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Since i didn't play the hots beta and am currently experimenting around with the new units i was surprised when the casters in a recent MLG match (Bomber vs Taeja) mentioned that you can target specific units with the widow mine shortly before the shot goes off. Before that i was convinced that the mine targets the unit that comes into range first and that you can not prevent the mine from shooting.
However when i tried this in the unittester, i noticed that this retargeting has a slight delay. This means that you can delay your widow mine shots by rapidly retargeting (basically rightclickspamming) between 2 or more targets within range. If you do this long enough, you can even delay the shot until all targets are out of range and thus prevent the mine from shooting at all!
Is this commonly known by now? I didn't see it used in MLG at all and while it is quite microintensive, it can be very useful to preserve mineshots or just get better shots off.
Imagine for example a zergling/baneling force rushing past your mine (lings leading the charge). By "microing" the mine it is easy to delay the shot until banelings come into range and actually focus those down!
Keep in mind that to do this you need to have the mine(s) selected all the time, so it is probably not very useful in major battles. Also you can't prevent the mine from shooting if only one target is in range (and you can't target friendly units, so placing a marine nearby doesn't help). I hope this will still prove useful to some players 
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noob
User was temp banned for this post.
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On March 19 2013 02:34 Xtreeze wrote:
noob
You wasted your first post on this junk? How is this useful?
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On March 19 2013 02:34 Xtreeze wrote:
noob
-.-'
On topic, this might be too imba though, as terrans can put them on wall-offs, turn them off and with a player like Flash's reflexes, turn them on as lings run by and kill them...
Maybe a cooldown before they can shoot after being turned on?
edit, misunderstood the OP sorry
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All I know for certain is they don't work how you would expect. Life running over 3 of them with dozens of Zerglings and not being blown up in the final game proves this.
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On March 18 2013 11:27 DeCoup wrote:
The way manual mine firing mechanics works is as follows:
- mines automatically squire a target when in range and fire after about a second.
- during this time if you change targets it resets the aiming time to a second again then launches at the new target
- if you keep changing targets before the second is up it will never fire (hold micro)
- if you stop using hold micro all selected mines will fire at the last targeted unit simultaneously.
- if a targeted unit is out of range the mine will auto squire a new target in range. This will reset the aim timer also.
- the whole time a mine is aquiring a target it is visible (but not attackable) by your opponent. This means they are aware you are using hold micro.
- note: (this is the only point which i still need to verify but i believe it is true) for hold micro you can target a unit which is out of range (eg an enemy overlord in your base while your mines are centre map), this does not technically target the overlord. What it does is reset the aim timer and force auto target a unit in range. But the end effect is that you can hold micro using a unit which is out of mine range.
As a high end example, lets say there is a 3 sentry, 5 zealot, 5 stalker army approaching your base and you have 3 mines in their path.
1) select all 3 mines and start using hold micro as they pass over your mines by clicking new targets <1 sec apart.
2) target a sentry with the mines
3) remove a mine from your selection
4) repeat steps 2-3 again until each mine is targeting a different sentry
depending on how quickly you performed steps 3-5 all 3 mines will kill seperate sentries and soften up the rest of the army over a period of 1.1-3 seconds.
I am sorry for my punctuation. Posted this from a phone because people NEED to know this now.
From the discussion thread on widow mine mechanics. Of note, this "hold" micro on the widow mines resets their delay timer before firing.
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If you learn to read editor data, you can figure out how the mine works:
- The widow mine's attack has a prepare time of 1.5 game seconds.
=> This means, that it needs to focus at an enemy for 1.5 seconds before it executes the attack. The unit is required to be targetable and within range during the complete duration.
- The widow mine has range of 5 and no "range extra". So the range for the targeting is exactly 5. Most units have a range extra of 1 allowing them to fire at units that barely touched its max range and run away again.
Ranges use the true distance between the units. This means the attack radius of each unit includes the own unit radius and the target's unit radius to calculate the distance.
- It should target closest valid unit by itself, if it is loosing its target unit (-> unit dies/burrows/cloaks/is out of range/morphs to a structure).
- It doesn't automatically target disguised changelings, revealed hallucinations or units that other mines are targeting.
- Its attack ability is a "smart" ability making it able to be casted via right click on units. (Of course it needs to focus on the target unit again.)
- Widow mines can't target larvae and its targets are required to be visible.
- It can fire in an arc of 360 meaning that it doesn't need to turn to fire.
- It deals 125 damage and up to 35 damage versus shields to the target unit.
- The splash has a radius of 1.75 and can't hit structures and your own widow mines.
- The damage uses the spell type meaning that hardened shield does not reduce its damage.
- The damage has 0 armor reduction meaning that armor can't reduce its damage.
- Attack has a cooldown of 40 seconds.
- "A-Click" doesn't do anything.
- During the focusing, all enemies can see an untargetable image of the widow mine.
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[spoiler]On March 19 2013 04:26 Ahli wrote:
If you learn to read editor data, you can figure out how the mine works:
- The widow mine's attack has a prepare time of 1.5 game seconds.
=> This means, that it needs to focus at an enemy for 1.5 seconds before it executes the attack. The unit is required to be targetable and within range during the complete duration.
- The widow mine has range of 5 and no "range extra". So the range for the targeting is exactly 5. Most units have a range extra of 1 allowing them to fire at units that barely touched its max range and run away again.
Ranges use the true distance between the units. This means the attack radius of each unit includes the own unit radius and the target's unit radius to calculate the distance.
- It should target closest valid unit by itself, if it is loosing its target unit (-> unit dies/burrows/cloaks/is out of range/morphs to a structure).
- It doesn't automatically target disguised changelings, revealed hallucinations or units that other mines are targeting.
- Its attack ability is a "smart" ability making it able to be casted via right click on units. (Of course it needs to focus on the target unit again.)
- Widow mines can't target larvae and its targets are required to be visible.
- It can fire in an arc of 360 meaning that it doesn't need to turn to fire.
- It deals 125 damage and up to 35 damage versus shields to the target unit.
- The splash has a radius of 1.75 and can't hit structures and your own widow mines.
- The damage uses the spell type meaning that hardened shield does not reduce its damage.
- The damage has 0 armor reduction meaning that armor can't reduce its damage.
- Attack has a cooldown of 40 seconds.
- "A-Click" doesn't do anything.
- During the focusing, all enemies can see an untargetable image of the widow mine.
This is the best description of the WM's operation that I've seen yet, really helpful for my understanding of the unit.
Many thanks.
OT: This looks like it might be useful. The trouble is that, during the focussing, the widowmine is revealed (via the untargetable image) and so if you're holding its fire by rapid re-focussing, enemies will see it and may therefore divert the target for which you are holding. If that makes sense.
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EPT
