modedit: Renamed thread as requested from "[D] Widow Mine too random?"
*Please see the update below this portion of the post*
I've been watching the Winter Championship like a lot of other players and fans and I cant help but come to the conclusion that widow mines are just not predictable enough to rely on. I think they are incredibly random, especially in the final 4 matches of Life vs Flash, I mean the widow mines were performing pathetically, and I may even go as far to say, embarrassingly bad. Let's stay away from the "Well flash should have been doing XXXX..." The point is, we are discussing widow mines and their efficacy, specifically in tournament play It seems to me there were so many occasions in this tournament where widow mines were used where they just performed exactly how you would not want them to; attacking the one isolated zergling in the back of the group, or the astray unit, etc and suddenly you find yourself at the mercy of a cooldown on a unit that should be more predictable, at least in my opinion. I'm very curious for other players to chime in on this after seeing them used extensively in the Winter Championship.
-Honorable mention, I did not once see Flash research drilling claws, which was very surprising to me, considering the fact he used them so often. However, this has no effect on their targeting/prioritizing.
Important update regarding the mechanics of the Widowmine, thanks to Zelniq, Morrow, DeCoup and so many others from within the community for some testing.
******The way that Widow Mines operate including its manipulation via manual targeting is described below******
- Standard burrow time is 3 seconds, with the drilling claws upgrade at the factory (armory required) Burrowing is reduced down to a 1 second burrow time.
- A Widow Mine will attack a target on its own, or by manually selecting a target within its range.
- The automatic attack proccess is as follows: After the Widow Mine has completed burrowing, the nearest visible enemy unit within the boundaries of its strict 5 range will be targeted. If that enemy leaves, it retargets, and the attack 1.5 second attack process starts over. It will not automatically target hallucinations or changelings
- The process from lock-on to fire is 1.5 game seconds. In order for it to execute its attack the enemy needs to remain in range until the end of the 1.5 preparatory period. This period can only begin after the Widow Mine has completed the burrowing animation.
- During this time you may manually change targets. With at least one mine is selected, right click on a nearby enemy unit that is within its 5 range during 1.5 second preparatory period; by successfully doing this the timer will reset on its new target, and once the new 1.5 seconds is complete it will fire at the new designated target.
- if you keep changing targets before the second is up it will never fire (this is described as "hold fire micro" - this is important - do not click like a mad man on a bunch of different units because they will never fire. You can, however, do this strategically to prevent premature detonation, if you're comfortable controlling them under those circumstances.)
- The Widow Mine has no "range extra" This essentially means that a unit must be within its 5 range. Certain other units in the game have a bonus range of 1 "range extra" so that if an enemy unit touches the fringe of the perimeter, it will be attacked. To clarify, the widow mine will not do this and it is mechanically clarified in a few moments.
- 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-acquire a new target in range. This will reset the aim timer.
- The whole time a mine is aquiring a target it is visible (but not attackable) by your opponent.
-This means a discerning player may be able to tell you are specifically witholding the attack.
- When an enemy unit approaches the mine and touches the fringe of its radius, it becomes visible, during this time the unit can retreat and successfully not trip the mine.
i also was puzzled at the game 6 on daybreak when life moved his whole army of about 50 lings and 10 mutas over about 3 mines, and literally like 10 zerglings died tops and then easily cleaned up flashes army.
I was thinking the exact same thing and found this thread while searching before I was going to make a post.
The widow mine is entirely too random and is subsequently being beaten with AI exploitation. During the Flash v Life game, control of the mine targeting would have turned the tide in Flash's favor because he would have the micro to actually do it and do it well.. I don't understand why they cannot be controlled..
On March 18 2013 10:20 gabsonuro wrote: i also was puzzled at the game 6 on daybreak when life moved his whole army of about 50 lings and 10 mutas over about 3 mines, and literally like 10 zerglings died tops and then easily cleaned up flashes army.
It's probably because they aimed air instead of ground and when it target air units it doesn't do damage to ground. Same other way arround.
Second possibility is the army left the range of mines way too fast that the game might have stopped it to avoid glitching.
It was literally painful every match. Think of Neo Planet S (medium map, circular shape with no Xel Naga towers) and the engagements of the widow mines were so bad every time. It seems to me with the quantity that Flash had in several of his matches, like others have noted, it just "feels like more damage should have happened" if you will.
On March 18 2013 10:22 bri9and wrote: I was thinking the exact same thing and found this thread while searching before I was going to make a post.
The widow mine is entirely too random and is subsequently being beaten with AI exploitation. During the Flash v Life game, control of the mine targeting would have turned the tide in Flash's favor because he would have the micro to actually do it and do it well.. I don't understand why they cannot be controlled..
On March 18 2013 10:20 gabsonuro wrote: i also was puzzled at the game 6 on daybreak when life moved his whole army of about 50 lings and 10 mutas over about 3 mines, and literally like 10 zerglings died tops and then easily cleaned up flashes army.
It's probably because they aimed air instead of ground and when it target air units it doesn't do damage to ground. Same other way arround.
Second possibility is the army left the range of mines way too fast that the game might have stopped it to avoid glitching.
Actually, quite the contrary, the splash damage from an air unit will affect ground units below it. However, I am not sure about the opposite; the widow mine attacking a ground unit and whether or not if affects any air units above it. I would presume the answer is yes, but I'm curious if anyone knows definitively.
On March 18 2013 10:22 bri9and wrote: I was thinking the exact same thing and found this thread while searching before I was going to make a post.
The widow mine is entirely too random and is subsequently being beaten with AI exploitation. During the Flash v Life game, control of the mine targeting would have turned the tide in Flash's favor because he would have the micro to actually do it and do it well.. I don't understand why they cannot be controlled..
edit: yeah if you want to kill a billion units and not make it random at all (which btw it's not, it's just like how any other unit chooses targets when on autoattack). so for example if life had a few lings separated from the rest of his huge pack out in front to tank mine hits, if flash just targeted the bigger clump by right clicking them it would have targeted those instead and killed a billion lings. as I said in another thread, the game just came out and flash had hardly any time to prepare for it..he admitted as much in an interview. he also didnt get to play beta much with his busy schedule
yeah actually you can targetfire with them I heard, when the target is in range. also I don't think it's random, it just feels/looks that way. if you study it closer or just get more experienced with it, you'll get the feel of how it works I think. it has an unusual, unique ai, but I don't think it's random.
I'm going to test it some right now in the unit tester, I suspect the strange detonations have to do with the speed of the speedlings just zooming on by them..
On March 18 2013 10:42 Zelniq wrote: yeah actually you can targetfire with them I heard, at certain times when the target is in range or something. also I don't think it's random, it just feels/looks that way. if you study it closer or just get more experienced with it, you'll get the feel of how it works I think. it has an unusual, unique ai, but I don't think it's random.
I'm going to test it some right now in the unit tester, I suspect the strange detonations have to do with the speed of the speedlings just zooming on by them..
No you cannot target fire with them. They removed that capability.
As for the detonations, they are more or less completely random in the sense that whichever unit appears closest to the widow mine at first at the moment it burrows will be targeted, but if there are a huge number of targets within roughly the same distance from the widow mine you have almost no clue which will be targetted.
Also very fast units like speedlings can run out of the activation range of the mine if they are on the very fringe of the detonation radius, which then adds on to the randomness because the initial ling targetted becomes untargetted and the mine reacquires a closer target out of the 5000 lings/units there which you have no idea which one it is because there is no indicator.
So, it basically is more or less random in the end because there's no way the human eye can track which unit first comes into the mine's activation radius and if the unit leaves the activation radius with 30 other units entering it shortly after it's impossible to tell what unit is targetted, both visually and in terms of what it's coded to hit.
On March 18 2013 10:42 Zelniq wrote: yeah actually you can targetfire with them I heard, at certain times when the target is in range or something. also I don't think it's random, it just feels/looks that way. if you study it closer or just get more experienced with it, you'll get the feel of how it works I think. it has an unusual, unique ai, but I don't think it's random.
I'm going to test it some right now in the unit tester, I suspect the strange detonations have to do with the speed of the speedlings just zooming on by them..
I think this is spot on. The projectile speed can't catch up so certain units pass by, so it has to hit a unit further back in its range, that will still be in range by the time the projectile hits.
I think there should be a lot shorter delay before they fire and you should be able to control them better in terms of auto attack or not auto attack, or at least have focus fire capability if they are forced to fire on enemy targets entering range.
On March 18 2013 10:42 Zelniq wrote: yeah actually you can targetfire with them I heard, at certain times when the target is in range or something. also I don't think it's random, it just feels/looks that way. if you study it closer or just get more experienced with it, you'll get the feel of how it works I think. it has an unusual, unique ai, but I don't think it's random.
I'm going to test it some right now in the unit tester, I suspect the strange detonations have to do with the speed of the speedlings just zooming on by them..
No you cannot target fire with them. They removed that capability.
As for the detonations, they are more or less completely random in the sense that whichever unit appears closest to the widow mine at first at the moment it burrows will be targeted, but if there are a huge number of targets within roughly the same distance from the widow mine you have almost no clue which will be targetted.
Also very fast units like speedlings can run out of the activation range of the mine if they are on the very fringe of the detonation radius, which then adds on to the randomness because the initial ling targetted becomes untargetted and the mine reacquires a closer target out of the 5000 lings/units there which you have no idea which one it is because there is no indicator.
So, it basically is more or less random in the end because there's no way the human eye can track which unit first comes into the mine's activation radius and if the unit leaves the activation radius with 30 other units entering it shortly after it's impossible to tell what unit is targetted, both visually and in terms of what it's coded to hit.
just tested it many times, targeting definitely works every single time.
On March 18 2013 10:42 Zelniq wrote: yeah actually you can targetfire with them I heard, at certain times when the target is in range or something. also I don't think it's random, it just feels/looks that way. if you study it closer or just get more experienced with it, you'll get the feel of how it works I think. it has an unusual, unique ai, but I don't think it's random.
I'm going to test it some right now in the unit tester, I suspect the strange detonations have to do with the speed of the speedlings just zooming on by them..
No you cannot target fire with them. They removed that capability.
As for the detonations, they are more or less completely random in the sense that whichever unit appears closest to the widow mine at first at the moment it burrows will be targeted, but if there are a huge number of targets within roughly the same distance from the widow mine you have almost no clue which will be targetted.
Also very fast units like speedlings can run out of the activation range of the mine if they are on the very fringe of the detonation radius, which then adds on to the randomness because the initial ling targetted becomes untargetted and the mine reacquires a closer target out of the 5000 lings/units there which you have no idea which one it is because there is no indicator.
So, it basically is more or less random in the end because there's no way the human eye can track which unit first comes into the mine's activation radius and if the unit leaves the activation radius with 30 other units entering it shortly after it's impossible to tell what unit is targetted, both visually and in terms of what it's coded to hit.
just tested it many times, targeting definitely works every single time.
With right clicking? I'm fairly sure this does not work anymore, it "acquires" a target on it's own, I have not been able to manually target anything with mines. But i'll test it out later and check it out again.
On March 18 2013 10:22 bri9and wrote: I was thinking the exact same thing and found this thread while searching before I was going to make a post.
The widow mine is entirely too random and is subsequently being beaten with AI exploitation. During the Flash v Life game, control of the mine targeting would have turned the tide in Flash's favor because he would have the micro to actually do it and do it well.. I don't understand why they cannot be controlled..
You can targetfire with them. Cant you?
No.. That is the problem
yes you can. You can use micro to prevent them from detonating by constantly changing targets and you can choose a target to hit. You can even use this to make multiple mines simultaneously hit 1 target (eg make 2 mines fire at a single overseer at the same time). People are just not aware of this fact.
On March 18 2013 10:42 Zelniq wrote: yeah actually you can targetfire with them I heard, at certain times when the target is in range or something. also I don't think it's random, it just feels/looks that way. if you study it closer or just get more experienced with it, you'll get the feel of how it works I think. it has an unusual, unique ai, but I don't think it's random.
I'm going to test it some right now in the unit tester, I suspect the strange detonations have to do with the speed of the speedlings just zooming on by them..
No you cannot target fire with them. They removed that capability.
As for the detonations, they are more or less completely random in the sense that whichever unit appears closest to the widow mine at first at the moment it burrows will be targeted, but if there are a huge number of targets within roughly the same distance from the widow mine you have almost no clue which will be targetted.
Also very fast units like speedlings can run out of the activation range of the mine if they are on the very fringe of the detonation radius, which then adds on to the randomness because the initial ling targetted becomes untargetted and the mine reacquires a closer target out of the 5000 lings/units there which you have no idea which one it is because there is no indicator.
So, it basically is more or less random in the end because there's no way the human eye can track which unit first comes into the mine's activation radius and if the unit leaves the activation radius with 30 other units entering it shortly after it's impossible to tell what unit is targetted, both visually and in terms of what it's coded to hit.
Thats exactly the randomness I'm describing. For example, If four zerglings walk into the widowmine trigger area at roughly the same time its a complete crapshoot which one is going to be targeted for both parties.
On March 18 2013 10:42 Zelniq wrote: yeah actually you can targetfire with them I heard, at certain times when the target is in range or something. also I don't think it's random, it just feels/looks that way. if you study it closer or just get more experienced with it, you'll get the feel of how it works I think. it has an unusual, unique ai, but I don't think it's random.
I'm going to test it some right now in the unit tester, I suspect the strange detonations have to do with the speed of the speedlings just zooming on by them..
No you cannot target fire with them. They removed that capability.
As for the detonations, they are more or less completely random in the sense that whichever unit appears closest to the widow mine at first at the moment it burrows will be targeted, but if there are a huge number of targets within roughly the same distance from the widow mine you have almost no clue which will be targetted.
Also very fast units like speedlings can run out of the activation range of the mine if they are on the very fringe of the detonation radius, which then adds on to the randomness because the initial ling targetted becomes untargetted and the mine reacquires a closer target out of the 5000 lings/units there which you have no idea which one it is because there is no indicator.
So, it basically is more or less random in the end because there's no way the human eye can track which unit first comes into the mine's activation radius and if the unit leaves the activation radius with 30 other units entering it shortly after it's impossible to tell what unit is targetted, both visually and in terms of what it's coded to hit.
just tested it many times, targeting definitely works every single time.
Which unit tester are you using? I tried about 5 different testers in the arcade by searching "unit test" and all of them didnt even let me use a widow mine, so it would be nice to know which one officially is the "go-to" for some hots testing.
if an enemy unit wanders in range but exits the range (range of 5) within less than ~2 ingame seconds, the mine doesn't fire, same thing goes for multiple units..if 10 lings enter but leave the radius before the ~2 seconds, it doesn't fire. If it's there for ~2+ seconds it does. So for an idea of what that's like, the magic ~2 second time that it won't set the mine off is a speedling off creep that's moving across the edge of the circle's range of a mine, as if you were slicing the end of an orange.
The target unit's speed is irrelevant, a queen off creep can wander in, spot the mine and leave without getting hit if it leaves the radius fast enough. (btw even without detection, the mine reveals itself when I think you wander in its range. reveals its location, but doesn't allow you to attack it, similar to units you can't see that's on higher ground, that shoot you)
@Swagger: search "hots unit tester online" in arcade. it uses whatever the current state of the game is, as in say the unlisted change that occured within last few days where mothership core's recall is canceled if the mothership core dies during the recall
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.
There is no randomness to it at all. It simply fires the first unit that comes within range. What people need to do is learn to target fire properly, or position them better so that it is not wasted on the zerglings in the very front.
On March 18 2013 10:42 Zelniq wrote: yeah actually you can targetfire with them I heard, at certain times when the target is in range or something. also I don't think it's random, it just feels/looks that way. if you study it closer or just get more experienced with it, you'll get the feel of how it works I think. it has an unusual, unique ai, but I don't think it's random.
I'm going to test it some right now in the unit tester, I suspect the strange detonations have to do with the speed of the speedlings just zooming on by them..
No you cannot target fire with them. They removed that capability.
As for the detonations, they are more or less completely random in the sense that whichever unit appears closest to the widow mine at first at the moment it burrows will be targeted, but if there are a huge number of targets within roughly the same distance from the widow mine you have almost no clue which will be targetted.
Also very fast units like speedlings can run out of the activation range of the mine if they are on the very fringe of the detonation radius, which then adds on to the randomness because the initial ling targetted becomes untargetted and the mine reacquires a closer target out of the 5000 lings/units there which you have no idea which one it is because there is no indicator.
So, it basically is more or less random in the end because there's no way the human eye can track which unit first comes into the mine's activation radius and if the unit leaves the activation radius with 30 other units entering it shortly after it's impossible to tell what unit is targetted, both visually and in terms of what it's coded to hit.
just tested it many times, targeting definitely works every single time.
With right clicking? I'm fairly sure this does not work anymore, it "acquires" a target on it's own, I have not been able to manually target anything with mines. But i'll test it out later and check it out again.
yep with right clicking. it definitely works, i tested in in a normal map as well.
some other facts, spawned/temporary units set off mines, including broodlings from broodlords or dead buildings.
also another thing to note is you can 'overkilll' with target fire mines of course..if you have 8 mines and right click a zergling they'll all fire at the zergling.
From what I have seen, they are indeed way too random. There were some points in the Flash vs Life final where Flash's mines crippled him by injuring his own units more than Life's, there were some points where, he practically destroyed the army of Life, and some points in between where they killed some units, but not enough to do serious damage.
IMO these should be heavily modified. I would have liked to see them as spider mines, more for map control than anything else. However, these can be used both offensively and defensively, and I think that basically overlaps the point of the siege tank. Right now, it is a flawed unit in that it serves no unique purpose of the terran army.
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.
great post! and yeah just confirmed this stuff, it's true. I'd just like to correct that it's about 2 ingame(blizzard) seconds, though it feels more like 1 real second I guess. Neat stuff, so you can infinitely or however long you want to, stop their attack as long as there are at least 2 targets in range..but they can see the mine and likely wont just stand around with a bunch of units heh
On March 18 2013 11:20 Zelniq wrote: further testing indicates a couple of things:
if an enemy unit wanders in range but exits the range (range of 5) within less than ~2 ingame seconds, the mine doesn't fire, same thing goes for multiple units..if 10 lings enter but leave the radius before the ~2 seconds, it doesn't fire. If it's there for ~2+ seconds it does. So for an idea of what that's like, the magic ~2 second time that it won't set the mine off is a speedling off creep that's moving across the edge of the circle's range of a mine, as if you were slicing the end of an orange.
The target unit's speed is irrelevant, a queen off creep can wander in, spot the mine and leave without getting hit if it leaves the radius fast enough. (btw even without detection, the mine reveals itself when I think you wander in its range. reveals its location, but doesn't allow you to attack it, similar to units you can't see that's on higher ground, that shoot you)
@Swagger: search "hots unit tester online" in arcade. it uses whatever the current state of the game is, as in say the unlisted change that occured within last few days where mothership core's recall is canceled if the mothership core dies during the recall
Basically the first post i made accurately describes the how the mine works, and no you cannot manually target mines. And yes it is more or less random.
On March 18 2013 11:35 Dibella wrote: As expected. As people get better the Widowmine gets worse.
Essentially yes. It's been an issue since the beta began, reported to blizzard multiple times. They seem fine with how it is though.
argh why are you still saying you can't manually target them...you obviously didn't just test it cus you would have found out you can..and your first post doesn't really explain the mechanics..it's basically what DeCoup posted at the top of this page. test it right now, you can see not only can you target with them but his post about how you can keep changing targets to reset the aim timer to indefinitely prevent them from attacking..just play vs AI and try it..
On March 18 2013 11:55 Zelniq wrote: argh why are you still saying you can't manually target them...you obviously didn't just test it cus you would have found out you can..and your first post doesn't really explain the mechanics..it's basically what DeCoup posted at the top of this page. test it right now, you can see not only can you target with them but his post about how you can keep changing targets to reset the aim timer to indefinitely prevent them from attacking..just play vs AI and try it..
I wouldn't bother arguing with someone that has his head so firmly planted in the sand.
Thanks for the info, definitely confirms a lot of the stuff I've observed while playing around with it, you can retarget but only in range and it restarts the 2 second attack animation. If flash had all his mines hotkeyed and targeted well i think a lot of the fights would have looked completely different in the finals today!
On March 18 2013 11:55 Zelniq wrote: argh why are you still saying you can't manually target them...you obviously didn't just test it cus you would have found out you can..and your first post doesn't really explain the mechanics..it's basically what DeCoup posted at the top of this page. test it right now, you can see not only can you target with them but his post about how you can keep changing targets to reset the aim timer to indefinitely prevent them from attacking..just play vs AI and try it..
I'm talking about manually targetting to have them blow up immediately on the target you want like they were in a previous patch version of beta. You can no longer do that.
OK, well how was anyone supposed to know that from your statements..and if that's how it worked before then it sounds like they fixed an unintended mechanic of the mine.. The delay before it fires as it aims at a target seems deliberate. And since you can target them they aren't random at all, nor unreasonable to make effective use of them, unlike your first post implicated.
On March 18 2013 11:20 Zelniq wrote: further testing indicates a couple of things:
if an enemy unit wanders in range but exits the range (range of 5) within less than ~2 ingame seconds, the mine doesn't fire, same thing goes for multiple units..if 10 lings enter but leave the radius before the ~2 seconds, it doesn't fire. If it's there for ~2+ seconds it does. So for an idea of what that's like, the magic ~2 second time that it won't set the mine off is a speedling off creep that's moving across the edge of the circle's range of a mine, as if you were slicing the end of an orange.
The target unit's speed is irrelevant, a queen off creep can wander in, spot the mine and leave without getting hit if it leaves the radius fast enough. (btw even without detection, the mine reveals itself when I think you wander in its range. reveals its location, but doesn't allow you to attack it, similar to units you can't see that's on higher ground, that shoot you)
@Swagger: search "hots unit tester online" in arcade. it uses whatever the current state of the game is, as in say the unlisted change that occured within last few days where mothership core's recall is canceled if the mothership core dies during the recall
no you cannot manually target mines. And yes it is more or less random.
On March 18 2013 11:55 Zelniq wrote: argh why are you still saying you can't manually target them...you obviously didn't just test it cus you would have found out you can..and your first post doesn't really explain the mechanics..it's basically what DeCoup posted at the top of this page. test it right now, you can see not only can you target with them but his post about how you can keep changing targets to reset the aim timer to indefinitely prevent them from attacking..just play vs AI and try it..
I'm talking about manually targetting to have them blow up immediately on the target you want like they were in a previous patch version of beta. You can no longer do that.
It's no wonder people don't take you seriously when you argue, its just an exercise in eye-rolling and face-palming frustration.
Oh you can still target with the mine, thought they removed it in order to keep the mine strong, so positioning them is important as well as the ability for the opponent to set the mines off. So personally I hope they remove the targeting completely. And not so sure that their targeting is to random. Atleast for your opponent because the reveal when it is targeting basically tells you which one of your units the mine is locking on, so you can sort it out. Especially blink dodge is easy. I really like the mine not being controlable apart from burrow unburrow (which is super fast with the upgrade), that way it can keep the high damage. Sure it owns noobs, but so do most AoEs.
And Flash should have just done what other Terrans already did in the tournament, leave a small bit of Bio in range to make sure the lings stack up when the mines go off.
On March 18 2013 12:08 Zelniq wrote: OK, well how was anyone supposed to know that from your statements..and if that's how it worked before then it sounds like they fixed an unintended mechanic of the mine.. The delay before it fires as it aims at a target seems deliberate. And since you can target them they aren't random at all, nor unreasonable to make effective use of them, unlike your first post implicated.
Well, it's unreasonable for a player of SC2 to know that you can manually target a mine when there's no target command and nothing in the tooltip that explains anything close to that.
Isn't the real problem with mines that you can run a group of 50 lings over them and they do barely anything unless you target fire with them? Awesome unit for zoning out different attack paths etc.
On March 18 2013 12:08 Zelniq wrote: OK, well how was anyone supposed to know that from your statements..and if that's how it worked before then it sounds like they fixed an unintended mechanic of the mine.. The delay before it fires as it aims at a target seems deliberate. And since you can target them they aren't random at all, nor unreasonable to make effective use of them, unlike your first post implicated.
Well, it's unreasonable for a player of SC2 to know that you can manually target a mine when there's no target command and nothing in the tooltip that explains anything close to that.
On March 18 2013 11:20 Zelniq wrote: further testing indicates a couple of things:
if an enemy unit wanders in range but exits the range (range of 5) within less than ~2 ingame seconds, the mine doesn't fire, same thing goes for multiple units..if 10 lings enter but leave the radius before the ~2 seconds, it doesn't fire. If it's there for ~2+ seconds it does. So for an idea of what that's like, the magic ~2 second time that it won't set the mine off is a speedling off creep that's moving across the edge of the circle's range of a mine, as if you were slicing the end of an orange.
The target unit's speed is irrelevant, a queen off creep can wander in, spot the mine and leave without getting hit if it leaves the radius fast enough. (btw even without detection, the mine reveals itself when I think you wander in its range. reveals its location, but doesn't allow you to attack it, similar to units you can't see that's on higher ground, that shoot you)
@Swagger: search "hots unit tester online" in arcade. it uses whatever the current state of the game is, as in say the unlisted change that occured within last few days where mothership core's recall is canceled if the mothership core dies during the recall
no you cannot manually target mines. And yes it is more or less random.
On March 18 2013 11:55 Zelniq wrote: argh why are you still saying you can't manually target them...you obviously didn't just test it cus you would have found out you can..and your first post doesn't really explain the mechanics..it's basically what DeCoup posted at the top of this page. test it right now, you can see not only can you target with them but his post about how you can keep changing targets to reset the aim timer to indefinitely prevent them from attacking..just play vs AI and try it..
I'm talking about manually targetting to have them blow up immediately on the target you want like they were in a previous patch version of beta. You can no longer do that.
It's no wonder people don't take you seriously when you argue, its just an exercise in eye-rolling and face-palming frustration.
Nice ad hominem, lots of people specialize more in ad hominems lately than they do in analysis because it's easier for them.
Point i was making that flew over your head was that in the beta you previously could use the attack command to manually target widow mines onto units, whereas in the current release version that is no longer possible.
What zelniq is saying is entirely different. He is saying you can target the widow mines with a right click command onto units which is completely unintuitive for any player that played the beta version with the previous attack command that was on the command card and the current incarnation of the mine that has no option available in the command card.
How is a player supposed to know that they can re-target the widow mine manually by constantly changing attack targets with the mine over and over within a 2 second time-span? No one knew this before, and there also is no tool-tip for it.
So deth if you want to go argue about arguments and improve your ad hominem take it to reddit, they take that quite seriously over there.
There's a differentiation between the ability for a player to use the attack-move command and for something that does not show that in the command card yet it's still possible with a weird rule on it that no one knows about.
On March 18 2013 12:08 Zelniq wrote: OK, well how was anyone supposed to know that from your statements..and if that's how it worked before then it sounds like they fixed an unintended mechanic of the mine.. The delay before it fires as it aims at a target seems deliberate. And since you can target them they aren't random at all, nor unreasonable to make effective use of them, unlike your first post implicated.
Well, it's unreasonable for a player of SC2 to know that you can manually target a mine when there's no target command and nothing in the tooltip that explains anything close to that.
You started out saying that widow mines couldn't be manually targeted, then stated that you originally meant that widow mines couldn't be manually targeted and then instantly attack, now argue that it's unreasonable to not have the tooltip explain to you that mines can manually target units... I'm so confused. All Zelniq is trying to say is that you can target widow mines, which is correct.
I'm fairly certain you did not know manually targeting widow mines was possible under any circumstance. You said "With right clicking? I'm fairly sure this does not work anymore, it 'acquires' a target on it's own, I have not been able to manually target anything with mines." That's a very clear statement, I don't understand why you argue that this implied only an instant widow mine shot was possible after manually targeting a unit.
Well, seeing mlg, it confirmed what i thought. Mines are good, but there not a replacement for aoe in a composition. But, mixed in your strategy and dropping some now and then is pretty sweet. So, yes they are good as a harras/defensive/spotter unit. But if u use them as your main aoe unit, chances are u will loose when facing an equally talented player.
But mines will have a bigger effect in lowerleagues because everyone is a-moving.
Its your own fault for not expressing yourself clearly at all, making broad untrue statements and then continuing to try and take some sort of high ground when called out for being wrong
i honestly can't comprehend why you continue to express yourself in such a bias, whining, anti blizz and self important fashion every time you're playing horribly or cannot figure out how to use units correctly. its been annoying me for years.
On March 18 2013 12:35 deth wrote: Its your own fault for not expressing yourself clearly at all, making broad untrue statements and then continuing to try and take some sort of high ground when called out for being wrong
i honestly can't comprehend why you continue to express yourself in such a bias, whining, anti blizz and self important fashion every time you're playing horribly or cannot figure out how to use units correctly. its been annoying me for years.
Ur mood doesnt correspond well with the above statement
Of course it wouldn't, avilo calls him out on ad hominem when avilo was basically asking to be ad hominem'd when he absolutely refused to actually address Zelniq.
Anyway.
Widow mines do seem a tad random, or should I say a bit wonky in their controls. Zelniq mentioned a 2 second time window where there's a target but the mine will not fire. Maybe if blizz reduces it to 1 sec it would 'respond better' and seem less random. Or widen the radius a bit.
Tbh it seemed as random as it did in life vs flash because life's lings were so fast. I do remember a game on daybreak where life ran over some planted mines and they only managed to catch the last couple of lings, other times the mines wrecked his mutas. Speed does seem to enter the equation. So I'd declare for now that tanks are still best anti ling aoe because it's hitscan.
also, about the 'hold position' micro. Does anyone know if it works like lurkers did in bw?
I did some extensive testing myself, it appears you can right click onto other units with the widow mine and it will *most of the time* execute the performed choice, however, like others have stated; the widow mine does definitely overkill.Also, if you find yourself spamming right click like a mad man between several units they wont engage, which I believe zelniq did specify. That being said if you target one unit with all, they will all attack that one unit and they will ALL be on cooldown. Another thing I had tried is queuing right clicks with the mine, it appears that it will try and attack all the units you right click. There is no clear way to prove this because of matters I explain in a moment. I will say, if this is how they intend a person to control the mine. It is very unintuitive, meaning, it is not explained anywhere, it does not show anything of the sort on the command card, unit information, etc. Not to mention, since theres technically no confirmation, it still feels like you have no complete control of what it attacks. That may be the way they want it, after all.
Guys - A widow mine costs the same as ONE baneling, 50 for a pair of lings, and 25/25 for the baneling, it does a lot more damage, has a lot more HP, can attack air and ground, and can be used repeatedly.
I think you are expecting too much for such a cheap unit. Life just played very well, you can't expect him to lose all his lings to 1 widow mine.
On March 18 2013 13:34 bakemono wrote: Guys - A widow mine costs the same as ONE baneling, 50 for a pair of lings, and 25/25 for the baneling, it does a lot more damage, has a lot more HP, can attack air and ground, and can be used repeatedly.
I think you are expecting too much for such a cheap unit. Life just played very well, you can't expect him to lose all his lings to 1 widow mine.
for the record, it costs 4 times the supply of a baneling.
TheSwagger, I tested both of your unconfirmed statements in a unit tester and they don't seem to work.
This is a useful micro trick from what I've seen. I think it will only be worthwhile to use this for small numbers of widow mines in engagements, because it's difficult to spread your attacks to different targets within two in-game seconds, and more than two or three widow mines triggering on a single unit would be inefficient.
I was worried widow mines would have no micro potential excepting positioning and burrowing them. I hope the manual targeting capability stays in the game, it allows widow mines to scale with better micro.
how widow mine works they lock onto a target. first one who enter within 5 range OR best unit (which is basically the closest unit to the widow mine) once they lock into a target it begins channeling for 1.5 seconds (ingame)
if the unit leaves the 5 range, dies or player manually switches target during the channeling period - the widow mine repeats the process
so this is why mines sometimes dont attack, sometimes kill terran and sometimes kill zerg so lets say you run in with zerglings against marines and a widow mine. the widow mine locks onto the first zergling who enters. if the zergling dies to marines, it changes target and has to wait another 1.5 sek, if that ling dies to marines it changes target etc. so it appears not to be attacking at all. if the zergling runs past the widow mine, behind the marines for example it switches target as well (the target has to be within 5 range the entire lockdown process)
as terran so in a fight, you basically as terran ideally want to switch targets between the zerglings until the banelings enter range and then you target the bane and let the mines be. second option is to stay with the marines, burst down as many lings as you can, and hopefully (and probably) you will kill all zerglings which were targetted automatically by the widow mines before they finish channeling and then banelings enter and you target the mines onto the banes
as zerg as a zerg player, you know that your first zerglings will be targetted, so use your frontal line in move command behind the terran army and attack with the rest of your zerglings normally. if you do this just right (and terran doesnt) the mines will all fire on your lings that are behind his bio army and kill everything he got
widow mines appear random at the first glance of it. but the more you play around with them the more you realize how much you (as terran or zerg) can manipulate them and make them do exactly what you want them to. its not a user friendly unit at all because of how it can completely backfire using widow mines where as a siege tank you know will do a certain amount of damage. things like this is really beautiful and what is making bw a very different game from sc2. in bw there were tons of "OP" units that crushed your opponent or did close to nothing or killed yourself where as in sc2 its much more predictable whats expected of a unit because the complexity of it its not very deep
i think the widow mines are slightly too strong right now. but if your a zerg reading this i hope it helped abit how to make the widow mines turn against the terran instead of raping everything you got
On March 18 2013 14:15 MorroW wrote: how widow mine works they lock onto a target. first one who enter within 5 range OR best unit (which is basically the closest unit to the widow mine) once they lock into a target it begins channeling for 1.5 seconds (ingame)
if the unit leaves the 5 range, dies or player manually switches target during the channeling period - the widow mine repeats the process
so this is why mines sometimes dont attack, sometimes kill terran and sometimes kill zerg so lets say you run in with zerglings against marines and a widow mine. the widow mine locks onto the first zergling who enters. if the zergling dies to marines, it changes target and has to wait another 1.5 sek, if that ling dies to marines it changes target etc. so it appears not to be attacking at all. if the zergling runs past the widow mine, behind the marines for example it switches target as well (the target has to be within 5 range the entire lockdown process)
as terran so in a fight, you basically as terran ideally want to switch targets between the zerglings until the banelings enter range and then you target the bane and let the mines be. second option is to stay with the marines, burst down as many lings as you can, and hopefully (and probably) you will kill all zerglings which were targetted automatically by the widow mines before they finish channeling and then banelings enter and you target the mines onto the banes
as zerg as a zerg player, you know that your first zerglings will be targetted, so use your frontal line in move command behind the terran army and attack with the rest of your zerglings normally. if you do this just right (and terran doesnt) the mines will all fire on your lings that are behind his bio army and kill everything he got
widow mines appear random at the first glance of it. but the more you play around with them the more you realize how much you (as terran or zerg) can manipulate them and make them do exactly what you want them to. its not a user friendly unit at all because of how it can completely backfire using widow mines where as a siege tank you know will do a certain amount of damage. things like this is really beautiful and what is making bw a very different game from sc2. in bw there were tons of "OP" units that crushed your opponent or did close to nothing or killed yourself where as in sc2 its much more predictable whats expected of a unit because the complexity of it its not very deep
i think the widow mines are slightly too strong right now. but if your a zerg reading this i hope it helped abit how to make the widow mines turn against the terran instead of raping everything you got
Whats your opinion about unitcomposition? Like, i see many proterrans play widowmine/marine/medivac. On MLG too with some succes. Do u think (against Z in particular) it's better to mix tanks and widowmines or play widowmines only?
It feels for me the 125 splashdamage is pretty cool, but the cooldown is what is makes the composition weaker in mid and late game. Still i see proterrans sticking with there composition. Which could state im wrong. What do u think?
On March 18 2013 14:15 MorroW wrote: how widow mine works they lock onto a target. first one who enter within 5 range OR best unit (which is basically the closest unit to the widow mine) once they lock into a target it begins channeling for 1.5 seconds (ingame)
if the unit leaves the 5 range, dies or player manually switches target during the channeling period - the widow mine repeats the process
so this is why mines sometimes dont attack, sometimes kill terran and sometimes kill zerg so lets say you run in with zerglings against marines and a widow mine. the widow mine locks onto the first zergling who enters. if the zergling dies to marines, it changes target and has to wait another 1.5 sek, if that ling dies to marines it changes target etc. so it appears not to be attacking at all. if the zergling runs past the widow mine, behind the marines for example it switches target as well (the target has to be within 5 range the entire lockdown process)
as terran so in a fight, you basically as terran ideally want to switch targets between the zerglings until the banelings enter range and then you target the bane and let the mines be. second option is to stay with the marines, burst down as many lings as you can, and hopefully (and probably) you will kill all zerglings which were targetted automatically by the widow mines before they finish channeling and then banelings enter and you target the mines onto the banes
as zerg as a zerg player, you know that your first zerglings will be targetted, so use your frontal line in move command behind the terran army and attack with the rest of your zerglings normally. if you do this just right (and terran doesnt) the mines will all fire on your lings that are behind his bio army and kill everything he got
widow mines appear random at the first glance of it. but the more you play around with them the more you realize how much you (as terran or zerg) can manipulate them and make them do exactly what you want them to. its not a user friendly unit at all because of how it can completely backfire using widow mines where as a siege tank you know will do a certain amount of damage. things like this is really beautiful and what is making bw a very different game from sc2. in bw there were tons of "OP" units that crushed your opponent or did close to nothing or killed yourself where as in sc2 its much more predictable whats expected of a unit because the complexity of it its not very deep
i think the widow mines are slightly too strong right now. but if your a zerg reading this i hope it helped abit how to make the widow mines turn against the terran instead of raping everything you got
So its like the spidermines in bw, as in mine dragging, map control, and blowing things up??
I'm a master zerg and even I don't want mines to be nerfed, it just feels so great to be able to do better by playing better(morrow made a really good thread a couple of months ago about how zerg didn't really have the ability to micro in the sence that 90% of the obligatory microing falls on the protoss/terran during the battle). Now I can finally look at a game i've won(or lost) and say "yeah, that was me winning/losing the decicive battle" instead of having to just sit there and grunt about how stupid it was that i couldn't have done anything better micro-wise to win.
On March 18 2013 11:20 Zelniq wrote: further testing indicates a couple of things:
if an enemy unit wanders in range but exits the range (range of 5) within less than ~2 ingame seconds, the mine doesn't fire, same thing goes for multiple units..if 10 lings enter but leave the radius before the ~2 seconds, it doesn't fire. If it's there for ~2+ seconds it does. So for an idea of what that's like, the magic ~2 second time that it won't set the mine off is a speedling off creep that's moving across the edge of the circle's range of a mine, as if you were slicing the end of an orange.
The target unit's speed is irrelevant, a queen off creep can wander in, spot the mine and leave without getting hit if it leaves the radius fast enough. (btw even without detection, the mine reveals itself when I think you wander in its range. reveals its location, but doesn't allow you to attack it, similar to units you can't see that's on higher ground, that shoot you)
@Swagger: search "hots unit tester online" in arcade. it uses whatever the current state of the game is, as in say the unlisted change that occured within last few days where mothership core's recall is canceled if the mothership core dies during the recall
no you cannot manually target mines. And yes it is more or less random.
TO THIS:
On March 18 2013 12:01 avilo wrote:
On March 18 2013 11:55 Zelniq wrote: argh why are you still saying you can't manually target them...you obviously didn't just test it cus you would have found out you can..and your first post doesn't really explain the mechanics..it's basically what DeCoup posted at the top of this page. test it right now, you can see not only can you target with them but his post about how you can keep changing targets to reset the aim timer to indefinitely prevent them from attacking..just play vs AI and try it..
I'm talking about manually targetting to have them blow up immediately on the target you want like they were in a previous patch version of beta. You can no longer do that.
It's no wonder people don't take you seriously when you argue, its just an exercise in eye-rolling and face-palming frustration.
Nice ad hominem, lots of people specialize more in ad hominems lately than they do in analysis because it's easier for them.
Point i was making that flew over your head was that in the beta you previously could use the attack command to manually target widow mines onto units, whereas in the current release version that is no longer possible.
What zelniq is saying is entirely different. He is saying you can target the widow mines with a right click command onto units which is completely unintuitive for any player that played the beta version with the previous attack command that was on the command card and the current incarnation of the mine that has no option available in the command card.
How is a player supposed to know that they can re-target the widow mine manually by constantly changing attack targets with the mine over and over within a 2 second time-span? No one knew this before, and there also is no tool-tip for it.
So deth if you want to go argue about arguments and improve your ad hominem take it to reddit, they take that quite seriously over there.
There's a differentiation between the ability for a player to use the attack-move command and for something that does not show that in the command card yet it's still possible with a weird rule on it that no one knows about.
you wanna know why everyone ends up making ad hominem attacks on you? its because you're legitly, genuinely, dumb. im not saying that as an insult or anything. you just don't think well. so you keep saying things that are untrue and missing points that are very clearly made. so people get frustrated and tell you to fuck off. its been a pattern since the start of sc2. you're slow but even you should get it by now.
Removing FF from WM would be a pretty good step IMO.
Oh hell no. You would get a retarded composition of just tanks and repairing scvs while spamming missile turrets that will autowin vs all races including night elf.
Widow mines definitely seem really random to me. I had game earlier where some lings ran right past my widow mines, I was certain it was a bug.
Here's a video from the replay:
The lings run around a corner, each one coming into range of mines #2 and #3, but each one never stays in range long enough for the mines to fire. When I watched the replay from the zerg's viewpoint, he could see the mines flickering in and out but never firing a shot.
I've never seen a mechanic like this in an RTS game, and I've never seen widow mines do this in the many streamed games I've watched. Stuff like this definitely adds to the randomness... I'd be in favor of having them fire instantly at units in range, but have the shot travel slightly slower maybe.
you wanna know why everyone ends up making ad hominem attacks on you? its because you're legitly, genuinely, dumb. im not saying that as an insult or anything. you just don't think well. so you keep saying things that are untrue and missing points that are very clearly made. so people get frustrated and tell you to fuck off. its been a pattern since the start of sc2. you're slow but even you should get it by now.
On March 18 2013 15:44 Chocobo wrote: Widow mines definitely seem really random to me. I had game earlier where some lings ran right past my widow mines, I was certain it was a bug.
At a glance it seems consistent with morrow's description. Every single ling that passed through didn't stay long enough for it's "channeling" complete.
IMO it's working as intended. Otherwise you would get results like multiple wms overkilling a single ling or accidentally losing your entire bio army because a roach tunneled under you.
It may look random if you don't look how it works carefully. The longer you play you will learn how to manipulate them from both sides. Life manipulated mines really fucking well against Last and Flash. This is better for the game.
On March 18 2013 15:44 Chocobo wrote: Widow mines definitely seem really random to me. I had game earlier where some lings ran right past my widow mines, I was certain it was a bug.
At a glance it seems consistent with morrow's description. Every single ling that passed through didn't stay long enough for it's "channeling" complete.
Yes I agree, now that I know that's how it works I realize it's not a bug. It just looks funny to see all the lings running past the mines.
IMO it's working as intended. Otherwise you would get results like multiple wms overkilling a single ling or accidentally losing your entire bio army because a roach tunneled under you.
It's working as intended, but imho I don't think it should be intended to work that way. I don't see anything wrong with the situations you described, or with having the widow mines fire their shot off instantly when a target is in range.
On March 18 2013 12:35 deth wrote: Its your own fault for not expressing yourself clearly at all, making broad untrue statements and then continuing to try and take some sort of high ground when called out for being wrong
i honestly can't comprehend why you continue to express yourself in such a bias, whining, anti blizz and self important fashion every time you're playing horribly or cannot figure out how to use units correctly. its been annoying me for years.
The funny thing is, no one really cares what you think.
Haven't you ever learned that if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all. Because all you're doing now is not adding anything constructive to this conversation other than your over-inflated ego and and some deep seated hate.
Instead of continually replying with taunts and coming off as a jerk, it would make more sense to take it to PMs, so you won't look like such an arrogant fool.
Either that, or participate in the thread like a decent human being.
It's your choice, but ask yourself honestly, are you acting like a douche right now? And there's no way to hide from the answer that rings true from within you.
On March 18 2013 16:16 Chocobo wrote: It's working as intended, but imho I don't think it should be intended to work that way. I don't see anything wrong with the situations you described, or with having the widow mines fire their shot off instantly when a target is in range.
Consistency is good in a competitive game.
I find it more consistent than a wm having no delay, actually. You are given a leeway of ~2 secs for the wm to shoot a more valuable target instead of a minesweeper ling that the clump of bio nearby was supposed prevent. They'll become close to useless as burrowed banes IMO.
On March 18 2013 16:18 `dunedain wrote: The funny thing is, no one really cares what you think.
Actually I appreciated what he did. Someone had to say it. His posts are usually too painful to read. Makes me wish that I can filter his name like in 4chan so that I can never read his posts.
There should just be an upgrade that lowers the cool-down or maybe lowers the targeting time to make it less coin-flippy in larger, late game engagements. While the hold-micro tricks are definitely sexy, it is not feasible for any player to make use of it past a certain point in the game. Thus, the randomness of the widow mine comes back, and the risk of having it sit there with its thumb up its ass waiting for cool down is too great to justify the dice roll of an effective detonation.
The main goal is to balance a unit with depth with being usable. If it proves to be to random in late game situations, it will be abandoned for something more stable, and possibly more boring.
EDIT: Please stop with the flames. This thread is important.
On March 18 2013 17:05 J.E.G. wrote: There should just be an upgrade that lowers the cool-down or maybe lowers the targeting time to make it less coin-flippy in larger, late game engagements. While the hold-micro tricks are definitely sexy, it is not feasible for any player to make use of it past a certain point in the game. Thus, the randomness of the widow mine comes back, and the risk of having it sit there with its thumb up its ass waiting for cool down is too great to justify the dice roll of an effective detonation.
The main goal is to balance a unit with depth with being usable. If it proves to be to random in late game situations, it will be abandoned for something more stable, and possibly more boring.
EDIT: Please stop with the flames. This thread is important.
Does this not just come down to positioning your mines better? If lings run past the very outside radius, it probably shouldn't go off and kill half of them, if they run right over the top, it almost certainly will go off. They already have a fairly generous range, and cost almost nothing. Just make 2 or 3 and spread them out so that your opponent is guaranteed to pretty much step on one.
As I said before I think you Terran expect far too much for such a cheap/extremely efficient unit. You don't see zerg complaining that marines split when a baneling shows up and that it gets shot down before it can get into melee range.
On March 18 2013 17:05 J.E.G. wrote: There should just be an upgrade that lowers the cool-down or maybe lowers the targeting time to make it less coin-flippy in larger, late game engagements. While the hold-micro tricks are definitely sexy, it is not feasible for any player to make use of it past a certain point in the game. Thus, the randomness of the widow mine comes back, and the risk of having it sit there with its thumb up its ass waiting for cool down is too great to justify the dice roll of an effective detonation.
The main goal is to balance a unit with depth with being usable. If it proves to be to random in late game situations, it will be abandoned for something more stable, and possibly more boring.
EDIT: Please stop with the flames. This thread is important.
Widow mines are very strong in the late game. I don't understand why you think they aren't feasible past a certain point. For example, the only zerg units mines aren't strong against in the late game is brood lords.
I don't agree that use of the widow mine is a dice roll. People don't call friendly fire on tanks, spider mines, and reavers coin flippy. If you think widow mines are too coin flippy to be viable in the late game, maybe they should be buffed in other ways. I completely agree with morrow, units that can be turned against you but are very effective if used correctly are great units. I would rather have units that are difficult to use but highly potent when used correctly than consistent units with a lower skill ceiling.
On March 18 2013 17:05 J.E.G. wrote: There should just be an upgrade that lowers the cool-down or maybe lowers the targeting time to make it less coin-flippy in larger, late game engagements. While the hold-micro tricks are definitely sexy, it is not feasible for any player to make use of it past a certain point in the game. Thus, the randomness of the widow mine comes back, and the risk of having it sit there with its thumb up its ass waiting for cool down is too great to justify the dice roll of an effective detonation.
The main goal is to balance a unit with depth with being usable. If it proves to be to random in late game situations, it will be abandoned for something more stable, and possibly more boring.
EDIT: Please stop with the flames. This thread is important.
Does this not just come down to positioning your mines better? If lings run past the very outside radius, it probably shouldn't go off and kill half of them, if they run right over the top, it almost certainly will go off. They already have a fairly generous range, and cost almost nothing. Just make 2 or 3 and spread them out so that your opponent is guaranteed to pretty much step on one.
As I said before I think you Terran expect far too much for such a cheap/extremely efficient unit. You don't see zerg complaining that marines split when a baneling shows up and that it gets shot down before it can get into melee range.
Agreed. In contrary to banelings the widowmines are way better and cheap early in game.
1. There invisible 2. They can connect more then once 3. Can target air 4. Have a larger range 5. Dont need speedupgrade 6. Cant be blinding clouded 7. Forces opponent to invest in detection early 8. Can be combined with speedmedi's
It's a nice unit for the cost and gives terran more options. Certainly that blinding cloud doesnt affect the mines is a big bonus .
On March 18 2013 17:05 J.E.G. wrote: There should just be an upgrade that lowers the cool-down or maybe lowers the targeting time to make it less coin-flippy in larger, late game engagements. While the hold-micro tricks are definitely sexy, it is not feasible for any player to make use of it past a certain point in the game. Thus, the randomness of the widow mine comes back, and the risk of having it sit there with its thumb up its ass waiting for cool down is too great to justify the dice roll of an effective detonation.
The main goal is to balance a unit with depth with being usable. If it proves to be to random in late game situations, it will be abandoned for something more stable, and possibly more boring.
EDIT: Please stop with the flames. This thread is important.
Does this not just come down to positioning your mines better? If lings run past the very outside radius, it probably shouldn't go off and kill half of them, if they run right over the top, it almost certainly will go off. They already have a fairly generous range, and cost almost nothing. Just make 2 or 3 and spread them out so that your opponent is guaranteed to pretty much step on one.
As I said before I think you Terran expect far too much for such a cheap/extremely efficient unit. You don't see zerg complaining that marines split when a baneling shows up and that it gets shot down before it can get into melee range.
I don't play terran. Widow mines are fun to watch, and i don't want players to stop using them if they are faulty in late-game situations.
The problem i think of in regards to better positioning is that moment when day9 was about to have a heart attack as a large group of mutas and lings went straight over three mines (i forget which game...) and nothing happened. This behavior was consistently inconsistent throughout the series.
As for the baneling analogy, it is less like a terran preforming good splits to avert baneling damage and more like connecting a perfect baneling hit on a pack of marines only to see a couple of them die. If WMs are only killing a couple lings after ~14 minutes into a game, they are not efficient at all, and there is not much the terran player can do about it. This would lead to more stable and possibly more boring play and unit compostions, which I am against.
On March 18 2013 17:05 J.E.G. wrote: There should just be an upgrade that lowers the cool-down or maybe lowers the targeting time to make it less coin-flippy in larger, late game engagements. While the hold-micro tricks are definitely sexy, it is not feasible for any player to make use of it past a certain point in the game. Thus, the randomness of the widow mine comes back, and the risk of having it sit there with its thumb up its ass waiting for cool down is too great to justify the dice roll of an effective detonation.
The main goal is to balance a unit with depth with being usable. If it proves to be to random in late game situations, it will be abandoned for something more stable, and possibly more boring.
EDIT: Please stop with the flames. This thread is important.
Widow mines are very strong in the late game. I don't understand why you think they aren't feasible past a certain point. For example, the only zerg units mines aren't strong against in the late game is brood lords.
I don't agree that use of the widow mine is a dice roll. People don't call friendly fire on tanks, spider mines, and reavers coin flippy. If you think widow mines are too coin flippy to be viable in the late game, maybe they should be buffed in other ways. I completely agree with morrow, units that can be turned against you but are very effective if used correctly are great units. I would rather have units that are difficult to use but highly potent when used correctly than consistent units with a lower skill ceiling.
Reavers were very coin-flippy with glitchy scarabs, but that is a bit besides the point.
The risk of friendly fire with tanks and spider mines is great for adding depth to the game. Zealot bombs were one of my favorite things to see in BW. The difference here is that those things were more readily identified as strategies by the players and spectators, where as the widow mine detonations are more likely to be identified as a glitch instead of respecting an awesome play during a large late game battle, which is rather anti-climactic.
It's impossible for it to be truly random of course, so the question is: is it possible to use mines reliably and consistently. i guess we just wait and see over the next few months.
On March 18 2013 17:05 J.E.G. wrote: There should just be an upgrade that lowers the cool-down or maybe lowers the targeting time to make it less coin-flippy in larger, late game engagements. While the hold-micro tricks are definitely sexy, it is not feasible for any player to make use of it past a certain point in the game. Thus, the randomness of the widow mine comes back, and the risk of having it sit there with its thumb up its ass waiting for cool down is too great to justify the dice roll of an effective detonation.
The main goal is to balance a unit with depth with being usable. If it proves to be to random in late game situations, it will be abandoned for something more stable, and possibly more boring.
EDIT: Please stop with the flames. This thread is important.
Does this not just come down to positioning your mines better? If lings run past the very outside radius, it probably shouldn't go off and kill half of them, if they run right over the top, it almost certainly will go off. They already have a fairly generous range, and cost almost nothing. Just make 2 or 3 and spread them out so that your opponent is guaranteed to pretty much step on one.
As I said before I think you Terran expect far too much for such a cheap/extremely efficient unit. You don't see zerg complaining that marines split when a baneling shows up and that it gets shot down before it can get into melee range.
I don't play terran. Widow mines are fun to watch, and i don't want players to stop using them if they are faulty in late-game situations.
The problem i think of in regards to better positioning is that moment when day9 was about to have a heart attack as a large group of mutas and lings went straight over three mines (i forget which game...) and nothing happened. This behavior was consistently inconsistent throughout the series.
As for the baneling analogy, it is less like a terran preforming good splits to avert baneling damage and more like connecting a perfect baneling hit on a pack of marines only to see a couple of them die. If WMs are only killing a couple lings after ~14 minutes into a game, they are not efficient at all, and there is not much the terran player can do about it. This would lead to more stable and possibly more boring play and unit compostions, which I am against.
On March 18 2013 17:05 J.E.G. wrote: There should just be an upgrade that lowers the cool-down or maybe lowers the targeting time to make it less coin-flippy in larger, late game engagements. While the hold-micro tricks are definitely sexy, it is not feasible for any player to make use of it past a certain point in the game. Thus, the randomness of the widow mine comes back, and the risk of having it sit there with its thumb up its ass waiting for cool down is too great to justify the dice roll of an effective detonation.
The main goal is to balance a unit with depth with being usable. If it proves to be to random in late game situations, it will be abandoned for something more stable, and possibly more boring.
EDIT: Please stop with the flames. This thread is important.
Widow mines are very strong in the late game. I don't understand why you think they aren't feasible past a certain point. For example, the only zerg units mines aren't strong against in the late game is brood lords.
I don't agree that use of the widow mine is a dice roll. People don't call friendly fire on tanks, spider mines, and reavers coin flippy. If you think widow mines are too coin flippy to be viable in the late game, maybe they should be buffed in other ways. I completely agree with morrow, units that can be turned against you but are very effective if used correctly are great units. I would rather have units that are difficult to use but highly potent when used correctly than consistent units with a lower skill ceiling.
Reavers were very coin-flippy with glitchy scarabs, but that is a bit besides the point.
The risk of friendly fire with tanks and spider mines is great for adding depth to the game. Zealot bombs were one of my favorite things to see in BW. The difference here is that those things were more readily identified as strategies by the players and spectators, where as the widow mine detonations are more likely to be identified as a glitch instead of respecting an awesome play during a large late game battle, which is rather anti-climactic.
I think it's identifiable by spectators if zergs move-command small groups of zerglings into clumps of units to deal splash damage to the terran. If spectators are unable to easily identify when terrans target fire widow mines onto banelings, that's not a huge issue in my opinion.
You said that a group of units went straight over a group of widow mines and didn't detonate them. If this is true, that should be fixed because widow mines should automatically deal damage to units that run directly above them. If they ran to the side of the attack radius, then that's fine and simply means that the effective radius of the widow mine is different dependent on the movement speed of units.
I'm guessing casters, particularly analytical casters, will understand the widow mine AI soon enough and the apparent randomness of the mine won't be much of an issue for spectators.
On March 18 2013 11:20 Zelniq wrote: further testing indicates a couple of things:
if an enemy unit wanders in range but exits the range (range of 5) within less than ~2 ingame seconds, the mine doesn't fire, same thing goes for multiple units..if 10 lings enter but leave the radius before the ~2 seconds, it doesn't fire. If it's there for ~2+ seconds it does. So for an idea of what that's like, the magic ~2 second time that it won't set the mine off is a speedling off creep that's moving across the edge of the circle's range of a mine, as if you were slicing the end of an orange.
The target unit's speed is irrelevant, a queen off creep can wander in, spot the mine and leave without getting hit if it leaves the radius fast enough. (btw even without detection, the mine reveals itself when I think you wander in its range. reveals its location, but doesn't allow you to attack it, similar to units you can't see that's on higher ground, that shoot you)
@Swagger: search "hots unit tester online" in arcade. it uses whatever the current state of the game is, as in say the unlisted change that occured within last few days where mothership core's recall is canceled if the mothership core dies during the recall
no you cannot manually target mines. And yes it is more or less random.
TO THIS:
On March 18 2013 12:01 avilo wrote:
On March 18 2013 11:55 Zelniq wrote: argh why are you still saying you can't manually target them...you obviously didn't just test it cus you would have found out you can..and your first post doesn't really explain the mechanics..it's basically what DeCoup posted at the top of this page. test it right now, you can see not only can you target with them but his post about how you can keep changing targets to reset the aim timer to indefinitely prevent them from attacking..just play vs AI and try it..
I'm talking about manually targetting to have them blow up immediately on the target you want like they were in a previous patch version of beta. You can no longer do that.
It's no wonder people don't take you seriously when you argue, its just an exercise in eye-rolling and face-palming frustration.
Nice ad hominem, lots of people specialize more in ad hominems lately than they do in analysis because it's easier for them.
Point i was making that flew over your head was that in the beta you previously could use the attack command to manually target widow mines onto units, whereas in the current release version that is no longer possible.
What zelniq is saying is entirely different. He is saying you can target the widow mines with a right click command onto units which is completely unintuitive for any player that played the beta version with the previous attack command that was on the command card and the current incarnation of the mine that has no option available in the command card.
How is a player supposed to know that they can re-target the widow mine manually by constantly changing attack targets with the mine over and over within a 2 second time-span? No one knew this before, and there also is no tool-tip for it.
So deth if you want to go argue about arguments and improve your ad hominem take it to reddit, they take that quite seriously over there.
There's a differentiation between the ability for a player to use the attack-move command and for something that does not show that in the command card yet it's still possible with a weird rule on it that no one knows about.
you wanna know why everyone ends up making ad hominem attacks on you? its because you're legitly, genuinely, dumb. im not saying that as an insult or anything. you just don't think well. so you keep saying things that are untrue and missing points that are very clearly made. so people get frustrated and tell you to fuck off. its been a pattern since the start of sc2. you're slow but even you should get it by now.
lmao you're one to talk idra. Everything you just said applies to yourself more than it ever has me edit: anyways, we got a few sour apples de-railing the thread...
Just refer to morrow's last post about how the widow mine works, or a previous post i made in the thread describing the exact same thing.
How the mine works:
1) acquires first target and closest to come within the 5 range 2) if the unit leaves the range it acquires new target within the 5 range 3) if you manually right click your opponent's units, you reset the widow mine's targetting
The question is, let's say a Zergling runs past the mine and then out of the activation range.
Then let's say 20 more Zerglings run into activation range as the first slips out of it...which one is auto-targeted and how can a player tell? It's impossible to tell visually right?
On March 18 2013 17:05 J.E.G. wrote: There should just be an upgrade that lowers the cool-down or maybe lowers the targeting time to make it less coin-flippy in larger, late game engagements. While the hold-micro tricks are definitely sexy, it is not feasible for any player to make use of it past a certain point in the game. Thus, the randomness of the widow mine comes back, and the risk of having it sit there with its thumb up its ass waiting for cool down is too great to justify the dice roll of an effective detonation.
The main goal is to balance a unit with depth with being usable. If it proves to be to random in late game situations, it will be abandoned for something more stable, and possibly more boring.
EDIT: Please stop with the flames. This thread is important.
Does this not just come down to positioning your mines better? If lings run past the very outside radius, it probably shouldn't go off and kill half of them, if they run right over the top, it almost certainly will go off. They already have a fairly generous range, and cost almost nothing. Just make 2 or 3 and spread them out so that your opponent is guaranteed to pretty much step on one.
As I said before I think you Terran expect far too much for such a cheap/extremely efficient unit. You don't see zerg complaining that marines split when a baneling shows up and that it gets shot down before it can get into melee range.
I don't play terran. Widow mines are fun to watch, and i don't want players to stop using them if they are faulty in late-game situations.
The problem i think of in regards to better positioning is that moment when day9 was about to have a heart attack as a large group of mutas and lings went straight over three mines (i forget which game...) and nothing happened. This behavior was consistently inconsistent throughout the series.
As for the baneling analogy, it is less like a terran preforming good splits to avert baneling damage and more like connecting a perfect baneling hit on a pack of marines only to see a couple of them die. If WMs are only killing a couple lings after ~14 minutes into a game, they are not efficient at all, and there is not much the terran player can do about it. This would lead to more stable and possibly more boring play and unit compostions, which I am against.
On March 18 2013 17:05 J.E.G. wrote: There should just be an upgrade that lowers the cool-down or maybe lowers the targeting time to make it less coin-flippy in larger, late game engagements. While the hold-micro tricks are definitely sexy, it is not feasible for any player to make use of it past a certain point in the game. Thus, the randomness of the widow mine comes back, and the risk of having it sit there with its thumb up its ass waiting for cool down is too great to justify the dice roll of an effective detonation.
The main goal is to balance a unit with depth with being usable. If it proves to be to random in late game situations, it will be abandoned for something more stable, and possibly more boring.
EDIT: Please stop with the flames. This thread is important.
Widow mines are very strong in the late game. I don't understand why you think they aren't feasible past a certain point. For example, the only zerg units mines aren't strong against in the late game is brood lords.
I don't agree that use of the widow mine is a dice roll. People don't call friendly fire on tanks, spider mines, and reavers coin flippy. If you think widow mines are too coin flippy to be viable in the late game, maybe they should be buffed in other ways. I completely agree with morrow, units that can be turned against you but are very effective if used correctly are great units. I would rather have units that are difficult to use but highly potent when used correctly than consistent units with a lower skill ceiling.
Reavers were very coin-flippy with glitchy scarabs, but that is a bit besides the point.
The risk of friendly fire with tanks and spider mines is great for adding depth to the game. Zealot bombs were one of my favorite things to see in BW. The difference here is that those things were more readily identified as strategies by the players and spectators, where as the widow mine detonations are more likely to be identified as a glitch instead of respecting an awesome play during a large late game battle, which is rather anti-climactic.
I think it's identifiable by spectators if zergs move-command small groups of zerglings into clumps of units to deal splash damage to the terran. If spectators are unable to easily identify when terrans target fire widow mines onto banelings, that's not a huge issue in my opinion.
You said that a group of units went straight over a group of widow mines and didn't detonate them. If this is true, that should be fixed because widow mines should automatically deal damage to units that run directly above them. If they ran to the side of the attack radius, then that's fine and simply means that the effective radius of the widow mine is different dependent on the movement speed of units.
I'm guessing casters, particularly analytical casters, will understand the widow mine AI soon enough and the apparent randomness of the mine won't be much of an issue for spectators.
I agree.
It happens at 13:15 of this video (17:45 ingame time of game 6).
I was wrong in my original statement. Four active and perfectly spread mines do detonate, but it seems like they kill hardly any lings and the mutas come out untouched. Is this because WMs really don't do splash to air units if they target ground? All of these details about what works and what doesn't just makes WM's seem.... weird.
I am guessing they will need some work in the end, but more time to understand it does seem like the best remedy, as you mentioned.
On March 18 2013 11:20 Zelniq wrote: further testing indicates a couple of things:
if an enemy unit wanders in range but exits the range (range of 5) within less than ~2 ingame seconds, the mine doesn't fire, same thing goes for multiple units..if 10 lings enter but leave the radius before the ~2 seconds, it doesn't fire. If it's there for ~2+ seconds it does. So for an idea of what that's like, the magic ~2 second time that it won't set the mine off is a speedling off creep that's moving across the edge of the circle's range of a mine, as if you were slicing the end of an orange.
The target unit's speed is irrelevant, a queen off creep can wander in, spot the mine and leave without getting hit if it leaves the radius fast enough. (btw even without detection, the mine reveals itself when I think you wander in its range. reveals its location, but doesn't allow you to attack it, similar to units you can't see that's on higher ground, that shoot you)
@Swagger: search "hots unit tester online" in arcade. it uses whatever the current state of the game is, as in say the unlisted change that occured within last few days where mothership core's recall is canceled if the mothership core dies during the recall
no you cannot manually target mines. And yes it is more or less random.
TO THIS:
On March 18 2013 12:01 avilo wrote:
On March 18 2013 11:55 Zelniq wrote: argh why are you still saying you can't manually target them...you obviously didn't just test it cus you would have found out you can..and your first post doesn't really explain the mechanics..it's basically what DeCoup posted at the top of this page. test it right now, you can see not only can you target with them but his post about how you can keep changing targets to reset the aim timer to indefinitely prevent them from attacking..just play vs AI and try it..
I'm talking about manually targetting to have them blow up immediately on the target you want like they were in a previous patch version of beta. You can no longer do that.
It's no wonder people don't take you seriously when you argue, its just an exercise in eye-rolling and face-palming frustration.
Nice ad hominem, lots of people specialize more in ad hominems lately than they do in analysis because it's easier for them.
Point i was making that flew over your head was that in the beta you previously could use the attack command to manually target widow mines onto units, whereas in the current release version that is no longer possible.
What zelniq is saying is entirely different. He is saying you can target the widow mines with a right click command onto units which is completely unintuitive for any player that played the beta version with the previous attack command that was on the command card and the current incarnation of the mine that has no option available in the command card.
How is a player supposed to know that they can re-target the widow mine manually by constantly changing attack targets with the mine over and over within a 2 second time-span? No one knew this before, and there also is no tool-tip for it.
So deth if you want to go argue about arguments and improve your ad hominem take it to reddit, they take that quite seriously over there.
There's a differentiation between the ability for a player to use the attack-move command and for something that does not show that in the command card yet it's still possible with a weird rule on it that no one knows about.
you wanna know why everyone ends up making ad hominem attacks on you? its because you're legitly, genuinely, dumb. im not saying that as an insult or anything. you just don't think well. so you keep saying things that are untrue and missing points that are very clearly made. so people get frustrated and tell you to fuck off. its been a pattern since the start of sc2. you're slow but even you should get it by now.
lmao you're one to talk idra. Everything you just said applies to yourself more than it ever has me edit: anyways, we got a few sour apples de-railing the thread...
Just refer to morrow's last post about how the widow mine works, or a previous post i made in the thread describing the exact same thing.
How the mine works:
1) acquires first target and closest to come within the 5 range 2) if the unit leaves the range it acquires new target within the 5 range 3) if you manually right click your opponent's units, you reset the widow mine's targetting
The question is, let's say a Zergling runs past the mine and then out of the activation range.
Then let's say 20 more Zerglings run into activation range as the first slips out of it...which one is auto-targeted and how can a player tell? It's impossible to tell visually right?
So after thinking youre right, and actually blatantly wrong, you tried to backtrack to make it look like you weren't because you obviously have some kind of self pride issue, which derailed the thread. Now you're telling everyone how the mine works lol. You act like a 6 year old
On March 18 2013 13:34 bakemono wrote: Guys - A widow mine costs the same as ONE baneling, 50 for a pair of lings, and 25/25 for the baneling, it does a lot more damage, has a lot more HP, can attack air and ground, and can be used repeatedly.
I think you are expecting too much for such a cheap unit. Life just played very well, you can't expect him to lose all his lings to 1 widow mine.
for the record, it costs 4 times the supply of a baneling.
It happens at 13:15 of this video (17:45 ingame time of game 6).
I was wrong in my original statement. Four active and perfectly spread mines do detonate, but it seems like they kill hardly any lings and the mutas come out untouched. Is this because WMs really don't do splash to air units if they target ground? All of these details about what works and what doesn't just makes WM's seem.... weird.
I am guessing they will need some work in the end, but more time to understand it does seem like the best remedy, as you mentioned.
That game is a perfect example of what Morrow was talking about. The widow mines all triggered on the frontmost zerglings, doing minimal damage. If Flash had instead target fired the central group of zerglings and mutas he would have done more damage.
Even though the widow mines did minimal damage, Life's supply went from 194 to 179 after the first two two widow mines went off, so two widow mines killed 30 lings before the marines began attacking. That's very cost efficient, although Day[9] didn't realize it at the time.
The reason only two widow mines of the four triggered initially is the first widow mine was still burrowing when the lings ran over it, and a second widow mine was unable to fire on a target because the zergling it was locked on was killed by another widow mine. They then triggered on units further back in Life's army.
On March 18 2013 11:20 Zelniq wrote: further testing indicates a couple of things:
if an enemy unit wanders in range but exits the range (range of 5) within less than ~2 ingame seconds, the mine doesn't fire, same thing goes for multiple units..if 10 lings enter but leave the radius before the ~2 seconds, it doesn't fire. If it's there for ~2+ seconds it does. So for an idea of what that's like, the magic ~2 second time that it won't set the mine off is a speedling off creep that's moving across the edge of the circle's range of a mine, as if you were slicing the end of an orange.
The target unit's speed is irrelevant, a queen off creep can wander in, spot the mine and leave without getting hit if it leaves the radius fast enough. (btw even without detection, the mine reveals itself when I think you wander in its range. reveals its location, but doesn't allow you to attack it, similar to units you can't see that's on higher ground, that shoot you)
@Swagger: search "hots unit tester online" in arcade. it uses whatever the current state of the game is, as in say the unlisted change that occured within last few days where mothership core's recall is canceled if the mothership core dies during the recall
no you cannot manually target mines. And yes it is more or less random.
TO THIS:
On March 18 2013 12:01 avilo wrote:
On March 18 2013 11:55 Zelniq wrote: argh why are you still saying you can't manually target them...you obviously didn't just test it cus you would have found out you can..and your first post doesn't really explain the mechanics..it's basically what DeCoup posted at the top of this page. test it right now, you can see not only can you target with them but his post about how you can keep changing targets to reset the aim timer to indefinitely prevent them from attacking..just play vs AI and try it..
I'm talking about manually targetting to have them blow up immediately on the target you want like they were in a previous patch version of beta. You can no longer do that.
It's no wonder people don't take you seriously when you argue, its just an exercise in eye-rolling and face-palming frustration.
Nice ad hominem, lots of people specialize more in ad hominems lately than they do in analysis because it's easier for them.
Point i was making that flew over your head was that in the beta you previously could use the attack command to manually target widow mines onto units, whereas in the current release version that is no longer possible.
What zelniq is saying is entirely different. He is saying you can target the widow mines with a right click command onto units which is completely unintuitive for any player that played the beta version with the previous attack command that was on the command card and the current incarnation of the mine that has no option available in the command card.
How is a player supposed to know that they can re-target the widow mine manually by constantly changing attack targets with the mine over and over within a 2 second time-span? No one knew this before, and there also is no tool-tip for it.
So deth if you want to go argue about arguments and improve your ad hominem take it to reddit, they take that quite seriously over there.
There's a differentiation between the ability for a player to use the attack-move command and for something that does not show that in the command card yet it's still possible with a weird rule on it that no one knows about.
you wanna know why everyone ends up making ad hominem attacks on you? its because you're legitly, genuinely, dumb. im not saying that as an insult or anything. you just don't think well. so you keep saying things that are untrue and missing points that are very clearly made. so people get frustrated and tell you to fuck off. its been a pattern since the start of sc2. you're slow but even you should get it by now.
lmao you're one to talk idra. Everything you just said applies to yourself more than it ever has me edit: anyways, we got a few sour apples de-railing the thread...
Just refer to morrow's last post about how the widow mine works, or a previous post i made in the thread describing the exact same thing.
How the mine works:
1) acquires first target and closest to come within the 5 range 2) if the unit leaves the range it acquires new target within the 5 range 3) if you manually right click your opponent's units, you reset the widow mine's targetting
The question is, let's say a Zergling runs past the mine and then out of the activation range.
Then let's say 20 more Zerglings run into activation range as the first slips out of it...which one is auto-targeted and how can a player tell? It's impossible to tell visually right?
i wrote it in my post it targets "best unit" which is easiest put the closest target to the mine so once the single ling exits 5 range and the blob of lings is right on top of the mine, it targets the center ling in the blob. theres no way to tell visually what unit it has targeted at any point. but knowing the range of 5 and that it targets closest unit should give you a good idea if you pay attention closely
It happens at 13:15 of this video (17:45 ingame time of game 6).
I was wrong in my original statement. Four active and perfectly spread mines do detonate, but it seems like they kill hardly any lings and the mutas come out untouched. Is this because WMs really don't do splash to air units if they target ground? All of these details about what works and what doesn't just makes WM's seem.... weird.
I am guessing they will need some work in the end, but more time to understand it does seem like the best remedy, as you mentioned.
That game is a perfect example of what Morrow was talking about. The widow mines all triggered on the frontmost zerglings, doing minimal damage. If Flash had instead target fired the central group of zerglings and mutas he would have done more damage.
pretty much yea. life micro control and understanding of the widow mine was beyond any other zerg i have seen so far, while flash positioning of the widow mines was amazing it often felt like the mines helped life more than flash
On March 18 2013 12:35 deth wrote: Its your own fault for not expressing yourself clearly at all, making broad untrue statements and then continuing to try and take some sort of high ground when called out for being wrong
i honestly can't comprehend why you continue to express yourself in such a bias, whining, anti blizz and self important fashion every time you're playing horribly or cannot figure out how to use units correctly. its been annoying me for years.
The funny thing is, no one really cares what you think.
Haven't you ever learned that if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all. Because all you're doing now is not adding anything constructive to this conversation other than your over-inflated ego and and some deep seated hate.
Instead of continually replying with taunts and coming off as a jerk, it would make more sense to take it to PMs, so you won't look like such an arrogant fool.
Either that, or participate in the thread like a decent human being.
It's your choice, but ask yourself honestly, are you acting like a douche right now? And there's no way to hide from the answer that rings true from within you.
Just my two cents.
So...wait.....shouldn't your post have been a PM? :D
This insight into widow mine targeting should help a lot with handling widow mine drops. In one of the games Taeja (as far as I remember at least) had widow mines burrowed in his mineral line, but just kept marines standing on it, to prevent volleys at workers. I thought it was 'luck' that it worked, but apparently not.
On March 18 2013 11:20 Zelniq wrote: further testing indicates a couple of things:
if an enemy unit wanders in range but exits the range (range of 5) within less than ~2 ingame seconds, the mine doesn't fire, same thing goes for multiple units..if 10 lings enter but leave the radius before the ~2 seconds, it doesn't fire. If it's there for ~2+ seconds it does. So for an idea of what that's like, the magic ~2 second time that it won't set the mine off is a speedling off creep that's moving across the edge of the circle's range of a mine, as if you were slicing the end of an orange.
The target unit's speed is irrelevant, a queen off creep can wander in, spot the mine and leave without getting hit if it leaves the radius fast enough. (btw even without detection, the mine reveals itself when I think you wander in its range. reveals its location, but doesn't allow you to attack it, similar to units you can't see that's on higher ground, that shoot you)
@Swagger: search "hots unit tester online" in arcade. it uses whatever the current state of the game is, as in say the unlisted change that occured within last few days where mothership core's recall is canceled if the mothership core dies during the recall
no you cannot manually target mines. And yes it is more or less random.
TO THIS:
On March 18 2013 12:01 avilo wrote:
On March 18 2013 11:55 Zelniq wrote: argh why are you still saying you can't manually target them...you obviously didn't just test it cus you would have found out you can..and your first post doesn't really explain the mechanics..it's basically what DeCoup posted at the top of this page. test it right now, you can see not only can you target with them but his post about how you can keep changing targets to reset the aim timer to indefinitely prevent them from attacking..just play vs AI and try it..
I'm talking about manually targetting to have them blow up immediately on the target you want like they were in a previous patch version of beta. You can no longer do that.
It's no wonder people don't take you seriously when you argue, its just an exercise in eye-rolling and face-palming frustration.
Nice ad hominem, lots of people specialize more in ad hominems lately than they do in analysis because it's easier for them.
Point i was making that flew over your head was that in the beta you previously could use the attack command to manually target widow mines onto units, whereas in the current release version that is no longer possible.
What zelniq is saying is entirely different. He is saying you can target the widow mines with a right click command onto units which is completely unintuitive for any player that played the beta version with the previous attack command that was on the command card and the current incarnation of the mine that has no option available in the command card.
How is a player supposed to know that they can re-target the widow mine manually by constantly changing attack targets with the mine over and over within a 2 second time-span? No one knew this before, and there also is no tool-tip for it.
So deth if you want to go argue about arguments and improve your ad hominem take it to reddit, they take that quite seriously over there.
There's a differentiation between the ability for a player to use the attack-move command and for something that does not show that in the command card yet it's still possible with a weird rule on it that no one knows about.
you wanna know why everyone ends up making ad hominem attacks on you? its because you're legitly, genuinely, dumb. im not saying that as an insult or anything. you just don't think well. so you keep saying things that are untrue and missing points that are very clearly made. so people get frustrated and tell you to fuck off. its been a pattern since the start of sc2. you're slow but even you should get it by now.
thank god for idra speaking up for the rest of us. avilo posts have always been really frustrating to read.
going back on topic, I think we should wait until more pros get their feel to how to manipulate the mines before any more changes are made. the mechanism of how it works is looking to be quite interesting to be honest
Ty Zelniq for the trick, didn't know that the 1second delay was actually not part of the attack, but a real delay. Though in retrospect it makes sense, as the mine doesn't shoot if a target leaves the range too fast.
On March 18 2013 20:54 r1flEx wrote: the firing is too random, but imo you should be able to outrun/fly them which isn't the case as it seems
Judging by the entire thread, the only thing possibly wrong about the wm is that the splash doesn't affect air if it blew up on the ground and vice versa. THIS is what I want to know if it's working as intended.
On March 18 2013 20:54 r1flEx wrote: the firing is too random, but imo you should be able to outrun/fly them which isn't the case as it seems
Judging by the entire thread, the only thing possibly wrong about the wm is that the splash doesn't affect air if it blew up on the ground and vice versa. THIS is what I want to know if it's working as intended.
I am pretty sure that it does work, since I saw MANY times Terran blowing his own Medivacs and Ravens when Widow Mines were destroying Lings underneath. Maybe it got bugged since release, but it worked in Beta, I am 100% sure.
This is fucking awesome, stuff like this is what gives depth to competitive games.
In the short term it sucks, but in the long term it adds ridiculous amounts of depth as people find more and more about it and exploit the fringes of the game which is a necessary catalyst for creating the greatest moments in competitive games
Scarabs are perceived as random because of their potential to "dud", but in fact they are the complete opposite of that.
Scarab dodging was perfected down to a science, any given scarab on a-move towards a random worker can be perfectly dodged pretty much 100% of the time by a progamer, just worker train in the right direction with the right building placement.
Eventually people figured out manoeuvres to enhance the scarabs effectiveness again, targeting specific units, and forcing the defender to make mistakes and cause the scarabs to hit perfectly.
After that players started leveling the shit out of each other during these moments, and it was fucking awesome to watch.
(Leveling which I derived from poker for the ability for players to think about what the other person is thinking, each level is an iteration of this)
Ironically, this is the only time I will ever say this, give the game some time. People will figure out whether its really random or not once the science is figured out.
On March 18 2013 20:10 ETisME wrote: thank god for idra speaking up for the rest of us. avilo posts have always been really frustrating to read.
To be honest, he isn't. And i dont like your continious bashing and assuming your talking for the whole community either. Yes he could be wrong, but a forum is for discussion isn't it? Not for bashing.. Just show a little respect, cant be that hard.
anyway - widow mine mechanic being like this is exhilarating to watch. anyone who watched BOTH the life vs last series AND the life vs flash series could see that last knows something about mine usage that flash doesnt.
widow mines are amazing fun to watch and i havent been this close to the edge of my seat with unit interactions in starcraft since reavers in bw
god bless widow mines
ps. jesus h christ this thread is so great and so terrible at the same time, but thank god for idra calling things out as always
On March 18 2013 22:22 sluggaslamoo wrote: Guys are you seriously that boring?
This is fucking awesome, stuff like this is what gives depth to competitive games.
In the short term it sucks, but in the long term it adds ridiculous amounts of depth as people find more and more about it and exploit the fringes of the game which is a necessary catalyst for creating the greatest moments in competitive games
Scarabs are perceived as random because of their potential to "dud", but in fact they are the complete opposite of that.
Scarab dodging was perfected down to a science, any given scarab on a-move towards a random worker can be perfectly dodged pretty much 100% of the time by a progamer, just worker train in the right direction with the right building placement.
Eventually people figured out manoeuvres to enhance the scarabs effectiveness again, targeting specific units, and forcing the defender to make mistakes and cause the scarabs to hit perfectly.
After that players started leveling the shit out of each other during these moments, and it was fucking awesome to watch.
(Leveling which I derived from poker for the ability for players to think about what the other person is thinking, each level is an iteration of this)
Ironically, this is the only time I will ever say this, give the game some time. People will figure out whether its really random or not once the science is figured out.
If the widow mine leads to that level of micro between opponents, it will essentially become the most interesting unit in sc2. I agree, we should leave the way the widow mine works alone and see how it develops.
On March 18 2013 20:54 r1flEx wrote: the firing is too random, but imo you should be able to outrun/fly them which isn't the case as it seems
Judging by the entire thread, the only thing possibly wrong about the wm is that the splash doesn't affect air if it blew up on the ground and vice versa. THIS is what I want to know if it's working as intended.
Nope, just tested. As others said, the widow mine does splash both air and ground regardless of what it attacked.
so if you manually target mutas and there are either lings or banes underneath, the lings/banes willl all be 1 shotted by the splash.
I think the widow mine is a good unit, however it is definitely super random for mid game pushes. I think the MLG showcase proved that it should not be used a core unit, it works much better as early defense, drops, map vision and base delays.
Using it against Zerglings who's melee units are coming towards you anyways, just drags AOE towards your units. That 2 second delay almost ensures that the speed lings will be already clumped up on your marines by the time it hits. So you take out the zerglings at your own detriment.
Personally, Id like the seperate option to blow them up manually, like burrowed banelings, to add some level of reliability.
So now not only do terran players have to split, stutter step, focus fire, burrow/unburrow mines. siege/unsiege tanks we also have to manipulate mines to make them work the way we want them too? While a zerg player just has to send a few lings in before A-moving the rest of his army?
I say keep the randomness but add a on and off feature. It can be used for when zerg goes broodlords and you dont wamt the mines detonating on your marines/army. If you unburrow in that situation you have made mines that just die when unburrowed. And so that 1 ling can't trugger it. Will also resemble a burrowed baneling.
Oh so that's why when I was target firing with mines I had the feeling that they took a fucking long time to shoot :D It resets the attack timer. Very nice thread, thanks.
So in fact, if the mine is in range of two moving targets, A and B, and it automatically acquires A, if you target-fire B it's possible that by the time the mine actually can fire (timer reset included) both targets are not in range anymore, while if you had just let the mine do its thing, you would have hit A. You can literally "miss your shot" at doing damage if you overmicro :D
On March 19 2013 00:48 mokumoku wrote: I say keep the randomness but add a on and off feature. It can be used for when zerg goes broodlords and you dont wamt the mines detonating on your marines/army. If you unburrow in that situation you have made mines that just die when unburrowed. And so that 1 ling can't trugger it. Will also resemble a burrowed baneling.
You won't "keep the randomness" if you add an instantaneous on and off feature. The unit the widow mine targets will be very predictable, whatever unit is above the widow mine at the time of activation.
Turning the mine on and off would need to take at least a couple of seconds so that it wouldn't be possible to easily activate the mine in an optimal position.
The mine would be waaaaaaay too powerful if you can disable/enable it while burrowed. It would essentially force people to have mobile detection (which is generally very expensive) to just move a group of units on the map (to attack for example) in the early game, because 2 or 3 burrowed mines could just wipe out their army, whatever precaution they take. Right now they can at least spot in advance where mines are by sending a single unit, and mitigate critical damage in battle by somewhat choosing what the mine hits. The way they should act is more akin to BW spidermines than to burrowed banelings.
In my own personal experiments with widow mines, I've had very random success. The only thing that seems to work fairly reliably for me is widow mine drops and blocking bases with them. Widow mine drops are excellent and take so long to clean up that you can pull way far ahead in economy.
In TvZ, specifically, I'm having a lot of trouble connecting reliably with widow mines. If zerg players simply run over the mines with lings, they will take minimal damage; example is game 5 of Flash vs. Life, where Flash ran backwards into a series of mines that literally only killed around 15 lings total. I haven't played around with hold position micro much, but I'm planning on doing that this week. I'm hoping that it fixes things some, but I think there will still be the problem of lings being practically invulnerable to them if they just run over them.
Also, random note: it seems 100000x harder to kill ultralisks now, I have no clue what to do when ultras get out except cry.
I've had them work fine depending on how well I micro my surrounding Bio forces, personally.
What I do is I use my Bio to kill off the individual Zerglings and smaller packs of Zerglings that would trigger the Widow Mines, instead letting them trigger on the larger groups. It's harder than just marine splitting, but very effective when I manage to do it correctly. Obviously, it's easier if I have more widow mines since I have more chances, and am not reliant on one or two 75/25 investments.
supposedly, I think, mines have a mechanic that says "mine will only track a target IF no other mines are currently targeting that unit. But if the unit is over 125health it allows more mines to target"
this means if 1 zergling runs into 5 mines it would only set off 1 mine
pretty much the mines are coded to not overkill
is this true?
if its true it means you can realistically stack 10 mines really close together in a defensive position and you never need to worry about 1 zergling setting off all your mines. they have overkill prevention
this could allow reactored mines to be very useful for defense letting terran be super defensive with just making dem mines, while going 5CC behind his base then once you have 25 mines you move out more and expand and mine up getting tanks/marines whatever. if mines really have overkill prevention they could serve as very powerful defensive units allowing for less marines early game, more mines, more CC's (vs zerg only of course)
On March 19 2013 02:56 centergoliath4 wrote: heres something i want to know about mines
supposedly, I think, mines have a mechanic that says "mine will only track a target IF no other mines are currently targeting that unit. But if the unit is over 125health it allows more mines to target"
this means if 1 zergling runs into 5 mines it would only set off 1 mine
pretty much the mines are coded to not overkill
is this true?
if its true it means you can realistically stack 10 mines really close together in a defensive position and you never need to worry about 1 zergling setting off all your mines. they have overkill prevention
this could allow reactored mines to be very useful for defense letting terran be super defensive with just making dem mines, while going 5CC behind his base then once you have 25 mines you move out more and expand and mine up getting tanks/marines whatever. if mines really have overkill prevention they could serve as very powerful defensive units allowing for less marines early game, more mines, more CC's (vs zerg only of course)
Although you are forgetting that if there are 10 mines all stacked up, and 10 zerglings run in range at the same time, all ten will fire. At the same time, if there was 1 mine and 10 zerglings, the one mine will fire and still kill the 10 zerglings.
The mine is very... niche to say the least. I think too many people expect the mine to deal huge amounts of damage just because it has the potential to. Most of the time, this should not be the inferred case. They are just too random to be expecting these huge connects to occur every time a mine goes off. Yeah occasionally it will happen, but this should not be considered the norm.
On March 19 2013 02:56 centergoliath4 wrote: heres something i want to know about mines
supposedly, I think, mines have a mechanic that says "mine will only track a target IF no other mines are currently targeting that unit. But if the unit is over 125health it allows more mines to target.
One small point. Even if a unit has more than 125 hp, only one mine will target it at a time. If a colossus walks over two mines that are next to each other, one mine will go off and then the other will 1.5 seconds later.
I just posted this in another thread, but I think the details from the editor should be posted in here, too. Well, if you are able to read the editor's 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.
I hope mines continue to work like this in that Blizzard does not make it fully automatic or anything. Seem like it has a lot more potential, which I can not say about a lot of SC2 units.
I feel like that is all great stuff for improving the micro of the widow mine for all terran players. But based off this I can see see a small amount of potential for more late game use of widow mines. Initially I thought they wouldn't make it past 15-20 minutes into the game. I personally like that I can control the placement of shots from the widow mine, I just never noticed it when I had already been doing it
On March 19 2013 04:32 Ahli wrote: - It doesn't automatically target disguised changelings, revealed hallucinations or units that other mines are targeting.
I've done some more testing on this, and the part about not targeting units that are already being targeted is quite important. It means that :
- Mines do not overkill. Blinking a Stalker in the range of 5 mines will only activate exactly one.
- If you blink a group of 5 stalkers directly in the range of 5 mines, all 5 mines will target different Stalkers and they will all die.
- If you move a unit with high HP, say, an Ultralisk, in a field of 5 mines, it will take a lot of time for the Ultralisk to die, because each mine will wait for the previous mine to fire before starting to activate. Since an Ultralisk requires 5 mines to die, and it takes 1.5 seconds to launch a missile, it means that it will take 7.5 seconds of the Ultralisk staying in the mine field for the mines to kill it.
- You can, however, bypass this by right-clicking. If you select all mines and right-click the Ultralisk as it enters the range of the mines, all five mines will fire, and the Ultralisk will die after only 1.5 seconds. Beware though, that this leads to overkill. Say you have 15 mines selected, all 15 mines will fire and you will waste 10 shots.
This isn't exactly true. While it is true that multiple mines will never overkill on a single target, they will overkill on multiple targets that would otherwise all be destroyed by splash damage. For example, if you have 5 stalkers walking over 5 Widow Mines, all the widow mines will fire. If you have 5 zerglings or 5 marines walking over 5 widow mines, all widow mines will fire, despite only one or two needing to fire in order to destroy the targeted units.
What happens if you select multiple widow mines (say five) and manually targets multiple enemy units (for instance say you want to target 5 infestors)? Will this count as "resetting" the proces over and over (so it won't target any units at all) or will it count as you targetting all of the five infestors?
On April 02 2013 04:39 Hider wrote: What happens if you select multiple widow mines (say five) and manually targets multiple enemy units (for instance say you want to target 5 infestors)? Will this count as "resetting" the proces over and over (so it won't target any units at all) or will it count as you targetting all of the five infestors?
I believe the answer is in the updated OP.
If you select multiple widow mines and right click one unit, they will all fire on the target and likely overkill onto said target. You must select each individual widow mine and target the specific target you wish to attack.
if i see a pack of lings and i have 6~7 mines burrowed, selecting a few and unburrowing them only activates 1 or 2 mines instead of all of them. all depends on micro though, i'm gonna test it out more on ladder
also, with this kind of micro, it's essential that you have the drilling claws upgrade
On March 19 2013 02:56 centergoliath4 wrote: heres something i want to know about mines
supposedly, I think, mines have a mechanic that says "mine will only track a target IF no other mines are currently targeting that unit. But if the unit is over 125health it allows more mines to target"
this means if 1 zergling runs into 5 mines it would only set off 1 mine
pretty much the mines are coded to not overkill
is this true?
if its true it means you can realistically stack 10 mines really close together in a defensive position and you never need to worry about 1 zergling setting off all your mines. they have overkill prevention
this could allow reactored mines to be very useful for defense letting terran be super defensive with just making dem mines, while going 5CC behind his base then once you have 25 mines you move out more and expand and mine up getting tanks/marines whatever. if mines really have overkill prevention they could serve as very powerful defensive units allowing for less marines early game, more mines, more CC's (vs zerg only of course)
If i saw a terran go 5 CC-widow mine, I would go gasless 5 base into fast hive and he couldn't do jack shit about it. I would then win the game with ultra viper broodlord bling corrupter.
I play SC2 on lowest settings, currently saving up to buy a nice rig, atm it's decent enough to run sc2. i noticed on stephano's stream im guessing he plays on max setting that a widow mine shows a black indent. Can you see this on lowest setting!?!? IWhat is the lowest setting needed to view this.
EPT
