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TvZ i'd say it's a little bit stronger but still not that great. It's played quite a bit and really good on narrow typical mech maps though, akilon waste being the only one of those at the moment.
Yes vipers are good against it and even swarm hosts have their uses against it but the mech buffs outway that compared to wol really. Hellbats are better hellions that don't need an upgrade to excel, siege tech upgrade is free and shared air upgrades is fantastic. Improved muta's can be quite problematic but it's still just about seeing it and planting some turrets while adding some thors. The fact you basically save blueflame and siege tech upgrade compared to WoL makes it possible to open much greedier and do far stronger timings, especially since roaches do lousy against the helllbat/tank ball way before you're at 200/200. If the maps weren't so open and MMMM wouldn't be doing so damn well we'd be seeing it more really, it's definately a viable style, vipers can be countered by some vikings and splitting your tanks fairly well. The broodlord transition is no longer a real risk either since you'll be far ahead in air upgrades and thors do a bit better damage against them.
TvP mech is still completely terrible. It's hard to say if it's off worse since it is not even close to viable in WoL or HotS. Hellbats and tanks got a nice buff and widow mine is useful for opening but MsC and the air buffs make it so easy for protoss to play greedy and just transition into an unkillable air ball now. Doesn't really matter too much your vikings will have a slight upgrade advantage, protoss can easily pick up and just dominate with massive warpgates in the end.
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On June 04 2013 06:26 kollin wrote:
Nah I've got a fair bit, been following both sc2 and bw in my time here. Also tha guy failed to understand the key concepts behind what mech should be, rather than the much more boring version we have today in hots.
Blizzard doesn't want traditional mech.
They saw vods of TvP and TvT, and immediately said to themselves:
Wow, all these guys are doing is building tanks and sitting around. They haven't built more than 4 or 8 marines in a single game...hell, they're just floating their barracks out in the middle of the map! We have to do something about this!
Thus, they made the Immortal, increased siege tank costs, neglected to carry over the old damage system from sc1 (where shields took full damage from all attack types), and set about buffing bio to high-heaven.
HotS had a heavy focus on "breaking up tank lines":
- The Warhound had an anti-mech attack, but was scrapped because even Blizzard thought they were boring
- The Viper could use Abduct to yank tanks or other high-value units
- The Tempest has absurd range, and was intended as a Carrier replacement (partially because the dev team knows fuck-all about SC1 and the Carrier's role, and partially because vikings / corruptors are the perfect counters to Carriers as a concept)
- Blizzard considered the addition of some sort-of "long range missile truck" that would destroy tanks, but then reconsidered...probably because it would be too similar to a siege tank.
For Blizzard, factory units are intended to be support units for a barracks core. You build tanks to defend your marines from banelings and infestors. You build Hellions and Mines to defend your marines from large masses of zealots and zerglings. Battle Hellions have all of these buffs (18 damage vs nonlight targets, pre-igniter damage vs light without an upgrade, a bio tag for heals, etc) because if they didn't, people wouldn't want to build them if they were committing to Bio. They just wouldn't be worth the resources.
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On June 04 2013 06:21 Emzeeshady wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2013 06:13 CecilSunkure wrote:On June 04 2013 05:07 kollin wrote:
Yep, you're extremely narrow-minded. You can't expect a SC2 dude with no BW perspective to understand. what a stupid thing to say. Why would you need BW experience to deduce how fun mech is to watch in SC2? It might have been fun to watch in BW but that really does't have anything to do with SC2 mech. Besides, Kollin is only like 13 or 14 so I doubt he had much BW experience anyway.
It isn't stupid to say. It's just hard to understand to have an appreciation if you haven't seen it before, and in general it's safe to assume the average TL user has mostly just a SC2 perspective.
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I mean, it is pretty stupid to say. You come across as a snob and are making a baseless assumption because someone is saying that the playstyle isn't entertaining to watch in SC2.
For me, it was much more entertaining watching mech in BW because of the limitations that BW imposed on the players.
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On June 04 2013 03:46 targ wrote:
I thought HOTS was supposed to focus on buffing mech with the changes - battle hellions and widow mines added, siege mode free and thors getting the high impact mode to deal with heavy air. But it seems that mech is even less viable than before, it wasn't good in TvP in WOL and it still isn't, while in TvZ it used to be ok, but vipers seem to own it now.
Anyone else feel the same way?
I think they gave up halfway through the beta. To be honest, I am not fussed. The game seems fine enough without Mech. At least traditional mech. There is the possibility of mech variants in HOTS which are interesting and should develop further.
Too much is made of BW mech. Especially for TvP. SC2 is a different game and HOTS does not need it.
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On June 04 2013 09:12 armada[sb] wrote:
I mean, it is pretty stupid to say. You come across as a snob and are making a baseless assumption because someone is saying that the playstyle isn't entertaining to watch in SC2.
For me, it was much more entertaining watching mech in BW because of the limitations that BW imposed on the players.
I was actually more of advising Kollin on how to respond, not insulting or snobbing at you. Didn't mean to offend anyone though, so I apologize if I did.
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I think mech is really entertaining to watch. It's really suspensful. But i understand why some people don't like it, people don't like change. Also on a side note: entertaining is completely subjective.
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On June 04 2013 10:05 CecilSunkure wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2013 09:12 armada[sb] wrote:
I mean, it is pretty stupid to say. You come across as a snob and are making a baseless assumption because someone is saying that the playstyle isn't entertaining to watch in SC2.
For me, it was much more entertaining watching mech in BW because of the limitations that BW imposed on the players. I was actually more of advising Kollin on how to respond, not insulting or snobbing at you. Didn't mean to offend anyone though, so I apologize if I did.
My apologies, I misunderstood who you were talking to. A lot of people are still really snobby about the sc2 vs BW nonsense and it really rustles my jimmies.
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Definitely weaker in the sense of traditional mech. Sea's TvP mech style is still semi-valid, but in my eyes the only mech composition viable at a high level in non-tvt is hellbat/thor/raven.
TvZ I used to do 2fac/2port bfh/raven->mech+heavy raven army (in WoL), but the change to seeker missile makes it a lot easier to dodge when not being braindead, so it's a lot harder to hold off timings with a charge of the light brigade. Vipers, hosts, and tempests wreck mech really easily (abduct, cloud, and double thor range is absurd). Free units are free units (hosts are just a lot more effective and risk free ways of soaking up tank fire like infested terrans-they lose the forced FF ability but gain the ability to actually do damage before they die.
Honestly it feels like you just need your opponent to make a huge mistake to win with mech in TvZ/P. If you can get massive worker kills, or they run into a bajillion seekers, or they run at sieged tanks through a choke, it's not a hard fight... But if they use any of the plethora of anti-mech options they have, it becomes so much easier to deal with....
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On June 04 2013 09:29 aZealot wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2013 03:46 targ wrote:
I thought HOTS was supposed to focus on buffing mech with the changes - battle hellions and widow mines added, siege mode free and thors getting the high impact mode to deal with heavy air. But it seems that mech is even less viable than before, it wasn't good in TvP in WOL and it still isn't, while in TvZ it used to be ok, but vipers seem to own it now.
Anyone else feel the same way? I think they gave up halfway through the beta. To be honest, I am not fussed. The game seems fine enough without Mech. At least traditional mech. There is the possibility of mech variants in HOTS which are interesting and should develop further. Too much is made of BW mech. Especially for TvP. SC2 is a different game and HOTS does not need it.
I agree that mech variants are interesting. The way I see it is that in HOTS mech is way better than before as a support to bio. In TvP I don't float around my factory anymore because mines are quite useful in early game, sieged tanks can be used to drive back blink stalker builds with no research needed and in the late game hellbats can be produced to fight zealots. Same in TvZ, widow mines are very useful beside bio all game.
But I'm still very keen on pure mech making a comeback, as another option is usually good for the game. I definitely enjoyed watching the various stargate openings in TvP, although I hate dealing with the oracle myself.
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On June 04 2013 05:22 Targe wrote:
I have to say that Mech TvT seems stronger, not that I go mech, I've actually semi swapped to bio for some games.
Ok I gotta admit this seems true, I think because of the hellbats being tanky and destroyers of mineral lines.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On June 04 2013 21:59 targ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2013 05:22 Targe wrote:
I have to say that Mech TvT seems stronger, not that I go mech, I've actually semi swapped to bio for some games. Ok I gotta admit this seems true, I think because of the hellbats being tanky and destroyers of mineral lines.
It's very hard to engage head on with a mech army, your only chance with bio is to engage early and prevent them getting bases I feel.
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
People are right in saying SC2 is a different game, but you cannot fault some for wanting a different route that is viable. It always benefits a strategy game to have more variety. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll ever see Blizzard 'fix' mech, or even attempt to. Imo, they just don't have the passion anymore to make any drastic changes.
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Canada11595 Posts
We have never had a good version of mech play in SC2 (positional and harass based). And I highly doubt anything in HotS wil change that.  Our loss. It's a completely unique gamestyle that I do not think has been replicated in any other RTS.
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