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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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a 1.5 sec stun seems kinda long for such a cheap unit
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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.
This.
@OP: Your suggestion is appealing because anything sounds appealing besides the current warhound at this point. But I don't see how you could sell this to anyone if you restate it as plainly as possible:
It's a marauder, except it builds from factory and has bonus vs light units instead. And it hits air!!
It's a mass and win stutter step unit just like bio. This game doesn't need more purely mobility impairment (slow/stun) effects, I think everyone has more than had their fill of those.
However, space control effects... that's what everybody wants!
Your suggestion should have been: + Show Spoiler +
Warhound can cast brief plasma field at a point of your choice.
Mix and match buffs/debuffs besides "slow" for interesting and useful ability. For example, if it's just a slow, that's a very microable unit that can use it to kite (especially when you build up groups to cast successively), but it's also even more synergistic with mech because you place down "don't come here" zones near your tank position.
Another example, units inside the plasma Energize field get a damage buff (like +20%) but whenever a unit inside the plasma attacks, it damages every unit inside the plasma (like 5 damage). This could be cast on top of your units to evaporate zerglings (along with your front line potentially), but you and your opponent can both move-command your troops to prevent firing and taking damage. This again is microable, very choice dependent, and synergizes with "mech". Against closing units you can cast preemptive fields to force them to move in taking fire, back off, or take extra damage while trying to engage (like a pack of marines stimming into tanks... imagine that). On top of that, you can even use it on your own units to buff their damage temporarily. Siege boost anyone? Yamato?
Note that with the Energize example, the Warhound would fill a sorely needed role in mech: anti-zealot. Zealots have two attacks, so 3 zealots attacking once inside the same field is 6 activations, causing 6N damage over the 3 of them, which is 18N or 90 damage. That's half a psi storm, and this is a conservative example!
But anyway, moving warhound deeper into caster territory gives you any number of options. Any of which are better than the current version.
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I dunno if I agree with the bonus vs light or not, seems to overlap with hellions abit.
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oh YEAH SHADY IS FEATURED LIKE A BOSS
ot: make warhound -> goliath
make siege tank -> siege tank
make thor something awesome
now you're done and its fuckin awesome
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Why does it do bonus damage to light? That's what hellions are for.
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like orb says, warhound doesnt need to be patched, it needs to be removed
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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.
Well that really wouldn't be effective. I mean in TvT at least both Banshee and Medivac pilots are female unless it gets to BCs it wouldn't get the vehicle to slow down and I really don't know what the Protoss pilots are in to...
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I think up them to 3 supply. Seems weird having such a versatile ability on something with decent hp and damage at just 2 supply.
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On September 12 2012 19:48 GolemMadness wrote:
Why does it do bonus damage to light? That's what hellions are for.
The text is in red; the bonus damage only applies if Thor is a hero unit. Then you need bonus to light + air to retain mech's ability to kill mutas without bio upgrades.
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On September 12 2012 13:04 aRyuujin wrote:
oh YEAH SHADY IS FEATURED LIKE A BOSS
ot: make warhound -> goliath
make siege tank -> siege tank
make thor something awesome
now you're done and its fuckin awesome
=) thanks!
have to disagree about making WH a carbon copy of goliath tho. Goliath was a pretty dumb/a-movy unit in BW (and, next to the BW dragoon, my least liked unit.)
the thing is that right now mech lacks the ability to reliably come out ahead in engagements when it's sieged up and entrenched. This is a problem because, from an army comparison standpoint, the tradeoff should always go like this, assuming equal tech tiers and resource cost:
more speed <--------------------------> less speed
less power <--------------------------> more power
A sieged up mech position is the slowest army in the game: it has to unsiege, then find a new position without getting attacked along the way (while maneuvering around at 2.25 speed), then siege up again. By this logic, it should wipe the floor with any faster T2 or T3 army if mech is sieged.
Mech is expensive. Also, since the armory is a tier 2 structure (not t1 like evo chamber or forge), 3/3 mech, given how late it comes in the game, should for all intents and purposes be considered t3.
The only t3 armies that can compare with a mech army in expense are a collo/archon/templar/speedzeal army, or a BL/infestor army, or a lategame skyterran army. All of these armies are more mobile than a sieged up mech position, yet they also all win in a head to head fight versus maxed 3/3 tank lines. This means mech is always undesirable as it simply does not do the job of an army (winning fights and/or maintaining map control through mobility) as well as counterparts with the same cost and tech position.
Thats why I propose making the WH like this: because this new WH, from a pure HP/dmg perspective, is cost ineffective, but becomes very cost effective when used to force units to wade through an additional volley or two of tank fire before entering engagement range or forcing swarms of air units to stay spread out versus a mech deathball.
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On September 12 2012 09:49 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +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. This. @OP: Your suggestion is appealing because anything sounds appealing besides the current warhound at this point. But I don't see how you could sell this to anyone if you restate it as plainly as possible: It's a marauder, except it builds from factory and has bonus vs light units instead. And it hits air!!It's a mass and win stutter step unit just like bio. This game doesn't need more purely mobility impairment (slow/stun) effects, I think everyone has more than had their fill of those. However, space control effects... that's what everybody wants! Your suggestion should have been: + Show Spoiler +
Warhound can cast brief plasma field at a point of your choice.
Mix and match buffs/debuffs besides "slow" for interesting and useful ability. For example, if it's just a slow, that's a very microable unit that can use it to kite (especially when you build up groups to cast successively), but it's also even more synergistic with mech because you place down "don't come here" zones near your tank position.
Another example, units inside the plasma Energize field get a damage buff (like +20%) but whenever a unit inside the plasma attacks, it damages every unit inside the plasma (like 5 damage). This could be cast on top of your units to evaporate zerglings (along with your front line potentially), but you and your opponent can both move-command your troops to prevent firing and taking damage. This again is microable, very choice dependent, and synergizes with "mech". Against closing units you can cast preemptive fields to force them to move in taking fire, back off, or take extra damage while trying to engage (like a pack of marines stimming into tanks... imagine that). On top of that, you can even use it on your own units to buff their damage temporarily. Siege boost anyone? Yamato?
Note that with the Energize example, the Warhound would fill a sorely needed role in mech: anti-zealot. Zealots have two attacks, so 3 zealots attacking once inside the same field is 6 activations, causing 6N damage over the 3 of them, which is 18N or 90 damage. That's half a psi storm, and this is a conservative example!
But anyway, moving warhound deeper into caster territory gives you any number of options. Any of which are better than the current version.
I disagree that this is exactly like the marauder conc shell.
Marauder conc shell, in my view, is made for squad level engagements. 2 or 3 marauders, 8-10 marines versus a handful of opposing units. Marauders slow down chunks of the army and let the marines clean up. Conc shell is not all that great once armies get big, as inevitably there are more targets for "slowing" than the player can effectively target down given limited APM.
On the flip side, this WH slow/stun ability is designed to be most effective in late-game large engagements, because it has a longer cooldown and is AOE.
I think the energize ability would be a pretty decent addition IF the damage didn't affect your units but only enemy units. I'll have to think more about it though.
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Thats a strong ability for the midgame for that cost lol
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source on where they've stated they want positional mech play? I thought part of the warhounds function was intended to avoid stagnation in tvt mech games? could be wrong.
also, is there a reason you think they'd change the thor back to a "hero" unit? didnt think that was really on the table anymore
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I do like the changes you came up with. I doubt blizzard will see them.
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TBh, I think the old warhound idea from ages ago someone had was best.
Smokescreen ability. It shoots LOS blocking. This encourages great positional play and skill.
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I think the problem with the Warhound in general is that by adding battle hellions and refusing to change the Thor, they've created an avenue where the Warhound just doesn't fit into any role.
It can't be an AA unit because Thors are still AA and they've made Widow Mines AA.
It can't the meat and potatoes unit of Mech, because they've made Battle Hellions for that.
It can't even really be the anti-mechanical anti-siege unit that they wanted it to be, because that overlaps with siege tanks, funnily enough. They tried to make it that just by making it ridiculously cost effective and it not only didn't work but was boring.
I think in order to make the Warhound fit, they need to either change Battle Hellions, or change Thors.
Either A:
Remove Battle Hellions and make Warhounds a cheaper 2 supply anti ground Factory unit that doesn't require a Tech Lab, but reduce its stats across the board.
Or B:
Change Thor to a ground-only anti siege unit. Change Strike Cannons so they've got a siege tank comparable range, so that Thors can be used to break siege lines in TvT. Give the things more health/armor and better anti ground stats, remove their anti air attack, and make them cost more.
And then give Warhound an anti air attack and make it the AA unit. Price it similar to a siege tank and make it not as good against ground as a tank, but with a nice AA attack.
Of course then it would just be a Goliath, funnily enough.
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wow wtf, 1.5 second AoE stun? U know what happens in dota when 5 heroes on the same team has an AoE stun?. Well now think of it as like 30 warhounds all with AoE stun.
This is way too imba, even more broken than fungal growth.
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At this point, doesn't it not matter though, since Warhounds have just been removed completely from the game?
I didn't read any official announcements etc or anything, so I'm not sure whether they're planning to replace it with something else or what, though. I do think they should add in something to have some variety in what T can play around with etc.
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EPT
