EPT[Q] When and how to use 250 mm Thor?
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pjeung
Philippines10 Posts
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TheNomad
United States134 Posts
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Rikk
Bahrain31 Posts
Edit: Stun effect was removed in beta and I never noticed, for shame =( | ||
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snadmonkey
United States26 Posts
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NB
Netherlands12045 Posts
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theMarkovian
Netherlands183 Posts
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sajfen
Sweden2 Posts
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Apocalyptic
United States131 Posts
 I have a saved replay where someone attacks me with 17 thors (all full energy) and I feedback 15 of them | ||
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ltortoise
633 Posts
250mm spell canon thing is worthless period. | ||
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PhantomPumpkin
9 Posts
On September 16 2010 23:29 Apocalyptic wrote: In my ~300 games since release, I have never once had the strike cannons used against me. I'm happy for this, because it means I can feedback half of their life away I have a saved replay where someone attacks me with 17 thors (all full energy) and I feedback 15 of them Can you post that? It's not that I doubt you, I'd just love to see it. | ||
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shawabawa
United Kingdom417 Posts
On September 16 2010 23:23 sajfen wrote: The 250mm canon ignores armor so its not worthless against ultras at all. How can you play terran and not know that? Maxed ultras have 6 armour, thors naturally do 30x2. Thors attack cooldown is 1.28 seconds. Strike cannons does 500 damage over 10 seconds (2 seconds to enter, 2 seconds to exit, 6 seconds duration). So strike cannons do 50 dps, plus you can't move during that time. Thors DPS vs unarmoured target = 60/1.28 = 46.875 Thors DPS vs level 5 armour ultra (6 armour) = 48/1.28 = 37.5 So yes, it could be worth it, however you have to think about whether it's worth the research and the extra micro, plus the extra vulnerabililty of being unable to move for 10 seconds. Plus there is a very large possibility that the target dies during the strike cannons, in which case the 4 seconds of switching for less that the maximum damage lowers the DPS much more. If it had range 8+ it would at least have the very slight point of out ranging base defense, as it is it's just a badly designed ability. edit: I just realised I was comparing 0 upgraded Thor attack to strike cannons With level 1 weapons: Thors DPS vs unarmoured target = 66/1.28 = 51.56 Thors DPS vs 6 armour = 54/1.28 = 42.18 With level 2 weapons: Thors DPS vs unarmoured target = 72/1.28 = 56.25 Thors DPS vs 6 armour = 60/1.28 = 46.875 With level 3 weapons: Thors DPS vs unarmoured target = 78/1.28 = 60.9 Thors DPS vs 6 armour = 66/1.28 = 51.56 Conclusion: another +1 attack is so much more worth it than strike cannons. With level 3 vehicle attack, even against the most armoured target in the game, strike cannons has less dps than regular attack and has the same range. Plus you can't switch target until it's over, plus it overkills most units in the game, plus you can't move. The only situation in the game where it has a use is vs Immortals. And to stun I guess, but now that ultra's can't be stunned and it kills everything else near instantly anyway... | ||
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SilverPotato
United States560 Posts
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ThirdStorm
21 Posts
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Shadrak
United States490 Posts
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Hizzo
United States193 Posts
On September 16 2010 23:49 ThirdStorm wrote: They should change it to an area of effect weapon. 50 dps damage over 6-10 seconds sounds in an area a little smaller then a Protoss force field sounds about right. I don't think terrans need more splash damage. | ||
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awesomoecalypse
United States2235 Posts
The point of the 250 mm spell is to give Thor's energy, enabling HTs to feedback them Basically this. If 250 mm worked on a cooldown like Blink rather than on energy, it still wouldn't be that useful, but at least it wouldn't be a major liability. | ||
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spancho
United States161 Posts
Thors are worthless TvP. 250mm spell canon thing is worthless period. 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. | ||
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Scorcher2k
United States802 Posts
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ltortoise
633 Posts
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. Lol wtf. So you think the counter to fast robo in TvP is to: 1. Go early factory 2. Get an armory 3. Make thors 4. Research strike canon. I call shenanigans. Seems absurd to me. I would never ever do that build unless things changed QUITE a bit. | ||
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Fission
Canada1184 Posts
Step 1) Make a ghost Step 2) Emp your own thors Step 3) Tada! | ||
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BEARDiaguz
Australia2362 Posts
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. | ||
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SugarBear
United States842 Posts
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... | ||
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Arcalious
United States213 Posts
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Zack1900
United States211 Posts
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Tiamat
United States498 Posts
and i am not kidding. If it had more range then it could do its job, but right now its a useless skill. | ||
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Zergxy
Mexico25 Posts
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AzureD
United States320 Posts
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. | ||
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Zack1900
United States211 Posts
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.) | ||
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MadBoat
127 Posts
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). | ||
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Xizorz
93 Posts
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. | ||
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PimpMobeel
120 Posts
On September 17 2010 07:08 Xizorz wrote: 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. | ||
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PimpMobeel
120 Posts
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. | ||
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Bibdy
United States3481 Posts
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. | ||
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PimpMobeel
120 Posts
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. | ||
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ZomgTossRush
United States1041 Posts
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kawazu
United States111 Posts
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. | ||
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papaHav
Australia14 Posts
Think BW archons... better just to hold position and unload something, if you're going to snipe something go for a Nexus | ||
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Bibdy
United States3481 Posts
On September 17 2010 08:18 PimpMobeel wrote: 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. | ||
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Ndugu
United States1078 Posts
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. | ||
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Zack1900
United States211 Posts
On September 17 2010 09:09 Bibdy wrote: 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. | ||
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Techno
1900 Posts
Although, perhaps against a sieged tank the sieged tank will get less shots off if you 250 it as opposed to just kill it normally. | ||
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AzureD
United States320 Posts
Basically any damage before or during the use of the ability will allow you to kill the Ultra. One other potential use is to freeze a retreating enemy so they can not escape. Would work better if it had a lower cd first. If an Archon, Immortal, or Colossus is trying to get away you can probably use this to stop any micro they could be attempting. This probably would work much better when using a Dropship. Perhaps there is some potential in this in a timing drop to assassinate a Colossi or Immortal when it comes out of the robo facility. Also do those cannons stop buildings from functioning? I am pretty sure it stops defensive buildings from being able to fire. | ||
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AzureD
United States320 Posts
Basically any damage before or during the use of the ability will allow you to kill the Ultra. One other potential use is to freeze a retreating enemy so they can not escape. Would work better if it had a lower cd first. If an Archon, Immortal, or Colossus is trying to get away you can probably use this to stop any micro they could be attempting. This probably would work much better when using a Dropship. Perhaps there is some potential in this in a timing drop to assassinate a Colossi or Immortal when it comes out of the robo facility. Also do those cannons stop buildings from functioning? I am pretty sure it stops defensive buildings from being able to fire. | ||
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Xizorz
93 Posts
On September 17 2010 08:05 PimpMobeel wrote: 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. Well, you shoot the ultra once, then 250mm it. The thor will win. Any upgrade combination of attack > move, though, the ultra will win with equal upgrade. | ||
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Grummler
Germany743 Posts
On September 16 2010 23:32 shawabawa wrote: Maxed ultras have 6 armour, thors naturally do 30x2. Thors attack cooldown is 1.28 seconds. Strike cannons does 500 damage over 10 seconds (2 seconds to enter, 2 seconds to exit, 6 seconds duration). So strike cannons do 50 dps, plus you can't move during that time. + Show Spoiler + With level 1 weapons: Thors DPS vs unarmoured target = 66/1.28 = 51.56 Thors DPS vs 6 armour = 54/1.28 = 42.18 With level 2 weapons: Thors DPS vs unarmoured target = 72/1.28 = 56.25 Thors DPS vs 6 armour = 60/1.28 = 46.875 With level 3 weapons: Thors DPS vs unarmoured target = 78/1.28 = 60.9 Thors DPS vs 6 armour = 66/1.28 = 51.56 Conclusion: another +1 attack is so much more worth it than strike cannons. With level 3 vehicle attack, even against the most armoured target in the game, strike cannons has less dps than regular attack and has the same range. Plus you can't switch target until it's over, plus it overkills most units in the game, plus you can't move. The only situation in the game where it has a use is vs Immortals. And to stun I guess, but now that ultra's can't be stunned and it kills everything else near instantly anyway... This. I made the math yesterday for myself, as i was toying arround with 250mm. As long as the stun doesnt help a lot, 250mm is totally useless. Even with good stunable targets it is pretty bad, because of np and feedback. Blizz should decrease the duration and remove the stun effect. 500dmg over 10 seconds is just to slow. 500 over 5 seconds without stun sounds much more reasonable | ||
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