EPTI had planned to make a vlog and have fun with that, but now I'm not.
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When I see the Warhound in action the only thing I can think of is the Roach. It's big, stupid, cumbersome, and doesn't have a lot of depth (less than the roach). I know I'm using a lot of visual words, but please don't mistake what I'm saying; my complaints about the Warhound have nothing to do with it's appearance (though it is ugly as sin).
The Roach is a very core zerg unit, and it is a zerg unit that stands alone from others. It doesn't play well with others. It's a very good all around unit all by itself. It's a very good unit all by itself because of how zerg functions as a race. Terran however, do not need a Roach, and a Roach cannot function within anything terran-related. Let's talk about the Roach though.
The Roach is sort of like a World of Warcraft Paladin in Burning Crusade (the early part for the really anal people). It could tank, but if you wanted a pure tank you'd roll a warrior. It could do damage, but if you honestly wanted to purely do damage you'd roll any other class than a paladin. It could heal, but a priest would laugh at your output. The Roach can fit anywhere in any Zerg composition. In almost all cases however, a different unit would be better. You can put Roaches in with your broodlords and infestors, but most of the time you'd rather have pure lings, or more infestors, or spine crawlers, or even ling/baneling. Roaches can do it though, and in a very few instances they might be better, but the vast majority of the time if you really want to tank damage for your broodlords you want a unit that's not going to eat your supply that you can get a lot of. Let's say you rush in the early game: You go for a roach ling all in. How many Roaches do you make? The answer is enough to tank damage to get the terran wall down. You don't keep flooding roaches after that. You make lings! They produce faster, move faster, cost less, are harder to deal with inside a base, and will eat and surround everything the terran has. Could you make Roaches instead? Sure. In almost any circumstance however any composition involving Roaches would be better off without Roaches.
...Except pure Roach. Roaches don't fit well in any composition because of their supply, damage, how they function, their design, and how the rest of zerg units can and can't be micro-d relative to the roach, and a lot of other reasons. If you have Roaches though, the only thing better for your Roach pure composition is MORE roaches. (And maybe infestors in a few situations and against a mirror build.) You don't get to 170 supply on roaches and add stuff. When you want to add stuff or change your composition you go attack with your roaches and start making other stuff, or do the same thing more slowly and carefully. Roaches function as a transitional unit in that way. But you have a pure roach ball to kill stuff with? As long as you have as many roaches as you can make in it, you have the best roach ball you can have.
And it works because Zerg need a Roach. Zerg need a unit they can just have a bunch of and kill you with. A unit that they can have all around if their entire composition dies because it was badly matched and they need time. A unit that can work as a barrier to transition from one aspect of the game to another. A good all around unit.
Terran do not.
Terran do not and terran can not. Enter the Warhound.
Because it's shorter to explain, terran can not because terran can not spontaneously produce thirty Roaches in a production cycle. If the terran is going to use a Warhound, it must be planned on being made, which means it has to fit into a composition, or it has to be massed.
Terran theoretically have three (four if air, more if air + mech, air + bio) styles of play: bio, biomech, and mech. Obviously the Warhound is not a bio unit, so there's not a whole lot to discuss about it's place in pure bio. It is worth comparing to though, as ideally, mech and bio should be able to function separately but still be comparable.
The Warhound cannot fit into biomech very well. Immediately I will say, "this is assuming that it's numbers all get tweaked to some sane level." Let's pretend it still keeps it's 7 range at least, just for the sake of argument and giving it the biggest advantage it might have aside from the + damage to mech units. (Frankly if we remove both the argument doesn't change.) Why would you put a Warhound in a biomech army? MMM+ Warhound? What purpose do the Warhounds fill? They don't. The best reach that can be made is "against biomech with MMM+tank you can break siege lines more easily. If you're going straight Bio against Biomech, by now terran should have figured out how to beat it. More importantly, if a terran is deciding to go straight bio against marine-tank it's because that terran has really mastered how to play pure bio against it and is probably doing a ton of micro and baiting and dropping and surging forward to snipe tanks and such. The Warhound cannot surge forward, it doesn't have stim. Mauraders fill that role, if you even want them in that group. Warhounds cannot be split, they're fast but they are not marines and they are not bio. Warhounds cannot be healed by medivacs. Sure you can bring SCVs with you, but then you're wasting supply and you have to babysit your scvs and if there's tanks they all will die. Can Warhounds be involved in drops, similar to a siege tank in siege mode with two groups of marines? I guess, but what advantage would that give you over a maurader? Slightly more damage if they have stalkers? Is that more of an advantage than your drop ship actually being able to heal your unit? It doesn't have a place in bio mech.
Similarly, the Warhound has no place in a mech army. Think about the siege tank. Think about what the siege tank is supposed to do. (The fact that it doesn't do it and that it fails in it's role after a certain point is a completely different conversation.) Does the Warhound buffer damage so that the Siege tank can fire? Sure! Like the Roach for the Broodlord. But, like the roach for the Broodlord numbers will be a problem. How many Warhounds will you get with a tank heavy army? How many Warhounds can you get with a tank heavy army? The answer is: Not enough. Because the answer is not enough the army faces the same problem the Roach/Broodlord/Infestor army faces: Not enough buffer. What sort of things does the Warhound do best against? Are these things the same things that are going to try to roll over siege tanks? Would those things be better combated by Marines and Mauraders, or Hellions? Would those units be a better buffer than a handful of Warhounds?
Would those units have more functionality? Even within a mech army, what does the Warhound do other than sit with the siege tanks? Do you micro it in battle to better help your tanks? Do you micro it in battle to help itself? Can you micro it period? Do you take small groups of Warhounds and snipe expansions? Do you take small groups of Warhounds and drop harrass? What is the relationship of the Warhound and the hellion and the Tank and the Thor? Does it have any place in any army other than to stand and shoot? The answer to most of these is either that it doesn't, or there isn't one. The only potential mech army the Warhound has a place in is Warhound + Thor, which is amazingly similar to Roach + Ultralisk. What's possibly better than a bunch of roaches? How about adding in a few Giant roaches? Same concept.
If the Warhound can't really fit in with a mech army and can't fit in with a biomech army, the only place for the Warhound is by itself. A single-dimensional unit best balled up and sent somewhere to attack. It is actually below the Roach. Theoretically the Roach can be micro-d. Because it can be mass produced the Roach can be sacrificed. It can be sent to kill expansions and harrass in small groups, because Roaches are expendable. Terran production prevents any mech unit from being expendable, save hellions. The Warhound is a void ray with flux vanes. The Warhound is the Reaper during 5rr.
The Roach was used in another example. The early rush where you break down the wall and use it just enough to get your other units out and safe. Maybe the Warhound can function in that way. Maybe you make 3-4 Warhounds to do just enough bonus damage to the opponents mech army to mitigate the fact that you made Warhounds in the first place, and the tradeoff is worth it because of their composition or because you can't or won't position/micro better than your opponent. And even then it isn't going to function outside of following your army around.
The Warhound exists to be massed, or used almost not at all. Frankly, I'd prefer not at all.
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Apologies for length.
Angel.
