|
Funnily enough the only use of the 250mm strike cannons is to use it on other thors.
Yeah... Blizzard kinda dropped the ball on this one ><
Well, not entirely. The thor was, back in beta times, a more staple unit then it is now. Actually, that's not true, it's still basically the same mostly sidelined unit, but there's a pretty good explanation for why that is.
It's only good at killing mutalisks! From a costeffective standpoint that is. It can kill hydras and raoches and marines and marauders and zealots and stalkers and sentries and hellions and collosi and all that but it cannot do any of that better then the siege tank which requires exactly the same setup, ie, a factory with a tech lab on it. The main niche with the thor is that I can quickly build one and pull like 12 SCV's to repair it and all-in the other guy. The other main niche is that it's fucking awesome in TvZ, and it does nicely against banshees (but anything good at shooting aircraft is like that)
I like how we have an aerial splash attack unlike those other two weiner races, but it sucks that as a result the Terran ground to air capability vs armoured is not fantastic. Protoss have the mighty stalker and Zerg, well, they can spam a whole lot of shit to counter air (note how once the spire comes up few dare to challenge Zerg for air control as about a thousand mutalisks pop and kill everything. The only real chance is 2 stargate phoenixes, which can leave the protoss rather lopsided in their unit composition, especially if the Zerg built a hydra den instead!).
The main issue with our ground-to-air vs armoured sucking is TvT, funnily enough. It's very much about vikings killing each other. Well, it's also about tank positioning, expo timing, stimming up marauders and running them about and sweet drop play, but the main problem is that the best way to counter vikings is really just to have more vikings then the other guy. This is a bit boring from a design point of view, and it puts the player in a very "um and uhh" mindset about managing air control in TvT. This also applies to Battlecruisers, who dont' counter vikings very well either seeing as they can be perfectly kited and can only really shoot their yamato cannon (also note that said bc's are invulnerable to both ground to air terran units. Seriously, armour 3 vs dmg 6 thors and marines before upgrades. Holy effing shit.). So the best way to kill a Terran's vikings in a straight up fight is to mass your own vikings (or use PDD, which is nice but not necessarily the deciding factor in hardcore viking struggles. Plus to get it means I have to actually build a raven which means I'm set back 4 vikings unless I have 2 starports in which case I'm going for far too much air! You see my issue here!)
I know that Vikings are our armoured air-to-air unit and this is a role it exceeds at quite nicely, it would just be nice (from a whingy Terran point of view, I freely accept that our race has 'all' the best units!) if the thor fit a better kind of role. I'm not entirely sure what that would be, and for such a massive change it should really happen in HotS, not a patch.
Alternatively, make 250mm strike cannons have .1 start up time. Seriousyl hate waiting 3 seconds for it to start stunning that zealot my SCV's already killed. Goddammit.
|
On September 17 2010 00:56 spancho wrote:Actually, Ive found that as 'toss, when I go early colossus, if there is just one or two thors waiting for my attack the Terran defense is much stronger. The Strike Cannon completely owns all robotech units, its only once HTs come into play that the ability loses its efficacy.
The funny thing is colossus can kite thors quite well with range upgrade. For whatever reason the thor won't use it's air attack when the colo is out of range...
|
IMO the initial attack delay is the deal breaker for me. In most battles, the target will probably be dead or half dead before that attack has any chance to do significant damage. One on one it is a great ability, but this is usually not the case as it is army vs army.
|
250mm needs a buff. I a faster set up, quicker duration, and lower energy cost (maybe the energy cost). This would make it worth while to use. A quick note: a thor with unlimited strike cannons (set it to 0 energy cost in the editor) can take out 7 cannons even when you mis micro and get in range of a cannon not being stunned while you kill another. He doesn't need help vs static defense as someone suggested. (even in it's current form I feel like strike cannons are a good choice vs static d if that's all that your attacking)
|
The skill is useless. I had 14 thors vs 12 thors and I figured I would spam the 250mm cannon against his, thinking that if i stun half his army mine would clean up easy. I lost all my thors and he has like 5 left with good health.
and i am not kidding.
If it had more range then it could do its job, but right now its a useless skill.
|
Well, it's not like Terran need another AOE source of damage... So, don't complain, just don't use it.
|
If the cool down time is not an issue then the strike cannons can be worth it. When doing this with unit tests I noticed that I could only beat large Ultra armies using 250mm cannons.
In general though it is not a very useful ability in TvZ.
A Thor without 250mm cannons can not beat an Ultra. A Thor with that upgrade however will despite calculations saying that the dps is the same. In-game results trump theory crafted calculations.
So the ability is not COMPLETELY useless just not worth the cost as it is barely better than regular guns. If the ability had a much shorter start up time it would be much better.
|
On September 17 2010 05:13 Tiamat wrote:
The skill is useless. I had 14 thors vs 12 thors and I figured I would spam the 250mm cannon against his, thinking that if i stun half his army mine would clean up easy. I lost all my thors and he has like 5 left with good health.
and i am not kidding.
If it had more range then it could do its job, but right now its a useless skill.
The best I could do on a custom map with a 12v14 thor battle was 4 left over for me using the cannons. You have to select the thor individually then tell it to cannon them otherwise the slow things try to walk a bit too far, but I agree an upgrade that is meant to kill high hp high priority targets should be better at it's job.
When I retested with an equal number of marines on each side I was left with 5 thors though. So in a pure thor vs thor battle cannons are good when used properly. In a thor marine battle cannons are better but still not amazing. It is not a critical upgrade (think siege, ling speed ect.)
|
you know, stylistically, the Thor uses a seperate set of guns to do a 250mm... why would you stop shooting your main guns while shooting those?
that's a great way to buff the cannons; make it so you keep shooting normally while the spell is active (but not move or cancel).
|
On September 17 2010 05:32 AzureD wrote:
If the cool down time is not an issue then the strike cannons can be worth it. When doing this with unit tests I noticed that I could only beat large Ultra armies using 250mm cannons.
In general though it is not a very useful ability in TvZ.
A Thor without 250mm cannons can not beat an Ultra. A Thor with that upgrade however will despite calculations saying that the dps is the same. In-game results trump theory crafted calculations.
So the ability is not COMPLETELY useless just not worth the cost as it is barely better than regular guns. If the ability had a much shorter start up time it would be much better.
That's because in a 1 thor vs 1 ultra situation, the 2 second cooldown at the end of the animation doesnt come into play.
But in an ingame situation, you can 250 MM an ultra, and kill it, but you're losing a normal shot on the next ultra during those 2 seconds.
|
On September 17 2010 07:08 Xizorz wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2010 05:32 AzureD wrote:
If the cool down time is not an issue then the strike cannons can be worth it. When doing this with unit tests I noticed that I could only beat large Ultra armies using 250mm cannons.
In general though it is not a very useful ability in TvZ.
A Thor without 250mm cannons can not beat an Ultra. A Thor with that upgrade however will despite calculations saying that the dps is the same. In-game results trump theory crafted calculations.
So the ability is not COMPLETELY useless just not worth the cost as it is barely better than regular guns. If the ability had a much shorter start up time it would be much better. That's because in a 1 thor vs 1 ultra situation, the 2 second cooldown at the end of the animation doesnt come into play. But in an ingame situation, you can 250 MM an ultra, and kill it, but you're losing a normal shot on the next ultra during those 2 seconds.
250mm cannon does NOT kill an ultralisk. It leaves it with 1 hp left due to zerg units having regen and then the thor is sitting ducks for another 2 seconds. In general +1 weapons upgrade will do more dps than the cannon in its entire 10sec duration (i.e. against ultralisks) and +3 weapons upgrade will do more damage in the 8sec duration the cannon functions; of course armour upgrades change that a bit but it does not take away from the fact that this upgrade is almost totally useless. Might be usable against colossi and immortals in small battles and pfs as others have suggested, but in large numbers expect tanks and void rays/immortals/hts/colossi to completely wreck the crap out of thors.
|
On September 17 2010 05:32 AzureD wrote:
If the cool down time is not an issue then the strike cannons can be worth it. When doing this with unit tests I noticed that I could only beat large Ultra armies using 250mm cannons.
In general though it is not a very useful ability in TvZ.
A Thor without 250mm cannons can not beat an Ultra. A Thor with that upgrade however will despite calculations saying that the dps is the same. In-game results trump theory crafted calculations.
So the ability is not COMPLETELY useless just not worth the cost as it is barely better than regular guns. If the ability had a much shorter start up time it would be much better.
An ultralisk will beat a thor using 250mm cannons as long as the weapons upgrades are +1 or more which usually is the case due to love for the double evo chambers.
|
I'm actually curious how much of a difference 250mm cannon makes in a Thor vs Immortal fight.
During the Protoss challenge mission thing, I decided to send the Immortals at the Thors (apparently you were supposed to send the Carriers...who knew?) and they got their asses handed to them WITHOUT 250mm cannon.
|
On September 17 2010 08:10 Bibdy wrote:
I'm actually curious how much of a difference 250mm cannon makes in a Thor vs Immortal fight.
During the Protoss challenge mission thing, I decided to send the Immortals at the Thors (apparently you were supposed to send the Carriers...who knew?) and they got their asses handed to them WITHOUT 250mm cannon.
Are you trying to suggest that thors beat immortals? Cos at +1 upgrade and higher on both sides 1 immortal will always beat 1 thor.
|
Can you use 250 MM strike on neutral units/buildings? If i saw this in a high level game, when the t was avoiding feedback i would crap my pants with joy.
|
Thors can kill 1 immortal due to their two attacks and attack speed without the ability, so it's not really worth the upgrade.
The real deal breaker is the range.
5 range means they are spending a lot more than 10 seconds trying to use the ability.
Throw in a handful of marines and the thor walks around like an idiot and doesn't do anything.
Having longer than 7 range would make the ability too good against static D, which would be too close to the siege tanks role. 5 rang is too short because it interferes with the rest of the terran army. If it had 7 range it would be a lot more viable. Maybe 6 range would be a good compromise.
|
250mm cannon does slightly more DPS on paper, but in practice with bio/mech composition vs ultras it often results in overkill on half dead ultras and is too slow and bulky "snipe" the back ones on full health... often getting blocked in the process and wasting precious seconds failing behind marines
Think BW archons... better just to hold position and unload something, if you're going to snipe something go for a Nexus
|
On September 17 2010 08:18 PimpMobeel wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2010 08:10 Bibdy wrote:
I'm actually curious how much of a difference 250mm cannon makes in a Thor vs Immortal fight.
During the Protoss challenge mission thing, I decided to send the Immortals at the Thors (apparently you were supposed to send the Carriers...who knew?) and they got their asses handed to them WITHOUT 250mm cannon. Are you trying to suggest that thors beat immortals? Cos at +1 upgrade and higher on both sides 1 immortal will always beat 1 thor.
When you go into larger numbers, yeah.
Thors do a surprising amount of damage, and with the dual-attack, it only takes 5 complete attacks to bring down the shield, not 10, they rip through the main health-bar incredibly fast and they get the first shot off with a range of 7 vs range 5.
I'm pretty sure the mission gave me 9 Immortals to send at 9 Thors, too, and they got crushed.
|
Its a really silly ability imho that carried over from versions of the game that were bad.
If anything, if Thor needs an ability, it should be significantly worse versus air, but have an AoE ability that does massive damage to air if it isnt dodged.
250mm cannon has no role in the game.
It needs to lose its energy though so that it can be more viable versus Protoss.
|
On September 17 2010 09:09 Bibdy wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2010 08:18 PimpMobeel wrote:On September 17 2010 08:10 Bibdy wrote:
I'm actually curious how much of a difference 250mm cannon makes in a Thor vs Immortal fight.
During the Protoss challenge mission thing, I decided to send the Immortals at the Thors (apparently you were supposed to send the Carriers...who knew?) and they got their asses handed to them WITHOUT 250mm cannon. Are you trying to suggest that thors beat immortals? Cos at +1 upgrade and higher on both sides 1 immortal will always beat 1 thor. When you go into larger numbers, yeah. Thors do a surprising amount of damage, and with the dual-attack, it only takes 5 complete attacks to bring down the shield, not 10, they rip through the main health-bar incredibly fast and they get the first shot off with a range of 7 vs range 5. I'm pretty sure the mission gave me 9 Immortals to send at 9 Thors, too, and they got crushed.
Thors with strike cannons crush immortals if they don't get feed backed.
Strike cannons have a range of 7 meaning if you can shoot it you could have Strike cannoned it. It does 500 damage ignoring hardened shields, and renders the immortal useless (non attacking and paralyzed) after it starts firing. In short the cannons best target by far is the immortal. Saddly I can't think of another good target in anything except low unit number battles.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
