So...i make this thread obviously and start this discussion after having played a hell of a lot of LOTV games, both post release and during the entire beta.
I feel like blizzard has taken many steps backwards when it comes to promoting mech viability.
To start, the economy of the game makes it incredibly more difficult to play and execute mech due to having to spread yourself more thin.
In TvT now, Mech is still playable and very strong, but my experiences on ladder i have not played versus a single other meching Terran yet. It's incredibly rare...
99% of TvTs i play at the moment are versus bio Terrans. And some players that i would normally crush and had zero percent chance against me in HOTS suddenly are standing a chance via suiciding bio units into tank lines or doom drops.
Please do not get me wrong. I'm not complaining that mech got slightly more difficult to play. I'm fine with that. But bio became way too ridiculously easy to play and execute in TvT to the point it's the dominant strategy.
Another way to think about how mech got nerfed in relation to the economy is since you have less money per base the game is less forgiving since you won't have the same amount of money to build turret rings which were necessary to play mech vs bio.
Anyways, that's TvT. Bio is way too easy now imo.
For TvZ...mech is really bad atm for a myriad of reasons:
1. Cyclone too expensive/bad vs swarm of units 2. parasitic bomb 3. raven nerf 4. siege tank now has even more counters via 8 armor ultra/unarmored ravagers/corrosive bile 5. broodlord range buff to 11
Basically...since Zerg got a hell of a lot of new toys...and the cyclone is really bad atm, mech is in a really sorry state. It's barely playable, and even if you do want to "mech" you're going to end up massing liberators because Zerg will go brood+viper and mech has no answer since ravens were nerfed.
I feel like cyclones just are garbage, and it's a huge reason why mech might be feeling bad overall to me.
For TvP...same thing goes for this match-up.
1. phoenixes hard counter cyclones, if you send cyclones out on the map, you autolose to this because phoenix will pick them all up and you now die to counter attack 2. carrier/tempest are abusively strong since the raven nerf + carrier buff. Mech has no anti-air to deal with this since cyclones are too expensive supply-wise and cost-wise. (you have to mass liberator to counter carrier, and raven to counter tempest...those are air units, not mech units_.
Mech really is not playable in TvP mostly due to air units. There is no mech anti-air that can fight capital ships, meaning you autolose if the opponent even gets 4 carriers versus your "mech" army.
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Those are a lot of my thoughts about mech...a lot of it seems to boil down to mech viability for Terran seems worse because the other races got many shiny new toys, and Blizzard has left the cyclone in a very sorry state, and mech STILL, after 4+ years of SC2 being out...HAS NO ANTI-AIR UNIT FROM THE FACTORY.
Maybe give the thor some sick anti-air AOE bombard to deal with air? Adjust the cost of cyclones so you can actually build them and trade them? I don't know.
All i know is i've played SC2 since the game has been released, i've played SC1 since 1998 or so and it would be nice if mech was a playable strategy in LOTV just like bio is so that 99% of pro games aren't just bio every game.
I think the issue is that blizzard is very hesitant to make mech the predominant style in lotv given how boring and banal mech became in HotS.
Controlling space and playing strategically goes against the grain of what they're trying to achieve with constant action, fights and expanding. Mech has been collateral damage for them in achieving that goal.
I would love to see mech become viable in a manner which rewards strategic positioning, but I'm not expecting anything drastic to change in the short-mid term. Maybe after we have a full season of GSL/PL/SSL without a single mech game, they might revisit it.
Mech is only boring if it's too weak to be aggressive with, forcing the meching player to exploit the high ground and walls in order to win a fight. In HOTS the idea was to defend, defend, defend until skyterran death blob wins the game, which takes a lot of time and passivity, and the airblob itself is a boring fight.
If ground mech were actually cost-competitive then it would be possible to attack, contain the enemy, and be aggressive. Aggressive contains right at their doorstep, constant chipping damage, and eventually forcing the enemy to mine out, result in extremely high-action, strategically interesting games.
They need to remove lifting siege tanks, and just buff the damn unit already. It has been virtually useless since they nerfed it into oblivion while Steppes of War and Kulas Ravine were in the pool in WoL beta.
If giving the tank more splash damage is too strong, then redesign the tank from the beginning. How about giving it a projectile with a travel time (avoids smart fire), less splash, more single target damage, and more range and rate of fire? Note that adding range means you will need other units to stand in front of the tank in order to spot for it, since it will be unable to see far enough by itself.
The Factory also needs a decent anti-air unit. Honestly, this isn't rocket science. Had Goliath. Now have shitty Thor instead. Just make the Cyclone good against air units, even if you have to remove its anti-ground attack completely. It's a job that Terran needs done.
I think another reason that blizz is hesitant to buff up mech is because its not an ideal playstyle for the game for the opponents. Mech requires thought on where to take engagements and where to set up sure, its fairly easy to die to a variety of things so you have to know a lot of responses to different all-ins/gimmicks. But in a regular fight where both armies clash mech just doesn't require much mechanical skill. When a zerg or protoss or bio terran loses to a terran going bio, sure they might complain about this unit or that but overall they can see that the terran didn't simply A-move and had to actually so some outplaying to get into the position they get in.
Mech on the other hand is basically like playing against the swarmhost from early hots where the opponent just struggles to break them over and over and its like throwing water against a steel wall. It is not fun to watch, it is not fun to play against, and there is a very clear side that is having an easier time executing the fights. The only real way for mech to ever be in a spot where blizz would feel comfortable buffing it is if there was some way to add micro mechanics to the units themselves taht are pretty much required to use in a big fight to come out ahead. By that I do not mean add a new ability to each unit like the thor being able to bombard a location or something, but somehow rework existing units or mechanics to give them a more dynamic interaction with the game like stimmed bio.
Basically a straight up buff to mech without addressing the key playstyle issues that it encourages would be a bad idea that will likely never happen because half the terrans are religious bio users and the protoss/zergs (especially the zergs) do NOT want to deal with that shit in a game that seems to be revolving around engagement mechanics so far.
No, the problem is that Blizzard actually wants giant army battles that end in five seconds flat. Mech means that big, flashy, stupid pitched battle to end the game that Blizzard wants doesn't happen. Or, more accurately, in means the mech player wins when that happens.
In order to beat a mech army you have to be smarter than attack-moving a large army into a pitched battle. You have to eliminate key units. You have to threaten multiple avenues of attack to force the mech to split, and cover several areas. You have to put pressure on the base to force defenses.
You have to use actual tactics to weaken the enemy rather than just arrange for your blob to engage and defeat their blob, which ends in a few seconds.
The mech player really would like a pitched battle where both sides put all their chips on the same spot, and the battle is over in a few seconds. That type of battle makes it a lot easier if all your units are completely immobile since you only have to worry about one army and one area, and it maximizes your efficiency. Covering lots of places means you have to have the right amount of forces everywhere, and if you don't react in time there is always the chance a large enemy attack will locally overwhelm your immobile units in one of those places. A single large battle is ideal.
But there's no reason why you should be obligated to do that when you can snipe tanks, pressure bases, go around, and use all sorts of tricks to make small, positive trades all game long. Like dropping zealots from transports, using Mutalisks, potentially Tempests, or Abduct/Blinding Cloud, and so on. Eventually you will have killed enough costly mech units that you can attack-move and win, or the mech player will screw up and you are in a mining base and kill their workers while they're out of position, and the meching player is dead.
In order to beat a mech army you have to be smarter than attack-moving a large army into a pitched battle. You have to eliminate key units. You have to threaten multiple avenues of attack to force the mech to split, and cover several areas. You have to put pressure on the base to force defenses.
You have to use actual tactics to weaken the enemy rather than just arrange a battle which you win, which ends in a few seconds.
Ok see I get that, I understand where the fun might come from the mech player in trying to hold their position and leap frog around trying to gain more advantageous spots. I get why that is seen as fun to the meching player. Problem is it is absolutely horrible to play against. I kinda went in on that when I was talking about how its similar to play against as the old Swarm Host styles. I'm not saying its unbeatable, its just insanely tedious. Zergs don't want to deal with it, Protoss don't want to deal with it, and half of the terrans don't want to deal with it. That means it likely wont be rebuffed and added to the game because 3/4 of the playerbase do not want to play against it or have it be particularly viable.
And that is without going into the fact that the effort to break a meching player is a fair bit harder then it is to defend with mech as far fight mechanics go. Unless that is somehow altered I do not see mech making a viable comeback due to any blizzard intervention.
Mech is not dead, but turtle mech is "Raven , tanks, viking , *wink* *wink*". Blizzard doesn't want prolong 1-2 hours game + player sitting on minimal bases (3-5) to roll over their opponent. The units design were icing on the cake with the mineral patches revamp. I don't think they will listen to you consider they disagree your strategy, but Blizzard will probably agree that Mech is slightly underpower and will be balance it out.
They have watched your stream + Lillekanin's WCS series and realize the game was not meant to be design that way. Basically the strategy you so call "Mech" is a flaw design by Blizzard in which you abuse the loop hole for years and have fixed it since the release of LOTV.
Mech should not be anything stronger than bio for fair reasons. Blizzard should buff factory or whatever units that seems to be unfavor to provide variety of choices for terran to play the game in a flexible way. Players who only plays mech is in a miniority of the population, it is difficult for Blizzard to address the issue without certain claims.
The reason why "turtle mech" was a thing isn't because tanks were strong. "Turtle mech" existed because there were other units (skyterran) which were worth turtling and waiting to obtain. Meanwhile actually building a mech army directly... was not worth attacking with.
TNSVG made the claim that attacking against mech is harder than defending using mech. That is untrue. Tanks are literally immobile when sieged, and are dog food when moving. What this means is that in order to effectively defend multiple areas using mech, your multitasking ability must be off the charts.
You also have to anticipate where the enemy is going to move as much as 30 seconds in advance in order to position the correct type and quantity of units in the correct places ahead of time. Get it wrong and you may lose a chunk of your forces for little gain, and it will then cost you some more forces to take that territory back again. Unless you're precognizant, that requires exceptional strategic planning, mind games, and star sense.
You cannot simply plop a giant army in the center of the map the way many people suggest. The enemy is too intelligent to suicide their entire army directly into your tank line and instantly lose the game.
And if you split your forces to cover several areas, you expose yourself to Mutalisks picking off tanks without AA, or Dark Templar picking off tanks away from detection, or a large pack of units locally overwhelming some units that are too far from help. You have to be on the ball, and you have to be everywhere.
If you watch Flash play Brood War, you realize how ridiculously challenging mech play really is, and the reason why so very few players can actually master it.
On November 22 2015 17:48 TriaD wrote: Mech is not dead, but turtle mech is "Raven , tanks, viking , *wink* *wink*". Blizzard doesn't want prolong 1-2 hours game + player sitting on minimal bases (3-5) to roll over their opponent. The units design were icing on the cake with the mineral patches revamp. I don't think they will listen to you consider they disagree your strategy, but Blizzard will probably agree that Mech is slightly underpower and will be balance it out.
They have watched your stream + Lillekanin's WCS series and realize the game was not meant to be design that way. Basically the strategy you so call "Mech" is a flaw design by Blizzard in which you abuse the loop hole for years and have fixed it since the release of LOTV.
No one wants games like that...the only reason games ever were like that in the first place is because tanks are weak compared to pre-nerf tanks/brood war tanks that.
Think of the liberator right now. Right now everyone knows liberators destroy stuff HARD. You don't step in that fuckin circle unless you are 100% sure you can take the fight and gogo.
Liberators control space because they do enough damage to control that space, even with only 2-3 liberators.
Siege tanks USED to be able to do that when tehy did 65 dmg per shot. People had to actually back off in those situations because the tank held it's ground.
The tank in it's current form with current damage...people literally a-move into them and come out ahead.
Only way to play mech is to turtle into a huge critical mass of tanks to overcome the previous tank damage nerf from ages ago.
Blizzard made mech what it is with that one nerf alone from years ago. They didn't want turtle mech games, but ironically removing the damage from the tank forces you to turtle if you want to play a mech game...
If you watch Flash play Brood War, you realize how ridiculously challenging mech play really is, and the reason why so very few players can actually master it.
Taking anything at all from BW as a means of justifying the skill behind using mech is a very poor argument. BW is in nearly every single way different from sc2. From how you use control groups, how you move/micro units, how you manage your economy, everything. I think BW mech is actually a great example of my original point where mech needs to be redone from a mechanical standpoint to add actual MECHANICAL skill to using mech units in big engagements. in BW u had to split ur vultures and such fairly well against reavers or pull your opponent apart with counter engagements and such, there was no real turtling.
Also your points on the difficulties on defending with mech compared to attacking into it would be disagreed upon by most every zerg/protoss/bio terran. I tried to state in my original comment that there are difficulties toward playing with mech but engagements/executing fights was not one of them. You certainly have to be smart with your positioning/sim city and responses.
Lastly your point on mechers having to be prepared for counterengagements at a moments notice and the difficulties on finding out where they will attack and the difficulty of defending multiple spots.....Sensor Towers.
I'm fine with tanks getting a damage buff (as long as the upgrade is put back in) and Liberators getting a bit of a nerf (why they do the job of the siege tank better then the siege tank is asinine) but lets be honest..
Mech sucks ass to watch and to play against for anyone who isn't a Terran that just loves to go mech. Long boring turtle fest games, I guess Banshee play into mech was kind of cool but eh, there isn't really much mechanical ability to it, it's a really strategic slow strategy that rewards super defensive play.
Skyterran we saw towards the end of Hots was silly and not good for the game.
I'd wait whether we see any kind of mech TvZ and TvP in WCS or not, but i can't see it. Maps play a huge part too, "abusing" highhround and chokes, but current eco mechanics are pretty much anti-mech since you are being spread too thin and terran mech units are still too inefficient in small numbers and way too expensive.
Vultures were what made mech great in BW - fast cheap unit that can even defend against runbys and of course spider mines.
I can't ever see ground mech with a bit of air support be as strong as bio/biomech style. Big changes would be needed, Blizzard sadly didnt want to experiment in Lotv beta.
It's shame because ground mech would have been quite fun to watch too if played aggressively, it's not all about turtling and moving out with 200/200.
If you watch Flash play Brood War, you realize how ridiculously challenging mech play really is, and the reason why so very few players can actually master it.
Taking anything at all from BW as a means of justifying the skill behind using mech is a very poor argument.
Even in ground vs ground TvP mech is not viable at all because of the Adepts, they destroy the hellbats that are meant to tank for the siege tanks. Without them, immortals / archons can crush the defenseless tanks.
Even adepts can be used to trigger friendly fire from Tanks with their shade ability.
I think another reason for the sorry mech state in TvP is that Blizzard believe that EMP + (buffed) tanks will be OP, so basically they take into account the units without shields and compare it vs tanks:
Stalkers = 80 HP Immortals = 200 HP Colossus = 200 HP
With 3 3 tanks, they can destroy those units with 3-4 rounds, which seems "ok" to them.
As much as I usually hate Terran whine, imo, you're pretty spot on.
You did miss that you can pick up tanks with medivacs now, so you shouldn't be losing them to Ravagers... but dang, you gotta LOVE micro. (Hint, most terrans do. They think its the bombdiggerydo.)
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Anyway, mass liberator isn't fun for anyone imo. Liberators feel more like skyterran and also, aoe air is just... amove.
Mass Protoss air is also kind of strong atm. Time will tell if actually too strong, but its strong now. Its also about as dumb as mass Liberators. Mass carriers is just.. bleh. Tempests at least were not good in mass.
Yes. Blizzard has complete destroyed the interesting resting part of mech - strong tanks with decent factory anti-air support.
In HOTS tanks were almost useless - they were basically only there to buy you time to do an air transition. Now tanks are even worse and you start to transition to air within 2-3 minutes of the game.
It is BroodLords, Carriers, Parastic Swarm and Liberators that should be nerfed. Tanks should be improved. Cyclones should be pure anti-air and much better at it.
This game could have been so much better if David Kim did not hate tanks.
i think you're misunderstanding the builds themselves, from bw days. there were pushes with tanks early on in a tvp game because they produced similarly to dragoons but had a better animation in those engagements. that pressure existed almost solely to have rallied vultures to lay spider mines and stall out a bulldog push or to ensure that you could expand before dragoon range was done, and could outrange your bunker. there was that small back-and-forth because of how those units interacted with each other. the tanks and vultures, vs the dragoons and zealots, respectively.
think of it this way, if bio units were weak, why were they used over mechanical units in tvz? they were just part of a poor unit composition that did not fare well against the openings, tech tree, and the possibilities of micro for protoss in bw.
in sc2 if you put a tank against a stalker 1v1, the tank wins handedly, you can be sure this was part of the balance and design and was taken wholely into consideration. the dps, fire rate, and health combined are enough to make that possible, but you never see that happen, and you probably never will. there are simply so many other problems that take place before that situation even occurs. protoss in sc2 have a stronger response (immortals) and stronger openings that render a tank push totally unecessary. at the rate at which factory units come out, and with the economy that's required to support more than 2 factories worth of unit production, a protoss or a zerg can simply make enough upgraded units to stave off any and all aggression that comes from mech, bio, and what have you. the exact same situations goes the same for both races in reaction to the regular terran openings.
in sc2, you simply have many good options, all across the board for any situation at all. if a tank were required to hold a zergling baneling bust in the past, now the widow mine or hellbats can fill that role very similarly. if tanks were required for roach agression aimed at punishing CC-first or similar, banshees can fill a similar role and deal with it comfortably as well. imagine that in bw you could build a scout that dealt extra damage to armored ground units and still filled the anti-air role that it was designed for. that's what wer're talking about here in sc2. the limitations come mechanically because both players react adequetely without having to insanely tech to stronger and more specialized units. many units in sc2 fill more than one role and make up the vast chunk of the army in any aggressive move-out.
in bw you're also talking about very specifically designed maps with small ramps (highground) or chokepoints leading outside your natural, the protoss often doesn't have much presence on the map before observers because their units aren't strong enough to hold those passageways before the push comes. again--back to that tank and dragoon back-and-forth. that interaction is actually similar to what bio pushes were earlier in the sc2 pro circuit. protoss would make handfuls of stalkers to kite and stall the first push with fresh medivacs and stim+shields researched. the terran had a very specific timing laid out that made it difficult for the protoss to respond to in a cost efficient manner, so they stalled for gateways to finish or sentry and mothership core energy to build up from their initial investment in anticipation of the push.
aggressive moveouts are fine and good and i could see stronger tanks making it a good response to P openings from behind a nuanced/delicate push involving tanks, but i can also see the current protoss or terran having many, many ways of getting around that without much difficulty. the focus of the metagame then shifts and you have players opening this way as opposed to the still-viable bio and now there are -too- many ways to assail an opponent early to mid-game. now there are too many ways to make certain map designs seemingly impossible in certain matchups (hello lost temple 1.0). and too many ways to make a game whacky out of the fact that any units can appear at your front door and hope to achieve damage, but only one build, or one unit combination (early on) is considered for extorting the most out your opponent.
if it's not a tank, it's bio, if it's not bio, it's an alien, or a teacup or anything at all that does the best job and feels good. that's what you'll see from the pro circuit at the highest level, not what's "viable".
I don't think Mech got weaker in LotV, match up wise it opened up some more options.
TvZ: You can do alot more sustained mech pressure in TvZ with hellion cyclone and some mixture of other units when the zerg is on 2 base going up to 3 depending on the map. Liberators complement every composition fairly well.
TvP is shaping up with bio complemented by liberators but that's much more so the tempo of the match up and meta than the actual composition, since Protoss players basically force the terran to have to respond to all their possible early game shenanigans with bio. If the meta gets to a point where the terran player can consistently transition to a mech comp i don't see how it wouldn't happen, remains to be seen if mass carriers just beat everything though.
TvT I think is the most interesting part of the equation. Medivac tank comps will probably see much greater usage at the higher levels than lower levels, while the traditional bio tank comps will still be very effective at lower levels.
I think the bigger part of the issue is how much micro management and baby sitting is required to make the new formats of mech play viable. Mech was traditionally seen as a more turtling composition that relies on either 1) light harass from some cheap mineral only unit out of the factory that builds up to a strong 3 base push at 150-200 supply, or 2) playing to split map situations and hard contain the opponent and deprive them of resources. With how mobile the armies have gotten it's extremely difficult to defend key locations with just a few units and the tempo of games swing much harder in late game compared with BW. The new added mech units promote aggressive harassment which would have helped to support the tempo based timing pushes of the past, but the new units require so much micro management and are so gas and tech intensive that they aren't utilized by everybody.
That's off creep for one, benefitting the Cyclones/Hellions. Half the army is also just standing there.
Second, it's only Ling/Bane/Ultra. That would in theory lose to any air units alone. Usually there quite a few ranged units or Mutalisks to accompany such a force. And if you are going for a pure kiting composition, I'd get Infestors and Fungal Growth the whole army. (I play Terran though, so maybe Zergies would go for something else) And even then, Zerg won't just let his Ultralisks/expensive units get kited all day long. They'll just retreat. Cyclones don't kill stuff fast enough to be used in a straight up fight.
Not saying Cyclones/Hellions can't work, but no way is that going to beat a lategame Zerg army. Assume creep, assume different types of units other than Ling/Bane/Ultra and always remember that Zerg can remax in the lategame.
On November 22 2015 18:11 TNVSG wrote: Also your points on the difficulties on defending with mech compared to attacking into it would be disagreed upon by most every zerg/protoss/bio terran. I tried to state in my original comment that there are difficulties toward playing with mech but engagements/executing fights was not one of them. You certainly have to be smart with your positioning/sim city and responses.
That is bullshit and even more so in LotV.
To defend with mech is not just to be smart with positioning, first you are going to have way to many bases to simply take smart positioning, you need good vision to know when you are getting droped/harassed/attacked, be fast with your response, have your army split in at least 3 or even more groups if you don't wanna die to multipron attacks, have some harass/counter attack ready or you risk letting your opponent, keep expanding, etc.
If you try to simply sit behind a wall of tanks and turrets in LotV you will die before the 10 min mark for a lack of resources, so saying that is totally not true, if playing mech was so easy everyone would do it (for example in late HotS thats why eveyone did it) but yet nobody is meching at all.
And most of the mech games I've seen have been as action packed as a bio game, I watched Fantasy mech on stream and his games where amazing, he played a game against Nestea where he had to constantly expand and defend pick up his tanks, using liberators, doing banshee harass, even transitioned to BCs it was really fun.
So stop taking HotS as an example of how mech is, that has the same value as taking BW as an example, the game is way too different to compare the two together.
well lotv is an expansion for Starcraft 2 so sure the game has changed quite a bit but I can't believe no comparison should be made with the previous versions of it a lot of things have changed, but also a lot of things have not changed since WoL (expansions are expected to improve on a game by building on it rather than change it completely)
Not sure why people want to compare this game to Broodwar. Bio is way better in SC2 compared to Boodwar with the Marines getting a massive buff and the introduction of the Marauder + ultra mobility of the medivac.
Simple fact is Mech is not what this game is about, it never has been and apart from the end of HoTS it hopefully never will be thankfully after what i seen in the tournaments. 45 min turtle feasts kill the game so hard
its over 5 years since release and 3 expansions later people still cant stop bitching about this dead horse. let it die along with this thread
On November 22 2015 23:46 Topdoller wrote: Not sure why people want to compare this game to Broodwar. Bio is way better in SC2 compared to Boodwar with the Marines getting a massive buff and the introduction of the Marauder + ultra mobility of the medivac.
Simple fact is Mech is not what this game is about, it never has been and apart from the end of HoTS it hopefully never will be thankfully after what i seen in the tournaments. 45 min turtle feasts kill the game so hard
its over 5 years since release and 3 expansions later people still cant stop bitching about this dead horse. let it die along with this thread
mech don't has to be this boring. look at taeja vs innovation on newkirk, this is what mech play should be. The problem in HotS was that ground mech was to weak and skyterran to strong so you were forced to turtle to that air fleet.
On November 22 2015 19:07 Isarios wrote: As much as I usually hate Terran whine, imo, you're pretty spot on.
You did miss that you can pick up tanks with medivacs now, so you shouldn't be losing them to Ravagers
You do realise thats its way harder to micro your tanks to not get hit by CB than just firing CB? Besides that it adds nice "survivability" to the tank but the damage is still rather neglectable so why even bother investing resources or APM and attention to this crap unit?
First thing the hellions fight of the swarmy stuff, cuz cyclones DO suck vs many small units like lings etc. Second your proof is a video where microed units fight vs unmicroed units? Really impressive lol
I still feel most of the people in this thread are missing the point that Mech in sc2 has been and likely always will be an anti-fun style to play against. Unless that is somehow addressed, unless blizzard somehow adds micro mechanics to mech units or the compositions that use them that you HAVE to use to be cost effective, it will never be accepted back into the game in a significant way.
Stim bio you HAVE to split/kite to be cost effective. Blink stalkers you HAVE to micro to be cost effective. ling bane you HAVE to micro to be cost effective. Even ravagers you have to be using their bombard effectively if you want to come out ahead in fights.
I'm not saying every single thing that the races do right now are all micro intensive and that every style has the same degree of skill to use. Obviously airtoss is mindlessly easy to execute, sometimes zerg can just move command some ultras into you and not give a shit cause they are unkillable. Liberator turtling can also be pretty retarded to break at times.
But just because there are other easy to execute styles/comps doesn't mean that we should buff up mech and add another. Until there is some way to make mech players have to micro in fights to a reasonable degree 3/4ths of the community will always veto/shoot down any thought of blizz buffing mech into a more viable state.
Hell for all we know mech actually is still viable and we just haven't seen GuMiHo come out and destroy people with it.
On November 22 2015 15:53 TheoMikkelsen wrote: there is no anti air unit on the robo
Different races are different.
Mech is a style of positional play based around the Siege Tank with support from other Factory units. Due to the way +1 upgrades are divided with Terran, it makes sense to have an effective anti-air unit come out of the Factory. As Protoss (being a Protoss player myself) when I upgrade +1 attack, it helps both my Immortals and Colossus from the Robo, as well as supporting anti-air unit, Blink Stalkers.
avilo rightly points out some major issues here. First that the Siege Tank is too weak (which frankly, myself and a lot of people have been arguing since the HOTS beta) and second that the Factory doesn't provide a reliable and effective method of anti-air.
On November 23 2015 02:15 TNVSG wrote: I still feel most of the people in this thread are missing the point that Mech in sc2 has been and likely always will be an anti-fun style to play against. Unless that is somehow addressed, unless blizzard somehow adds micro mechanics to mech units or the compositions that use them that you HAVE to use to be cost effective, it will never be accepted back into the game in a significant way.
I find this really sad. Sad in the sense that you probably haven't experience the beauty of positional play. The micro and skill of positional play is the positional jockey that happens before a battle. Getting your Tanks in the right spot, covering your flanks, scanning to see where his army his, judging whether you can take the high ground before his army gets there, seeing if you can find a weakness in his line or get his forces out of position ect...
And that is really what strategy games have traditionally been about. The units fight for themselves, but you have put them into position to win. And we know that is a skill based game, because the same players keep coming out on top in positional strategy games.
I find positional play incredibly fun. My reflexes and hands will slow down with age and I won't be able to micro well my whole life. But positional play is much more about your brain.
Now we've nearly lost positional play in SC2. Things like Forcefields, Blinding Cloud and Abduct threaten it. "Oh your army is sieged up in a good position? I'll just cast some Blinding Cloud and make that position worthless..." "Oh my army is in a bad spot, I'll just throw down some Forcefields and now the concave is in my favor"
Micro being able to so easily overcome positional play has increasing made SC2 into WC3 where abilities rule. Day[9] subtlety pointed this out when he did a daily on Starbow, where positioning is really important because abilities don't negate it so completely. He said that SC2 is more about having the right units and abilities at the right time, whereas Starbow and BW include having those units in the right place.
It probably is weaker. The economy changes on top of the tank still being shit probably means its not viable. I'm not complaining. The kind of mech I'm interested in playing and watching doesn't seem possible in sc2. Ofc a few niche players like bbyong can make aggressive mech work. However, attacking with mech is inferior to turtling into skyterran in almost every way. Mass raven-bc isn't even mech imo.
On November 23 2015 02:15 TNVSG wrote: I still feel most of the people in this thread are missing the point that Mech in sc2 has been and likely always will be an anti-fun style to play against.
I dont think so and I too hate to play vs turtle Mech TvTs to an enormous point. To nerf turtling was the whole reason the economy changes were introduced, wasn`t it?
Also i still feel most people in this thread are missing the point, that only 1 playstyle to be viable for an entire race is utmost inacceptable. Look at TvP the unit compositions since WOL didnt change until now the Liberator usually get incorporated, too. What change did HOTs bring to TvZ? Instead of supplementing your Bio with tanks you now do it with way more mobile mines.
It really sucks to be 100% reliant on Bio in TvP and TvZ for years now. Isnt it understandable that Terran players wish for more than one production facility to be viable as core production?
On November 23 2015 02:15 TNVSG wrote: I still feel most of the people in this thread are missing the point that Mech in sc2 has been and likely always will be an anti-fun style to play against.
I dont think so and I too hate to play vs turtle Mech TvTs to an enormous point. To nerf turtling was the whole reason the economy changes were introduced, wasn`t it?
Also i still feel most people in this thread are missing the point, that only 1 playstyle to be viable for an entire race is utmost inacceptable. Look at TvP the unit compositions since WOL didnt change until now that Liberators usually get incorporated, too. What change did HOTs bring to TvZ? Instead of supplementing your Bio with tanks you now do it with way more mobile mines.
It really sucks to be 100% reliant on Bio in TvP and TvZ for years now. Isnt it understandable that Terran players wish for more than one production facility to be viable as core production?
On November 23 2015 02:15 TNVSG wrote: I still feel most of the people in this thread are missing the point that Mech in sc2 has been and likely always will be an anti-fun style to play against.
I dont think so and I too hate to play vs turtle Mech TvTs to an enormous point. To nerf turtling was the whole reason the economy changes were introduced, wasn`t it?
Also i still feel most people in this thread are missing the point, that only 1 playstyle to be viable for an entire race is utmost inacceptable. Look at TvP the unit compositions since WOL didnt change until now that Liberators usually get incorporated, too. What change did HOTs bring to TvZ? Instead of supplementing your Bio with tanks you now do it with way more mobile mines.
It really sucks to be 100% reliant on Bio in TvP and TvZ for years now. Isnt it understandable that Terran players wish for more than one production facility to be viable as core production?
On November 23 2015 02:48 royalroadweed wrote: It probably is weaker. The economy changes on top of the tank still being shit probably means its not viable. I'm not complaining. The kind of mech I'm interested in playing and watching doesn't seem possible in sc2. Ofc a few niche players like bbyong can make aggressive mech work. However, attacking with mech is inferior to turtling into skyterran in almost every way. Mass raven-bc isn't even mech imo.
Funny you point two things that don't even exist in LotV, first turtling in LotV is suicide, you can't simple stay on 3/4 bases or you will die even before you can get 3 starports; second, ravens and BCs suck, if you somehow are able to make a huge raven/BC ball you will just die to vipers/carriers.
On November 23 2015 02:15 TNVSG wrote: I still feel most of the people in this thread are missing the point that Mech in sc2 has been and likely always will be an anti-fun style to play against.
I dont think so and I too hate to play vs turtle Mech TvTs to an enormous point. To nerf turtling was the whole reason the economy changes were introduced, wasn`t it?
Also i still feel most people in this thread are missing the point, that only 1 playstyle to be viable for an entire race is utmost inacceptable. Look at TvP the unit compositions since WOL didnt change until now that Liberators usually get incorporated, too. What change did HOTs bring to TvZ? Instead of supplementing your Bio with tanks you now do it with way more mobile mines.
It really sucks to be 100% reliant on Bio in TvP and TvZ for years now. Isnt it understandable that Terran players wish for more than one production facility to be viable as core production?
Welcome to Zerg, playing the same unit comps against the same races since WOL. Only Protoss has any real unit composition diversity imo
Zerg still plays mass roach plays into some type of Lair/Hive tech units (Lurkers and Vipers) ZvP
Yes, you can now take cost efficient fights against spread siege tanks, that is really sad I don't understand at all that blizzard decided that 45 minutes games where the terran just want to safe himself with tanks and AA, then make himself unbreakable with ravens, that was so entertaining. I don't get it ! So shame you now have to use barracks to eventually win the game !
Seriously now, you're no longer allowed to be so static, because of the new minerals, and the new units that allow the other player to be efficient against meca. However I understand your feels when it's about to say that you don't have the endgame 100% sure now, because you can't build the ultimate army anymore.
Even more seriously, I think i do agree with the cyclones being a bit weak, in archon mode they can be used to kite forever, but in 1v1 there is issues to make it worth it, because it simply does require too much attention/time. And maybe the vypers are a bit overpowered, but in the other hand if you spread well and your air army survive, you're just fine, I think it's too early to say.
Oh and maybe the infestor/vypers combinaison is a bit overpowered now, but I do think that with time, terran will learn how to not get their whole army touched with just one parasitic bomb/fungal
Edit : i did a lot of edit because a lot to say, and don't want to be too long to read
On November 23 2015 02:33 BronzeKnee wrote:Micro being able to so easily overcome positional play has increasing made SC2 into WC3 where abilities rule. Day[9] subtlety pointed this out when he did a daily on Starbow, where positioning is really important because abilities don't negate it so completely. He said that SC2 is more about having the right units and abilities at the right time, whereas Starbow and BW include having those units in the right place.
Honestly in WC3 though, I mean ok in WC3 the economy of the game and "macro choices" are way simplified it is a lot more straightforward and simple than SC or SC2 in that aspect, but in WC3 the micro though it is heavily based on abilities is a lot nicer and complex than SC2 isn't it ? Positional play is very present in WC3, it is just on a smaller scale than BW, and there are tons of different things you can do with it and I think the game does shine in it. It has good good micro. SC2's micro is not on par with WC3. With SC/BW you can say micro is "different" when you compare it with WC3, it is faster and about as hard and diverse, whereas in WC3 it is more complex locally but slower and smaller scale (way more tactical implications than strategic). In SC2 the micro is just not on par with those two games. This is a result mostly of the pathing that prevents a lot of micro/tactical possibilities in SC2, because it is not hard to bring something/everything in range of something/everything else in SC2, in most cases it's just you better not get in range unless you are going to deal more damage in that engagement due to what you have against what ur opponent has. The units and abilities are all designed considering this pathing and it is the most core important problem in the game imo, along with the attack rates or some movement mechanics. WC3 and SC/BW indeed have very close pathing/collision system, WC3 mostly just perfected it by removing some bugs or errors that sometimes happen in SC/BW but mainly it functions the same.
Probably you noticed that the zerg player was quite passive for the entirety of the game (while employing the same army composition which was mostly ground based). Using a small cyclones group as a harassing unit during late game might work provided that the zerg (as seen in the vod) has no clue how to approach the late game in efficient manner.
I am not sure if mech is less viable, but I know that Thors lost their good anti air mode ... and that siege tanks have even more counters now. As a bonus they divided the upgrades again, while forcing even more air support for mech. So its bit weird ! But I think Terran air is way cooler now. Well if you can make it there ... somehow ? Can we get the herc back please ?
And hey Blizzard, Ravagers have it, Hellbats have it. Give it to vikings too. Remove armored from their ground mode.
On November 22 2015 16:19 deth wrote: Controlling space and playing strategically goes against the grain of what they're trying to achieve with constant action, fights and expanding. Mech has been collateral damage for them in achieving that goal.
To me I find that to be really weird. Constant fights and expanding goes hand in hand with strategic-positional play. Constantly trying to push forward and hold off pushes while securing locations is what they're looking for, but they seems to prefer resorting to simpler methods of micro in the form of more abilities and units which need to be babysat more. I think if blizzard focused on starcraft's micro being simple actions on many different groups of units rather than more complex actions on individual units in a large, deathball fight it would be a better game. The lurker, disruptor, and liberator are all units which can work very well in a positional environment.
Remove the Cyclone. Give Thor AA if Goliaths aren't going to be put back into the game. Remove the widow mine from the game and give mines back to Hellions (Vultures) on an ammo system.
I really don't know for now if mech has became non viable as I haven't heard the opinion of a good Terran about it. Nevertheless, if it is really weak, then it's a good thing as mech is really boring both to watch and to play against. Yeah, some mech games are great sometimes (clearly not the one from Avilo though) but given the ratio between good and boring mech games it's not worth it to try to make it viable.
In Starcraft 2, mech has been boring because it is so weak you cannot attack with it. Instead people would turtle into skyterran, like the Raven/BC blob. But looking at how shit mech is in SC2 and inferring that therefore mech is boring is completely wrong. You guys have never even seen mech when it wasn't uselessly weak and incapable of aggression.
Look at BW for how mech can be exciting, aggressive, active, and strategically interesting even though tanks are immobile:
Really great mech games are all over the place.
The reason why we don't see this happening is because since the beta in Wings of Liberty these units have been too weak to ever use.
On November 23 2015 07:22 ledarsi wrote: In Starcraft 2, mech has been boring because it is so weak you cannot attack with it. Instead people would turtle into skyterran, like the Raven/BC blob. But looking at how shit mech is in SC2 and inferring that therefore mech is boring is completely wrong. You guys have never even seen mech when it wasn't uselessly weak and incapable of aggression.
Oh no, quite the contrary, a lot of mech game through WoL and HoTS were just 3CC into one big attack. It was still terrible. Brood War is a different game and is irrelevant in the discussion, but I would say that if you miss the brood war way to play terran, switch to protoss, because it is quite similar.
Haha I am a P user got Master P in WoL I can tell you that being a Master P in SC2 is bullshit compared to playing Terran in Starcraft ^^
I like how I hear sometimes SC2 being referred to as just "Starcraft" and then reading someone say a comparison with BW being "irrelevant". Face it, SC2's whole foundations of the 3 races, the cost of the base units and buildings, the resource model and supply is directly taken from SC1. Anything that they put in SC2 that was also in SC1 is very easy to directly compare and very relevant. That's how it is most obvious to criticize SC2 and maybe why you don't like such comparisons being made. Even if you don't like it, SC1 is a much better game than SC2, and it is obvious if you compare what you can do with zealots, marines, zerglings, hydras, tanks, just about anything that is in both games, and yes that includes what you can do with mech in SC1 or with bio in SC1 or with both.
On November 23 2015 06:49 DemigodcelpH wrote: How to fix mech:
BUFF THE TANK.
Remove the Cyclone. Give Thor AA if Goliaths aren't going to be put back into the game. Remove the widow mine from the game and give mines back to Hellions (Vultures) on an ammo system.
No one wants games like that...the only reason games ever were like that in the first place is because tanks are weak compared to pre-nerf tanks/brood war tanks that.
Think of the liberator right now. Right now everyone knows liberators destroy stuff HARD. You don't step in that fuckin circle unless you are 100% sure you can take the fight and gogo.
Liberators control space because they do enough damage to control that space, even with only 2-3 liberators.
Siege tanks USED to be able to do that when tehy did 65 dmg per shot. People had to actually back off in those situations because the tank held it's ground.
The tank in it's current form with current damage...people literally a-move into them and come out ahead.
Only way to play mech is to turtle into a huge critical mass of tanks to overcome the previous tank damage nerf from ages ago.
Blizzard made mech what it is with that one nerf alone from years ago. They didn't want turtle mech games, but ironically removing the damage from the tank forces you to turtle if you want to play a mech game...
Spitting truth right here, i stopped playing since HOTS beta because they promised to make mech good in hots, but they simply didn't. Mech should be based around the SIEGE TANK, not any supporting unit that you need to mass to protect your weak tanks... When the main unit that im looking to win with is no longer the tank but me having to do some air switch or something, that's just no longer terran mech. It really makes me sad but playing mech is simply NOT FUN ever since the start of hots to me because the tank is just so weak on it's own without a ton of supporting units and has so many "counters". The tanks don't matter anymore, and that means the positional play you can do with them is no longer there, which makes mech lose all the charm and fun positional play it had in the past. It's like the siege tank's only purpose is to have high range and poke at your enemy's army to make him engage, but the tank itself doesn't do much damage at all, so the tank is no longer a main unit in your army it's just a support unit. It's really sad that i'll sooner die than blizzard will take a look at the tank and wonder if they should increase it's damage/dps to make it truly a unit that can control space and give strategic options, instead of having to bunch all your tanks in one place because otherwise any little runby will just overrun your position. I thought surely at some point in the lotv beta they will just try out reverting that old nerf and increase the tank's damage, but no... Oh well. Good luck to anyone STILL trying to mech, you'll need it.
On November 23 2015 07:22 ledarsi wrote: In Starcraft 2, mech has been boring because it is so weak you cannot attack with it. Instead people would turtle into skyterran, like the Raven/BC blob. But looking at how shit mech is in SC2 and inferring that therefore mech is boring is completely wrong. You guys have never even seen mech when it wasn't uselessly weak and incapable of aggression.
Oh no, quite the contrary, a lot of mech game through WoL and HoTS were just 3CC into one big attack. It was still terrible. Brood War is a different game and is irrelevant in the discussion, but I would say that if you miss the brood war way to play terran, switch to protoss, because it is quite similar.
Yes, mech has to turlte until maxed out and attack in a deathball because splitting is impossible. Even if maxed out, the army can get destroyed by Zerg and Protoss on the open field in a matter of seconds. This leads to mech players turling on 3 bases into air. Ledarsi is right, the games are just boring because factory units (the tank especially) are too weak in low numbers. TVT games involving mech are often very exciting because the opposing terran can't just kill the entire mech army by a moving. He has to position his army smartly, flank and make raids and drops and take lots of small engagements.
Haha, the one-word rebuttal implying something of value has been conveyed. Why don't you leave balance discussion to the big boys, little buddy? Poor lil guy.
Well, i think mech still hasn't been addressed in a rational way by Blizzard. They still seem to throw stuff around hoping something sticks.
Some of the problems are:
1)no use or synergy for WMs in a mech composition due to the high supply cost. So instead of acting as a space/flank control for mech, it's actually just a mini Siege Tank for bio and, an occasional drop harras.
2)a very poor core unit in the Siege Tank that instead of being fixed, is given gimmick uses with the silly medvac drop.
3)the heavy cost of units together with the new eco should have been addressed with some cost adjustments. Mech is very reliant on Turrets, Senzor T, PFs and Hellions. The cost for all of these should have been lowered.
I feel like Blizzard has no clear idea on what to do, or they are simply lying when they say they want mech viable. 2 expansions they had this as a goal, and the best we got was mass air armies of casters and now it looks like mass air armies of liberators.
We'll just have to wait for 2 years before they even address the issue and then expect a patch that buffs BCs or something like that. It's really hopeless lol
guys, just buff the thor and that's pretty much it, make thor AA attack split as 4 indivdual missiles that individually track AND deal splash damage (like 8 damadge aoe per missile). There 4*8 seeker missiles. happy.
On November 23 2015 07:22 ledarsi wrote: In Starcraft 2, mech has been boring because it is so weak you cannot attack with it. Instead people would turtle into skyterran, like the Raven/BC blob. But looking at how shit mech is in SC2 and inferring that therefore mech is boring is completely wrong. You guys have never even seen mech when it wasn't uselessly weak and incapable of aggression.
Oh no, quite the contrary, a lot of mech game through WoL and HoTS were just 3CC into one big attack. It was still terrible. Brood War is a different game and is irrelevant in the discussion, but I would say that if you miss the brood war way to play terran, switch to protoss, because it is quite similar.
Yes, mech has to turlte until maxed out and attack in a deathball because splitting is impossible. Even if maxed out, the army can get destroyed by Zerg and Protoss on the open field in a matter of seconds. This leads to mech players turling on 3 bases into air. Ledarsi is right, the games are just boring because factory units (the tank especially) are too weak in low numbers. TVT games involving mech are often very exciting because the opposing terran can't just kill the entire mech army by a moving. He has to position his army smartly, flank and make raids and drops and tank lots of small engagements.
Let's put on LoTV on a side for a moment, because it is completely new and we have not seen one single high level tournament on it for now so it's still to see how it , and let's look at HoTS, mech in TvZ (post Swarmhost removal) and TvP (I'd agree that mech is non existent in TvP as it is very weak).
The two constant complains we hear about mech from mech players, is that they lack good AA, and that the tank is too weak and it needs a direct buff. I disagree with both points, to me it does sound that mech player does not want to be pressured or harass at all, either from the sky or by ground army. As a matter of fact, I haven't seen a lot of mech player losing to air army, from time to times it did happened of course, like extra greedy 2 base spire before speedling or hidden remax on 50+ highly upgraded mutalisk, but it has never been broken at all, on the contrary it's rather weak if you are expect. As for the tank, while I do agree that a stronger tank could, in principle, allow more move out on the map, what else does it allow? Turtle play and of course that's most of what we would see if the tank is buffed as you seem to want, as it is the easiest way to play the game.
Consider all the mech game we had through the end of HoTS in TvZ: the different build were more than able to defend against any fast muta opening, then turtle on tanks on three base that should not be broken by any army unless a mistake was made by the terran, then keep expanding with a strong ground support and slowly transition to unbreable sky-terran army. That kind of games would have been better with a stronger tank? Clearly, I do not think so, it would have been a much more easier strategy, thus a lot of players would have play like this, but the core concept would have stayed the same. In Hots and mostly in TvZ (but I believe the same would be true in TvT) Turtle play would have beneficit the most from a siege tank buff, because it would make the turtle and thus the transition to skyterran part much more easier.
So, my point, only based on HoTS because honestly LoTV is absolutely not figured out: if you want the tank to be stronger when it's in a good position, you have to consider to nerf them when they are caught in a bad position, so as damage buff could, in my opinion, only be done if it's compensated by a big nerf on its HP, the time to siege/unsiege and/or the damage output of unsieged tank.
On a side note, I find the reluctance to consider starport units part of the mech composition because "it does not comes from a factory" quite stupid, like do we see bio player cry because they have to build medivacs to support their bio units?
I think the most significant thing that messes with mech is the parasitic bomb that messes up your air transition significantly. I found that if zergs cast it on vikings I can land them and that gets rid of the parsley entirely but other than that..... and no, cyclones can't really be the answer for ultralisks if Zerg balances out their composition really well. If the siege tanks are buffed, they should take a bit longer to siege up and tankivacs should be impossible. Unfortunately, DK is really proud of his tankivacs so no avail there.
why ppl always think about mech and bio like they are different races? Play terrans men, not just part of arsenal. It's dumb didnt use other units and say "my race soo weak". Lol.
On November 23 2015 23:49 i_am_Nite wrote: why ppl always think about mech and bio like they are different races? Play terrans men, not just part of arsenal. It's dumb didnt use other units and say "my race soo weak". Lol.
Why? Because Blizzard enforces that they are different. Mech and bio have split ground upgrades for attack and armor, Zerg has split attack upgrades for range and melee, Protoss has upgrades that affect all ground units. Mech and bio are distinctly split from each other, but bio can't win without mech based support, and pure mech is bad right now.
On November 23 2015 07:22 ledarsi wrote: In Starcraft 2, mech has been boring because it is so weak you cannot attack with it. Instead people would turtle into skyterran, like the Raven/BC blob. But looking at how shit mech is in SC2 and inferring that therefore mech is boring is completely wrong. You guys have never even seen mech when it wasn't uselessly weak and incapable of aggression.
Oh no, quite the contrary, a lot of mech game through WoL and HoTS were just 3CC into one big attack. It was still terrible. Brood War is a different game and is irrelevant in the discussion, but I would say that if you miss the brood war way to play terran, switch to protoss, because it is quite similar.
Yes, mech has to turlte until maxed out and attack in a deathball because splitting is impossible. Even if maxed out, the army can get destroyed by Zerg and Protoss on the open field in a matter of seconds. This leads to mech players turling on 3 bases into air. Ledarsi is right, the games are just boring because factory units (the tank especially) are too weak in low numbers. TVT games involving mech are often very exciting because the opposing terran can't just kill the entire mech army by a moving. He has to position his army smartly, flank and make raids and drops and tank lots of small engagements.
Let's put on LoTV on a side for a moment, because it is completely new and we have not seen one single high level tournament on it for now so it's still to see how it , and let's look at HoTS, mech in TvZ (post Swarmhost removal) and TvP (I'd agree that mech is non existent in TvP as it is very weak).
The two constant complains we hear about mech from mech players, is that they lack good AA, and that the tank is too weak and it needs a direct buff. I disagree with both points, to me it does sound that mech player does not want to be pressured or harass at all, either from the sky or by ground army. As a matter of fact, I haven't seen a lot of mech player losing to air army, from time to times it did happened of course, like extra greedy 2 base spire before speedling or hidden remax on 50+ highly upgraded mutalisk, but it has never been broken at all, on the contrary it's rather weak if you are expect. As for the tank, while I do agree that a stronger tank could, in principle, allow more move out on the map, what else does it allow? Turtle play and of course that's most of what we would see if the tank is buffed as you seem to want, as it is the easiest way to play the game.
Consider all the mech game we had through the end of HoTS in TvZ: the different build were more than able to defend against any fast muta opening, then turtle on tanks on three base that should not be broken by any army unless a mistake was made by the terran, then keep expanding with a strong ground support and slowly transition to unbreable sky-terran army. That kind of games would have been better with a stronger tank? Clearly, I do not think so, it would have been a much more easier strategy, thus a lot of players would have play like this, but the core concept would have stayed the same. In Hots and mostly in TvZ (but I believe the same would be true in TvT) Turtle play would have beneficit the most from a siege tank buff, because it would make the turtle and thus the transition to skyterran part much more easier.
So, my point, only based on HoTS because honestly LoTV is absolutely not figured out: if you want the tank to be stronger when it's in a good position, you have to consider to nerf them when they are caught in a bad position, so as damage buff could, in my opinion, only be done if it's compensated by a big nerf on its HP, the time to siege/unsiege and/or the damage output of unsieged tank.
On a side note, I find the reluctance to consider starport units part of the mech composition because "it does not comes from a factory" quite stupid, like do we see bio player cry because they have to build medivacs to support their bio units?
Because mech is and always has been viable vs Terran, mech players did not turtle to air against Bio terrans. In fact, oftentimes the Bio player would slowly transition into air.
Regarding Buffing the Siege Tank: You obviously have to be very careful when buffing the tank that mech doesn't become too strong. Maybe reduce splash lighty and buff single target damage while sieged. I don't know what would be the best way to do it.
Since the terran air army doesn't seem to dominate Zerg air anymore since LotV (e.g. parasitic bomb, separated Air and Ground attack upgrades), turtling to an unbeatable air army isn't very desirable anymore. Although rushing to air armies might be a general problem of LotV. But you are right, LotV is not yet figured out. Maybe the Liberator and Cyclone will make for an interesting and viable new mech style.
So I think you are right in that it is not easy to buff the tank to promote a fun to play and watch mech style. Adding a solid ground anti air unit will help making mech more viable and prevent the need to respond with air against air compositions. Changing the tank in the correct way is probably necessary to make interesting mech play viable.
EPT
