to lay a mine that did the current Widow Mine attack once and then was used up. Rather than resources, a 40 second cooldown (or what ever the current cooldown on the attack is).
On December 28 2012 16:05 ledarsi wrote: Anyone who says that tanks beat immortals is completely out of their gourd. In real games, immortals absolutely obliterate tank based play. I cannot even believe this is up for debate.
Protosses with enough immortals will happily A-move into tank lines and CRUSH them. It is so one-sided that the Protoss doesn't even have to get cute with flanks, warp prisms, or even trying to micro to get tanks to shoot a particular target. They just blindly A-move in and straight up defeat tank lines.
Ghosts help massively to deal with the hardened shields. However apart from the EMP the ghost is not useful in the slightest, and the need for them does cut into your already pathetic maximum tank count due to them being 3 supply each. However, honestly, I would rather have infantry, or thor+hellion, or be sky terran.
You cannot attack quickly with tanks, you cannot retreat with tanks, you will suffer massive casualties when attacked, and there is no way to rebuild them quickly enough to avoid losing the game when you do suffer serious losses. There's too many different ways Protoss can cheaply cripple or straight up murder your tank count even if it is already a huge amount of supply and resource investment. I'd rather have MMM and Ghosts to deal with the Templar, and Vikings to deal with the Colossi. It's cheaper, has higher HP per cost and supply (and medivacs), has higher damage per cost and supply (and stim), and much greater movespeed and versatility, especially anti-air. It gives you great mobility and map control, lets you expand safely and defend by moving your entire army to defend rather than posting defenders that just get killed for free and aren't a part of your main army in the meantime. And MMM beats pretty much everything except those two Protoss splash dealers- Colossi and HTs.
Furthermore, you are going to make Ghosts and Vikings either way, so I'd rather have MMM+VG than mech+VG. The only difference is you EMP the HTs instead of the Immortals, and the Vikings shoot Colossi instead of Skytoss units.
I think, as far as unit counters in TvP mech go, terran should win by an overwhelming majority on the ground with 6-8 tanks, around 30 hellions, and 4-5 full energy ghosts. With ghosts in the composition, there's no contest at all. I just tested a lot of mech engagements in the unit tester using tanks vs. immortals, tanks vs. immortal/chargelot, tank/hellion mixes against immortal/chargelot, and ghostmech vs. immortal/zealot/archon. In equal supply, ghost mech crushes the hell out of anything protoss can make on the ground. Immortal/VR/tempest is another story completely though....
THE ISSUE with mech is not necessarily that the immortal hard counters tanks. The biggest issue is that the mech player has to engage with their entire army and engage perfectly in order to deal with a big protoss deathball. There is no ability to control space effectively enough to ensure that an expansion is safe or that you don't need a large part or all of your army there to deal with it. In addition, mech has a hard time getting up off the ground because of all the options protoss has at their disposal in the early and mid-game (especially now with the MsC). Because none of the factory units hard counter a significant part of protoss options, mech has to be played with extreme caution, scouting correctly, reading correctly, getting things in the perfect position, etc. And while that's fun on its own level, there's nothing more frustrating that losing a game because your 2nd widow mine wasn't QUITE close enough to take down the warp prism.
Giving tanks a straight-up single target damage buff can help some of this because most big units would be weakened substantially, leaving the possibility for things like planetaries, mines, and hellions to clean them up. Thus, space control synergy would definitely improve and give mech a better chance of getting off the ground and getting ghostmech up.
When air play gets involved...well, that's a whole other realm. It doesn't really need fixing until the first parts of mech, including the early game and midgame, are repaired.
why not make the tank dependent on a different unit, such as mm a ghost or raven that helps 'spot' or 'paint the target' for the tank.
enemies caught by the laser or aoe on the ground take extra damage for the tank.
this helps balance something like making an extra powerful 111 by placing the bonus damage that a tank does on a different, more high tech unit (maybe it requires research if you really need to balance things like this).
an idea could be a research added on top of EMP like 'buffed EMP" (change the name obviously). targets affected by EMP take an additional 25 (number if variable obviously) damage from splash damage for x number of seconds.
you could even tie it to a different 'shot' if you wanted.
i think in this way the game can be desinged around a bio centric force (imagine MMMghost/viking/raven tech support) and mech styles where ghosts (or ravens) are added on as wel as biomech type of forces. the ghost/raven would function as the ultimate unit in a way by series of 'tech' to equalize to the power of Z or P in end game.
In order to increase the tank's ability to control space, what about making it a pseudo-mine layer? The Siege Tank (only in siege mode) can fire a targeted round (cannot target units, only terrain) that immediately buries itself into the ground and then works similar to the Shredders from the HotS annoucement, dealing damage to enemy units that enter their field of effect (units leaving the field could even continue taking damage for a few seconds). The round would be a timed life structure/unit. The ability would need to be on a cooldown since adding energy to tanks is a bad idea. Make it an upgrade on Tech Labs that is unlocked when an Armory is built.
On December 28 2012 10:57 a176 wrote: someone help me out here
And I do enjoy this immensely lol. Yeah, widow mines are not really as responsive as spider mines were...would be nice to see Blizzard work on the physics of the widow mine to prevent things like speedlings and chargelots from waltzing over them like they're not there. Probably need to add overkill and give widow mine a much shorter cooldown.
Widow Mines arent even as fun to watch as the "eeek ... a Spider Mine just unburrowed ... run away run away" slapstick comedy that arises from their whole mechanics and movement. Spider Mines also required some skill and could be used "offensively" by riding your Vultures into the enemy lines to burrow the mines there. You can do the same with Widow Mines, BUT the control for that is much easier and you dont have a Vulture to risk at the same time.
On December 28 2012 20:07 Evangelist wrote: The widow mine just isn't working in its current form. Its a cool idea but I don't think it'll ever be completely balanced because of the binary nature of its usage. Spider mines worked because they were free in a sense. Widow mines are a commitment which relies on your opponent making a really big mistake. If they do not make this mistake, they easily take out a huge amount of supply.
However I don't think the widow mine should be completely given up on. Personally I like the idea of widow mines and siege tanks working together to hold space but I think 3 things need to happen:
1. Late game tanks need dramatically more damage than they currently have. Add the shaped charge upgrade to the fusion core which increases single target damage. 2. Widow mines should have a single target high damage attack when burrowed. 3. Widow mines should be able to lay spider mines ala vultures, at 25 minerals a pop.
Widow mines are only effective in large enough numbers to cut into your tank count. Having spider mines will deal with the Immortal syndrome - Protoss can no longer a move into tank lines.
1. Not only late game tanks ... at 35 base damage there probably is a timing where they wont even kill a Zergling with one shot (when Zerglings have 1 armor and Tanks 0 attack upgrades). They also need to deal damage equally well against every type of unit, because it is already reduced for the splash and having some units take close to zero damage from such an expensive unit is a joke ... and a bad implementation of rock-paper-scissors.
2. Widow Mines are a lackluster and boring unit, which should be replaced by the funny squealing Spider Mine ...
3. TERRIBLE idea, because you can just spam the skill if you have the resources for it.
I could see 3. working if it basically the Widow Mine's only ability was freezing for 3(1 with upgrade) seconds to lay a mine that did the current Widow Mine attack once and then was used up. Rather than resources, a 40 second cooldown (or what ever the current cooldown on the attack is).
If you do that you will have Terran bases VERY safe, because you can simply build 4-5 Widow Mines early and then cover every base with spawned Spider Mines every 40 seconds. So a cooldown isnt a good regulator either. The only working one would be "3 charges", but thats an idea "stolen from BW", so Browder will never ever consider it and why should a Widow Mine lay Spider Mines at all?
Apart from that having the "Spider Mine" attack like the Widow Mine would be terribly dull, because the attack method of the Spider Mine - sounds and movement - was half the fun of it to watch ... just as the "random flight pattern attack" of the Reaver was.
On December 29 2012 05:44 dreamsmasher wrote: why not make the tank dependent on a different unit, such as mm a ghost or raven that helps 'spot' or 'paint the target' for the tank.
enemies caught by the laser or aoe on the ground take extra damage for the tank.
this helps balance something like making an extra powerful 111 by placing the bonus damage that a tank does on a different, more high tech unit (maybe it requires research if you really need to balance things like this).
an idea could be a research added on top of EMP like 'buffed EMP" (change the name obviously). targets affected by EMP take an additional 25 (number if variable obviously) damage from splash damage for x number of seconds.
you could even tie it to a different 'shot' if you wanted.
i think in this way the game can be desinged around a bio centric force (imagine MMMghost/viking/raven tech support) and mech styles where ghosts (or ravens) are added on as wel as biomech type of forces. the ghost/raven would function as the ultimate unit in a way by series of 'tech' to equalize to the power of Z or P in end game.
I honestly don't think either of these is a great idea. Plain and simple, it's too complex. When you add too much complexity to the game, there becomes too much to do, and as a result, the game becomes about micro and not about positioning and macro (which is not good for a "strategy" game). The siege tank really shouldn't be anything more than a unit that does a lot of ground damage and deters units from coming too close.
On December 29 2012 15:16 xPrimuSx wrote: In order to increase the tank's ability to control space, what about making it a pseudo-mine layer? The Siege Tank (only in siege mode) can fire a targeted round (cannot target units, only terrain) that immediately buries itself into the ground and then works similar to the Shredders from the HotS annoucement, dealing damage to enemy units that enter their field of effect (units leaving the field could even continue taking damage for a few seconds). The round would be a timed life structure/unit. The ability would need to be on a cooldown since adding energy to tanks is a bad idea. Make it an upgrade on Tech Labs that is unlocked when an Armory is built.
Again, too complex and kind of overpowered. I see no reason to have tanks lay mines if you have widow mines.
On December 28 2012 10:57 a176 wrote: someone help me out here
And I do enjoy this immensely lol. Yeah, widow mines are not really as responsive as spider mines were...would be nice to see Blizzard work on the physics of the widow mine to prevent things like speedlings and chargelots from waltzing over them like they're not there. Probably need to add overkill and give widow mine a much shorter cooldown.
Widow Mines arent even as fun to watch as the "eeek ... a Spider Mine just unburrowed ... run away run away" slapstick comedy that arises from their whole mechanics and movement. Spider Mines also required some skill and could be used "offensively" by riding your Vultures into the enemy lines to burrow the mines there. You can do the same with Widow Mines, BUT the control for that is much easier and you dont have a Vulture to risk at the same time.
On December 28 2012 20:07 Evangelist wrote: The widow mine just isn't working in its current form. Its a cool idea but I don't think it'll ever be completely balanced because of the binary nature of its usage. Spider mines worked because they were free in a sense. Widow mines are a commitment which relies on your opponent making a really big mistake. If they do not make this mistake, they easily take out a huge amount of supply.
However I don't think the widow mine should be completely given up on. Personally I like the idea of widow mines and siege tanks working together to hold space but I think 3 things need to happen:
1. Late game tanks need dramatically more damage than they currently have. Add the shaped charge upgrade to the fusion core which increases single target damage. 2. Widow mines should have a single target high damage attack when burrowed. 3. Widow mines should be able to lay spider mines ala vultures, at 25 minerals a pop.
Widow mines are only effective in large enough numbers to cut into your tank count. Having spider mines will deal with the Immortal syndrome - Protoss can no longer a move into tank lines.
1. Not only late game tanks ... at 35 base damage there probably is a timing where they wont even kill a Zergling with one shot (when Zerglings have 1 armor and Tanks 0 attack upgrades). They also need to deal damage equally well against every type of unit, because it is already reduced for the splash and having some units take close to zero damage from such an expensive unit is a joke ... and a bad implementation of rock-paper-scissors.
2. Widow Mines are a lackluster and boring unit, which should be replaced by the funny squealing Spider Mine ...
3. TERRIBLE idea, because you can just spam the skill if you have the resources for it.
I could see 3. working if it basically the Widow Mine's only ability was freezing for 3(1 with upgrade) seconds to lay a mine that did the current Widow Mine attack once and then was used up. Rather than resources, a 40 second cooldown (or what ever the current cooldown on the attack is).
If you do that you will have Terran bases VERY safe, because you can simply build 4-5 Widow Mines early and then cover every base with spawned Spider Mines every 40 seconds. So a cooldown isnt a good regulator either. The only working one would be "3 charges", but thats an idea "stolen from BW", so Browder will never ever consider it and why should a Widow Mine lay Spider Mines at all?
Apart from that having the "Spider Mine" attack like the Widow Mine would be terribly dull, because the attack method of the Spider Mine - sounds and movement - was half the fun of it to watch ... just as the "random flight pattern attack" of the Reaver was.
I don't know, some of us might argue how terrible the reaver scarabs were lol. But yeah, I don't see widow mines ever laying down spider mines; even if they had only 3 spider mines to lay, they would then be useless supply (unlike vultures), so it just doesn't work out too well. They really just need a dramatic drop in supply in order to become even close to relevant in later stages of the game.
Like many others, I think most of the problems have to do on the Protoss side. I had made these suggestions on improving PvZ and PvT. I will repost them here to figure out how people feel.
The Problems with protoss in PvT and PvZ:
1. Warp In is terrible. As a result of warp in, there is no defender's advantage and Protoss is pressured do early all ins disproportionately, because of how weak gateways are mid/late game, and how good warp in is early game.
2. Mothership metagame sucks.
3. Too many counter units that require no micro/boring play and counter more exciting play (siege tanks).
Solution to Warpage: Take away warpgate research and bring it in the late game. Buff all gateway units.
I offer the following method that could be interesting: We bring about warpins with a new unit (lets call it the arbiter for the sake of argument).
Properties of the Arbiter: 1. produces large warp in field. 2. small aoe "stasis" (or some other spell if you guys think of a better one) 3. passive ability, aoe cloak.
The Arbiter is built FROM the Mothership (making the mother ship a real "mother" ship). This helps limit the number of Arbiters one can make allowing them to be fairly powerful.
Reworking the Mothership 1. take away vortex. It sucks. 2. Increase its speed, lower its health/shields and cost. 3. Give it two forms of recall. Targeted Recall, which works as it currently does, and Mass Recall, which costs more energy but brings back every unit near Arbiters to the Mothership. 4. Give it the ability to produce Arbiters.
Fixing the Immortal The "Mech Killer". Its a boring unit, durable as hell, powerful, good range, easy to protect. Its the perfect "A move and dont worry" unit.
-Change it's stats to be 200 shield, 25 health. -Take away Hardened Shields. -give it a Bonus 50 vs. Buildings stat. -Increased Regeneration. The Immortal recharges its shield out of combat much faster than other units (keeping true to its name).
This makes the immortal a better harass unit, less durable, and more likely to be protected in combat situations. It would also have great synergy with warp prisms, not only for harassing, but to drop them into battle and pull them out quickly while they recharge their shields in the transport.
Changing the Warp Prism Ever transport unit needs an ability in starcraft 2. My suggestion about the Arbiter makes warp prism warping redundant. I think the warp prism warp in area should only be big enough for 1 or 2 dts but warpins in HOTS should be at arbiters, not at pylons and only at warp prisms for harassing. The warp prism should get the Hardened Shield ability. WIth the following changes.
1. Hardened shield. When in "activated mode", the Warp Prism creates an aoe umbrella under it, reducing damage greater than 10 to 10 for 5 seconds or as long as the Warp Prism is Alive. The Warp Prism is also protected in the same way by its umbrella.
My feeling about these changes is that it increases the harassment potential from robo, reduces the need to rely on timing attacks, makes more sustanable gateway pressure that doesn't revolve around win it or lose it timings. Toss can move around the map lategame easier, because mothership is purely a recall device and faces no risk outside of that. Furthermore, warping in powerful gateway units all over the map is really good late game.
On December 30 2012 04:39 People_0f_Color wrote: Like many others, I think most of the problems have to do on the Protoss side. I had made these suggestions on improving PvZ and PvT. I will repost them here to figure out how people feel.
The Problems with protoss in PvT and PvZ:
1. Warp In is terrible. As a result of warp in, there is no defender's advantage and Protoss is pressured do early all ins disproportionately, because of how weak gateways are mid/late game, and how good warp in is early game.
2. Mothership metagame sucks.
3. Too many counter units that require no micro/boring play and counter more exciting play (siege tanks).
Solution to Warpage: Take away warpgate research and bring it in the late game. Buff all gateway units.
I offer the following method that could be interesting: We bring about warpins with a new unit (lets call it the arbiter for the sake of argument).
Properties of the Arbiter: 1. produces large warp in field. 2. small aoe "stasis" (or some other spell if you guys think of a better one) 3. passive ability, aoe cloak.
The Arbiter is built FROM the Mothership (making the mother ship a real "mother" ship). This helps limit the number of Arbiters one can make allowing them to be fairly powerful.
Reworking the Mothership 1. take away vortex. It sucks. 2. Increase its speed, lower its health/shields and cost. 3. Give it two forms of recall. Targeted Recall, which works as it currently does, and Mass Recall, which costs more energy but brings back every unit near Arbiters to the Mothership. 4. Give it the ability to produce Arbiters.
Fixing the Immortal The "Mech Killer". Its a boring unit, durable as hell, powerful, good range, easy to protect. Its the perfect "A move and dont worry" unit.
-Change it's stats to be 200 shield, 25 health. -Take away Hardened Shields. -give it a Bonus 50 vs. Buildings stat. -Increased Regeneration. The Immortal recharges its shield out of combat much faster than other units (keeping true to its name).
This makes the immortal a better harass unit, less durable, and more likely to be protected in combat situations. It would also have great synergy with warp prisms, not only for harassing, but to drop them into battle and pull them out quickly while they recharge their shields in the transport.
Changing the Warp Prism Ever transport unit needs an ability in starcraft 2. My suggestion about the Arbiter makes warp prism warping redundant. I think the warp prism warp in area should only be big enough for 1 or 2 dts but warpins in HOTS should be at arbiters, not at pylons and only at warp prisms for harassing. The warp prism should get the Hardened Shield ability. WIth the following changes.
1. Hardened shield. When in "activated mode", the Warp Prism creates an aoe umbrella under it, reducing damage greater than 10 to 10 for 5 seconds or as long as the Warp Prism is Alive. The Warp Prism is also protected in the same way by its umbrella.
My feeling about these changes is that it increases the harassment potential from robo, reduces the need to rely on timing attacks, makes more sustanable gateway pressure that doesn't revolve around win it or lose it timings. Toss can move around the map lategame easier, because mothership is purely a recall device and faces no risk outside of that. Furthermore, warping in powerful gateway units all over the map is really good late game.
I would like to read about your ideas sometime and see what sort of race overhauls protoss needs. However, I don't think this is really the right thread for this post. The discussion here is not exactly what problems mech has against protoss or how broken the matchup may be; it is about terran, and how space control in general is terrible.
On December 30 2012 05:57 RavenLoud wrote: why not put spider mines WITH window mines?
As I've stated earlier, I'm not sure if giving widow mines the ability to lay mines is useful. It makes no sense to give mines the ability to lay mines AND be mines themselves, meaning that widow mines would still end up being dead supply after you used up the mines (unlike vultures in BW). In my opinion, the widow mines need a severe supply and power cut, and turned into a massable AoE damage dealer, which would solve a ton of problems that terran has with space control in general.
What I think is happening is that Blizzard's changes to the fundamentals of the Terran production system, including their rearrangement of the tech tree, the cost reduction of factories, and the normalization of tech labs and the creation of reactors, has made the tank behave differently early in the game. The tank is a range 13 unit, and as a result having just one (or two), ASAP, can in some situations be very powerful. Especially in TvT.
So the Widow Mine is essentially swallowing the Siege Tank's role as a positional splash damage dealer. It deals more damage for less cost, is more mobile, and is invisible when burrowed. And it hits air units, with splash. The existence of the Widow Mine makes it very difficult to justify ever building tanks, when you could build mines instead.
What needs to happen is the Siege Tank either needs to be massively, tremendously buffed, or it just needs to be reworked. The Siege Tank is an iconic terran unit, and needs to have a place in SC2, and in a more robust way than technically being available like the WoL Carrier.
The Widow Mine in its current form (produced independently from the Factory) has always been a bizarre unit. The mine should not be able to move on its own, it should not cost supply as it is not a real unit, and it should be produced or created by another unit. And it really, really should not have an upgrade that turns it into a Baneling for running directly into the enemy and blowing everything up. It is retarded enough to have one unit that behaves that way, and it stings even worse that we lost the Lurker because Browder seemed to think the Baneling A) conflicts with it, and B) is better than the Lurker.... Losing the Siege Tank to some ridiculous landmine-baneling with delusions of grandeur would be beyond redemption.
However the existing Widow Mine has been tested, and actually seems numerically alright, possibly with some number tweaking. So instead of chucking it wholesale and going back to Spider Mines, some effort should be made to salvage a bad situation.
So here is my suggestion. Make a unit build Widow Mines, and make the mine not cost supply to just exist out on the map. It cannot move. Hellions are the best candidate to create mines, in my opinion (vehicle mode only). However Reapers could also work. The mines cost resources to make, and there is a lengthy cooldown which encourages making more units rather than waiting for the cooldown.
I would also suggest that Blizzard look into the possibility of making Perdition/Flaming Betty turrets instead of Battle Hellions. Never going to happen because they are pridefully stubborn and never admit mistakes- but the Battle Hellion is not a "new unit" either- it's a Hellion with 50% more HP. Having Hellions produce beefy turrets to defend fixed positions rather than physically stand there gives mech better positional and harass tools that don't work in a deathball, and is less offensively devastating than just attacking with a wall of Hellbat HP in front of marines in TvZ.
If Blizzard is up for a more dramatic Factory rework, then make the Widow Mine not attack air units, and give Terran a real Factory anti-air unit. Something with range and better firepower against flying units than marines, but more expensive. A 2 supply unit with decent hitpoints that deals bonus damage against Light units, possibly even splash. Could even make the Thor just have its High Impact Payload (or just make it a dedicated ground assault unit). There really is no excuse for the Factory not to just have a unit that shoots air units worth a damn. Multiple kinds of anti-air are mandatory. ESPECIALLY if Blizzard wants to use that retarded balance angle of "real strong unit, countered by air units" which they love so much. (See: Marauder, Roach, Immortal, Colossus, etc. etc...). Which is the domain of the incompetent RTS designer, but it seems we are stuck with it.
As I've stated earlier, I'm not sure if giving widow mines the ability to lay mines is useful. It makes no sense to give mines the ability to lay mines AND be mines themselves, meaning that widow mines would still end up being dead supply after you used up the mines (unlike vultures in BW). In my opinion, the widow mines need a severe supply and power cut, and turned into a massable AoE damage dealer, which would solve a ton of problems that terran has with space control in general.
Makes no sense for the widow mine to be called a "mine" anyway.
After using up the spider mines, just bumrush em to the enemy with the 1s burrow upgrade or use it in whatever way.
On December 30 2012 04:39 People_0f_Color wrote: Like many others, I think most of the problems have to do on the Protoss side. I had made these suggestions on improving PvZ and PvT. I will repost them here to figure out how people feel.
The Problems with protoss in PvT and PvZ:
1. Warp In is terrible. As a result of warp in, there is no defender's advantage and Protoss is pressured do early all ins disproportionately, because of how weak gateways are mid/late game, and how good warp in is early game.
2. Mothership metagame sucks.
3. Too many counter units that require no micro/boring play and counter more exciting play (siege tanks).
Solution to Warpage: Take away warpgate research and bring it in the late game. Buff all gateway units.
I offer the following method that could be interesting: We bring about warpins with a new unit (lets call it the arbiter for the sake of argument).
Properties of the Arbiter: 1. produces large warp in field. 2. small aoe "stasis" (or some other spell if you guys think of a better one) 3. passive ability, aoe cloak.
The Arbiter is built FROM the Mothership (making the mother ship a real "mother" ship). This helps limit the number of Arbiters one can make allowing them to be fairly powerful.
Reworking the Mothership 1. take away vortex. It sucks. 2. Increase its speed, lower its health/shields and cost. 3. Give it two forms of recall. Targeted Recall, which works as it currently does, and Mass Recall, which costs more energy but brings back every unit near Arbiters to the Mothership. 4. Give it the ability to produce Arbiters.
Fixing the Immortal The "Mech Killer". Its a boring unit, durable as hell, powerful, good range, easy to protect. Its the perfect "A move and dont worry" unit.
-Change it's stats to be 200 shield, 25 health. -Take away Hardened Shields. -give it a Bonus 50 vs. Buildings stat. -Increased Regeneration. The Immortal recharges its shield out of combat much faster than other units (keeping true to its name).
This makes the immortal a better harass unit, less durable, and more likely to be protected in combat situations. It would also have great synergy with warp prisms, not only for harassing, but to drop them into battle and pull them out quickly while they recharge their shields in the transport.
Changing the Warp Prism Ever transport unit needs an ability in starcraft 2. My suggestion about the Arbiter makes warp prism warping redundant. I think the warp prism warp in area should only be big enough for 1 or 2 dts but warpins in HOTS should be at arbiters, not at pylons and only at warp prisms for harassing. The warp prism should get the Hardened Shield ability. WIth the following changes.
1. Hardened shield. When in "activated mode", the Warp Prism creates an aoe umbrella under it, reducing damage greater than 10 to 10 for 5 seconds or as long as the Warp Prism is Alive. The Warp Prism is also protected in the same way by its umbrella.
My feeling about these changes is that it increases the harassment potential from robo, reduces the need to rely on timing attacks, makes more sustanable gateway pressure that doesn't revolve around win it or lose it timings. Toss can move around the map lategame easier, because mothership is purely a recall device and faces no risk outside of that. Furthermore, warping in powerful gateway units all over the map is really good late game.
I would like to read about your ideas sometime and see what sort of race overhauls protoss needs. However, I don't think this is really the right thread for this post. The discussion here is not exactly what problems mech has against protoss or how broken the matchup may be; it is about terran, and how space control in general is terrible.
Very polite of you. I just thought it was relevant since the solution to making protoss better is the solution to making mech viable.
I'm a P player here, but I am 100% behind the idea of buffing mech and will talk a little bit about TvP. I feel it's for now quite fragile because of that damn immortal...
My ideal game ? A game where the defender has a strong advantage and positionnal play has a lot of importance. You win by strong macro and big multitasking by defending and harassing a lot a lot. So a lot of skirmishes around the map as you slowly overcome your opponent, hurting his macro. SC2 is far from there (yet?).
Therefore, I am advocating big buffs to the tank. Hell, tanks should be scary ! I am not supposed to a-move 6 immortals into them and ruining everything... I should try to play with mech's weakness: immobility, avoiding them to harass expansions where tanks aren't, while expanding crazy myself... and then suffering harass myself with hellions/mines, etc. I don't quite now how to explain this and maybe I sound stupid, but this comes from the heart guys :D
On the other hand... in BW T bio was muredered by the biffy P units. Don't get me wrong, I would be very happy if T can mech or go bio, both being viable. But the fast is that bio now just destroy protoss in mid-game without AOE. So we see a lot of turtling, less harass, etc. and this leads to less interesting games.
The problem is, that nerfing for example the marauder is shutting down T bio. So the "design flaw" is more on the P side... that's why I'd make drastic changes to this race that don't feel... well... that don't feel "protoss" or just well designed. Something like make the stalker damage bonus to light and not vs armor, swap sentry and immortal in robo. Yes, immortals T1.5, but nerfed a lot. Etc, etc. and THEN, we will be able to see a viable mech + viable bio.
CONCLUSION: please please buff the hell out of tanks. Remake P almost from scratch. Thanks.
Tanks are already really good against zerg, making them better could break the balance of them in TvZ, maybe a buff like siege tanks ignore immortal shields or something of the sort, something that won't affect TvZ as it looks pretty awesome in HoTS so far.
The tank needs to be looked at more, the widow mine is for space control not for aggression. What must be understood that has already been stated in this thread is that banglings are melee mines. To say that widow mines should have the splash of bangling is one that should not be made. Blizz needs to look at takes not widow mines!
I'm a P player here, but I am 100% behind the idea of buffing mech and will talk a little bit about TvP. I feel it's for now quite fragile because of that damn immortal...
My ideal game ? A game where the defender has a strong advantage and positionnal play has a lot of importance. You win by strong macro and big multitasking by defending and harassing a lot a lot. So a lot of skirmishes around the map as you slowly overcome your opponent, hurting his macro. SC2 is far from there (yet?).
Therefore, I am advocating big buffs to the tank. Hell, tanks should be scary ! I am not supposed to a-move 6 immortals into them and ruining everything... I should try to play with mech's weakness: immobility, avoiding them to harass expansions where tanks aren't, while expanding crazy myself... and then suffering harass myself with hellions/mines, etc. I don't quite now how to explain this and maybe I sound stupid, but this comes from the heart guys :D
On the other hand... in BW T bio was muredered by the biffy P units. Don't get me wrong, I would be very happy if T can mech or go bio, both being viable. But the fast is that bio now just destroy protoss in mid-game without AOE. So we see a lot of turtling, less harass, etc. and this leads to less interesting games.
The problem is, that nerfing for example the marauder is shutting down T bio. So the "design flaw" is more on the P side... that's why I'd make drastic changes to this race that don't feel... well... that don't feel "protoss" or just well designed. Something like make the stalker damage bonus to light and not vs armor, swap sentry and immortal in robo. Yes, immortals T1.5, but nerfed a lot. Etc, etc. and THEN, we will be able to see a viable mech + viable bio.
CONCLUSION: please please buff the hell out of tanks. Remake P almost from scratch. Thanks.
Tanks are already really good against zerg, making them better could break the balance of them in TvZ, maybe a buff like siege tanks ignore immortal shields or something of the sort, something that won't affect TvZ as it looks pretty awesome in HoTS so far.
If you read the OP, I talked about how giving the tank a huge single target damage and reduced splash would balance the tank against other races while simultaneously giving tanks the ability to hold their own against protoss units better. The splash would be base 40 damage, almost the same as it is now, so it wouldn't affect marines, zerglings, or banelings very differently.
Again, it's not even immortals that are the problem with TvP mech; 6-8 tanks, 4-5 fully charged ghosts, and a shitton of hellions wins hands down in almost every fight. The biggest issue is that GETTING there is really painful, so a lategame upgrade that makes tanks more powerful against immortals isn't useful...there needs to be a midgame solution.
I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
Tanks in bw and WoL is actually quite similar if you compare the damage system and how it worked in bw and sc2. So buffing damage is not the way to go imo. The big nerf siege tanks got in sc2 compared to bw is the food, 3 food makes a difference and imo is the core problem with mech in TvP.
As for widow mines the supply cost is also too high I do not know about there internal testing but reducing wm and tanks could really evovle TvP and TvT.
To op:
I think that just reducing the food cost solves the problems and it just overcomplicate things with the attack changes.
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
Tanks in bw and WoL is actually quite similar if you compare the damage system and how it worked in bw and sc2. So buffing damage is not the way to go imo. The big nerf siege tanks got in sc2 compared to bw is the food, 3 food makes a difference and imo is the core problem with mech in TvP.
As for widow mines the supply cost is also too high I do not know about there internal testing but reducing wm and tanks could really evovle TvP and TvT.
To op:
I think that just reducing the food cost solves the problems and it just overcomplicate things with the attack changes.
I respectfully disagree. In my opinion, the most difficult problem with the tank is that it is very cost ineffective against protoss units, particularly because zealots and stalkers can close the distance very quickly. AND, as you point out, they are also supply inefficient in that equal supply of immortals or chargelot/stalker can trade mostly evenly. However, fixing the supply still doesn't fix the cost efficiency problem.
Therefore, either the damage needs to be tweaked to be stronger against those units OR the cost needs to go down as well as the supply. I chose damage because I actually think it has the least ramifications on the other matchups and the general gameplay of terran. A major single target damage buff wouldn't matter in TvT or TvZ where most units die in 1-2 tank shots anyway. It might make 1-1-1 tank pushes a little stronger, but with MsC and other buffs protoss is receiving in HotS, protoss still has plenty of safe options against it.
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
There should never be a reason to unsiege tanks other than to move them to another tactical position. With a damage buff to give them more DPS when sieged, there is literally no reason to have unsieged tanks unless you're moving, making SC2 more about positioning and careful movements.
A gas reduction + supply reduction MIGHT work, but I think that a damage buff is simpler and more elegant. With a supply reduction and a gas reduction, you run the risk of tanks becoming way too strong in other matchups (primarily TvT comes to mind). In addition, this doesn't really solve the deathball problem as tanks STILL can't fulfill their role.
Concussive shells was probably even a bad idea on marauders. I imagine the game would have turned out totally differently if the warhound had been in place of the marauder and concussive shells....
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
Tanks in bw and WoL is actually quite similar if you compare the damage system and how it worked in bw and sc2. So buffing damage is not the way to go imo. The big nerf siege tanks got in sc2 compared to bw is the food, 3 food makes a difference and imo is the core problem with mech in TvP.
As for widow mines the supply cost is also too high I do not know about there internal testing but reducing wm and tanks could really evovle TvP and TvT.
To op:
I think that just reducing the food cost solves the problems and it just overcomplicate things with the attack changes.
I respectfully disagree. In my opinion, the most difficult problem with the tank is that it is very cost ineffective against protoss units, particularly because zealots and stalkers can close the distance very quickly. AND, as you point out, they are also supply inefficient in that equal supply of immortals or chargelot/stalker can trade mostly evenly. However, fixing the supply still doesn't fix the cost efficiency problem.
Therefore, either the damage needs to be tweaked to be stronger against those units OR the cost needs to go down as well as the supply. I chose damage because I actually think it has the least ramifications on the other matchups and the general gameplay of terran. A major single target damage buff wouldn't matter in TvT or TvZ where most units die in 1-2 tank shots anyway. It might make 1-1-1 tank pushes a little stronger, but with MsC and other buffs protoss is receiving in HotS, protoss still has plenty of safe options against it.
And mines need a huge drop in supply. Yes.
I like both these lines of reasoning, but ultimately I think buffing the supply efficiency is the way to go. The two main problems a tank heavy player faces are immortals and mass air. A damage buff would help with neither. A supply cost decrease would allow you to have more tanks or more support.
Also, I support having widow mines be less supply/cost expensive and stats tweaked so they are more expendable. I would like mines to be more of a mech support unit, with better tankiness for supply cost and less range + maybe no ability to hit air. Spider mines in bw worked well with mech not only by destroying melee units before they could reach tanks, but also absorbing fire from enemy ranged units.
I'm seriously confused, people complain about the state of the game atm (being to stale or "NR30") yet they support mech, and even buffing the siege tank wtf? If you buff mech, this will lead to more boring games of just sitting back and maxing to 200/200 and deathball fights. Why would you WANT that? This game is inherently boring as it is, don't make it worse. Buffing the siege tank alone is also an odd idea. Do you want people camping for the entire game?
On January 03 2013 15:53 bLueSkY) wrote: I'm seriously confused, people complain about the state of the game atm (being to stale or "NR30") yet they support mech, and even buffing the siege tank wtf? If you buff mech, this will lead to more boring games of just sitting back and maxing to 200/200 and deathball fights. Why would you WANT that? This game is inherently boring as it is, don't make it worse. Buffing the siege tank alone is also an odd idea. Do you want people camping for the entire game?
Mech is not boring, imo. And I can't see how a mech player that camps all game ever winning. He will never have a fourth and lose when the meching player mines out.
Besides a 200/200 mech army is really weak TvP but that is because a max mech player should have about 10 more tanks or support units.
On January 03 2013 15:53 bLueSkY) wrote: I'm seriously confused, people complain about the state of the game atm (being to stale or "NR30") yet they support mech, and even buffing the siege tank wtf? If you buff mech, this will lead to more boring games of just sitting back and maxing to 200/200 and deathball fights. Why would you WANT that? This game is inherently boring as it is, don't make it worse. Buffing the siege tank alone is also an odd idea. Do you want people camping for the entire game?
At the moment the main issue with mech is it gets overrun supply for supply unless you hit 150-200 supply. This is because each mech unit is hugely expensive and risking small numbers of mech units results in inefficient engagements.
The way to overcome this is to make tanks stronger without making them particularly more powerful. Both zerg and protoss have methods of punishing a turtling terran - both swarm hosts and oracles fill that role handily. Essentially all they need to do is slow down the mech deathball being built and they will eventually win. What needs to happen now is mech (or more specifically the siege tank) needs to be improved so that siege tanks can take the role they had in BW - spread out space control units which in small numbers offer a significant threat.
One possible way of doing this is simply to buff tank damage against non-armoured units. Just revert the original tank nerf and let them one shot marines and zerglings again. Another way is to reduce the supply of the tank.
On January 03 2013 15:53 bLueSkY) wrote: I'm seriously confused, people complain about the state of the game atm (being to stale or "NR30") yet they support mech, and even buffing the siege tank wtf? If you buff mech, this will lead to more boring games of just sitting back and maxing to 200/200 and deathball fights. Why would you WANT that? This game is inherently boring as it is, don't make it worse. Buffing the siege tank alone is also an odd idea. Do you want people camping for the entire game?
Camping is what happens when a player is afraid to leave the safety of his choke. With tanks you have a way to generate defensive power that does not involve sitting near your production with your entire army Pre split. You can push your defense forward by tank hopping / tank pushing, in order to take territory, while the enemy attempts to pick off or smash parts of your army that overextend.
Your post would make sense if we were talking about buffing planetary fortresses. Tanks are for conquering and claiming territory in a methodical, micro intensive, action packed orgy of seiging and unseiging, spreading out and repositioning to respond to enemy troop movement, rushing to reinforce weak points in the line as the enemy army harasses or full out assaults it. They are certainly not for camping. At least at the higher levels of play.
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
I posted this thread on reddit that breaks down the problem somewhat logically, and comes to the conclusion that the only really good change to Mech (short of a severe game redesign) would be to put the concussive shell effect onto Widow Mine attacks.
On January 03 2013 15:53 bLueSkY) wrote: I'm seriously confused, people complain about the state of the game atm (being to stale or "NR30") yet they support mech, and even buffing the siege tank wtf? If you buff mech, this will lead to more boring games of just sitting back and maxing to 200/200 and deathball fights. Why would you WANT that? This game is inherently boring as it is, don't make it worse. Buffing the siege tank alone is also an odd idea. Do you want people camping for the entire game?
No, because right now mech is only about as strong as protoss in a straight up fight, sometimes slightly more, but not significantly more.
The reason why it won't turn into deathball vs deathball is because it is pretty much that right now (referring to WoL). However, Protoss has many harass options and different ways to engage into a mech force, but thing is they don't even need them because mech isn't that strong.
By making mech stronger, the mech player will be able to actually split his army up into more than 1 area, and the protoss will actually have to find holes in the mech players' weakness and maybe eventually try to break through his defense with his full army or near full army (occasionally perhaps a mothership recall), which may or may not be a fitting climax.
On January 03 2013 15:53 bLueSkY) wrote: I'm seriously confused, people complain about the state of the game atm (being to stale or "NR30") yet they support mech, and even buffing the siege tank wtf? If you buff mech, this will lead to more boring games of just sitting back and maxing to 200/200 and deathball fights. Why would you WANT that? This game is inherently boring as it is, don't make it worse. Buffing the siege tank alone is also an odd idea. Do you want people camping for the entire game?
The only reason mech is NR30 is that it only works at all when it's maxed out. If you could make it better at lower unit counts, I know that Terrans would be more than happy to push out in the mid game.
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
I posted this thread on reddit that breaks down the problem somewhat logically, and comes to the conclusion that the only really good change to Mech (short of a severe game redesign) would be to put the concussive shell effect onto Widow Mine attacks.
Putting the concussive shell effect onto the window mine (and reduce damage) would work as well as long as it was a splash effect. I like this idea.
On January 03 2013 15:53 bLueSkY) wrote: I'm seriously confused, people complain about the state of the game atm (being to stale or "NR30") yet they support mech, and even buffing the siege tank wtf? If you buff mech, this will lead to more boring games of just sitting back and maxing to 200/200 and deathball fights. Why would you WANT that? This game is inherently boring as it is, don't make it worse. Buffing the siege tank alone is also an odd idea. Do you want people camping for the entire game?
At the moment the main issue with mech is it gets overrun supply for supply unless you hit 150-200 supply. This is because each mech unit is hugely expensive and risking small numbers of mech units results in inefficient engagements.
The way to overcome this is to make tanks stronger without making them particularly more powerful. Both zerg and protoss have methods of punishing a turtling terran - both swarm hosts and oracles fill that role handily. Essentially all they need to do is slow down the mech deathball being built and they will eventually win. What needs to happen now is mech (or more specifically the siege tank) needs to be improved so that siege tanks can take the role they had in BW - spread out space control units which in small numbers offer a significant threat.
One possible way of doing this is simply to buff tank damage against non-armoured units. Just revert the original tank nerf and let them one shot marines and zerglings again. Another way is to reduce the supply of the tank.
This is a very good point. I think if you look at the numbers here, though, it makes more sense to buff damage than supply cost. The reason is that even if you reduce the supply of the tank so that you have a 150 food army as strong as a 170 supply army, you've still been turtling the whole game and trying not to die. All it does is make your lategame army strong, not solve the midgame problems, which is tanks in small numbers vs. the numerous options protoss has.
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
I posted this thread on reddit that breaks down the problem somewhat logically, and comes to the conclusion that the only really good change to Mech (short of a severe game redesign) would be to put the concussive shell effect onto Widow Mine attacks.
I'm not sure how much I agree with this. I'll try to run through some of my thoughts: 1) marauder shells and mine shells would overlap, there's no getting around it. Whether or not that's a bad thing or non-applicable due to separate tech paths, I'm not sure. My only thought is that if mines have a larger slow splash, wouldn't it be easier to just make mass marine/ghost + a few mines in TvP? Or vice versa, if the mines have the same slow splash, wouldn't it just be easier to make marauders? And as such, does that really affect mech all that much? 2) If mines are placed far away from siege tanks in positions to slow down incoming units, won't they just all be sacrificial to friendly fire? Right now, it's more common to see 2-3 mines sitting on top of a tank to clean up units that get close. In these cases, slowing down units that are within the "safe zone" of the tank is not really useful. 3) The problem is broken down too simplistically for me to really believe that concussive shells on widow mines is the ONLY way to make mech work.
You could be right, but I'm just not sure. Honestly, some tweaks to supply and cost efficiency of mech would go a long way...only THEN would a really think about special abilities necessary in order to make it work.
You could be right, but I'm just not sure. Honestly, some tweaks to supply and cost efficiency of mech would go a long way...only THEN would a really think about special abilities necessary in order to make it work.
I agree that the quickest and easiest things to try are to tinker with supply/cost/damage of the mech units. Reverting the wol tank nerf is the number one easiest thing to try imo.
I really don't like the idea that widow mine is a unit. Maybe if it was more vulture like and dropped spider mines that could be cool. Buffing the tanks damage would be a great way to control space I think.
I didn't even know space control was even a thing... Correct me if I'm wrong .. but I've never heard Artosis say "The main thing that cost him that game was space control. That space man! gotta control it!" Wasn't this a term coined by Blizzard? Leave it to Blizzard to form their own crazy theories as to how the game plays and functions, rather than gaining some valuable insights from actual pros.
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
Tanks in bw and WoL is actually quite similar if you compare the damage system and how it worked in bw and sc2. So buffing damage is not the way to go imo. The big nerf siege tanks got in sc2 compared to bw is the food, 3 food makes a difference and imo is the core problem with mech in TvP.
As for widow mines the supply cost is also too high I do not know about there internal testing but reducing wm and tanks could really evovle TvP and TvT.
To op:
I think that just reducing the food cost solves the problems and it just overcomplicate things with the attack changes.
You reduce the food cost of tanks and it's possible you make them overpowered in tvz. Tvz would change a ton because that would mean terran can have even more marines or more tanks.
Lowering the food would imo break tvz completely because contrary to terrans belief, tanks are good tvz (until late game then they aren't as useful).
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
Tanks in bw and WoL is actually quite similar if you compare the damage system and how it worked in bw and sc2. So buffing damage is not the way to go imo. The big nerf siege tanks got in sc2 compared to bw is the food, 3 food makes a difference and imo is the core problem with mech in TvP.
As for widow mines the supply cost is also too high I do not know about there internal testing but reducing wm and tanks could really evovle TvP and TvT.
To op:
I think that just reducing the food cost solves the problems and it just overcomplicate things with the attack changes.
You reduce the food cost of tanks and it's possible you make them overpowered in tvz. Tvz would change a ton because that would mean terran can have even more marines or more tanks.
Lowering the food would imo break tvz completely because contrary to terrans belief, tanks are good tvz (until late game then they aren't as useful).
Exactly. Tanks aren't as good in late game TvZ. One reason is lack of shared upgrades with bio, another is broodlords. Thing is, reducing the supply cost would mostly be a buff to late game tank heavy strats, when the Terran is maxed out. Before max, a 1 supply differential barely matters, it just means you need to build a few less supply depots. Once you near max though, being able to be supply effective is huge.
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
Tanks in bw and WoL is actually quite similar if you compare the damage system and how it worked in bw and sc2. So buffing damage is not the way to go imo. The big nerf siege tanks got in sc2 compared to bw is the food, 3 food makes a difference and imo is the core problem with mech in TvP.
As for widow mines the supply cost is also too high I do not know about there internal testing but reducing wm and tanks could really evovle TvP and TvT.
To op:
I think that just reducing the food cost solves the problems and it just overcomplicate things with the attack changes.
You reduce the food cost of tanks and it's possible you make them overpowered in tvz. Tvz would change a ton because that would mean terran can have even more marines or more tanks.
Lowering the food would imo break tvz completely because contrary to terrans belief, tanks are good tvz (until late game then they aren't as useful).
Exactly. Tanks aren't as good in late game TvZ. One reason is lack of shared upgrades with bio, another is broodlords. Thing is, reducing the supply cost would mostly be a buff to late game tank heavy strats, when the Terran is maxed out. Before max, a 1 supply differential barely matters, it just means you need to build a few less supply depots. Once you near max though, being able to be supply effective is huge.
Why would you want to have tanks in late game when they have the achilles heel of Broodlords and no mech unit to defend them against that?
Tank damage needs to be increased significantly so they are SCARY in mid and late game, because they still have their weaknesses of immobility and no AA defense by themselves. This would give Terrans the ability to use the tank for what it was designed while keeping the methods to abuse their weaknesses equally strong so you have to build more than just tanks to win. There are quite a few new anti-tank-tricks coming with HotS, so increased damage should be ok.
I have been wondering if giving to tanks the skill to attack ground, it would be a simple way to boost positional play. I mean if you press shift + ground attack key you can spread the tank shoots dealing maximun splash damage and targeting the units you want (similar to HT storms), also you can do fire-walls against cloaked/burrowed units.
Attacking ground, disables auto fire so, sometimes it could work, others it could fail, idk.
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
Tanks in bw and WoL is actually quite similar if you compare the damage system and how it worked in bw and sc2. So buffing damage is not the way to go imo. The big nerf siege tanks got in sc2 compared to bw is the food, 3 food makes a difference and imo is the core problem with mech in TvP.
As for widow mines the supply cost is also too high I do not know about there internal testing but reducing wm and tanks could really evovle TvP and TvT.
To op:
I think that just reducing the food cost solves the problems and it just overcomplicate things with the attack changes.
You reduce the food cost of tanks and it's possible you make them overpowered in tvz. Tvz would change a ton because that would mean terran can have even more marines or more tanks.
Lowering the food would imo break tvz completely because contrary to terrans belief, tanks are good tvz (until late game then they aren't as useful).
Exactly. Tanks aren't as good in late game TvZ. One reason is lack of shared upgrades with bio, another is broodlords. Thing is, reducing the supply cost would mostly be a buff to late game tank heavy strats, when the Terran is maxed out. Before max, a 1 supply differential barely matters, it just means you need to build a few less supply depots. Once you near max though, being able to be supply effective is huge.
Why would you want to have tanks in late game when they have the achilles heel of Broodlords and no mech unit to defend them against that?
Tank damage needs to be increased significantly so they are SCARY in mid and late game, because they still have their weaknesses of immobility and no AA defense by themselves. This would give Terrans the ability to use the tank for what it was designed while keeping the methods to abuse their weaknesses equally strong so you have to build more than just tanks to win. There are quite a few new anti-tank-tricks coming with HotS, so increased damage should be ok.
Well, I was responding to the argument that supply effective (rather than cost effective) tanks would "break" tvz which, given the content of your post, I think you are in agreement with me that that is not the case.
Your post seems to have an inherent contradiction though, do you think tanks should be viable in late game tvz or not? Your first sentence dismisses the notion but then you say a damage buff will help (which it won't vs brood heavy comps, or immortal heavy for that matter). I agree that more mid game tank pushes would be nice.
I would honestly be fine with buffing the damage if not for immortals. However the fact that immortals exist mean that direct damage buff to tanks will barely help them at all to be more viable vs toss, especially not in the mid game. Maybe both a supply and damage buff could be incorporated, however if its JUST a damage buff tank heavy mech will still not really be viable in tvp. Only a supply based buff has the potential to change that.
The basic problem with the widow mine right now, is that you dont actually have to control the area you burrow your mines in... This makes it so that if the mines are any good at what they are supposed to, which is space control, they become way too strong as an offensive harrass unit... If their deployment time, on the other hand was considerably slower (Im talking something like 30 secs-1minute) they could be buffed to have good damage with splash, without being way too powerfull... That would make it so that you could only deploy the mines in areas you allready control, in order to advance further, or move back with your army and defend a counter attack...
On January 04 2013 18:33 immanentblue wrote: The basic problem with the widow mine right now, is that you dont actually have to control the area you burrow your mines in... This makes it so that if the mines are any good at what they are supposed to, which is space control, they become way too strong as an offensive harrass unit... If their deployment time, on the other hand was considerably slower (Im talking something like 30 secs-1minute) they could be buffed to have good damage with splash, without being way too powerfull... That would make it so that you could only deploy the mines in areas you allready control, in order to advance further, or move back with your army and defend a counter attack...
This is actually a stunningly good idea. Something like a 15 second deployment time would have so many good effects:
-This would be a great way to distinguish widow mines from spider mines. -Makes widow mine rushes / harass a non factor. -Allows mines to become more effective at positional play without being OP (enemy always has plenty of time to run, regroup). -Leads to fun micro (imagine a slow push, enemy tries to pick off mines that move forward, as terran tries to cover with tanks and other units) -Makes mech actually viable vs toss -Distinguishes mines from every other unit giving them a unique feel -Mines are less massable, stupid things like large groups of mines rushing in to a fight a battle will no longer exist. Careful positioning and hopping forward will be the new way to use them.
I think a buffed mine with this concept, combined with an elimination of ability to hit air, would do so much for Terran. HoTS needs more cool ideas like these, units need unique concepts and limitations dammit, not just stuff that looks cool.
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
Tanks in bw and WoL is actually quite similar if you compare the damage system and how it worked in bw and sc2. So buffing damage is not the way to go imo. The big nerf siege tanks got in sc2 compared to bw is the food, 3 food makes a difference and imo is the core problem with mech in TvP.
As for widow mines the supply cost is also too high I do not know about there internal testing but reducing wm and tanks could really evovle TvP and TvT.
To op:
I think that just reducing the food cost solves the problems and it just overcomplicate things with the attack changes.
You reduce the food cost of tanks and it's possible you make them overpowered in tvz. Tvz would change a ton because that would mean terran can have even more marines or more tanks.
Lowering the food would imo break tvz completely because contrary to terrans belief, tanks are good tvz (until late game then they aren't as useful).
Exactly. Tanks aren't as good in late game TvZ. One reason is lack of shared upgrades with bio, another is broodlords. Thing is, reducing the supply cost would mostly be a buff to late game tank heavy strats, when the Terran is maxed out. Before max, a 1 supply differential barely matters, it just means you need to build a few less supply depots. Once you near max though, being able to be supply effective is huge.
Why would you want to have tanks in late game when they have the achilles heel of Broodlords and no mech unit to defend them against that?
Tank damage needs to be increased significantly so they are SCARY in mid and late game, because they still have their weaknesses of immobility and no AA defense by themselves. This would give Terrans the ability to use the tank for what it was designed while keeping the methods to abuse their weaknesses equally strong so you have to build more than just tanks to win. There are quite a few new anti-tank-tricks coming with HotS, so increased damage should be ok.
Well, I was responding to the argument that supply effective (rather than cost effective) tanks would "break" tvz which, given the content of your post, I think you are in agreement with me that that is not the case.
Your post seems to have an inherent contradiction though, do you think tanks should be viable in late game tvz or not? Your first sentence dismisses the notion but then you say a damage buff will help (which it won't vs brood heavy comps, or immortal heavy for that matter). I agree that more mid game tank pushes would be nice.
I would honestly be fine with buffing the damage if not for immortals. However the fact that immortals exist mean that direct damage buff to tanks will barely help them at all to be more viable vs toss, especially not in the mid game. Maybe both a supply and damage buff could be incorporated, however if its JUST a damage buff tank heavy mech will still not really be viable in tvp. Only a supply based buff has the potential to change that.
I think tanks should be viable all game long and the design of the Broodlord makes them useless. If there was a reasonable way to fight Broodlords that would change, but as long as they spawn their free units which block movement at a super long range AND as long as Vikings can easily be fungaled and killed there is no chance for Tanks to be viable against any Broodlord composition.
A solution might be to reduce the range of Broodlords to something like 2-3 while increasing their mobility significantly (to almost Mutalisk mobility). With such a setup you could use the Vipers abduct spell to grab a few Siege Tanks and annihilate them with Broodlords and you could defend against straight up Broodlords with turrets or Thors (after they get a decent AA upgrade) while playing mech.
Against Immortals it is clear that you need Ghosts and EMP. Introducing a direct countermeasure against Immortals on the side of Tanks is pointless, because the Immortal was designed specifically against tanks. Increasing the damage of tanks will help against Immortals, because you can kill "everything else" faster and thus the "rest of your army" can deal with the Immortals.
Number 1- PDD really, really should stop Broodlord projectiles. There is no good reason for PDD not to work against them at all.
Number 2- Terran needs a better way to fight Corruptor+Broodlord. Massing Vikings sort of works, but then Fungal makes large corruptor-viking battles extremely difficult for terran. The new Raven Seeker Missile is a solution that works by sniping it with a powerful single-target spell. However I think a better solution is to have an anti-air splash damage spell (i.e. Raven Seeker Missile, WoL style) to aid the Vikings in fighting the Corruptors. Giving it 9 range, like Fungal has, would be a better solution.
Additionally, I think it would be cool to have the delayed-target missile still be in the game, but not on the Seeker Missile dealing 300 like a poor man's Yamato. Instead, make a much smaller missile on the Viking. Vikings are more numerous and might have multiple missiles each. Making them able to be used against both ground or air targets at long range from either mode would be excellent. These can be used in a variety of ways- just need to be careful with the damage number so they aren't free worker kills. Although, actually, that might not be the end of the world considering how late a significant number of Vikings arrives, the missile research being done, and how many missiles would be needed to deal significant economic damage that might be better spent shooting military targets.
The Viking is already intended to counter Broodlords- it just has to fight the Corruptors first. Ravens should be able to prevent Broodlords from damaging your ground units for a short time using PDD while this fight happens. It might also be an improvement to make Corruptor attacks not be intercepted by PDD, and rework Corruption to be a more interesting and powerful ability as well.
On January 04 2013 22:18 ledarsi wrote: Number 1- PDD really, really should stop Broodlord projectiles. There is no good reason for PDD not to work against them at all.
Number 2- Terran needs a better way to fight Corruptor+Broodlord. Massing Vikings sort of works, but then Fungal makes large corruptor-viking battles extremely difficult for terran. The new Raven Seeker Missile is a solution that works by sniping it with a powerful single-target spell. However I think a better solution is to have an anti-air splash damage spell (i.e. Raven Seeker Missile, WoL style) to aid the Vikings in fighting the Corruptors. Giving it 9 range, like Fungal has, would be a better solution.
Additionally, I think it would be cool to have the delayed-target missile still be in the game, but not on the Seeker Missile dealing 300 like a poor man's Yamato. Instead, make a much smaller missile on the Viking. Vikings are more numerous and might have multiple missiles each. Making them able to be used against both ground or air targets at long range from either mode would be excellent. These can be used in a variety of ways- just need to be careful with the damage number so they aren't free worker kills. Although, actually, that might not be the end of the world considering how late a significant number of Vikings arrives, the missile research being done, and how many missiles would be needed to deal significant economic damage that might be better spent shooting military targets.
The Viking is already intended to counter Broodlords- it just has to fight the Corruptors first. Ravens should be able to prevent Broodlords from damaging your ground units for a short time using PDD while this fight happens. It might also be an improvement to make Corruptor attacks not be intercepted by PDD, and rework Corruption to be a more interesting and powerful ability as well.
Vikings do have a problem ... they are pretty much rubbish once the air stuff is dead. The transformation gimmick looks nice on paper, but actually doing that is rather low mobility and you offer some seconds of vulnerability to your opponent. The problematic choice is: "let the Vikings die to be replaced by something else OR try to make them useful?"
On January 04 2013 21:11 Zahir wrote: I think a buffed mine with this concept, combined with an elimination of ability to hit air, would do so much for Terran. HoTS needs more cool ideas like these, units need unique concepts and limitations dammit, not just stuff that looks cool.
The obvious problem is that mine needs to hit air. With no splash on seeker missile widow mine is the only alternative to thor for air AoE damage. Removing it would badly nerf mech against corruptor/broodlord.
On January 04 2013 21:11 Zahir wrote: I think a buffed mine with this concept, combined with an elimination of ability to hit air, would do so much for Terran. HoTS needs more cool ideas like these, units need unique concepts and limitations dammit, not just stuff that looks cool.
The obvious problem is that mine needs to hit air. With no splash on seeker missile widow mine is the only alternative to thor for air AoE damage. Removing it would badly nerf mech against corruptor/broodlord.
Why do we need "alternatives" to the Thor? The Thor just needs to get to deal decent damage in high impact mode ...
The Thor fundamentally is a bad idea. Expensive, few in number, hero unit. It's what happens when Browder "lets the art lead." His words. That unit should have been smaller, cheaper, and weaker. There no excuse for making it so large other than being mistaken about what SC2 players like or think is "cool."
Shrink the Thor, or add a smaller unit that actually is effective against air units, for less cost.
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
Tanks in bw and WoL is actually quite similar if you compare the damage system and how it worked in bw and sc2. So buffing damage is not the way to go imo. The big nerf siege tanks got in sc2 compared to bw is the food, 3 food makes a difference and imo is the core problem with mech in TvP.
As for widow mines the supply cost is also too high I do not know about there internal testing but reducing wm and tanks could really evovle TvP and TvT.
To op:
I think that just reducing the food cost solves the problems and it just overcomplicate things with the attack changes.
You reduce the food cost of tanks and it's possible you make them overpowered in tvz. Tvz would change a ton because that would mean terran can have even more marines or more tanks.
Lowering the food would imo break tvz completely because contrary to terrans belief, tanks are good tvz (until late game then they aren't as useful).
If the terran player goes for a bio + tank mixture, the terran player will have about 10 tanks late game, that mean 10 extra supply if you reduce the food cost that is 5 vikings/tanks, 10 marines or 2 thors. I do not think that will break the late game. It will be stronger that is for sure but not too strong. Besides I can not see how lower food will change that much for a bio player in the mid game, you might be able to save 1-2 supply depots (200minerals) within a certain time. It might open up for other timing windows that I can not predict but I can not see how they can be overpowered timing just another type of timing.
The only problem would be if you let a terran max on mech when you have like 20 tanks, that might actually be really hard to break for zerg. However I stand by the concept of not letting a mech player easily get a fourth base hence the gas needed to get max.
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
Tanks in bw and WoL is actually quite similar if you compare the damage system and how it worked in bw and sc2. So buffing damage is not the way to go imo. The big nerf siege tanks got in sc2 compared to bw is the food, 3 food makes a difference and imo is the core problem with mech in TvP.
As for widow mines the supply cost is also too high I do not know about there internal testing but reducing wm and tanks could really evovle TvP and TvT.
To op:
I think that just reducing the food cost solves the problems and it just overcomplicate things with the attack changes.
You reduce the food cost of tanks and it's possible you make them overpowered in tvz. Tvz would change a ton because that would mean terran can have even more marines or more tanks.
Lowering the food would imo break tvz completely because contrary to terrans belief, tanks are good tvz (until late game then they aren't as useful).
Exactly. Tanks aren't as good in late game TvZ. One reason is lack of shared upgrades with bio, another is broodlords. Thing is, reducing the supply cost would mostly be a buff to late game tank heavy strats, when the Terran is maxed out. Before max, a 1 supply differential barely matters, it just means you need to build a few less supply depots. Once you near max though, being able to be supply effective is huge.
Why would you want to have tanks in late game when they have the achilles heel of Broodlords and no mech unit to defend them against that?
Tank damage needs to be increased significantly so they are SCARY in mid and late game, because they still have their weaknesses of immobility and no AA defense by themselves. This would give Terrans the ability to use the tank for what it was designed while keeping the methods to abuse their weaknesses equally strong so you have to build more than just tanks to win. There are quite a few new anti-tank-tricks coming with HotS, so increased damage should be ok.
Well, I was responding to the argument that supply effective (rather than cost effective) tanks would "break" tvz which, given the content of your post, I think you are in agreement with me that that is not the case.
Your post seems to have an inherent contradiction though, do you think tanks should be viable in late game tvz or not? Your first sentence dismisses the notion but then you say a damage buff will help (which it won't vs brood heavy comps, or immortal heavy for that matter). I agree that more mid game tank pushes would be nice.
I would honestly be fine with buffing the damage if not for immortals. However the fact that immortals exist mean that direct damage buff to tanks will barely help them at all to be more viable vs toss, especially not in the mid game. Maybe both a supply and damage buff could be incorporated, however if its JUST a damage buff tank heavy mech will still not really be viable in tvp. Only a supply based buff has the potential to change that.
I think tanks should be viable all game long and the design of the Broodlord makes them useless. If there was a reasonable way to fight Broodlords that would change, but as long as they spawn their free units which block movement at a super long range AND as long as Vikings can easily be fungaled and killed there is no chance for Tanks to be viable against any Broodlord composition.
A solution might be to reduce the range of Broodlords to something like 2-3 while increasing their mobility significantly (to almost Mutalisk mobility). With such a setup you could use the Vipers abduct spell to grab a few Siege Tanks and annihilate them with Broodlords and you could defend against straight up Broodlords with turrets or Thors (after they get a decent AA upgrade) while playing mech.
Against Immortals it is clear that you need Ghosts and EMP. Introducing a direct countermeasure against Immortals on the side of Tanks is pointless, because the Immortal was designed specifically against tanks. Increasing the damage of tanks will help against Immortals, because you can kill "everything else" faster and thus the "rest of your army" can deal with the Immortals.
Seeing broodlords zip around and own things at roach range would be kind of hilarious after all these games where they are the embodiment of slow, inevitable doom. I honestly have no clue whether that would be balanced or better for the game, but it would certainly be refreshing. Sadly, I doubt blizzard will ever make any such change because it is just too radical a divergence from the unit as it presently exists. As far as WoL units go, they are into tweaking numbers and that is about it.
As for immortals, I do not like the idea of forcing ghostmech. That is a composition that requires tremendous infrastructure and upgrades to be effective. The only safe way to get it is camping heavily on 3-4 base... which means tvp mech will always be 200/200 and 15 minutes before you see any serious action. Mech needs some way of being viable in this matchup without requiring an entire different tech/research path + fairly expensive supporting force.
To be blunt, I don't care that immortals were designed specifically against tanks. It was a bad idea to create such a skilless hard counter in the first place. The proper counter to tanks should be flanking, harassment, dropping on top of them, picking off overextended tanks, and so on. Dynamic, micro intensive play should counter tanks. Not a single unit with a built in anti tank shield. I don't want to see more games with spread out immortals absorbing enormous amounts of tank fire and then the protoss 1aing into the mech army for victory. I want to see immortals getting vaporized, and then chargelots, warp prisms, dts, blink stalkers, phoenixes, and all the other actual good protoss units use their cool starcraft 2 spells and abilities to pick apart siege lines in a gory explosion, 300 apm explosion of manly combat.
With increased damage on tanks that scenario will never occur. Increased damage will force the toss to build their hard counter, immortals, so that the terran does not kill "everything else" as you stated. Which, if the Terran has to build his own hard counter to counter the immortals, he might as well give up attacking at all until his tech tree are 3/3/3/3 upgrades are mostly complete.
Apologies if this post came out rude or anything. Bit low on sleep and I'm having trouble polishing my words.
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
Tanks in bw and WoL is actually quite similar if you compare the damage system and how it worked in bw and sc2. So buffing damage is not the way to go imo. The big nerf siege tanks got in sc2 compared to bw is the food, 3 food makes a difference and imo is the core problem with mech in TvP.
As for widow mines the supply cost is also too high I do not know about there internal testing but reducing wm and tanks could really evovle TvP and TvT.
To op:
I think that just reducing the food cost solves the problems and it just overcomplicate things with the attack changes.
You reduce the food cost of tanks and it's possible you make them overpowered in tvz. Tvz would change a ton because that would mean terran can have even more marines or more tanks.
Lowering the food would imo break tvz completely because contrary to terrans belief, tanks are good tvz (until late game then they aren't as useful).
Exactly. Tanks aren't as good in late game TvZ. One reason is lack of shared upgrades with bio, another is broodlords. Thing is, reducing the supply cost would mostly be a buff to late game tank heavy strats, when the Terran is maxed out. Before max, a 1 supply differential barely matters, it just means you need to build a few less supply depots. Once you near max though, being able to be supply effective is huge.
Why would you want to have tanks in late game when they have the achilles heel of Broodlords and no mech unit to defend them against that?
Tank damage needs to be increased significantly so they are SCARY in mid and late game, because they still have their weaknesses of immobility and no AA defense by themselves. This would give Terrans the ability to use the tank for what it was designed while keeping the methods to abuse their weaknesses equally strong so you have to build more than just tanks to win. There are quite a few new anti-tank-tricks coming with HotS, so increased damage should be ok.
Well, I was responding to the argument that supply effective (rather than cost effective) tanks would "break" tvz which, given the content of your post, I think you are in agreement with me that that is not the case.
Your post seems to have an inherent contradiction though, do you think tanks should be viable in late game tvz or not? Your first sentence dismisses the notion but then you say a damage buff will help (which it won't vs brood heavy comps, or immortal heavy for that matter). I agree that more mid game tank pushes would be nice.
I would honestly be fine with buffing the damage if not for immortals. However the fact that immortals exist mean that direct damage buff to tanks will barely help them at all to be more viable vs toss, especially not in the mid game. Maybe both a supply and damage buff could be incorporated, however if its JUST a damage buff tank heavy mech will still not really be viable in tvp. Only a supply based buff has the potential to change that.
I think tanks should be viable all game long and the design of the Broodlord makes them useless. If there was a reasonable way to fight Broodlords that would change, but as long as they spawn their free units which block movement at a super long range AND as long as Vikings can easily be fungaled and killed there is no chance for Tanks to be viable against any Broodlord composition.
A solution might be to reduce the range of Broodlords to something like 2-3 while increasing their mobility significantly (to almost Mutalisk mobility). With such a setup you could use the Vipers abduct spell to grab a few Siege Tanks and annihilate them with Broodlords and you could defend against straight up Broodlords with turrets or Thors (after they get a decent AA upgrade) while playing mech.
Against Immortals it is clear that you need Ghosts and EMP. Introducing a direct countermeasure against Immortals on the side of Tanks is pointless, because the Immortal was designed specifically against tanks. Increasing the damage of tanks will help against Immortals, because you can kill "everything else" faster and thus the "rest of your army" can deal with the Immortals.
Seeing broodlords zip around and own things at roach range would be kind of hilarious after all these games where they are the embodiment of slow, inevitable doom. I honestly have no clue whether that would be balanced or better for the game, but it would certainly be refreshing. Sadly, I doubt blizzard will ever make any such change because it is just too radical a divergence from the unit as it presently exists. As far as WoL units go, they are into tweaking numbers and that is about it.
As for immortals, I do not like the idea of forcing ghostmech. That is a composition that requires tremendous infrastructure and upgrades to be effective. The only safe way to get it is camping heavily on 3-4 base... which means tvp mech will always be 200/200 and 15 minutes before you see any serious action. Mech needs some way of being viable in this matchup without requiring an entire different tech/research path + fairly expensive supporting force.
To be blunt, I don't care that immortals were designed specifically against tanks. It was a bad idea to create such a skilless hard counter in the first place. The proper counter to tanks should be flanking, harassment, dropping on top of them, picking off overextended tanks, and so on. Dynamic, micro intensive play should counter tanks. Not a single unit with a built in anti tank shield. I don't want to see more games with spread out immortals absorbing enormous amounts of tank fire and then the protoss 1aing into the mech army for victory. I want to see immortals getting vaporized, and then chargelots, warp prisms, dts, blink stalkers, phoenixes, and all the other actual good protoss units use their cool starcraft 2 spells and abilities to pick apart siege lines in a gory explosion, 300 apm explosion of manly combat.
With increased damage on tanks that scenario will never occur. Increased damage will force the toss to build their hard counter, immortals, so that the terran does not kill "everything else" as you stated. Which, if the Terran has to build his own hard counter to counter the immortals, he might as well give up attacking at all until his tech tree are 3/3/3/3 upgrades are mostly complete.
Apologies if this post came out rude or anything. Bit low on sleep and I'm having trouble polishing my words.
The Broodlord suggestion is just to "counteract" their "immunity shield against ground units" by making them risk their own hides while attacking ... kinda like sieging up Siege Tanks to be immobile. That would make the unit much more interesting and far less overpowered.
Well as you so correctly pointed out: Blizzard wont boldly correct their own stupidity, so they are unlikely to take out the Immortal and replace it with a more sensible unit. Increasing the damage on the Siege Tank would make the Immortal irrelevant IMO, so there would be the opportunity to do it without Blizzard "losing face" (the Immortal could still be useful for PvZ and PvP). Building lots of Immortals simply opens up the Immortal to two weaknesses: Ghosts and air. Consequently I dont think mass Immortals would be a good tactic against tanks and the not-so-great mobility of Immortals would open massive Immortal numbers to their weakness against Hellions.
So I dont really have your pessimistic view of future tactics due to increasing SIege Tank damage. Instead the answer for Protoss would be their own "tricksy stuff" to counter a Siege Tank line ... stuff like one or two Tempests (which is still a horrible design) or maybe a Carrier to nibble at Siege Tank positions OR using their mobility with Blink Stalkers and Warp Prisms. That should be nicely dynamic gameplay with the Terran worrying about defending all the front against incursions while the Protoss tries to find the hole in that front line to sneak or punch through. More interesting than the dance of two huge armies around each other.
On January 04 2013 23:22 ledarsi wrote: The Thor fundamentally is a bad idea. Expensive, few in number, hero unit. It's what happens when Browder "lets the art lead." His words. That unit should have been smaller, cheaper, and weaker. There no excuse for making it so large other than being mistaken about what SC2 players like or think is "cool."
Shrink the Thor, or add a smaller unit that actually is effective against air units, for less cost.
The Thor is around the same size as the Utra or Colossi and at the same point on the tech tree. I agree with the folks saying the high impact cannon should do more damage as a whole and keeps it's long range. I like the idea of the Thor being the all purpose ground unit thats only flaw is that it is slow and easily overrun by teir 1 trash units.
On January 02 2013 03:12 dere wrote: I agree that there is a problem with the role overlap of siege tank and widow mines. I don't agree about swapping out the attacks. If you make tank's sieged attack single target I don't see a reason to siege them other than technical tank pushes. They already do more dps to a single target unsieged.
I think either a slight gas reduction for the tank (150/100) or reverting the WoL siege tank nerf would be the best place to start. However, if you wanted to get wild you could possibly add a concussive shell affect to tanks attacks.
Tanks in bw and WoL is actually quite similar if you compare the damage system and how it worked in bw and sc2. So buffing damage is not the way to go imo. The big nerf siege tanks got in sc2 compared to bw is the food, 3 food makes a difference and imo is the core problem with mech in TvP.
As for widow mines the supply cost is also too high I do not know about there internal testing but reducing wm and tanks could really evovle TvP and TvT.
To op:
I think that just reducing the food cost solves the problems and it just overcomplicate things with the attack changes.
You reduce the food cost of tanks and it's possible you make them overpowered in tvz. Tvz would change a ton because that would mean terran can have even more marines or more tanks.
Lowering the food would imo break tvz completely because contrary to terrans belief, tanks are good tvz (until late game then they aren't as useful).
Exactly. Tanks aren't as good in late game TvZ. One reason is lack of shared upgrades with bio, another is broodlords. Thing is, reducing the supply cost would mostly be a buff to late game tank heavy strats, when the Terran is maxed out. Before max, a 1 supply differential barely matters, it just means you need to build a few less supply depots. Once you near max though, being able to be supply effective is huge.
Why would you want to have tanks in late game when they have the achilles heel of Broodlords and no mech unit to defend them against that?
Tank damage needs to be increased significantly so they are SCARY in mid and late game, because they still have their weaknesses of immobility and no AA defense by themselves. This would give Terrans the ability to use the tank for what it was designed while keeping the methods to abuse their weaknesses equally strong so you have to build more than just tanks to win. There are quite a few new anti-tank-tricks coming with HotS, so increased damage should be ok.
Well, I was responding to the argument that supply effective (rather than cost effective) tanks would "break" tvz which, given the content of your post, I think you are in agreement with me that that is not the case.
Your post seems to have an inherent contradiction though, do you think tanks should be viable in late game tvz or not? Your first sentence dismisses the notion but then you say a damage buff will help (which it won't vs brood heavy comps, or immortal heavy for that matter). I agree that more mid game tank pushes would be nice.
I would honestly be fine with buffing the damage if not for immortals. However the fact that immortals exist mean that direct damage buff to tanks will barely help them at all to be more viable vs toss, especially not in the mid game. Maybe both a supply and damage buff could be incorporated, however if its JUST a damage buff tank heavy mech will still not really be viable in tvp. Only a supply based buff has the potential to change that.
I think tanks should be viable all game long and the design of the Broodlord makes them useless. If there was a reasonable way to fight Broodlords that would change, but as long as they spawn their free units which block movement at a super long range AND as long as Vikings can easily be fungaled and killed there is no chance for Tanks to be viable against any Broodlord composition.
A solution might be to reduce the range of Broodlords to something like 2-3 while increasing their mobility significantly (to almost Mutalisk mobility). With such a setup you could use the Vipers abduct spell to grab a few Siege Tanks and annihilate them with Broodlords and you could defend against straight up Broodlords with turrets or Thors (after they get a decent AA upgrade) while playing mech.
Against Immortals it is clear that you need Ghosts and EMP. Introducing a direct countermeasure against Immortals on the side of Tanks is pointless, because the Immortal was designed specifically against tanks. Increasing the damage of tanks will help against Immortals, because you can kill "everything else" faster and thus the "rest of your army" can deal with the Immortals.
Seeing broodlords zip around and own things at roach range would be kind of hilarious after all these games where they are the embodiment of slow, inevitable doom. I honestly have no clue whether that would be balanced or better for the game, but it would certainly be refreshing. Sadly, I doubt blizzard will ever make any such change because it is just too radical a divergence from the unit as it presently exists. As far as WoL units go, they are into tweaking numbers and that is about it.
As for immortals, I do not like the idea of forcing ghostmech. That is a composition that requires tremendous infrastructure and upgrades to be effective. The only safe way to get it is camping heavily on 3-4 base... which means tvp mech will always be 200/200 and 15 minutes before you see any serious action. Mech needs some way of being viable in this matchup without requiring an entire different tech/research path + fairly expensive supporting force.
To be blunt, I don't care that immortals were designed specifically against tanks. It was a bad idea to create such a skilless hard counter in the first place. The proper counter to tanks should be flanking, harassment, dropping on top of them, picking off overextended tanks, and so on. Dynamic, micro intensive play should counter tanks. Not a single unit with a built in anti tank shield. I don't want to see more games with spread out immortals absorbing enormous amounts of tank fire and then the protoss 1aing into the mech army for victory. I want to see immortals getting vaporized, and then chargelots, warp prisms, dts, blink stalkers, phoenixes, and all the other actual good protoss units use their cool starcraft 2 spells and abilities to pick apart siege lines in a gory explosion, 300 apm explosion of manly combat.
With increased damage on tanks that scenario will never occur. Increased damage will force the toss to build their hard counter, immortals, so that the terran does not kill "everything else" as you stated. Which, if the Terran has to build his own hard counter to counter the immortals, he might as well give up attacking at all until his tech tree are 3/3/3/3 upgrades are mostly complete.
Apologies if this post came out rude or anything. Bit low on sleep and I'm having trouble polishing my words.
I understand what you're saying, and I think I agree in most aspects. I think that having a unit that soft counters immortals at tier 2 would be better than forcing a hard counter on tier 3. I mean, ghostmech DESTROYS protoss armies, but, as you say, this means that mech is not powerful enough until the lategame, which eliminates a lot of strategy. I would like to see the fun composition wars that TvP bio has (more colossus -> more vikings -> switch to archon/zealot -> switch to ghost heavy army -> switch back to colossus, etc) with the tank, hellbat, and a tier 2 factory unit.
Ironically, the warhound filled this role perfectly. The only huge problem with warhound was that it was way overpowered. I mean, honestly, I don't ever think the warhound was a bad design at all, even though that's what it got killed for. I was kind of sick when I saw like 60 warhounds just winning games outright, but they didn't really overlap with marauders or tanks, which is what a lot of people were claiming.
On December 21 2012 16:37 YoungNV wrote: Banelings are inefficient when used on single targets, therefore you must choose your targets wisely, requiring more skill. Mines basically one-shot everything plus deal splash. The recent decrease in single target damage makes them more like banelings in that they are [slightly] less efficient when used on single targets now. Meaning that there is some added risk to using them, where before, there was little risk because you were almost guaranteed at least one kill.
Banelings have to be within melee range to detonate and you can only use them once. Mines have a ranged attack and can be used as many times as you want.
Banelings only attack ground units. Mines can attack ground and air units (thankfully not cloaked units anymore).
Basically, mines are way better than burrowed banelings in every single category. This explains why they cost so much more. My point here, is that if you reduce the cost or supply of the mines, you simply MUST nerf the hell out of it.
I just wanted to add, the only thing Widow mine is really more expensive than the baneling at is in supply.( 2 to 0.5) The widowmine costs 75/25, while a baneling costs 50/25, Baneling needs 2 attack upgrades to match the splash of a widow mine, and that is only vs light.
On December 21 2012 16:37 YoungNV wrote: Banelings are inefficient when used on single targets, therefore you must choose your targets wisely, requiring more skill. Mines basically one-shot everything plus deal splash. The recent decrease in single target damage makes them more like banelings in that they are [slightly] less efficient when used on single targets now. Meaning that there is some added risk to using them, where before, there was little risk because you were almost guaranteed at least one kill.
Banelings have to be within melee range to detonate and you can only use them once. Mines have a ranged attack and can be used as many times as you want.
Banelings only attack ground units. Mines can attack ground and air units (thankfully not cloaked units anymore).
Basically, mines are way better than burrowed banelings in every single category. This explains why they cost so much more. My point here, is that if you reduce the cost or supply of the mines, you simply MUST nerf the hell out of it.
I just wanted to add, the only thing Widow mine is really more expensive than the baneling at is in supply.( 2 to 0.5) The widowmine costs 75/25, while a baneling costs 50/25, Baneling needs 2 attack upgrades to match the splash of a widow mine, and that is only vs light.
The thing is that the Baneling is a really terrible unit from a design standpoint, so doing comparisons to it is pretty pointless. The reason why it is terrible in design is the way you use it actively. Every time there are Banlings rolling into a group of enemies the success or failure of the whole thing depends in a very very very big part upon the ability of your opponent to evade you. So YOUR SKILL is totally irrelevant and this really terrible for a unit in an RTS.
i agree that the widow mine should have greater splash damage considering how long the delay is on its missile.
on that note, i'd also like to see the widow mine upgrade be changed to reduce the delay between missiles. while i like the decrease in burrow time, i think that decreasing the time that this unit is dead weight is for the best.
On January 06 2013 06:25 megapants wrote: i agree that the widow mine should have greater splash damage considering how long the delay is on its missile.
on that note, i'd also like to see the widow mine upgrade be changed to reduce the delay between missiles. while i like the decrease in burrow time, i think that decreasing the time that this unit is dead weight is for the best.
Well, the point is to make it a strong unit without making it a core damage unit like the marine and marauder... increasing the deploy time makes it so that it can be usefull in certain situations, rather than all situations... only changing combat stats (dps, splash ect) wont change much i feel...
Making the mine take much longer to burrow, but with a quicker cooldown before it can fire a second time is an interesting idea. It might even work with a supply-using mine. Worth trying, but it really would be a better solution to just make mines that blow up, which are created by a unit, and do not cost supply.
On January 06 2013 06:25 megapants wrote: i agree that the widow mine should have greater splash damage considering how long the delay is on its missile.
on that note, i'd also like to see the widow mine upgrade be changed to reduce the delay between missiles. while i like the decrease in burrow time, i think that decreasing the time that this unit is dead weight is for the best.
Well, the point is to make it a strong unit without making it a core damage unit like the marine and marauder... increasing the deploy time makes it so that it can be usefull in certain situations, rather than all situations... only changing combat stats (dps, splash ect) wont change much i feel...
Really, the more I think about this idea the better it is. A lengthy deployment time would be unique, Terran like, and make the unit play more positional, like an actual mine. It would also make the unit a joy to balance, because it would ONLY be good at establishing territory. Not having to worry about offensive mines or mine harass would open up a ton of possibilities, for example, the rate of fire could be made like a normal unit so that pushing immortals and then the rest of the toss army past a minefield and into the Terran army would not be feasible. The mine could become a truly fearsome buffer with tremendous tank synergy (tanks would be the best unit for "covering" mines)... Mech would just be better and more mech like.
I have a radical idea- how about making the mine able to "deploy" as it does now in 3 seconds, no upgrade to this rate possible. Three seconds to deploy or undeploy. In this normal kind of deployment, it is not burrowed (the mine is perfectly visible) and cannot move. The cooldown on its attack is the same lengthy duration it is now.
A second, different, researchable deployment ability allows mines to burrow. The mine takes 30 seconds (longer?) to burrow (but unburrows in the same 3 seconds). Burrowed mines have a much faster attack speed than surface mines- say, 12 seconds.
This means three things. Firstly, mines are still useful for stopping all-ins and early pressure. The mine is perfectly visible while doing this job, however. This makes it far less effective at stopping mining in enemy bases for extended periods, and makes the mine ineffective at making in numbers to run into enemy armies and deploying, because even after they are deployed, they can still just be killed. They may get to fire once, but will not be protected by finishing their deploy animation, like they do now.
And lastly, it means you can research an ability to make them extremely dangerous positional units in the late game, which are burrowed and have a much higher rate of fire. However this function is virtually useless in an offensive capacity due to the extremely lengthy deploy time. This ability hits the field later than the plain-sight version as it requires research, and is fundamentally less offensively useful since you can't very well run next to an enemy and wait 30 seconds before firing.
Damage, splash, single target stuff, etc. all negotiable. It also does seem a bit inelegant to have two deploy abilities. But it does create a choice for each mine at each point in time, since they are mutually exclusive.
On January 06 2013 06:25 megapants wrote: i agree that the widow mine should have greater splash damage considering how long the delay is on its missile.
on that note, i'd also like to see the widow mine upgrade be changed to reduce the delay between missiles. while i like the decrease in burrow time, i think that decreasing the time that this unit is dead weight is for the best.
Well, the point is to make it a strong unit without making it a core damage unit like the marine and marauder... increasing the deploy time makes it so that it can be usefull in certain situations, rather than all situations... only changing combat stats (dps, splash ect) wont change much i feel...
i think that would be nice and dynamic, but that doesn't address what i said which is to increase the mine's missile fire rate. in fact, were blizzard to implement a very prolonged deployment, i think that only emphasizes the need to reduce the cooldown on the missile.
i think combining both our suggestions would improve the mine's design drastically.
By now I doubt Blizzard is interested in having any positional mech play let alone anything like effective minefields. Nearly all the changes to terran mech have been an attempt to make it move/deploy/harass better while nothing related to zoning and positioning was touched. A world were autoturrets and neo-steel bunkers are fine but the real problem of mech-play is lack of medivac drops is quite depressing.
On January 06 2013 06:25 megapants wrote: i agree that the widow mine should have greater splash damage considering how long the delay is on its missile.
on that note, i'd also like to see the widow mine upgrade be changed to reduce the delay between missiles. while i like the decrease in burrow time, i think that decreasing the time that this unit is dead weight is for the best.
Well, the point is to make it a strong unit without making it a core damage unit like the marine and marauder... increasing the deploy time makes it so that it can be usefull in certain situations, rather than all situations... only changing combat stats (dps, splash ect) wont change much i feel...
i think that would be nice and dynamic, but that doesn't address what i said which is to increase the mine's missile fire rate. in fact, were blizzard to implement a very prolonged deployment, i think that only emphasizes the need to reduce the cooldown on the missile.
i think combining both our suggestions would improve the mine's design drastically.
Of course what im talking about has to be seen in combination with a buff, either in fire rate, splash radius or something like that... I just dont think we can determine excactly what that is, without making the unit work properly, design wise in the first place... What i imagine is, a mine thats hard to deploy, but once deployed, makes an area very hard to enter...
On January 04 2013 22:18 ledarsi wrote: Number 1- PDD really, really should stop Broodlord projectiles. There is no good reason for PDD not to work against them at all.
Number 2- Terran needs a better way to fight Corruptor+Broodlord. Massing Vikings sort of works, but then Fungal makes large corruptor-viking battles extremely difficult for terran. The new Raven Seeker Missile is a solution that works by sniping it with a powerful single-target spell. However I think a better solution is to have an anti-air splash damage spell (i.e. Raven Seeker Missile, WoL style) to aid the Vikings in fighting the Corruptors. Giving it 9 range, like Fungal has, would be a better solution.
Additionally, I think it would be cool to have the delayed-target missile still be in the game, but not on the Seeker Missile dealing 300 like a poor man's Yamato. Instead, make a much smaller missile on the Viking. Vikings are more numerous and might have multiple missiles each. Making them able to be used against both ground or air targets at long range from either mode would be excellent. These can be used in a variety of ways- just need to be careful with the damage number so they aren't free worker kills. Although, actually, that might not be the end of the world considering how late a significant number of Vikings arrives, the missile research being done, and how many missiles would be needed to deal significant economic damage that might be better spent shooting military targets.
The Viking is already intended to counter Broodlords- it just has to fight the Corruptors first. Ravens should be able to prevent Broodlords from damaging your ground units for a short time using PDD while this fight happens. It might also be an improvement to make Corruptor attacks not be intercepted by PDD, and rework Corruption to be a more interesting and powerful ability as well.
I would like to see a hold fire or target fire only command for tanks. That would help a lot against the classic broodlord-infestor-corruptor army. Especially if the fungal range is toned down again. Tanks would still be able to control the area infestors can enter even with broodlords on the field, because they could stay in siegemode. This change would also make tanks a little bit better in a few other scenarios, especially if they are controlled well.
This change would make tanks better at controlling space as soon as broodlords are on the field.
Widow mines are excellent for keeping safe vs baneling busts, allows you to make a greedy 3rd, make it in the main and morph it into a PF at your 3rd.
After that however, they are not very useful, so phase them out quickly and replace with better stuff like medivacs or tanks. And WMs were never meant to be offensive units. The 160 damage made it so that you can just move them into a deathball and burrow them with the 1 second upgrade. Awful. Snipe the observer or overseer and that shit really was insane. The 120 damage makes it not a complete coinflip if you want to do a drop or banshee harass, but they can snipe a muta off.
And the 35 damage vs non armoured is fine IMO, tanks slaughter lings, banelings and marines because they like to conglomerate into a nice meaty ball. Chargelots were a problem in WoL, but now they are super hard countered by hellbats.
Come on, stop QQ'ing and learn to play. Tanks are expensive but keep them safe and alive and when you get 10 tanks, space control is amazing, the opponent is very apprehensive to move forward into it because he may not know how many more tanks there may be. And immobility? Turrets. Sensor towers. If you're going mech, you're going to be floating minerals. People forget sensor towers so much, they are literally map hacks.
What I really hate right now is that protoss can just transition to mass carriers, chrono those bastards out and A move to victory. Vikings get wrecked by carriers okay.
On January 08 2013 21:34 Duncaaaaaan wrote: Widow mines are excellent for keeping safe vs baneling busts, allows you to make a greedy 3rd, make it in the main and morph it into a PF at your 3rd.
After that however, they are not very useful, so phase them out quickly and replace with better stuff like medivacs or tanks. And WMs were never meant to be offensive units. The 160 damage made it so that you can just move them into a deathball and burrow them with the 1 second upgrade. Awful. Snipe the observer or overseer and that shit really was insane. The 120 damage makes it not a complete coinflip if you want to do a drop or banshee harass, but they can snipe a muta off.
And the 35 damage vs non armoured is fine IMO, tanks slaughter lings, banelings and marines because they like to conglomerate into a nice meaty ball. Chargelots were a problem in WoL, but now they are super hard countered by hellbats.
Come on, stop QQ'ing and learn to play. Tanks are expensive but keep them safe and alive and when you get 10 tanks, space control is amazing, the opponent is very apprehensive to move forward into it because he may not know how many more tanks there may be. And immobility? Turrets. Sensor towers. If you're going mech, you're going to be floating minerals. People forget sensor towers so much, they are literally map hacks.
What I really hate right now is that protoss can just transition to mass carriers, chrono those bastards out and A move to victory. Vikings get wrecked by carriers okay.
1. Tanks slaughter lings? What? A Siege Tank only deals its 35 damage in the primary splash radius and everything else is just "flashy Hollywood explosions" that look awesome but dont actually deal any serious damage. Those 35 damage wont even kill one ling if the Zerg has +1 armor before the Terran has +1 attack for his mech ... which is very likely since Zerg can start much earlier AND its more useful for them too. 35 base damage for tanks is RUBBISH! 2. Right ... take your 10 tanks (=30 supply) and "control space" ... at ONE SPOT, but what about the rest of the spots on the map where your opponent simply goes around your clump of tanks to kill your bases? Thats not "controlling space", thats stupid / useless.
On January 08 2013 21:34 Duncaaaaaan wrote: Widow mines are excellent for keeping safe vs baneling busts, allows you to make a greedy 3rd, make it in the main and morph it into a PF at your 3rd.
After that however, they are not very useful, so phase them out quickly and replace with better stuff like medivacs or tanks. And WMs were never meant to be offensive units. The 160 damage made it so that you can just move them into a deathball and burrow them with the 1 second upgrade. Awful. Snipe the observer or overseer and that shit really was insane. The 120 damage makes it not a complete coinflip if you want to do a drop or banshee harass, but they can snipe a muta off.
And the 35 damage vs non armoured is fine IMO, tanks slaughter lings, banelings and marines because they like to conglomerate into a nice meaty ball. Chargelots were a problem in WoL, but now they are super hard countered by hellbats.
Come on, stop QQ'ing and learn to play. Tanks are expensive but keep them safe and alive and when you get 10 tanks, space control is amazing, the opponent is very apprehensive to move forward into it because he may not know how many more tanks there may be. And immobility? Turrets. Sensor towers. If you're going mech, you're going to be floating minerals. People forget sensor towers so much, they are literally map hacks.
What I really hate right now is that protoss can just transition to mass carriers, chrono those bastards out and A move to victory. Vikings get wrecked by carriers okay.
1. Tanks slaughter lings? What? A Siege Tank only deals its 35 damage in the primary splash radius and everything else is just "flashy Hollywood explosions" that look awesome but dont actually deal any serious damage. Those 35 damage wont even kill one ling if the Zerg has +1 armor before the Terran has +1 attack for his mech ... which is very likely since Zerg can start much earlier AND its more useful for them too. 35 base damage for tanks is RUBBISH! 2. Right ... take your 10 tanks (=30 supply) and "control space" ... at ONE SPOT, but what about the rest of the spots on the map where your opponent simply goes around your clump of tanks to kill your bases? Thats not "controlling space", thats stupid / useless.
You use your vikings, turrets and sensor towers and hellions to deny drops. Yes you can't control a huge amount of space on the big maps, so keep them in your base and turtle or contain your opponent. Use your fucking head, holy shit. Clumping your tanks into a ball instead of spreading them out in a tank line in the middle of the map is shit, yes, so stop doing it.
Spreading them out in the middle of the map is shit, since you need all your tanks clumped up to do at least some damage (well you want them spread out a bit vs zerg for optimal killing, but you dont want anything resembling a real tankline, since then they are just far too weak to stop the enemy.
Anyway so your 'solution' where we had to 'use your fucking heads' for is to turtle on 3 bases? And then you think it is weird the toss can just mass carriers?
pff these suggestions are terrible... Why do some people keep whining about tanks so much.. They are already quite good and used all the time in TvT and TvZ... Both in bio mech and in pure mech.. You can not simply buff them bigtime like this as it would make them rediculously overpowered... Also STOP comparing sc2 to bw so literally. Damage, supply costs etc. just can't be compared between games. Tanks in sc2 rarely overkill, they do so all the time in BW. Supply is completely different between the game and useless to compare..
A small siege tank buff in return for a longer setup time could be fine to make mech play a bit more tactical and make tanks stronger in a sieged position. With current map design and only a need for 3 bases I worry this will just lead to split maps and boring stalls though so I rather see the siege tank kept as it is.
Widow mine does need some serious changes, I have absolutely no clue why blizzard has taken the route on that unit like they have now. It absolutely makes no sense.. It's a pretty good early unit against zerg now and absolutely crap against protoss. Terran doesn't need zoning abilities against lots of small units because they have hellions for that! They don't really need zoning ability against light air either because they have the superb turret and marines or thors already.. Terran needs a zoning unit against beefy protoss units like stalkers and maybe voidray/oracles but that's exactly what the widow mine sucks for now.. I still don't get why the widow mine is not just an actual mine.. Detonates itself, costs only 1 supply and is cheaper but actually kills protoss units! Terran changes in HotS are an absolute joke, the only really good thing they basically get is the hellbat upgrade which is about as boring as it get's, transforming your fast unit into a slow boring unit for slightly better stats..
Discussion from an LR thread I would like to bring in here.
It first started with inquiring whether widow mine drops during battles are feasable...
On January 30 2013 21:56 BisuDagger wrote: Do widow mines help out with BL/Infestor engagements in Hots? That first engagement corrupters ate up the vikings.
On January 30 2013 21:58 Noocta wrote: Good luck moving the mines in range of this shit with all the lings and broodlings on the ground.
On January 30 2013 22:00 BisuDagger wrote: So there's nothing tricky like medivac dropping window mines in range during battle.
...I quickly learned that they were to squishy and came up with a solution
On January 30 2013 22:01 Micromnky wrote: Maybe, you might be able to if you have the tunneling claws upgrade, for the faster burrowing. But pretty much, they're reeeeally fragile. You need to run a mass of them in with you army, and expect to lose some no matter what, or bait the opponent over set up ones
On January 30 2013 22:07 BisuDagger wrote: They should add another upgradeable buff that gives them increased armor(like lurker eggs) while burrowing and diminishes within seconds after burrow completes. That way the unit has to be really focus fired at during burrow, so you can either run or be caught in the widow mine chaos trying to target it down.
So is this upgrade a good solution or am I missing the purpose of widow mines. I merely want to improve their utility on the field. I am not in the HOTS beta so this is my place for questions and answers.
On December 24 2012 16:20 link0 wrote: Agree with the OP. The #1 reason why terran isn't satisfy to play is because it has devolved into a deathball army instead of a positional army. The only 2 units for space control: tanks and mines, are totally shit at actually controlling space.
You obviously have not seen Dragon melt opponents dumb enough to charge into marine/tank/ widow mine wall.
Widow mine does need some serious changes, I have absolutely no clue why blizzard has taken the route on that unit like they have now. It absolutely makes no sense.. It's a pretty good early unit against zerg now and absolutely crap against protoss. Terran doesn't need zoning abilities against lots of small units because they have hellions for that! They don't really need zoning ability against light air either because they have the superb turret and marines or thors already.. Terran needs a zoning unit against beefy protoss units like stalkers and maybe voidray/oracles but that's exactly what the widow mine sucks for now.. I still don't get why the widow mine is not just an actual mine.. Detonates itself, costs only 1 supply and is cheaper but actually kills protoss units! Terran changes in HotS are an absolute joke, the only really good thing they basically get is the hellbat upgrade which is about as boring as it get's, transforming your fast unit into a slow boring unit for slightly better stats..
I agree with this, because of the WM it's really really hard to play bio in TvT :S
Widow mine does need some serious changes, I have absolutely no clue why blizzard has taken the route on that unit like they have now. It absolutely makes no sense.. It's a pretty good early unit against zerg now and absolutely crap against protoss. Terran doesn't need zoning abilities against lots of small units because they have hellions for that! They don't really need zoning ability against light air either because they have the superb turret and marines or thors already.. Terran needs a zoning unit against beefy protoss units like stalkers and maybe voidray/oracles but that's exactly what the widow mine sucks for now.. I still don't get why the widow mine is not just an actual mine.. Detonates itself, costs only 1 supply and is cheaper but actually kills protoss units! Terran changes in HotS are an absolute joke, the only really good thing they basically get is the hellbat upgrade which is about as boring as it get's, transforming your fast unit into a slow boring unit for slightly better stats..
I agree with this, because of the WM it's really really hard to play bio in TvT :S
Marauders outrange widowmines don't they? You're a bio player against mech so you should have a lot of money for more CCs and lots of bases, so you could have plenty of scans.
On February 01 2013 03:14 Garmer wrote: tanks need a late game upgrade that make them do much more damage
Or perhaps better upgrade scaling so that they can stay at the same strength level in regards to early rushes and one base builds while actually being a threat and controlling space (as opposed to the current state of "Tanks? Oh I'll just make another round of speedlings and cost effectively a-move him") later on vs the extreme mobility creep in this game in addition to the 4 new HotS tank hard counters combined with already superior P/Z production mechanics (which means that Terran mech units need to be cost effective as you can't reasonably rebuild them; a mere 4 factories with add-ons costs 800/500 and 4 factories is hardly any production past 15 minutes).
The siege mode research upgrade should return, as the upgrade not existing is just unusual; if they're worried about mech early game being too hard then they can reduce the research time or reduce cost. Increase natural tank upgrade scaling, or add a fusion core or expensive armory level damage upgrade. Voila. Tank is fixed without hurting the early-mid game, everyone is happy, and the quality of games improve.
Atleast on the first few pages, there was a lot of mentioning of immortals and how they really hinder tanks at what they're supposed to do. I feel Thors are one of the biggest problems with mech, and their inability to be a 'good' unit plays a much more significant role in how bad the tank is. When you compare the Thor with the tank, you essentially have the same unit. -When a protoss sees the opponent fielding Thors he can respond with immortals, same can be said for the Siege Tank. -Thor and Tank costs are very similar, rather high on both supply, gas and time(much moreso the thor, requiring 60 seconds of build time) and mineral wise fairly low. Both are built at the Factory+techlab. -Both are armoured -Both do large chunks of damage
I blame mech's problem mostly on the thor. Not only do i think its bad but i hate using it. What id like to see, a current fix i see entirely implementable is to buff viking ground mode. With the recent synergy between medivacs and hellbats given to mech, Reactor starport can find quite a bit of use, except vs heavy immortal robo. Once you have 4-6 medivacs anymore is a complete waste, after 4 i try to drop with hellbats with the extra. But after 4 medivacs, and 4 vikings (unless he has stargate tech), the reactor starport isnt used. I dont see why vikings on the ground are as terrible as they are, being armoured and armorless ( -_-' ) they are perhaps the softest unit, particularly against immortals. Imagine it was an actual choice to land my vikings not an option, not a "o shit im out of everything else..." 'option'. For the purposes of balance I can see why they are what they are in the sky: armoured, soft, long range. But i think it would be a good fit; to tweak the stats of ground vikings.
EDIT: left out part pertaining to OP.
I do agree the tanks cost does not feel reflected in its combat abilities. And i feel the largest hindrance to its potential is its food cost, being 150% of BW's. I was a toss player when siege tank damage was nerfed from 60 to 35/50, and i felt that was overkill, "5 tanks shots before a zealot dies?" (TO DIRECT FIRE). I am now a mech only player and now find tanks are only good for outranging things and not even really for superior firepower, you have to support them with just too much.
On February 01 2013 12:07 Unsane wrote: Atleast on the first few pages, there was a lot of mentioning of immortals and how they really hinder tanks at what they're supposed to do. I feel Thors are one of the biggest problems with mech, and their inability to be a 'good' unit plays a much more significant role in how bad the tank is. When you compare the Thor with the tank, you essentially have the same unit. -When a protoss sees the opponent fielding Thors he can respond with immortals, same can be said for the Siege Tank. -Thor and Tank costs are very similar, rather high on both supply, gas and time(much moreso the thor, requiring 60 seconds of build time) and mineral wise fairly low. Both are built at the Factory+techlab. -Both are armoured -Both do large chunks of damage
I blame mech's problem mostly on the thor. Not only do i think its bad but i hate using it. What id like to see, a current fix i see entirely implementable is to buff viking ground mode. With the recent synergy between medivacs and hellbats given to mech, Reactor starport can find quite a bit of use, except vs heavy immortal robo. Once you have 4-6 medivacs anymore is a complete waste, after 4 i try to drop with hellbats with the extra. But after 4 medivacs, and 4 vikings (unless he has stargate tech), the reactor starport isnt used. I dont see why vikings on the ground are as terrible as they are, being armoured and armorless ( -_-' ) they are perhaps the softest unit, particularly against immortals. Imagine it was an actual choice to land my vikings not an option, not a "o shit im out of everything else..." 'option'. For the purposes of balance I can see why they are what they are in the sky: armoured, soft, long range. But i think it would be a good fit; to tweak the stats of ground vikings.
EDIT: left out part pertaining to OP.
I do agree the tanks cost does not feel reflected in its combat abilities. And i feel the largest hindrance to its potential is its food cost, being 150% of BW's. I was a toss player when siege tank damage was nerfed from 60 to 35/50, and i felt that was overkill, "5 tanks shots before a zealot dies?" (TO DIRECT FIRE). I am now a mech only player and now find tanks are only good for outranging things and not even really for superior firepower, you have to support them with just too much.
I agree with a portion of this, specifically, buffing ground attack on viking. It would be interesting to have some optimization of this mode. Terran as my main race, I've always thought viking ground mode was really a last resort/gimmicky. I think that would be a great way to settle some differences by adjusting viking ground mode. Possibly even through an upgrade on the starport tech lab.
Banelings must be detonated manually, requiring skill. Mines detonate automatically requiring zero skill.
Not to pick apart the whole comparison. But you can tell Banes to auto detonate. Also the Baneling detonates where you want. The Mine chooses a target randomly and the attack is most of all delayed. The baneling also is supply efficient and it attacks buildings.
So yeah the mine may be better then a burrowed baneling, but thats because a baneling is just 0.5 supply and has other uses as well. Also more precise when using. I don't think that something is better if it trades of precision for more damage. If it hits yes it hurts, but thats the question will it hit jackpot or just a cherry. You don't have this question with the burrowed baneling.
I do agree the tanks cost does not feel reflected in its combat abilities. And i feel the largest hindrance to its potential is its food cost, being 150% of BW's. I was a toss player when siege tank damage was nerfed from 60 to 35/50, and i felt that was overkill, "5 tanks shots before a zealot dies?" (TO DIRECT FIRE). I am now a mech only player and now find tanks are only good for outranging things and not even really for superior firepower, you have to support them with just too much.
I totally agree. I remember after the 9:30 marine/tank push in TvZ got phased out, terrans started realizing they should just do big pushes around 11:00 with like 40 marines and 3 tanks, and now Bomber plays a style that hits at like 13:00 with ~70 marines/8 tanks; the marine count just got higher and higher, and the tanks were really just a support unit. I think it's interesting how small of a role tanks play in terran play, especially when they were like the lifeforce of terran in BW. Quite honestly, terran feels like it revolves entirely around marines in SC2, which is why mech really doesn't work.
As far as the thor goes, yeah, it's bad lol. I've never really liked thors, and I really think that in order for SC2 to continue to grow, we need to cut the thor in half and make smaller units.
I never liked the buff to siege tanks not needing siege mode. It felt not only irrelevant, but also could potentially make way for aggressive/cheesy early game timings, which is not something we want to see often (think 1-1-1).
I think the problem with tanks has always been damage and their survivability. Even in SC2, if it's not supported by enough and marines/hellions and you don't have a critical mass, EVERYTHING will kill it. Now imagine HotS where you have Tempests, speed Hydras and Vipers around. It suddenly feels like tanks become less and less relevant.
I honestly think that for a start, just giving a slight HP buff will probably help tanks hold long enough to get a) more shots of or b) survive long enough for support units to cover them if they're out of position.
On December 22 2012 19:14 {ToT}ColmA wrote: i really dont think buffing tank in any way is the solution, tvz mech in its current form is doable / fine, viper is kinda hard with its cloud also being able to be used against mech but dmg wise its okay, its just tvp that is a problem and the tank dmg buff would solve it but would cause problems in other matchups, like tvt u will never see anything else then mech, i dont think a game where u ve to go xyz or else its bad is good game design
Actually better players would almost never go for mech in TvT. They mix marauders/marines with several tanks for support. The main strength of this comes from the mobility of bio and abuses the fact that mech if not clumped together is very weak. This enables the mainly bio player to control the map, thin the meching player or force engagements and back down to buy time. Going predominantly Bio also allows a much faster and easier tech transition into BCs since gas for Bio is not a large requirement. Players like Taeja, Bomber and Polt have performed many successful TvTs with this strat alone. Therefore, stronger tanks would actually help TvT, especially at higher skill levels.
I think it's safe to say that the relative weakness of the siege tank is a design decision, a bias from the dev. team. There are a ton of counters to the unit in WOL with new ones in HOTS, yet a direct buff looks like out of the question. Instead, blizzard looks at other units, bio in general for WOL, and transforming Helbats in to Roaches and Thors as a better all round unit (not to mention the Warhound that was supposed to be the new "core" mech unit).
So the more i think about it, i see it's down to one thing: death balls and space control. Blizzard WANTS death ball not only to be the easiest way to play but also one of the BEST ways. If you have strong Tanks/ Lurkers/etc then you heavily punish death balls.
If this is true, it's a shame that such fantastically designed units like siege tanks and lurkers have no mojo in SC2 just to accommodate one of the most hated things about SC2, the fucking death ball.
On February 01 2013 14:23 Sapphire.lux wrote: So the more i think about it, i see it's down to one thing: death balls and space control. Blizzard WANTS death ball not only to be the easiest way to play but also one of the BEST ways. If you have strong Tanks/ Lurkers/etc then you heavily punish death balls.
If this is true, it's a shame that such fantastically designed units like siege tanks and lurkers have no mojo in SC2 just to accommodate one of the most hated things about SC2, the fucking death ball.
I'm not too familiar with TvP since I'm a Zerg player, but at least in TvZ siege tanks timed well are still a key mech unit and for sure establishes ground dominance for a large portion of the game. Ling/bling/muta or unexpected amounts of Roaches used to be a bit too strong against tanks in WoL, but with better timings due to the removal of siege research, and Widow Mines making the lives of Muta/Lings harder, tanks can be very strong.
The counters to Siege Tanks in ZvT come at around the same time they did in BW (later game), and with Swarm Hosts coming out later than Lurkers did, hydras being more useful in ZvT due to new synergy with Widow Mines, tanks may even be a bit stronger than before. Ravens are also super powerful against deathball play too.
Considering this, I don't think your statement is too valid in TvZ. As I said I'm unsure of your other matchups though.
On February 01 2013 14:23 Sapphire.lux wrote: So the more i think about it, i see it's down to one thing: death balls and space control. Blizzard WANTS death ball not only to be the easiest way to play but also one of the BEST ways. If you have strong Tanks/ Lurkers/etc then you heavily punish death balls.
If this is true, it's a shame that such fantastically designed units like siege tanks and lurkers have no mojo in SC2 just to accommodate one of the most hated things about SC2, the fucking death ball.
I'm not too familiar with TvP since I'm a Zerg player, but at least in TvZ siege tanks timed well are still a key mech unit and for sure establishes ground dominance for a large portion of the game. Ling/bling/muta or unexpected amounts of Roaches used to be a bit too strong against tanks in WoL, but with better timings due to the removal of siege research, and Widow Mines making the lives of Muta/Lings harder, tanks can be very strong.
The counters to Siege Tanks in ZvT come at around the same time they did in BW (later game), and with Swarm Hosts coming out later than Lurkers did, hydras being more useful in ZvT due to new synergy with Widow Mines, tanks may even be a bit stronger than before. Ravens are also super powerful against deathball play too.
Considering this, I don't think your statement is too valid in TvZ. As I said I'm unsure of your other matchups though.
I agree with some of that, but i think the Viper, free units like Locusts and the strong Ultra more then make up for that. All in all, i see Tanks weaker then in WOL.
In TvP playing with tanks feels like playing with a handicap. Not sure about TvT, that might be the only MU where Tanks are not hard countered at every turn.
On February 01 2013 14:23 Sapphire.lux wrote: I think it's safe to say that the relative weakness of the siege tank is a design decision, a bias from the dev. team. There are a ton of counters to the unit in WOL with new ones in HOTS, yet a direct buff looks like out of the question. Instead, blizzard looks at other units, bio in general for WOL, and transforming Helbats in to Roaches and Thors as a better all round unit (not to mention the Warhound that was supposed to be the new "core" mech unit).
So the more i think about it, i see it's down to one thing: death balls and space control. Blizzard WANTS death ball not only to be the easiest way to play but also one of the BEST ways. If you have strong Tanks/ Lurkers/etc then you heavily punish death balls.
If this is true, it's a shame that such fantastically designed units like siege tanks and lurkers have no mojo in SC2 just to accommodate one of the most hated things about SC2, the fucking death ball.
Perfectly summed up.
The sad part is that the community hates deathballs and that Blizzard designs it specifically for that kind of play. Your comments about the Siege Tank show how they really WANT TO get rid of every connection to Brood War by making the last remnants of that brilliant game rather useless.
Widow mine does need some serious changes, I have absolutely no clue why blizzard has taken the route on that unit like they have now. It absolutely makes no sense.. It's a pretty good early unit against zerg now and absolutely crap against protoss. Terran doesn't need zoning abilities against lots of small units because they have hellions for that! They don't really need zoning ability against light air either because they have the superb turret and marines or thors already.. Terran needs a zoning unit against beefy protoss units like stalkers and maybe voidray/oracles but that's exactly what the widow mine sucks for now.. I still don't get why the widow mine is not just an actual mine.. Detonates itself, costs only 1 supply and is cheaper but actually kills protoss units! Terran changes in HotS are an absolute joke, the only really good thing they basically get is the hellbat upgrade which is about as boring as it get's, transforming your fast unit into a slow boring unit for slightly better stats..
I agree with this, because of the WM it's really really hard to play bio in TvT :S
Marauders outrange widowmines don't they? You're a bio player against mech so you should have a lot of money for more CCs and lots of bases, so you could have plenty of scans.
Yes even marines can kill the widow mine before detonation but If my opponent has a line of sieged tanks and a line of widow mines in front of those tanks it seems really hard to break it :S
Some test I have been doing with mech play: - Landed vikings wont work with hellbats against P. Pretty ovious, but I tested it anyways. Everything counters this composition xD. - Widow-mines makes you lol once, the first hit when you catch your enemy by suprise (love wm xDD), when detrection comes into play, mines become almost useless supply, you are forced to burrow them in the frontline, not very effective. - Hellbats are OK right now, but they dont solve Mech problems. - The tanks when you group them make a ton of damage once, against P deathball sometimes work, when there is no inmortals. Against Z if they use swarm host the tank balll is almost useless, eventually you have to retreat, if you spread then, vypers have a lot of fun with your tanks. - Thors are big, expensive and not as threatening as they should.
Nothing new in this post, just my casual experience. From my point of view, right now, if you spread your mech army for map control, the enemy deathball will crush you.
Maybe someone more skilled than me have more luck.
Banelings must be detonated manually, requiring skill. Mines detonate automatically requiring zero skill.
Not to pick apart the whole comparison. But you can tell Banes to auto detonate. Also the Baneling detonates where you want. The Mine chooses a target randomly and the attack is most of all delayed. The baneling also is supply efficient and it attacks buildings.
So yeah the mine may be better then a burrowed baneling, but thats because a baneling is just 0.5 supply and has other uses as well. Also more precise when using. I don't think that something is better if it trades of precision for more damage. If it hits yes it hurts, but thats the question will it hit jackpot or just a cherry. You don't have this question with the burrowed baneling.
You can pick a mines target and even perform hold micro with enough apm and vision of an enemy unit. During the time after a target is picked and before it fires clicking on any enemy unit targets it and resets the time till firing. if you change targets every second it will never fire. Then when an immortal or enough units are in range you can pick your final target and let it shoot. You can even use this technique to force multiple mines to fire at a single high health unit simultaneously (instead of the standard one at a time of auto attack).
Don't say im wrong till you've tried it. Cuz it works.
Banelings must be detonated manually, requiring skill. Mines detonate automatically requiring zero skill.
Not to pick apart the whole comparison. But you can tell Banes to auto detonate. Also the Baneling detonates where you want. The Mine chooses a target randomly and the attack is most of all delayed. The baneling also is supply efficient and it attacks buildings.
So yeah the mine may be better then a burrowed baneling, but thats because a baneling is just 0.5 supply and has other uses as well. Also more precise when using. I don't think that something is better if it trades of precision for more damage. If it hits yes it hurts, but thats the question will it hit jackpot or just a cherry. You don't have this question with the burrowed baneling.
You can pick a mines target and even perform hold micro with enough apm and vision of an enemy unit. During the time after a target is picked and before it fires clicking on any enemy unit targets it and resets the time till firing. if you change targets every second it will never fire. Then when an immortal or enough units are in range you can pick your final target and let it shoot. You can even use this technique to force multiple mines to fire at a single high health unit simultaneously (instead of the standard one at a time of auto attack).
Don't say im wrong till you've tried it. Cuz it works.
On February 01 2013 14:23 Sapphire.lux wrote: I think it's safe to say that the relative weakness of the siege tank is a design decision, a bias from the dev. team. There are a ton of counters to the unit in WOL with new ones in HOTS, yet a direct buff looks like out of the question. Instead, blizzard looks at other units, bio in general for WOL, and transforming Helbats in to Roaches and Thors as a better all round unit (not to mention the Warhound that was supposed to be the new "core" mech unit).
So the more i think about it, i see it's down to one thing: death balls and space control. Blizzard WANTS death ball not only to be the easiest way to play but also one of the BEST ways. If you have strong Tanks/ Lurkers/etc then you heavily punish death balls.
If this is true, it's a shame that such fantastically designed units like siege tanks and lurkers have no mojo in SC2 just to accommodate one of the most hated things about SC2, the fucking death ball.
Perfectly summed up.
The sad part is that the community hates deathballs and that Blizzard designs it specifically for that kind of play. Your comments about the Siege Tank show how they really WANT TO get rid of every connection to Brood War by making the last remnants of that brilliant game rather useless.
The bias that Dustin and the team has for keeping the colossus is likely the same reason that they refuse to give the tank a much needed real buff (as opposed to an irrelevant early game change) which seems to be that "death balls are cool" and positional play isn't worth it.
Banelings must be detonated manually, requiring skill. Mines detonate automatically requiring zero skill.
Not to pick apart the whole comparison. But you can tell Banes to auto detonate. Also the Baneling detonates where you want. The Mine chooses a target randomly and the attack is most of all delayed. The baneling also is supply efficient and it attacks buildings.
So yeah the mine may be better then a burrowed baneling, but thats because a baneling is just 0.5 supply and has other uses as well. Also more precise when using. I don't think that something is better if it trades of precision for more damage. If it hits yes it hurts, but thats the question will it hit jackpot or just a cherry. You don't have this question with the burrowed baneling.
You can pick a mines target and even perform hold micro with enough apm and vision of an enemy unit. During the time after a target is picked and before it fires clicking on any enemy unit targets it and resets the time till firing. if you change targets every second it will never fire. Then when an immortal or enough units are in range you can pick your final target and let it shoot. You can even use this technique to force multiple mines to fire at a single high health unit simultaneously (instead of the standard one at a time of auto attack).
Don't say im wrong till you've tried it. Cuz it works.
lol nice find ...actually seems doable =)
Yeah it is quite doable. One thing to note tho is that the whole time you are using this hold micro while their target is in range the mines will be visible to the opponent (but not attackable without detection). And also that if your targets of choice are 1 shottable by mined (eg sentrys) and you are hold firing multiple mines, you will need to set individual targets for them within a second when you are ready to stop holding. This is a little tricky but doable, especially if you are only holding 2-4 mines.
On February 01 2013 14:23 Sapphire.lux wrote: So the more i think about it, i see it's down to one thing: death balls and space control. Blizzard WANTS death ball not only to be the easiest way to play but also one of the BEST ways. If you have strong Tanks/ Lurkers/etc then you heavily punish death balls.
If this is true, it's a shame that such fantastically designed units like siege tanks and lurkers have no mojo in SC2 just to accommodate one of the most hated things about SC2, the fucking death ball.
I'm not too familiar with TvP since I'm a Zerg player, but at least in TvZ siege tanks timed well are still a key mech unit and for sure establishes ground dominance for a large portion of the game. Ling/bling/muta or unexpected amounts of Roaches used to be a bit too strong against tanks in WoL, but with better timings due to the removal of siege research, and Widow Mines making the lives of Muta/Lings harder, tanks can be very strong.
The counters to Siege Tanks in ZvT come at around the same time they did in BW (later game), and with Swarm Hosts coming out later than Lurkers did, hydras being more useful in ZvT due to new synergy with Widow Mines, tanks may even be a bit stronger than before. Ravens are also super powerful against deathball play too.
Considering this, I don't think your statement is too valid in TvZ. As I said I'm unsure of your other matchups though.
I agree with some of that, but i think the Viper, free units like Locusts and the strong Ultra more then make up for that. All in all, i see Tanks weaker then in WOL.
In TvP playing with tanks feels like playing with a handicap. Not sure about TvT, that might be the only MU where Tanks are not hard countered at every turn.
I was mainly referencing what you said about the deathball, not really a stand-alone statement. The higher amounts of Terran AoE discourage deathballs rather than encourage them, in TvZ at least.
For example you mentioned Locusts, if you try to deathball with them Tanks tear them up. You need to spread them to get around the Terran AoE if you want to win, which in a way is discouraging deathball play. If you look on the thread on here that teaches people how to use swarm hosts, they have some vids that show just how inefficient balled up swarm hosts are against Terran.
You mentioned Vipers and Vipers discourage deathballs too, the more spread you are the less chance of being caught in the cloud, or at least the more energy has to be spent on the clouds. Just because Vipers can regen energy on buildings doesn't mean it's not effective to get them to waste mana as much as you can.
Ultras, too, are AoE units, which discourage deathballs.
There's actually a lot of new mechanics to combat deathballs with the HotS additions (again, at least in ZvT). The biggest deathball counter is AoE... Both new Terran units are AoE, Ravens have stronger AoE (especially if you block your opponents path, either by flanking with hellions or dropping hellbats behind enemy army, you can make then inescapable) and Tanks were no slouch on AoE to begin with. For Zergs new units Swarm Hosts don't work ideally in deathballs, and Vipers discourage deathballs from the opponent. Plus Ultras are AoE, and the "free units" are a form of AoE, on top of deathballs making you vulnerable to Infestors and Banelings.
With all those mechanics in place, and videos as evidence demonstrating how these units are more efficient when spread rather than in a deathball, the question we should probably be asking ourselves is why aren't people trying to take advantage of these mechanics yet?
The ghost launches a nuke, "forces" the unsuspecting army to engage. Into a widow mine field PROFIT
Timings: Early/mid-game : 1) drop into the main base while hellions are harassing the front. 2) Burrow 3 WMsnear the ramp. 3) Launch nuke, either army climbs ramp to clear the ghost or probes transfer to the natural = lots of dead probes or dead army
On February 02 2013 14:19 Hattori_Hanzo wrote: Eureka moment folks. Hanzo's Utsusemi
WM/ghost/nuke
The ghost launches a nuke, "forces" the unsuspecting army to engage. Into a widow mine field PROFIT
Timings: Early/mid-game : 1) drop into the main base while hellions are harassing the front. 2) Burrow 3 WMsnear the ramp. 3) Launch nuke, either army climbs ramp to clear the ghost or probes transfer to the natural = lots of dead probes or dead army
1) Are we talking like 7:00 in the game?? Because that's what this scenario sounds like. 2) Assuming your opponent has good map vision, shouldn't he see the widow mines burrowing at the ramp, or even just have units at least CLOSE to the general area to stop the drop? 3) Assuming this scenario was actually set up according to plan, couldn't said player just pull workers to kill off the ghost themselves? If anything, just pulling the probes into the area where the ghost is standing is fairly safe spot.
When I think of nukes used in the mid- to late-stages of the game, I think of defensive nukes to force the opponent back. Maybe you could do the nuke and juke stuff that was common in TvT 2 years ago where you set down the nuke, run a bunch of widow mines forward to burrow, then cancel the nuke; this forces your opponent to back off without really dealing with the widow mines and allows you to slowly step forward as mech.
Just watched Thorzain vs Vibe and I can't believe I overlooked this now. I have previously made a thread about how the late game air vs air deathball will lead to the race with better air deathball wins. Traditionally, Terran needs more siege tanks to make sure they can fend off the infestors and queens getting too close. But Thorzain relied less tanks because: Widow mines can deal air and ground splash.
If the zerg ever tries to do a big engagement, the widow mines, HSM, PDDs, yamato etc will demolish any zerg anti air composition
I can forsee this being the case for TvP air deathball battle as well.
On February 02 2013 15:24 ETisME wrote: Just watched Thorzain vs Vibe and I can't believe I overlooked this now. I have previously made a thread about how the late game air vs air deathball will lead to the race with better air deathball wins. Traditionally, Terran needs more siege tanks to make sure they can fend off the infestors and queens getting too close. But Thorzain relied less tanks because: Widow mines can deal air and ground splash.
If the zerg ever tries to do a big engagement, the widow mines, HSM, PDDs, yamato etc will demolish any zerg anti air composition
I can forsee this being the case for TvP air deathball battle as well.
I should note at least from when I was watching this game.
Vibe didn't split anything when the seeker missiles came out (the unit turns red)
On February 02 2013 15:24 ETisME wrote: Just watched Thorzain vs Vibe and I can't believe I overlooked this now. I have previously made a thread about how the late game air vs air deathball will lead to the race with better air deathball wins. Traditionally, Terran needs more siege tanks to make sure they can fend off the infestors and queens getting too close. But Thorzain relied less tanks because: Widow mines can deal air and ground splash.
If the zerg ever tries to do a big engagement, the widow mines, HSM, PDDs, yamato etc will demolish any zerg anti air composition
I can forsee this being the case for TvP air deathball battle as well.
I should note at least from when I was watching this game.
Vibe didn't split anything when the seeker missiles came out (the unit turns red)
it depends which engagement you looked at. the first one he didn't split yes but he also got the NP off so it was kinda ok even trade (his hydras wouldn't get close enough because there were tanks and PFs anyway) But the 2nd engagement, half of his corruptors were almost all dead when they got hit by the mines. It wouldn't matter because he doesn't have enough corruptors against the BCs and vikings anyway
On February 02 2013 14:19 Hattori_Hanzo wrote: Eureka moment folks. Hanzo's Utsusemi
WM/ghost/nuke
The ghost launches a nuke, "forces" the unsuspecting army to engage. Into a widow mine field PROFIT
Timings: Early/mid-game : 1) drop into the main base while hellions are harassing the front. 2) Burrow 3 WMsnear the ramp. 3) Launch nuke, either army climbs ramp to clear the ghost or probes transfer to the natural = lots of dead probes or dead army
1) Are we talking like 7:00 in the game?? Because that's what this scenario sounds like. 2) Assuming your opponent has good map vision, shouldn't he see the widow mines burrowing at the ramp, or even just have units at least CLOSE to the general area to stop the drop? 3) Assuming this scenario was actually set up according to plan, couldn't said player just pull workers to kill off the ghost themselves? If anything, just pulling the probes into the area where the ghost is standing is fairly safe spot.
When I think of nukes used in the mid- to late-stages of the game, I think of defensive nukes to force the opponent back. Maybe you could do the nuke and juke stuff that was common in TvT 2 years ago where you set down the nuke, run a bunch of widow mines forward to burrow, then cancel the nuke; this forces your opponent to back off without really dealing with the widow mines and allows you to slowly step forward as mech.
This is a map specific strategy, where players fail to place buildings for vision on the ramp What I posted was an idea. A meta game changing strategy where T use their WMs the same way P use sentry in prism drops to prevent an army from defending the main by FF the main's ramp.
You can easily 1 medivac, 3 WM, 1 ghost with 2 medivac, 4 WM, 8 marines, and so on and so forth