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As a few people said before in different posts, and QQmonster just said, They are good on the ground if there is no air and if you want to harass.
On December 22 2010 09:41 ledarsi wrote:
Really, Blizzard dresses the Viking up as being versatile but it's really one of the most specialist units in the game.
I cannot disagree enough with that. I don't think Blizzard "dressed" the Viking up as versatile. I played BW up until about 2001, and the Wraith and Scout were not "versatile" because they could attack ground targets as well, they were AA units with a perk, cloak and speed respectively that just happened (with some thought) to be able to attack ground as well. The Viking has strong air in the redesign of SC2, and the perk is range at the cost of the transition to kinda effective ground damage. Then never claim it's versatile, they never did before. It can do what it can do.
If I didn't make my point well enough for anyone disagreeing with me, is the Corruptor versatile because it can morph into a Brood Lord and attack the ground? Not in the same ballpark as a Marine, Stalker or Mutalisk is in their ability to attack both ground and air. This isn't to say there is not a hard counter to pretty much everything or better playing can't get around, but it has been said above that they can harass, but the ground mode is really if they are not needed to do their primary purpose, which is AA with the perk of being behind the main conflict due to range or kiting in the same regard.
If anyone thinks I made ledarsi's point I simply believe Blizzard had no intention of secretly or subliminally making the Viking versatile to those who were smart enough to see it, I believe they used the same formula as before from SC1 and retailored a unit to fit differently into the new metagame. I agree with him that the unit is specialized, but not that Bliz tried to make it anything but, that's like saying they thought Zealots would be different now that they have charge instead of speed.
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Don't underestimate vikings in ground more as 3 can wreck chaos in undefended mineral line (be it probes or SCVs) to the point he has to run workers or loose a lot. They have high rate of fire in ground mode, and deal a lot of damage if nothing is shooting back. I used it mostly in TvT like after failed banshee rush which would kill just few scvs. Than i land my vikings in his base and get double of that kills. Unupgraded marines suck vs vikings, especially if they funnel 1 by 1 trough something. TvP, leftover vikings after cleaning up collosi can also be used to harras mineral line, but be careful not to loose them all to wrap-in stalkers... Vs Zerg, you need more vikings to attempt this as queens provide decent defense, and while you are done with the queen, units come that will defend...
There was one game on delta where i used my vikings in TvT as mutas. My opponent went pure bio and fast expoed to both his back and forward natural while skipping turrets. Land vikings in one of those, he will 1a run his bio there. Lift before he gets there and land on the other (short air distance, long run for the bio). He overstimmed, lost too much time dealing with my vikings and than he saw the tanks siege in front of his base while he was chasing vikings... gg.
Sadly tank/viking is no longer so viable in TvT after last round of patches...
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On December 22 2010 08:42 GaryBrackett wrote:vikings are really good at dethin stuff like DT's/HT's when in Ground Mode, also with upgrades they rly strong  P + Show Spoiler +
I saw your posts in another thread. Why do you have "Liquid_Brackett" in a spoiler in every post???
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The most I see of landed vikings in PvT is when they have killed all my Collosi and want to try to do a finishing push by landing their vikings and reinforcing their ground army with them. Zealots/Stalkers destroy vikings easily, but if a Protoss is already on their last leg, landing 8+ vikings can be the finishing blow.
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Vikings are goliaths with wings.Use them in conjunction with your tanks in Tvt to do a big push,or land them on top of the opposing tank line(undefended).
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Landed viking DPS: Vs light 10 Vs armored 14
Stalker DPS: Vs light 6.94 Vs armored 9.72
To be fair, it probably says more about how weak stalkers are, rather than how strong landed vikings are.
/QQ.
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The problem with ground-mode vikings is that usually you'd only build them to use against air units. Even if they're cost-effective in an isolated battle (against zealots, for example), losing a bunch of them on the ground means that when you lift up, you'll no longer have as many vikings as you wanted for anti-air. When you take this into account, vikings are no longer cost-effective on the ground except in the few limited scenarios where they completely dominate (vs workers/buildings, on a ledge, vs single file zerglings, vs a lone sieged tank, protecting marines from banelings, etc). Otherwise, you should only land them when you're sure you won't need them in the air any more.
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Responding to Xylarthen, the lore for the viking claims that it was created as a more versatile Goliath. Which is just nonsense. Allegedly in the brood war terran anti air was shown to be lacking... so they went and made it ten times worse... Well, they do this sort of reversal all the time, such as saying they "added a survivability package" to the tank while leaving its stats the same and inflating everything's damage. Basically if it says a unit was designed by the race to be X, it is the opposite of that.
The goliath could attack air and ground without a lengthy transition period, and also was a more effective generalist anti-air unit in the first place, where the viking is only effective against armored air, and gets crushed by mutalisks.
From brood war the terran lost the goliath, the wraith, and the valkyrie, and only got the thor and viking in return. I suppose you could include the banshee since it got the wraith's cloak, but it has no anti air so whatever. The thor got the valkyrie's splash, but its dps is terrible. The viking is more similar to the wraith than the goliath in a lot of ways, as you said, because it is largely an anti-air unit, with the perk of occasionally being used to attack ground units. However its ground dps is quite bad, and it's very fragile and expensive on par with air units, where beefier and higher-damage ground only units will obliterate it when it lands. The thor is more similar to the goliath in a lot of ways, except its ground attack is HUGE and its air attack is dreadful, pretty much the opposite of the old school goliath.
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Vikings in ground mode have the same range and higher dps than a stalker. That's not too bad for a unit that can just fly off and evacuate. I think people really underestimate ground mode viking dps. (and overestimate Stalker dps, but that aside). You can use them in your main army I think.
As in air mode, the problem with vikings is not their low dps, but their low hp. Vikings are high dps / low hp units, like dark templar. So if you land, do damage, and get out before they the enemy reacts to kill them, it's a favourable deal. They kill stuff pretty fast, they just die pretty fast too.
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Viking's usefulness in ground mode:
1) When spotting vulnerable workers.
2) Base building harass to split up your opponents army and killing off a few depots/pylons if your lucky.
3) In close battles when the opposing player does not have any sort of air threat left it might be a good idea to land the Vikings to help tilt the battle in your favour.
4) Killing enemy scouts parked at towers.
On December 22 2010 08:40 majestouch wrote:
in tvt you can land vikings on siege tanks and they will do a little damage and the enemy siege tanks will do firendly fire to their own tanks, also, you can do harrass around the map etc
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You can also use it to bait some banelings so you can lower the baneling count
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As Silmakuoppaanikinko said, the problem is the viking's hp. Their dps is actually acceptable in absolute terms, although it's bad for cost. For 150 minerals and 75 gas you get the equivalent of 1.5 unstimmed marines on the ground, in a package with less survivability than a marauder (but more than 2 marines, granted).
Against armored air vikings are excellent. Against light air and anything on the ground they are terrible. Get almost any other unit instead to fight those types of targets.
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.. dont 4get the change from air units to ground units make them invincible vs air only attacks .. like corrupters and other vikings .. like in tvt when u loose the air dominance dont fight till ur last viking if u see it wont work out .land em and retreat ^^
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On December 22 2010 20:56 ledarsi wrote:
As Silmakuoppaanikinko said, the problem is the viking's hp. Their dps is actually acceptable in absolute terms, although it's bad for cost. For 150 minerals and 75 gas you get the equivalent of 1.5 unstimmed marines on the ground, in a package with less survivability than a marauder (but more than 2 marines, granted).
Against armored air vikings are excellent. Against light air and anything on the ground they are terrible. Get almost any other unit instead to fight those types of targets. Well, air units as a rule have less dps for cost, obviously because they're less manevourable, did you know a Zergling has more dps than a mutalisk to its primary target? The viking ground dps is also higher than the corruptor dps against massive targets, not counting corruption. Corruptor has 200 hp though.
Viking ground dps is pretty good for cost I'd say. Its hp is just quite low.
What I've always wondered though is this 'paper airplane' thing, I mean the phoenix has 180 points including shield. THat's almost as high a a corruptor, the warp prism also has more than the viking, so why isn't the viking a 'paper airplane' The phoenix also has more than the banshee.
Methinks that the term is more used for things that simply look fragile cosmetically, instead of a term reserved for actual game stats.
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A lot of vikings on the ground can actually do a fair amount of damage. This doesn't last long though as Stalkers will ruin them in comparable numbers.
Generally though I have no respect for Vikings, especially on the ground. Terrans don't ground them properly I think. They should integrate them with their main army when their opponent gives up the air. Most of the time I'll see useless Vikings flying around and then get grounded too late as an afterthought, or committed too long to some harass.
Viking ground mode should be used to kill a Probe line and get the hell out of there, not linger trying to destroy a 1000/1000 Nexus. When they have nothing to kill they should be a part of the main army, not flying around aimlessly or grounded to help after the army has been destroyed.
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The problem with Vikings is that they don't keep up with ground upgrades. I guess if you throw money into air attack and air armor they would prolly be good late game. But you aren't going to do that because air upgrades don't scale that well and no one has viable Big Air builds on maps that aren't Scrap Station.
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if any of u watched kawaiirice's stream a while ago i remember he was playing against a friend and his composition was marine, tank, ground viking. so basically kawaii was just using the vikings as a meat shield for the banelings. thinking about it, it is slightly more efficient than using marauders for several reasons:
-you can pump more marines because you (can) have more reactors less tech labs on barracks
-vikings have higher dps vs zerglings and banelings than marauders without stim (with stim im not sure, but keep in mind that stim deals damage to marauders), making them more efficient vs both zerglings and banelings than marauders
-i havent confirmed this but vikings LOOK fatter than marauders so its probably harder to get a surround on them
-this isnt really a benefit but i just want to mention you can repair vikings so instead of medivac healing 2 of the 3 units you have (marine marauder) you have scv repairing 2 of the 3 units you have (tank viking)
however the cons:
-vikings cost more.. obviously
-fewer medivacs because you need the vikings
soo yea. additionally, after the match i asked kawaii if he thought the composition was good and he said no so... tell me what u guys think
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as others have mentioned they are cost-worthy against banelings.
Due to their mechanic they often choose were the fight take place and small units coming in a line etc is a good fight.
If you played brood war they can be treated as wraiths when fighting.
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The slow transformation speed makes them very vulnerable. Harassment is often a bigger risk than its potential reward. I would say its most useful lategame where your opponent has several expansion.
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I guess there are too ways of looking at it. Vikings as supporters or vikings as army staples.
As a supporter role vikings would be in smaller numbers, your 6-8 vikings to deal with colossus or brood lords.
As my or an army staple unit. Landing them to support tanks/hellions isn't all that bad. They fire fast, should you upgrade them they get decent damage (but that's still rare). They're basically expensive hydras with some more hp. You can get a decent viking count off of 2 base, but you'll cut into any barracks units if you planned on making them.
Frustratingly enough though I believe they are the only "armored" classified unit that doesn't come with +1 base armor.
Someone previously had suggested dropping 4 from a medivac, I'll have to give that a try. I found out that you could do that by accident and laughed at how silly that seems (what happens if the pilot hits the switch inside the medivac!!!). Given how clumsy their landing mode can be, just think. 6 seconds of an attack are spent landing/taking off. Not terribly ideal. 4 Vikings though do pretty well against an unsuspecting mineral line.
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EPT
