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First off, Mods if this is not in the right section or shouldn't be here at all, I apologize I just can't think off any good place to put it. Also sorry for no spolier tags to make it easier to read I am relatively new at posting.
Since the Battle Report has been posted and since blizzard annouced changes for the warhound a while ago, and because there is a lot of critisim about the warhound already I feel like one good thread should try to encompass the subject.
I myself play Terran on ladder so it may be slightly biased.
The main critisims I have found in TL threads are the following
1. It's ugly
2. Very A-Click like, making it not very useful to micro
3. Doesn't feel very mech like
4. No AA
So going right on down the list
1. Yes the warhound may not be the most asthetically appealing unit, but honestly does the supposed bad looks even matter. I don't think so, SC2 is a strategy game after all not a game about turning our units into runyway models, but the skin is not that hard to change(I think, I'm no developer) and has no real impact on the balance of the game overall.
2. The warhound may seem A-click like with the autocast on the haywire missles. What can be done about this to make it better?
We can do a few things. Here are my suggestion and reason.
First no autocast, simplest and most straight foward way of making it less A-click
forcing Terrans to click to use the spell, and most likely make seperate control groups with either biomech or mech so the terran doesn't overstim or unsiege by mistake. At the very least this casues more management of control groups.
Second thing would be scrap haywire missle and add-in another ability that would do comprable damage or be equally useful. My suggestion would be a defensive ability, but that is becasue I think mech does a lot of damage so adding more damage might be too good. The defensive ability would have to be relatively weak though becasue mech is quite a strong composition. I would suggest (as other have before) some sort of vision blocker or limiter than can be cleared pretty fast since warhounds may be massed. This could give siege tanks a better chance to rearragne themselves into better position.
3. Doesn't feel mech like is something that has been posted in the battle report quite a bit. Why do they say this?
Main reason seems to be it moves to fast, feels like a maurader. If we change the haywire missle to a defensive vision ability and slow the move speed of the warhound a bit this may make it better for position play as opposed to agressive play.
Even if the warhound keep haywire missle ability slower speed and maybe making it a bit less durable so that it must be positioned in tank range or with battle hellions to prevent it dying super fast would help it feel more like mech.
4. Lack of AA for mech without vikings are thors has been stated a bit.
First, is it a problem? Many seem to say yes, though if AA is given it needs to make sure the thor isn't obsolete and doesn't become a goliath. I am skeptical though and will express this after suggestion for AA.
My personal solution, if we are to even give the warhound AA, is to give it machine guns for AA that aren't too much better than viking ground attack (probably worse for balance), and in return make any abilities researchable to balance it out a bit, or scrap abilities all together. Some people have suggested a goliath remake, but it is quite obvious blizzard won't do this, nor should they. It is a new game and they should make new units to keep it fresh. I believe that machine gun AA solves this a bit, making the warhound the equivalent of a reverse goliath, making its ground attack better than its air, so that if mass air play was used by an opposing army it would require thors and vikings for much better AA but if an opposing army only did light air harrasment it would allow for warhounds to deal with it.
The other suggestion I would have for it would be single target missle, like a turret missle but worse. This may be too much like the goliath which blizzard would be trying to avoid so this might be a bad idea, but I figured it is worth seeing what input I can get on any AA for the warhound if any should be used at all.
So without splash damage, this means that balled up air units such as mutas, could be more effective against the warhound than the thor, still giving reasons to make thors.
The last big concern with giving AA is biomech styles. If warhounds with AA were paired with marines, it might make the terran army too effective at dealing with air. My reasoning for this is because, unlike BW terran in SC2 has pretty good AA option out of starport. The viking is an effective unit at killing air, unlike the wraith which was harder to mass and easier to kill due to shorter range and its weak ground attack, thus less effective. So giving the warhound AA might be overpowered. What use would mutas be against terran if turrets, marines, warhounds, and thors can deal with them effectively. It would seem to me that it would give terran too many good option versus mutas. Also it might make the new stargate units less viable due to more AA option from terran.
These are my personal suggestions feel free to critsize them and offer your own, my only goal with this thread is to stimulate better discusion on the unit than the one or two sentence posts lurking around other threads.
EDITS: Quite a bit of talk about the warhound being nothing but a factory marauder, my own opinions aside, please be specific about why it is one, and how it does or does not contribute to a mech position play. Simply stating it is a factory marauder gets us nowhere. Thanks!
Alright so some of you guys are simply stating aomething without claims to back it up. Please argue your points, it shows thought and can give good reason to change a unit.
So another thing I am seeing a number of people critsize is that the warhound is striclty an anti-mechanical unit, because it excels so well at killing mechanical veruses other types units. From what other people in the forum have stated it is a bad design to make something designed to counter a protoss or terran army, because although other options are good, this would be better. While I agree that it ought to be changed, it should not be changed to extra versus armored, because it would completely fill the maruader's role, both being tanky units that can do a good amount of damage in specific roles. So how should it be changed such that it is still useful versus the zerg race or bio terran, without breaking balance. My suggestion would be to increase overall dps and then have it not do extra to anything (so that it is stronger versus marines, roaches, hydras, etc. but not as strong against stalkers, tanks.) This may make it more mech like in TvT since it would be harder to break siege lines with the warhound than the current one. Also this may make the warhound less powerful TvP forcing more positional play with tanks instead of just running in and shooting.
Another option is to make its ability anti-bio so that it isn't so powerful against the mechanical P army and more powerful against the bio Z and T armies. Overall this would make the warhound weaker in some situations, but still useful in the ones it wasn't ment to be used such as a TvT mech versus bio.
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It's an A-move unit, they're giving Terrans a way to be like the other two races.
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Dakim literally said that the warhound and hellion are being designed to be a-move units in the anaheim interview.
They just don't realize how stupid that is.
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I don't know why people think it's just going to be another "A-click" unit; if anything it'll be fairly micro intensive.
You have to realise that if you have its ability on autocast then it will autotarget units that aren't necessarily the best units to target. Most pro players will probably have autocast disabled and then constantly have to manually cast it on higher priority units like colossus, immortals etc. as opposed to stalkers/sentries.
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I'm really concerned it's going to ruin TvT. I remember reading Browder or someone else say that they weren't a fan of siege tank lines in TvT but I'm pretty sure TvT is near universally considered the best and most skillful mirror matchup and siege tanks being super strong in fixed positions is a big part of that.
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On August 15 2012 01:48 Thaniri wrote:
Dakim literally said that the warhound and hellion are being designed to be a-move units in the anaheim interview.
They just don't realize how stupid that is.
Current Terran units already require lots of micro to maximize effectiveness, what's wrong with having a couple a-click units in the mix? You really want to make Terran players micro even more than they already have to?
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I don't think it should have autocast on the missiles, and the appearance is quite ugly. The biggest problem i have with it is that i think it will make the marauder kind of pointless. I mean, there will still be reasons to make the marauder (stim, healing by medivacs, lower cost) but overal i think the Warhound kind of replaces its role.
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you guys really shouldnt complain until at least the beta has started. you have no idea on how it will play out.
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Get rid of the a-clicking and it'll be fine. Redesign the art design too.
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If we're talking about giving warhounds a different ability, what about a smoke bomb that deploys a small, temporary LoS blocker? Granted, each 'hound can only cover 1 hex at a time, but that might make for an interesting space-control mechanic. Just a thought.
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The design is really too much ugly. Look like goldorak but in bad.
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On August 15 2012 01:48 Jimmeh wrote:
I don't know why people think it's just going to be another "A-click" unit; if anything it'll be fairly micro intensive.
You have to realise that if you have its ability on autocast then it will autotarget units that aren't necessarily the best units to target. Most pro players will probably have autocast disabled and then constantly have to manually cast it on higher priority units like colossus, immortals etc. as opposed to stalkers/sentries.
Focus firing is so micro intensive.
Edit : This is sarcasm btw, but you never know on Internet ^^
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Canada13404 Posts
On August 15 2012 01:50 KrazyTrumpet wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2012 01:48 Thaniri wrote:
Dakim literally said that the warhound and hellion are being designed to be a-move units in the anaheim interview.
They just don't realize how stupid that is. Current Terran units already require lots of micro to maximize effectiveness, what's wrong with having a couple a-click units in the mix? You really want to make Terran players micro even more than they already have to?
I would prefer to make the other races micro more than make Terran micro less.
As it is, making specifically a click units is boring. Why not have some more powerful tanks, and then make a micro unit.
Its not like we will see bio/tank/warhound with bio splitting etc etc and all the other micro alongside these 1a units.
These are high HP, high dps 1A infantry. Its different.
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On August 15 2012 01:53 Kmatt wrote:
If we're talking about giving warhounds a different ability, what about a smoke bomb that deploys a small, temporary LoS blocker? Granted, each 'hound can only cover 1 hex at a time, but that might make for an interesting space-control mechanic. Just a thought.
What if it also gave a very small vision radius? Then you'd be able to use it to spot for siege tanks instead of Scanning. See, now that would be cool. Maybe they could make the Warhound more of a fast raider unit that scouts and spots for Tanks rather than some Thor analogue that just kills armored stuff.
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On August 15 2012 01:53 Kmatt wrote:
If we're talking about giving warhounds a different ability, what about a smoke bomb that deploys a small, temporary LoS blocker? Granted, each 'hound can only cover 1 hex at a time, but that might make for an interesting space-control mechanic. Just a thought.
This is kinda what I was thinking, but it must be easy to clear out though becasue it appears that if terran goes pure mech it would be easy to mass and casue too much LoS blocking, though I like th idea of some vision blocking in general becasue it ought to allow terran to try to get better positioning with a mech army
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On August 15 2012 01:50 KrazyTrumpet wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2012 01:48 Thaniri wrote:
Dakim literally said that the warhound and hellion are being designed to be a-move units in the anaheim interview.
They just don't realize how stupid that is. Current Terran units already require lots of micro to maximize effectiveness, what's wrong with having a couple a-click units in the mix? You really want to make Terran players micro even more than they already have to?
Because Terran is the most well-designed race right now. We need to make the other races have more scaling micro units like Terran, not make Terran have less. Besides, going mech isn't micro heavy. It's not like Terran playesr are going to be making Hellions and Warhounds and Siege Tanks along with their micro heavy bio composition. There's no way to get that kind of production.
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Nah, I think the warhound is fine.
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I need to see and use the unit before I can make a decision on it. There are a number of factors that we have no idea about:
- Can it be dropped effectively during combat? Can a small group of them be used to flank units like colossi, using their front loaded damage to take them down quick?
- How do they control? Do they feel like stalkers, immortals or roaches? Can they kite melee units or units with shorter range?
As for looks, I like my mechs ugly and dumb looking. The unit looks like something out of mech warrior, which is awesome in many ways. I am not willing to jump on to the warhound-hate-wagon yet. Much like people I have never meet and books I have not read, I wait until I interact with the Warhound before passing judgment.
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Unit Art Design - Horrible, even non-designers know it sucks
Unit Animation - Horrible feels like a person/animal and not mechanical
Size - Feels too big
Unit Design - a boring paradigm that should at least replace the marauder (EG marauder doesn't exist anymore).
Browder's philosophy seems to be buffing mech by doing everything EXCEPT making siege tanks strong again.
Additionally, Hellions are still slow and weak so pure mech builds are barely viable because Mech has no fast unit. Probably what contributed in part to Jinro's retirement, because he wanted mech to be fun and viable and it really isn't.
On August 15 2012 01:48 Thaniri wrote:
Dakim literally said that the warhound and hellion are being designed to be a-move units in the anaheim interview.
They just don't realize how stupid that is.
David Kim is ruining Starcraft. It's hard enough just with Browder, his ideas for influencing 'balance' through unit design are horrible.
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