So...i make this thread obviously and start this discussion after having played a hell of a lot of LOTV games, both post release and during the entire beta.
I feel like blizzard has taken many steps backwards when it comes to promoting mech viability.
To start, the economy of the game makes it incredibly more difficult to play and execute mech due to having to spread yourself more thin.
In TvT now, Mech is still playable and very strong, but my experiences on ladder i have not played versus a single other meching Terran yet. It's incredibly rare...
99% of TvTs i play at the moment are versus bio Terrans. And some players that i would normally crush and had zero percent chance against me in HOTS suddenly are standing a chance via suiciding bio units into tank lines or doom drops.
Please do not get me wrong. I'm not complaining that mech got slightly more difficult to play. I'm fine with that. But bio became way too ridiculously easy to play and execute in TvT to the point it's the dominant strategy.
Another way to think about how mech got nerfed in relation to the economy is since you have less money per base the game is less forgiving since you won't have the same amount of money to build turret rings which were necessary to play mech vs bio.
Anyways, that's TvT. Bio is way too easy now imo.
For TvZ...mech is really bad atm for a myriad of reasons:
1. Cyclone too expensive/bad vs swarm of units 2. parasitic bomb 3. raven nerf 4. siege tank now has even more counters via 8 armor ultra/unarmored ravagers/corrosive bile 5. broodlord range buff to 11
Basically...since Zerg got a hell of a lot of new toys...and the cyclone is really bad atm, mech is in a really sorry state. It's barely playable, and even if you do want to "mech" you're going to end up massing liberators because Zerg will go brood+viper and mech has no answer since ravens were nerfed.
I feel like cyclones just are garbage, and it's a huge reason why mech might be feeling bad overall to me.
For TvP...same thing goes for this match-up.
1. phoenixes hard counter cyclones, if you send cyclones out on the map, you autolose to this because phoenix will pick them all up and you now die to counter attack 2. carrier/tempest are abusively strong since the raven nerf + carrier buff. Mech has no anti-air to deal with this since cyclones are too expensive supply-wise and cost-wise. (you have to mass liberator to counter carrier, and raven to counter tempest...those are air units, not mech units_.
Mech really is not playable in TvP mostly due to air units. There is no mech anti-air that can fight capital ships, meaning you autolose if the opponent even gets 4 carriers versus your "mech" army.
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Those are a lot of my thoughts about mech...a lot of it seems to boil down to mech viability for Terran seems worse because the other races got many shiny new toys, and Blizzard has left the cyclone in a very sorry state, and mech STILL, after 4+ years of SC2 being out...HAS NO ANTI-AIR UNIT FROM THE FACTORY.
Maybe give the thor some sick anti-air AOE bombard to deal with air? Adjust the cost of cyclones so you can actually build them and trade them? I don't know.
All i know is i've played SC2 since the game has been released, i've played SC1 since 1998 or so and it would be nice if mech was a playable strategy in LOTV just like bio is so that 99% of pro games aren't just bio every game.
I think the issue is that blizzard is very hesitant to make mech the predominant style in lotv given how boring and banal mech became in HotS.
Controlling space and playing strategically goes against the grain of what they're trying to achieve with constant action, fights and expanding. Mech has been collateral damage for them in achieving that goal.
I would love to see mech become viable in a manner which rewards strategic positioning, but I'm not expecting anything drastic to change in the short-mid term. Maybe after we have a full season of GSL/PL/SSL without a single mech game, they might revisit it.
Mech is only boring if it's too weak to be aggressive with, forcing the meching player to exploit the high ground and walls in order to win a fight. In HOTS the idea was to defend, defend, defend until skyterran death blob wins the game, which takes a lot of time and passivity, and the airblob itself is a boring fight.
If ground mech were actually cost-competitive then it would be possible to attack, contain the enemy, and be aggressive. Aggressive contains right at their doorstep, constant chipping damage, and eventually forcing the enemy to mine out, result in extremely high-action, strategically interesting games.
They need to remove lifting siege tanks, and just buff the damn unit already. It has been virtually useless since they nerfed it into oblivion while Steppes of War and Kulas Ravine were in the pool in WoL beta.
If giving the tank more splash damage is too strong, then redesign the tank from the beginning. How about giving it a projectile with a travel time (avoids smart fire), less splash, more single target damage, and more range and rate of fire? Note that adding range means you will need other units to stand in front of the tank in order to spot for it, since it will be unable to see far enough by itself.
The Factory also needs a decent anti-air unit. Honestly, this isn't rocket science. Had Goliath. Now have shitty Thor instead. Just make the Cyclone good against air units, even if you have to remove its anti-ground attack completely. It's a job that Terran needs done.
I think another reason that blizz is hesitant to buff up mech is because its not an ideal playstyle for the game for the opponents. Mech requires thought on where to take engagements and where to set up sure, its fairly easy to die to a variety of things so you have to know a lot of responses to different all-ins/gimmicks. But in a regular fight where both armies clash mech just doesn't require much mechanical skill. When a zerg or protoss or bio terran loses to a terran going bio, sure they might complain about this unit or that but overall they can see that the terran didn't simply A-move and had to actually so some outplaying to get into the position they get in.
Mech on the other hand is basically like playing against the swarmhost from early hots where the opponent just struggles to break them over and over and its like throwing water against a steel wall. It is not fun to watch, it is not fun to play against, and there is a very clear side that is having an easier time executing the fights. The only real way for mech to ever be in a spot where blizz would feel comfortable buffing it is if there was some way to add micro mechanics to the units themselves taht are pretty much required to use in a big fight to come out ahead. By that I do not mean add a new ability to each unit like the thor being able to bombard a location or something, but somehow rework existing units or mechanics to give them a more dynamic interaction with the game like stimmed bio.
Basically a straight up buff to mech without addressing the key playstyle issues that it encourages would be a bad idea that will likely never happen because half the terrans are religious bio users and the protoss/zergs (especially the zergs) do NOT want to deal with that shit in a game that seems to be revolving around engagement mechanics so far.
No, the problem is that Blizzard actually wants giant army battles that end in five seconds flat. Mech means that big, flashy, stupid pitched battle to end the game that Blizzard wants doesn't happen. Or, more accurately, in means the mech player wins when that happens.
In order to beat a mech army you have to be smarter than attack-moving a large army into a pitched battle. You have to eliminate key units. You have to threaten multiple avenues of attack to force the mech to split, and cover several areas. You have to put pressure on the base to force defenses.
You have to use actual tactics to weaken the enemy rather than just arrange for your blob to engage and defeat their blob, which ends in a few seconds.
The mech player really would like a pitched battle where both sides put all their chips on the same spot, and the battle is over in a few seconds. That type of battle makes it a lot easier if all your units are completely immobile since you only have to worry about one army and one area, and it maximizes your efficiency. Covering lots of places means you have to have the right amount of forces everywhere, and if you don't react in time there is always the chance a large enemy attack will locally overwhelm your immobile units in one of those places. A single large battle is ideal.
But there's no reason why you should be obligated to do that when you can snipe tanks, pressure bases, go around, and use all sorts of tricks to make small, positive trades all game long. Like dropping zealots from transports, using Mutalisks, potentially Tempests, or Abduct/Blinding Cloud, and so on. Eventually you will have killed enough costly mech units that you can attack-move and win, or the mech player will screw up and you are in a mining base and kill their workers while they're out of position, and the meching player is dead.
In order to beat a mech army you have to be smarter than attack-moving a large army into a pitched battle. You have to eliminate key units. You have to threaten multiple avenues of attack to force the mech to split, and cover several areas. You have to put pressure on the base to force defenses.
You have to use actual tactics to weaken the enemy rather than just arrange a battle which you win, which ends in a few seconds.
Ok see I get that, I understand where the fun might come from the mech player in trying to hold their position and leap frog around trying to gain more advantageous spots. I get why that is seen as fun to the meching player. Problem is it is absolutely horrible to play against. I kinda went in on that when I was talking about how its similar to play against as the old Swarm Host styles. I'm not saying its unbeatable, its just insanely tedious. Zergs don't want to deal with it, Protoss don't want to deal with it, and half of the terrans don't want to deal with it. That means it likely wont be rebuffed and added to the game because 3/4 of the playerbase do not want to play against it or have it be particularly viable.
And that is without going into the fact that the effort to break a meching player is a fair bit harder then it is to defend with mech as far fight mechanics go. Unless that is somehow altered I do not see mech making a viable comeback due to any blizzard intervention.
Mech is not dead, but turtle mech is "Raven , tanks, viking , *wink* *wink*". Blizzard doesn't want prolong 1-2 hours game + player sitting on minimal bases (3-5) to roll over their opponent. The units design were icing on the cake with the mineral patches revamp. I don't think they will listen to you consider they disagree your strategy, but Blizzard will probably agree that Mech is slightly underpower and will be balance it out.
They have watched your stream + Lillekanin's WCS series and realize the game was not meant to be design that way. Basically the strategy you so call "Mech" is a flaw design by Blizzard in which you abuse the loop hole for years and have fixed it since the release of LOTV.
Mech should not be anything stronger than bio for fair reasons. Blizzard should buff factory or whatever units that seems to be unfavor to provide variety of choices for terran to play the game in a flexible way. Players who only plays mech is in a miniority of the population, it is difficult for Blizzard to address the issue without certain claims.
The reason why "turtle mech" was a thing isn't because tanks were strong. "Turtle mech" existed because there were other units (skyterran) which were worth turtling and waiting to obtain. Meanwhile actually building a mech army directly... was not worth attacking with.
TNSVG made the claim that attacking against mech is harder than defending using mech. That is untrue. Tanks are literally immobile when sieged, and are dog food when moving. What this means is that in order to effectively defend multiple areas using mech, your multitasking ability must be off the charts.
You also have to anticipate where the enemy is going to move as much as 30 seconds in advance in order to position the correct type and quantity of units in the correct places ahead of time. Get it wrong and you may lose a chunk of your forces for little gain, and it will then cost you some more forces to take that territory back again. Unless you're precognizant, that requires exceptional strategic planning, mind games, and star sense.
You cannot simply plop a giant army in the center of the map the way many people suggest. The enemy is too intelligent to suicide their entire army directly into your tank line and instantly lose the game.
And if you split your forces to cover several areas, you expose yourself to Mutalisks picking off tanks without AA, or Dark Templar picking off tanks away from detection, or a large pack of units locally overwhelming some units that are too far from help. You have to be on the ball, and you have to be everywhere.
If you watch Flash play Brood War, you realize how ridiculously challenging mech play really is, and the reason why so very few players can actually master it.
On November 22 2015 17:48 TriaD wrote: Mech is not dead, but turtle mech is "Raven , tanks, viking , *wink* *wink*". Blizzard doesn't want prolong 1-2 hours game + player sitting on minimal bases (3-5) to roll over their opponent. The units design were icing on the cake with the mineral patches revamp. I don't think they will listen to you consider they disagree your strategy, but Blizzard will probably agree that Mech is slightly underpower and will be balance it out.
They have watched your stream + Lillekanin's WCS series and realize the game was not meant to be design that way. Basically the strategy you so call "Mech" is a flaw design by Blizzard in which you abuse the loop hole for years and have fixed it since the release of LOTV.
No one wants games like that...the only reason games ever were like that in the first place is because tanks are weak compared to pre-nerf tanks/brood war tanks that.
Think of the liberator right now. Right now everyone knows liberators destroy stuff HARD. You don't step in that fuckin circle unless you are 100% sure you can take the fight and gogo.
Liberators control space because they do enough damage to control that space, even with only 2-3 liberators.
Siege tanks USED to be able to do that when tehy did 65 dmg per shot. People had to actually back off in those situations because the tank held it's ground.
The tank in it's current form with current damage...people literally a-move into them and come out ahead.
Only way to play mech is to turtle into a huge critical mass of tanks to overcome the previous tank damage nerf from ages ago.
Blizzard made mech what it is with that one nerf alone from years ago. They didn't want turtle mech games, but ironically removing the damage from the tank forces you to turtle if you want to play a mech game...
If you watch Flash play Brood War, you realize how ridiculously challenging mech play really is, and the reason why so very few players can actually master it.
Taking anything at all from BW as a means of justifying the skill behind using mech is a very poor argument. BW is in nearly every single way different from sc2. From how you use control groups, how you move/micro units, how you manage your economy, everything. I think BW mech is actually a great example of my original point where mech needs to be redone from a mechanical standpoint to add actual MECHANICAL skill to using mech units in big engagements. in BW u had to split ur vultures and such fairly well against reavers or pull your opponent apart with counter engagements and such, there was no real turtling.
Also your points on the difficulties on defending with mech compared to attacking into it would be disagreed upon by most every zerg/protoss/bio terran. I tried to state in my original comment that there are difficulties toward playing with mech but engagements/executing fights was not one of them. You certainly have to be smart with your positioning/sim city and responses.
Lastly your point on mechers having to be prepared for counterengagements at a moments notice and the difficulties on finding out where they will attack and the difficulty of defending multiple spots.....Sensor Towers.
I'm fine with tanks getting a damage buff (as long as the upgrade is put back in) and Liberators getting a bit of a nerf (why they do the job of the siege tank better then the siege tank is asinine) but lets be honest..
Mech sucks ass to watch and to play against for anyone who isn't a Terran that just loves to go mech. Long boring turtle fest games, I guess Banshee play into mech was kind of cool but eh, there isn't really much mechanical ability to it, it's a really strategic slow strategy that rewards super defensive play.
Skyterran we saw towards the end of Hots was silly and not good for the game.
I'd wait whether we see any kind of mech TvZ and TvP in WCS or not, but i can't see it. Maps play a huge part too, "abusing" highhround and chokes, but current eco mechanics are pretty much anti-mech since you are being spread too thin and terran mech units are still too inefficient in small numbers and way too expensive.
Vultures were what made mech great in BW - fast cheap unit that can even defend against runbys and of course spider mines.
I can't ever see ground mech with a bit of air support be as strong as bio/biomech style. Big changes would be needed, Blizzard sadly didnt want to experiment in Lotv beta.
It's shame because ground mech would have been quite fun to watch too if played aggressively, it's not all about turtling and moving out with 200/200.
If you watch Flash play Brood War, you realize how ridiculously challenging mech play really is, and the reason why so very few players can actually master it.
Taking anything at all from BW as a means of justifying the skill behind using mech is a very poor argument.
Even in ground vs ground TvP mech is not viable at all because of the Adepts, they destroy the hellbats that are meant to tank for the siege tanks. Without them, immortals / archons can crush the defenseless tanks.
Even adepts can be used to trigger friendly fire from Tanks with their shade ability.
I think another reason for the sorry mech state in TvP is that Blizzard believe that EMP + (buffed) tanks will be OP, so basically they take into account the units without shields and compare it vs tanks:
Stalkers = 80 HP Immortals = 200 HP Colossus = 200 HP
With 3 3 tanks, they can destroy those units with 3-4 rounds, which seems "ok" to them.
As much as I usually hate Terran whine, imo, you're pretty spot on.
You did miss that you can pick up tanks with medivacs now, so you shouldn't be losing them to Ravagers... but dang, you gotta LOVE micro. (Hint, most terrans do. They think its the bombdiggerydo.)
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Anyway, mass liberator isn't fun for anyone imo. Liberators feel more like skyterran and also, aoe air is just... amove.
Mass Protoss air is also kind of strong atm. Time will tell if actually too strong, but its strong now. Its also about as dumb as mass Liberators. Mass carriers is just.. bleh. Tempests at least were not good in mass.
Yes. Blizzard has complete destroyed the interesting resting part of mech - strong tanks with decent factory anti-air support.
In HOTS tanks were almost useless - they were basically only there to buy you time to do an air transition. Now tanks are even worse and you start to transition to air within 2-3 minutes of the game.
It is BroodLords, Carriers, Parastic Swarm and Liberators that should be nerfed. Tanks should be improved. Cyclones should be pure anti-air and much better at it.
This game could have been so much better if David Kim did not hate tanks.
i think you're misunderstanding the builds themselves, from bw days. there were pushes with tanks early on in a tvp game because they produced similarly to dragoons but had a better animation in those engagements. that pressure existed almost solely to have rallied vultures to lay spider mines and stall out a bulldog push or to ensure that you could expand before dragoon range was done, and could outrange your bunker. there was that small back-and-forth because of how those units interacted with each other. the tanks and vultures, vs the dragoons and zealots, respectively.
think of it this way, if bio units were weak, why were they used over mechanical units in tvz? they were just part of a poor unit composition that did not fare well against the openings, tech tree, and the possibilities of micro for protoss in bw.
in sc2 if you put a tank against a stalker 1v1, the tank wins handedly, you can be sure this was part of the balance and design and was taken wholely into consideration. the dps, fire rate, and health combined are enough to make that possible, but you never see that happen, and you probably never will. there are simply so many other problems that take place before that situation even occurs. protoss in sc2 have a stronger response (immortals) and stronger openings that render a tank push totally unecessary. at the rate at which factory units come out, and with the economy that's required to support more than 2 factories worth of unit production, a protoss or a zerg can simply make enough upgraded units to stave off any and all aggression that comes from mech, bio, and what have you. the exact same situations goes the same for both races in reaction to the regular terran openings.
in sc2, you simply have many good options, all across the board for any situation at all. if a tank were required to hold a zergling baneling bust in the past, now the widow mine or hellbats can fill that role very similarly. if tanks were required for roach agression aimed at punishing CC-first or similar, banshees can fill a similar role and deal with it comfortably as well. imagine that in bw you could build a scout that dealt extra damage to armored ground units and still filled the anti-air role that it was designed for. that's what wer're talking about here in sc2. the limitations come mechanically because both players react adequetely without having to insanely tech to stronger and more specialized units. many units in sc2 fill more than one role and make up the vast chunk of the army in any aggressive move-out.
in bw you're also talking about very specifically designed maps with small ramps (highground) or chokepoints leading outside your natural, the protoss often doesn't have much presence on the map before observers because their units aren't strong enough to hold those passageways before the push comes. again--back to that tank and dragoon back-and-forth. that interaction is actually similar to what bio pushes were earlier in the sc2 pro circuit. protoss would make handfuls of stalkers to kite and stall the first push with fresh medivacs and stim+shields researched. the terran had a very specific timing laid out that made it difficult for the protoss to respond to in a cost efficient manner, so they stalled for gateways to finish or sentry and mothership core energy to build up from their initial investment in anticipation of the push.
aggressive moveouts are fine and good and i could see stronger tanks making it a good response to P openings from behind a nuanced/delicate push involving tanks, but i can also see the current protoss or terran having many, many ways of getting around that without much difficulty. the focus of the metagame then shifts and you have players opening this way as opposed to the still-viable bio and now there are -too- many ways to assail an opponent early to mid-game. now there are too many ways to make certain map designs seemingly impossible in certain matchups (hello lost temple 1.0). and too many ways to make a game whacky out of the fact that any units can appear at your front door and hope to achieve damage, but only one build, or one unit combination (early on) is considered for extorting the most out your opponent.
if it's not a tank, it's bio, if it's not bio, it's an alien, or a teacup or anything at all that does the best job and feels good. that's what you'll see from the pro circuit at the highest level, not what's "viable".
I don't think Mech got weaker in LotV, match up wise it opened up some more options.
TvZ: You can do alot more sustained mech pressure in TvZ with hellion cyclone and some mixture of other units when the zerg is on 2 base going up to 3 depending on the map. Liberators complement every composition fairly well.
TvP is shaping up with bio complemented by liberators but that's much more so the tempo of the match up and meta than the actual composition, since Protoss players basically force the terran to have to respond to all their possible early game shenanigans with bio. If the meta gets to a point where the terran player can consistently transition to a mech comp i don't see how it wouldn't happen, remains to be seen if mass carriers just beat everything though.
TvT I think is the most interesting part of the equation. Medivac tank comps will probably see much greater usage at the higher levels than lower levels, while the traditional bio tank comps will still be very effective at lower levels.
I think the bigger part of the issue is how much micro management and baby sitting is required to make the new formats of mech play viable. Mech was traditionally seen as a more turtling composition that relies on either 1) light harass from some cheap mineral only unit out of the factory that builds up to a strong 3 base push at 150-200 supply, or 2) playing to split map situations and hard contain the opponent and deprive them of resources. With how mobile the armies have gotten it's extremely difficult to defend key locations with just a few units and the tempo of games swing much harder in late game compared with BW. The new added mech units promote aggressive harassment which would have helped to support the tempo based timing pushes of the past, but the new units require so much micro management and are so gas and tech intensive that they aren't utilized by everybody.