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After watching DeMuslim, QuanticTheSTC, ForGG, et al play HotS, I believe the Warhound is a bad addition to HotS.
It's not that the Warhound doesn't fulfill its primary purpose: a beefy, fast Terran a-move unit. It's the fact that the Warhound has no synergy with other factory units, nor does it contribute to positional mech play (in fact, with its tank-busting role, it detracts from it.)
If Blizz would openly state that they hate positional mech play and want all races to be forced to fight with mobile armies all the time, that would be fine. If they do that, they should remove the tank and make SC2 their own game, distinct from BW. That's fine; it's their right, their prerogative.
But when they state they want positional mech play, then I want to take their words at face value. In this case, I'm going to suggest a few changes to Warhound to bring about that play.
First, the crux of positional mech play is that it is weak, clumsy, and slow while mobile and strong due to long range and AOE while immobile. The current WH build accomplishes neither of that.
Since the strength of mech is long range and AOE, wouldn't the WH help that playstyle better if it complemented those two factors?
Idea
Warhound v 2.0
Unit Stats
Cost: 150 minerals, 75 gas, 2 supply
Build time: The same as a Viking
HP: between 130 and 180, balance tweaks permitting
Movement speed: 2.95 (same as before)
Armor type: Light; mechanical
Base armor: 0-1, balance tweaks permitting
Damage: 15 +10 bonus to light; ground and air no splash damage
Cooldown: 1.5
Range: 7 ground or 8 air
Red text may be removed if Thor stays as a non-hero unit
Tech requirements
Factory with tech lab
Unit abilities
Haywire: Causes an AOE stunning effect (similar to Conc shell) on all ground or air within 1 radius of the targeted unit for 1.5 seconds (for comparison, storm, EMP, and fungal have radius of 1.5, so just imagine a circle half the size of those spells). This would be a 100/100 or 150/150 upgrade from the tech lab and cost a similar amount of time as marauder concussive shells (or blue flame) to research.
The idea is to have the WH be inefficient from a DPS standpoint, but work extremely well at 1) kiting small groups of light units, synergizing it with hellion harass, 2) helping marines chase down air units (mutalisks especially) if Thors are gone and 3) slowing down late game deathballs as they enter siege tank range.
Versus opposing armies, the WH itself would become a very microable unit, as you would want the WHs actively poking forward to screen your tank line, and slow down the enemy army far in advance of it actually hitting your mech army. You would also want them running forward to prevent mutalisks from sniping key units (by slowing them down, then running over groups of stimmed marines, for example). This would also help immensely versus a protoss chargelot/archon/immortal composition as well as Terran bio, as both armies engage mech by relying on unit speed to rapidly close with tanks.
Finally, this wouldn't require any additional animations or coding to work--simply using a scaled down version of the ghost EMP animation would be enough, and the attack animation can be kept as is.
  
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FYI the Haywire ability would have a cooldown of between 3 and 6 seconds. Alternatively, it could be a passive buff to the WH's primary attack, just like conc shell.
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i havent looked at the current stats but just looking at the proposed changes, it should not have +air attack. The 15 + 10 bonus seems outrageous to me given the cost, supply and build time. also the speed of the unit has always been an issue for me. a big machine that runs almost as fast as a roach with speed and deals way more damage? op to me lol.
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On September 12 2012 01:27 bsdaemon wrote:
i havent looked at the current stats but just looking at the proposed changes, it should not have +air attack. The 15 + 10 bonus seems outrageous to me given the cost, supply and build time. also the speed of the unit has always been an issue for me. a big machine that runs almost as fast as a roach with speed and deals way more damage? op to me lol.
But the WH costs 150/75 versus the roach's 75/25... so more than 2x the roach?
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Yeah, this is a solid gameplan for the warhound. Something needs to change it just doesn't fit into mech.
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On September 12 2012 01:30 Shady Sands wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2012 01:27 bsdaemon wrote:
i havent looked at the current stats but just looking at the proposed changes, it should not have +air attack. The 15 + 10 bonus seems outrageous to me given the cost, supply and build time. also the speed of the unit has always been an issue for me. a big machine that runs almost as fast as a roach with speed and deals way more damage? op to me lol. But the WH costs 150/75 versus the roach's 75/25... so more than 2x the roach?
But with the same supply cost as the roach. If there was no supply cap, roaches would be a pretty OP unit, but their high supply cost (relative to their mineral and gas cost) holds them back; one of the reasons I find Warhounds to be overpowered right now is due to all the power you can pack into just 2 supply; if a 75m/25g roach and a 100m/25g marauder both cost 2 supply, then a 150m/75g warhound should cost at the very least 3 supply; otherwise, when you reach a max army scenario where the limiting factor is supply, the warhound is far too supply-efficient (as it is in its current form as well).
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You call it an AOE stun, but its similar to conc shells, so you mean AOE slow I assume?
Also, even with the Thor still being there, I see no problems with warhounds being able to hit air, since you can't survive on just Thors alone, can you? And adding marines to a mech army is just ugly :< (Altho I'm not sure how mech is currently played vs zerg, but I assume you also need marines for AA support.)
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I kind of wish they'd just give us the Goliath back. Hell, if it was up to me then Terran would essentially be brood war Terran, but sadly I'm not Dustin Browder.
Also, congrats on the featured blogness and out of interest are you in Britain at the moment?
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On September 12 2012 01:54 kollin wrote:
I kind of wish they'd just give us the Goliath back. Hell, if it was up to me then Terran would essentially be brood war Terran, but sadly I'm not Dustin Browder.
Also, congrats on the featured blogness and out of interest are you in Britain at the moment?
Nah, I flew back from Britain a couple of days ago.
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At this point they can give the warhound the ability to launch playboy magazines at the enemy and it would have more depth than it currently does.
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On September 12 2012 01:53 imPermanenCe wrote:
You call it an AOE stun, but its similar to conc shells, so you mean AOE slow I assume?
Also, even with the Thor still being there, I see no problems with warhounds being able to hit air, since you can't survive on just Thors alone, can you? And adding marines to a mech army is just ugly :< (Altho I'm not sure how mech is currently played vs zerg, but I assume you also need marines for AA support.)
Yep, AOE slow.
I mean, I don't think adding marines in a mech army is bad per se; but there has to be a way to compensate for the fact that most of your gas will be going towards mech units rather than marine/bio upgrades. That's why I think this WH idea would be better than a Thor, because a Thor really doesn't help marine AA that much, but a WH that does AOE slow on air units will help offset the fact that your marines are still only 1/1 18 minutes into the game because you went mech instead of bio.
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On September 12 2012 01:50 Zato-1 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2012 01:30 Shady Sands wrote:On September 12 2012 01:27 bsdaemon wrote:
i havent looked at the current stats but just looking at the proposed changes, it should not have +air attack. The 15 + 10 bonus seems outrageous to me given the cost, supply and build time. also the speed of the unit has always been an issue for me. a big machine that runs almost as fast as a roach with speed and deals way more damage? op to me lol. But the WH costs 150/75 versus the roach's 75/25... so more than 2x the roach? But with the same supply cost as the roach. If there was no supply cap, roaches would be a pretty OP unit, but their high supply cost (relative to their mineral and gas cost) holds them back; one of the reasons I find Warhounds to be overpowered right now is due to all the power you can pack into just 2 supply; if a 75m/25g roach and a 100m/25g marauder both cost 2 supply, then a 150m/75g warhound should cost at the very least 3 supply; otherwise, when you reach a max army scenario where the limiting factor is supply, the warhound is far too supply-efficient (as it is in its current form as well).
Under the current WH build--yes I'd be comfortable with a 3-supply warhound (220 HP packed onto 2 supply doesn't make a lot of sense.)
But under the WH v 2.0 that I mention above, I think 2 supply would be fine, as the HP is dropped down to between 130 and 180, right in range of other 2 supply units (roach 145, marauder 125, stalker 160) and the extra damage/abilities are outweighed by substantially extra cost. Finally, the WH v 2.0's extra light damage wouldn't even be an issue with most light units except marines, zealots, and mutalisks--zerglings and banelings would still need to get 2-shotted (which is why I only made the bonus +10 as opposed to +15).
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On September 12 2012 02:02 avilo wrote:
At this point they can give the warhound the ability to launch playboy magazines at the enemy and it would have more depth than it currently does.
You can read into that statement in so many different ways.
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On September 12 2012 02:02 avilo wrote:
At this point they can give the warhound the ability to launch playboy magazines at the enemy and it would have more depth than it currently does.
I don't think raging at the current build is going to help. And I disagree that we should try to make SC2 terran exactly like BW terran; but preserving Terran's role as the race that benefits the most from good positioning is worth doing.
I don't think the current WH just lacks a lot of strategic depth--I would go one step further and say that no matter what sort of numerical tweaks they give the WH, they wouldn't be able to add back that depth or make it synergize with the rest of the Terran army. Browder/DKim designed the WH to be a Terran roach. By doing this, they're implicitly saying Terran doesn't need to be well positioned to fight effectively--or at least they want to give Terran that option. The problem with this logic is that the rest of the Terran race--cumbersome tech switches, MULEs to allow super-charged mining from fewer locations, a generally slow army, lots and lots of ranged units--plays well with positional tactics. Ergo I don't think Browder/DKim want Terran to be the a-move race. This is why I think giving Terrans a purely a-move unit is a bad idea, especially when it's placed in the mech tech tree. If they want T to be more a-movey, why not just buff bio, the natural a-move/more mobile option for Terran?
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I like this a lot - but why make it have bonus damage versus light ? Wouldn't that overlap a lot with hellions, especially with battle mode ?
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Wait.. An AoE Stun on a unit that people already create in mass numbers?
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On September 12 2012 03:49 laLAlA[uC] wrote:
Wait.. An AoE Stun on a unit that people already create in mass numbers?
What's wrong with that? People create mass numbers of marauders as well. What's more, the cooldown on the stun/slow effect is longer than the marauder, as noted above.
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On September 12 2012 03:06 ArcticRaven wrote:
I like this a lot - but why make it have bonus damage versus light ? Wouldn't that overlap a lot with hellions, especially with battle mode ?
The bonus damage to light is to counter mutas and zealots, but I'm going to change that to apply if the Thor is gone since--you are right--battle hellions already counter zeals.
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Basically there will be two types of micro involved here: 1 is to kite back and forth from the main army; the other is to spread out the stun/slow AOE attacks over the entire enemy front line as opposed to autocasting it over a few units.
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I would like to see the warhound as a versatile mech unit that would work similarly to how marines work with tanks. Imagine the opposite of a marine, warhound 2.0, which would have slow attack speed, high damage and the same amount hp as the current warhound.
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EPT
