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On November 18 2010 19:33 Nadagast wrote:
Thors have great anti air against light units, but against armored air units, their air attack is beyond terrible. With equal upgrades against Carriers, Thors do 4x4 = 16 damage per volley. That's less DPS than a stimmed Marine.
Thors weakness against armored air targets would be reasonable if they weren't so high up on the attack priority. In a large battle with Carriers on one side and Thors on the other, Thors do basically no DPS, unless you manually target Thors on ground units, they spend the entire fight shooting Interceptors and Carriers.
Now I know what you're saying: Get Vikings to kill Armored air units. But the problem is that Vikings suck on the ground. The problem is that getting armored air units is almost always a win for the Protoss in TvP. This is only masked by the fact that most TvPs are over fairly quickly and don't ever get past 2-3 base for the P, because almost all Terrans use bio. There are three ways getting Vikings to counter Carriers can go:
1. The best case scenario is that you make just enough to kill his Carriers then hope you win the ground battle. Terran maybe comes out slightly ahead in this case. But it's very difficult to hit the exact right amount of Vikings.
2. If you lose the air battle and he has carriers left over you lose the battle. Nothing else you have that shoots up (Marines and Thors) are good vs Carriers with support.
3. If you win the air battle with too many vikings left over, you'll lose the ground fight. Vikings that are 0/0 and on the ground are pretty terrible.
Also they are on an entirely separate upgrade table so you're at 0/0 when they already have some upgrades.
There are a couple of solutions to this problem:
Change Thor anti-air damage to be 12x4, or 24x2 instead of 6+6lightx4.
Change Thors to automatically target ground units over armored air units and Interceptors.
If Thors were changed so that Terrans had a viable counter to armored air other than Viking/Marines, I believe we would see playstyles other than bio open up.
You have just described the kind of balancing that Starcraft II has. Think of how wonderful it is you can't make a beastly unit that deals well with armored-ground, light-ground, armored-air, and light-air. Think of all those unused Vikings sitting inside the Starport because their macho comrade from the Factory just took over their role!
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The true problem is that 200/200 mech is not stronger than a 200/200 protoss army plain and simple.
Mech's playstyle is a "slowly but surely" mindset, massing a larger and larger force, taking expos, and harassing to deal economic damage for the inevitable big push. In BW 200/200 mech was slightly stronger than the protoss 200/200, which made it much more viable.
The lack of anti-air is just a problem in my opinion is the lack of scouting and adapting. Seeing as though a protoss sacrifices their ground unit count a bit. Seeing the tech switch too late and going on hellion/tank/ghost for too long will always get you killed. Just like BW, if you don't scout the tech switch to air, you won't get enough goliaths out in time to deal with it.
Even with EMP support, ghosts are expensive and result in lower tank count which is extremely important. You need to be preemptive with your EMPs. Otherwise the protoss will get 2-3 storms off, which by that time, EMPing his army makes no difference.
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On November 19 2010 04:32 Irrational_Animal wrote:
well the way I see it once there is a strong Thor/tank/hellion force there is no way to beat that stuff on the ground so air is a natural counter to it. The problem is that the thor is too much of an allround unit to be also a hard counter against heavy air.
Exactly, and that's the way it should stay. Can't have a unit that doesn't have a weakness, that would just be crazy.
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On November 18 2010 21:01 Nadagast wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 20:49 simme123 wrote:On November 18 2010 20:47 Nadagast wrote:On November 18 2010 20:43 simme123 wrote:On November 18 2010 20:40 Nadagast wrote:
I guess I haven't been clear enough on another point: the presence of an armored air unit turns the Thor into less DPS than a stimmed marine, unless you manually target each of your Thors (which is very difficult to keep up for 5+ Thors in a large battle).
Just the fact that a Void Ray or Carrier exists on the field means that your Thors are doing terrible damage unless manually targeted. I'd be okay with them simply changing the attack priority to have armored air and interceptors as a Thor's lowest priority. Well .. what purpose would the viking serve if the thor was strong vs all air? I'd say that it requires u to be a bit more reactive but still if the thor was good vs all air with it's strentghs vs ground it just wouldn't be a balanced unit. 'Strong' isn't a binary property. Vikings would still be stronger vs air and are much more mobile than slow walking Thors. What I am proposing would simply be to make the Thor outdps a stimmed Marine on armored air targets. 50/0 vs 300/200 and the Marine does more dps. What I am proposing is giving Thors roughly the equivalent of 2.5-3 stimmed Marine's dps against armored air. Well the thor doesn't only have the dps it's hp is much higher than that of a marine. And what you pay for when you get a thor isn't a strong anti armored air unit. It's fine as it is if you ask me. It's still really strong vs light air and all ground (with support). Against Carriers: 10 Marines (500/0) vs 1 Thor (300/200) 550 (450) HP vs 400 HP 69.7 dps vs 5.3 dps All I'm asking is that Marines aren't 13 times more effective against armored air. Thors will still be worse than Marines and Vikings against armored air, but they will be doing better than shooting blanks which is basically what they are doing now.
I'm all for nerfing marine anti-air in order to balance this equation. Maybe i can finally make some carriers as protoss 
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On November 18 2010 19:58 Bommes wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 19:43 Espelz wrote:
To be honest : in about 350 ladder games i have seen carriers maybe... once or twice. Protoss has the same problem with air-upgrades that you say the vikings have (if protoss starts with colossi,terrans sometimes get +1 air attack even, so...). Also letting thors do normal damage vs. armored would make them stronger vs. BCs/Broodlords also, so it would also effect the other matchups... i dont think this is a good idea to be honest Because you obviously don't play mech or you protoss opponents don't know how to respond to mech appropriately, it's really an issue. Mech is really really strong against protoss in late game, but weak thor AA makes it almost impossible to make a steady unitmix because you either have a groundarmy that obliterates everything and then you lose 15 tanks against 1 carrier or some void rays or you have 10 vikings and he just stops making air at all and vikings are really the most worthless unit in the game in the late game and just waste supply, so you lose the ground fight horribly. Plus they are on a different upgrade path, so they naturally aren't that good in later stages of the game. Playing mech against mass gateway + starport + occassional robo/immortal is IMO not really winnable (steadily) if the protoss knows what to do, and that's really sad because mech would be a great response to protoss late game if it's upgradable AA would be existant. Make thors much weaker against ground, change their 6(+6)x4 with 3.0s cd splash attack to something like 10x2 or 12x2 with 1.5s cooldown without or with really little splash, and they will be perfectly fine balanced. They are so slow, that they can't be the ultimate counter to air, because air naturally is very mobile, but at the same time they at least ARE some sort of Mech-AA possibility, which atm is non-existant and not even really viable against light air units without armor (mutalisks, phoenix) which they should counter gamedesign-wise.
Hmmmm, remove their bonus double, then double the damage they do to all units and reduce the splash. So basically just make thors do double damage to armored units. That way nothing can kill them.
And as long as we are talking about protoss armored air units being overpowered, name one air unit that is cost effective versus mass rines with combat shields and stim. Not phoenixes, not carriers, not void rays for certain.
If you are playing mech. There is no reason why a protoss player will be able to build an air force without you destroying him.
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I think a lot of you are misunderstanding what I'm saying. Even with a buff to Thors anti armored air damage, they would still be a poor choice vs armored air. They just would no longer be so beyond absolutely terrible against armored air.
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Terran has the most specialized air units in the game. Vikings are good at what they do, kill armored air units. Banshees are good at harass. Ravens are a good caster. Medivacs are a good support unit. Battlecruisers could be useful some day.
Thors AA attack is designed to kill mutalisks and phoenixes. That's why the took away the medivac prioritization because Thors aren't supposed to kill medivacs.
If you're having trouble against carriers, then you're having trouble scouting. It takes a long time to go carriers during which time the Protoss is vulnerable.
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I dont remember seeing these kinds of threads when lurking in the BW era?
Just imagine it: "Too strong storms crippling TvP creativity" in the BW strategy forum. The problem is not in the game.
Think about it: Instead of one goliath, you now have two better goliaths! The viking flies and the thor is a freaking monster vs ground and light air. The tradeoff is that thors are weak vs armoured air, and vikings have to land to fire against ground.
The units are different, I can see the problem with Thors targeting carriers, but why post about what to change in the game, instead of finding a workaround? The game already does a lot of things for you, but why make it choose optimal targets for you? Would banelings also have to be changed to target squishý bio, eliminating blunders like rolling into thors? And should zergling split so banelings get free paths to the bioball? The next step after that would be rightclick psionic storms from hts and autostim when a major battle breaks out.
I am not saying im a good player, I lose games running my banelings into mech like any other person, but I dont complain that the game didn't play itself for me.
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On November 19 2010 07:32 Nadagast wrote:
I think a lot of you are misunderstanding what I'm saying. Even with a buff to Thors anti armored air damage, they would still be a poor choice vs armored air. They just would no longer be so beyond absolutely terrible against armored air.
If your opponent is making carriers, use a scan to count how many there are and then make 3 x # of carriers. It's cost effective and will guarantee they don't make more carriers afterwards. If you make too many vikings, then that is your fault.
As far as thors, if they nerfed the ground damage, then buffing their anti-air would be fine, but otherwise they would be waaaaaay too cost effective. Marines are already cost effective as is, carriers and void rays are already countered by marines, vikings, and battleships. Giving terran another choice would make them way too strong.
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One carrier beats 3 vikings with +1. In larger battles the carriers win by an even bigger margin due to viking missile overkill.
1. Terran air armor upgrades are 50% more expensive than Protoss air attack upgrades. Terran needs dedicate an armory for air armor upgrades, but Protoss already has a idle cyber core for air attack upgrades.
2. You can never overbuild carriers since they are strong in all situations against any army composition. You can easily over/under build vikings.
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While the weak anti armor Thor attack is certainly a problem it is not the most important thing crippling TvP creativty - its the lack of versaitly of the Hellion compare to BW Vulture.
Spider Mines played a crucival role in mech builds, if Hellions would have mines instead of Preiginter they would be much more versatile.
This would reduce the pressure on the terran to go bio and allows for a more late game oriented style.
Building vikings would still be worse than producing Goliaths, but Toss has to upgrade air separatly too.
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Vikings in ground mode should receive Terran vehicle upgrades instead of Terran air upgrades. That'd help, a tiny bit.
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This is a terrible thread, how on earth is it 9 pages? The thor is a unit with an AA attack that includes multiple attacks and a massive bonus against light units, of course its bad against armored anti-air. It doesn't receive its bonus, and each attack is penalized vs. armor. This is the exact same balance you see on the phoenix, which can't kill a corrupter to save its life - multiple attacks, no attack bonus.
The really bizarre thing is, thors are really good in the TvP matchup already - there are a couple different variations on timing pushes that revolve around the thor. In the lategame, if you want to kill carriers and voidrays and stuff, why are you looking at specialized tier 3 unit when your own analysis says your most basic, tier 1, bread-and-butter unit does it better? Or you could get reactored vikings, the best AA unit in the game. This isn't a complaint even about TvP balance (and we could all agree it could use a few tweaks here and there), its a complaint that the thor doesn't do what it isn't designed to do.
You complain that if you go head to head, vikings vs. carriers, you might lose the ground battle. What ground battle? Carriers in any number are extraordinarily expensive and time consuming (its faster to get a mothership than a carrier), which is going to come at the cost of the protoss ground army... and terran units are superior in small numbers battles against gateway units. Even then, you still have hightech options like yamato, EMP, HSM, that can really pulverize expensive units like carriers.... Or your own, self admitted stim marines which do significant AA damage with no overkill. The thor isn't your answer to carriers, no. Nor is it designed to be.
Now, if you wanted to make a more open thread regarding AI attack priorities, that I could get behind. Units with several hundred percent attack gains when shooting specific unit types.... probably should go find those units and plasterize them. Immortals should naturally want to shoot marauders over marines, thors should shoot ground targets instead of voidrays, etc. That is a worthy discussion, and I'm sure many people would argue that having non-braindead AI removes part of the starcraft allure. Either way, at least you have an argument - complaining that a unit amazing vs. everything on the ground, and that can obliterate light air units in the blink of the eye, is not also amazing vs. armored air units is not a terribly productive use of time.
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On November 19 2010 08:01 link0 wrote:
One carrier beats 3 vikings with +1. In larger battles the carriers win by an even bigger margin due to viking missile overkill.
1. Terran air armor upgrades are 50% more expensive than Protoss air attack upgrades. Terran needs dedicate an armory for air armor upgrades, but Protoss already has a idle cyber core for air attack upgrades.
2. You can never overbuild carriers since they are strong in all situations against any army composition. You can easily over/under build vikings.
What are you talking about? I seriously tested this yesterday. Sure if you are shooting the interceptors then yeah, carriers pwn, but you should be targeting the carrier itself. The only cost effective air unit against vikings are motherships and 1 or more carriers (motherships by themselves are not, but add in 1 carrier and they are because the carrier gets to do unlimited dmg while the mothership tanks, otherwise vikings are very cost effective against carriers.
Vikings counter carriers http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Viking
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As a Protoss player, I completely agree with the OP. Having a unit like the Thor prioritize armored air over ground targets is nothing short of retarded. Some may contradict by saying that it introduces an element of "micro" or whatever you want to call it into battles through target-fire requirement. To those I say to each their own - I would much rather spend my APM on more meaningful things than telling the pilot of a huge warmachine which targets his weapons actually do damage to AFTER EVERY KILL. So yeah - fix Thor AI plx.
The suggestion to increase Thor damage vs. all air I don't agree with - I understand the reasoning behind it, but I find that it would be much simpler and much less volatile from a balance perspective to just fix the AI; buffing the damage in this case is beating around the bush and not fixing the real problem.
And on topic of AI - I would LOVE for my Voidrays to not prioritize anti-air units. Blizzard may have tried to make the Voidray more viable as a component of a regular army composition with the changes they've made not long ago, but that goal would be much better served by making the AI prioritize armored over anti-air. I'd love to be able to use Voidrays in this way vs. Zerg, but it's a bit hard when they charge straight into the Hydras which are HIDING BEHIND the roaches that the Voidrays are supposed to be killing.
Reading through this thread is pretty depressing btw - so many people COMPLETELY missing the point in the OP is scary.
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Yeah a lot of these replies are depressing...
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On November 19 2010 08:23 RyN wrote:
As a Protoss player, I completely agree with the OP. Having a unit like the Thor prioritize armored air over ground targets is nothing short of retarded. Some may contradict by saying that it introduces an element of "micro" or whatever you want to call it into battles through target-fire requirement. To those I say to each their own - I would much rather spend my APM on more meaningful things than telling the pilot of a huge warmachine which targets his weapons actually do damage to AFTER EVERY KILL. So yeah - fix Thor AI plx.
The suggestion to increase Thor damage vs. all air I don't agree with - I understand the reasoning behind it, but I find that it would be much simpler and much less volatile from a balance perspective to just fix the AI; buffing the damage in this case is beating around the bush and not fixing the real problem.
And on topic of AI - I would LOVE for my Voidrays to not prioritize anti-air units. Blizzard may have tried to make the Voidray more viable as a component of a regular army composition with the changes they've made not long ago, but that goal would be much better served by making the AI prioritize armored over anti-air. I'd love to be able to use Voidrays in this way vs. Zerg, but it's a bit hard when they charge straight into the Hydras which are HIDING BEHIND the roaches that the Voidrays are supposed to be killing.
Reading through this thread is pretty depressing btw - so many people COMPLETELY missing the point in the OP is scary.
I think everyone is ignoring the point in the OP because there are a lot of situations like this. Why do my immortals target marines instead of marauders sometimes? Void rays? Targeting buildings over units? Yet marauders always effectively target zealots first, and hydras target ranged.
There are a lot of AI issues that could be fixed. One about the thor targeting air targets over ground is because they were meant to be an effective anti-air unit against mutalisks. The short is, if you don't like what your unit is shooting, use your micro to change it's target.
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On November 19 2010 08:27 Nadagast wrote:
Yeah a lot of these replies are depressing...
They need the Pro Strategy forum already. :[
Don't worry, what you said makes sense and its one of the problems that makes TvP stupid and boring to play.
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Nadagast (correct me if I'm wrong) tests a lot of this shit out with none other than PainUser. He (Pain) talks about some of these findings at length on the most recent State of the Game podcast.
So please, at least engage in civilized discussion here instead of mocking what you don't understand.
But you probably know better than PainUser right? -_-
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EPT
