On September 08 2012 17:36 Snowbear wrote: When I look at Blizzard's sc2 past, I can conclude that they are too proud to change the warhound. MAYBE if we are lucky we get a new spell on it, but they will never rework it completely.
Warhound is a marketable 'casual' unit that's not hard to use and will be enjoyed in mass numbers for low level players. That's the bottom line about sc2 thus far.
I think everyone is harsh on the Warhound, it is the unit that allowed 3 match-ups we had never sever seen before : - Protoss VS Warhound - Zerg VS Warhound - and the infamous Warhound VS Warhound
On September 08 2012 17:36 Snowbear wrote: When I look at Blizzard's sc2 past, I can conclude that they are too proud to change the warhound. MAYBE if we are lucky we get a new spell on it, but they will never rework it completely.
I guess it doesn't need to be reworked. Simply nerf it until it remains good only against certain compositions, so that it becomes a reactionary unit that is only built sometimes to support tanks. And tanks are awesome!
On September 08 2012 17:44 Fjodorov wrote: What is this "A-move" unit? From what ive seen the Warhound is pretty fast, thus being highly microable. I dont get it...
Even if people start microing warhounds, the micro will be just like with bio, but simpler and less exciting (since with bio you have to control very squishy units, and warhounds are very buff). Even more importantly, If warhounds replace tanks, it just kills the diversity for spectators, since tank based positional games look very different from bio micro, and tanks are not going to be built because of warhounds
IMHO warhounds have to be nerfed hard, so that people prefer to build tanks over warhounds most of the time if they decide to go mech.
Btw, protoss players i think they should be fighting warhounds with immortals in warp prisms, if you can dodge their rockets and basic attack - and i think you can - then immortals get pretty effective am i right? Someone should test it how it does.
Lets just see how warhounds fares after that "dps nerf - slower attack speed". From what I've learned watching Thorzain stream (straight almost 14 hours <3 Thorzain ), having some warhounds early-mid game helps but in the late game as I've seen, the most effective unit is the Raven (less energy expensive hunter seeker missile) + basic late game composition - tanks/thors/hellions/etc if going mech (TvZ). As for TvP (having enough warhound numbers) the usage of warhounds can have a big impact due to haywire missiles and its inherent high alpha damage output (same goes for TvT if the opponent is meching also). Still, I have to see more "good" TvP matches to make a better idea about how good (or way too good) is the new unit (warhound).
All in all, it's too early to judge a new unit after only 3 days of beta. I'm pretty sure that there will be several ways to efficiently counter it (warhound), we just need to wait a little. People will figure it out quite fast.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with everyone here who hates the Warhound. I'm a bad player, and even I would rather see more skill-intensive units. If they drop it entirely... well, I dunno, I guess Terran would need something else or it would be be pretty boring in HotS. Having racecars transform into Firebats is cool and all, and you know, Totally-Not-Spider-Mines™ seem neat if they can balance them... but the Warhound is blegh. They could put Predators in multiplayer... not because Terran needs another fast ground-to-ground splash damage unit, but because it's a fucking robot panther.
Making the Warhound transform into a turret is a good idea. But I think Blizzard can do better, as long as they aren't too proud to try.
Protoss against warhound+marine can maybe try zealot+phoenix+centry Phoenix can take out/lift warhound and its less suply, they also easily beat viking. Zealot+few centry beat marine. Phoenix chrono can also build faster then warhound. Terran need get thor but that comes alot later and by then toss can go high templar ,tempest or something else. Or is this silly idea?:p
On September 09 2012 06:25 singul4rity wrote: Making mech viable means the units have to be good. Not sure why everyone hates there being a Mech unit that is actually usable vs. Protoss...
That's not even close to the reason why. It's a unit that wastes a slot in the game for something more interesting and lowers the level of excitement and interest in SC 2 overall. Any unit with really high numbers for health/speed/dmg etc can be really good and "microable." It then becomes generic and boring though, which is what you don't want for attracting more players and having interesting gameplay. Even the model looks like a generic mech thing that could have come out of any universe, which is an issue as it has no specific style to it either visually.
Not sure if it is posted here, although everyone knows it :D
Can you image that Blizzard haven't even made this super simple, a few hours test before even releasing this nightmarreish imbaunit in alpha version :D
What kind of people are working there lately? David Kim must be using hard the last couple of months and here is the result :D
1 simple nerf they can do to the warhound; just make it smaller! it is quite a big mech right now, if it's smaller then colossi would be better against it, which makes sense because then, even though you still COULD go heavy warhounds, as the game goes on longer and longer, there'll be more and more incentive to get tanks/viking to deal with colossi/HT etc etc
i mean seriously, those warhounds are huge mechs...
it would also help tanks vs warhounds, and would fit the way mech/tanks scale into lategame (bigger deathball = exponentially more powerful), since there would be more splash damage, while warhounds would still do well vs small tank-based mech armies
well there are many nerfs they can do, but I think a size change would be a decent idea
I hope it says as a 2 supply unit though instead of 3 -- i would rather it stay as 2 and be weakened. But either way is fine I guess.
Watching that video with the unit fights... HOLY SHIT 100 supply of warhounds is a HUGE FUCKING ARMY like holy crap! Imagine a 150 supply army... or even 165 (in late late game scenarios where Terran has like 20 OCs and 35 scvs mainly for gas)
Can you image that Blizzard haven't even made this super simple, a few hours test before even releasing this nightmarreish imbaunit in alpha version :D
What kind of people are working there lately? David Kim must be using hard the last couple of months and here is the result :D
I'm not actually 100% sure what you're asking, so if I'm wrong apologies. Why nerf/tweak a unit that is broken from a design perspective in the first place? People, myself included were hating the unit long, long before the Beta actually started with the subsequent Warhound dominance. As this guy put it: The Famous 'In Defence of Mech' Post
Ever since it was revealed people have loathed the unit, close to en-masse. I don't think even the Collosus has been as universally disliked by this community. 'A-move units', even if statistically balanced also tend to not scale well with good control either. Units like the Collosus, Warhound et al do not appreciably improve in the hands of a pro over the hands of a scrub. Other stock units are ostensibly A-move units (in that they don't have special abilities, but they have a good bit of micro potential, be they the marine, the stalker in early game (or later with blink) mutalisks, even banes.
All this as well after the public desire was made by the development team claimed to want to break up deathballs, but instead have just given Terran one. It's really not people flying off the handle over nothing.
Mech to be viable in TvP doesn't even really need its own anti-mech unit to kill immortals, being that it's upgraded chargelots that are the primary cause of pain. Battle hellions/tanks deal with those chargelot-centric compositions pretty well.
Fair enough. I haven't been keeping on the hots updates besides the battle reports and the unit introductions. I didn't know it was hated before the beta came out. I really like that post on how it doesn't seem to scale with skill, as I've never really thought about it. I was just asking if some of these proposed changes were because the unit is(was?) clearly broken as far as stats go. Anti mech counter to immortals sounds like an oxymoron, lol. I was asking my bud about how that aspect was supposed to work. Thanks for not being an ass about it. That I can appreciate.
I'm not actually 100% sure what you're asking, so if I'm wrong apologies. Why nerf/tweak a unit that is broken from a design perspective in the first place? People, myself included were hating the unit long, long before the Beta actually started with the subsequent Warhound dominance. As this guy put it: The Famous 'In Defence of Mech' Post
Ever since it was revealed people have loathed the unit, close to en-masse. I don't think even the Collosus has been as universally disliked by this community. 'A-move units', even if statistically balanced also tend to not scale well with good control either. Units like the Collosus, Warhound et al do not appreciably improve in the hands of a pro over the hands of a scrub. Other stock units are ostensibly A-move units (in that they don't have special abilities, but they have a good bit of micro potential, be they the marine, the stalker in early game (or later with blink) mutalisks, even banes.
All this as well after the public desire was made by the development team claimed to want to break up deathballs, but instead have just given Terran one. It's really not people flying off the handle over nothing.
Mech to be viable in TvP doesn't even really need its own anti-mech unit to kill immortals, being that it's upgraded chargelots that are the primary cause of pain. Battle hellions/tanks deal with those chargelot-centric compositions pretty well.
Fair enough. I haven't been keeping on the hots updates besides the battle reports and the unit introductions. I didn't know it was hated before the beta came out. I really like that post on how it doesn't seem to scale with skill, as I've never really thought about it. I was just asking if some of these proposed changes were because the unit is(was?) clearly broken as far as stats go. Anti mech counter to immortals sounds like an oxymoron, lol. I was asking my bud about how that aspect was supposed to work. Thanks for not being an ass about it. That I can appreciate.
In a nutshell what I want/advocate are units that are good at different levels of skill, but have a noticeable difference in effectiveness in the hands of a pro compared to an average ladder player.
You can watch MKP's marines and get excited, or marvel at Hero's lategame warp prism useage. Nobody really gets out of their seat for 'MC's sick collosus control' because beyond basic competence there's not much more mileage they can get out of those kind of units.
Either make units that scale with micro (and I'm talking basic units here, not spellcasters), or create units that dovetail well with others, a la Templar/Warp Prism drops. These kind of things are all units that players of all level can appreciate, but are more impressive the higher up players go in skill.
This kind of design is not exclusive to BW by any stretch, lots of these interesting unit interactions do exist in SC2 and Blizzard gets a fair bit right. I just wish to see them build on the good stuff they put in, rather than replace it with bad stuff (as I perceive it)
Can you image that Blizzard haven't even made this super simple, a few hours test before even releasing this nightmarreish imbaunit in alpha version :D
What kind of people are working there lately? David Kim must be using hard the last couple of months and here is the result :D
Wow! Just wow! That's total BS.
However I believe that it wouldn't be enough just to moderately nerf warhounds. Even if they become balanced, they are still uninspiring a-move units, that are very boring to watch compared to tank positional micro.
Am I the only one who thinks that the health of the Warhound should have been nerfed before anything else? 220HP for a 150/75 unit is quite ridiculous. Maybe chuck it down to 160 or something.
Well, i really don't take the unit tester for face value because the warhound will most always beat other units without micro because of it's range.
If you watch the video however, it's pretty clear that 3 things break the balance vs. current units. 1) The size. The size of the warhound makes it split all splash damage to a degree where splash units aside from sieged tanks and banelings are not cost effective. \
2) The range. imo the range of the "normal" attack should be much shorter, like range 4 and should be more marine-like rapid bursts of small damage.
3) The attack speed. We will see how the patch fixes this part. I was expecting the warhounds to get mowed down by bio, but of course in the video there are no medivacs, micro, or stimming more than 1x.
On September 09 2012 13:46 cerebralz wrote: Well, i really don't take the unit tester for face value because the warhound will most always beat other units without micro because of it's range.
If you watch the video however, it's pretty clear that 3 things break the balance vs. current units. 1) The size. The size of the warhound makes it split all splash damage to a degree where splash units aside from sieged tanks and banelings are not cost effective. \
2) The range. imo the range of the "normal" attack should be much shorter, like range 4 and should be more marine-like rapid bursts of small damage.
3) The attack speed. We will see how the patch fixes this part. I was expecting the warhounds to get mowed down by bio, but of course in the video there are no medivacs, micro, or stimming more than 1x.
Their range/movement speed/HP is a fucking problem. They got tons of HP 220 for a 2 supply is ridiculous. They are almost as fast a Stalker. Long range on their missile(9 range).
Their DPS is still strong but not as overpowered as before.
Now it is time to tweak their HP and movement speed.
Worst of all, THEY ARE ONLY 2 SUPPLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Those thing should be 3 supply.
This is like when roaches were on 1 supply but got nerfed to 2 supply.
EPT
), having some warhounds early-mid game helps but in the late game as I've seen, the most effective unit is the Raven (less energy expensive hunter seeker missile) + basic late game composition - tanks/thors/hellions/etc if going mech (TvZ). As for TvP (having enough warhound numbers) the usage of warhounds can have a big impact due to haywire missiles and its inherent high alpha damage output (same goes for TvT if the opponent is meching also). Still, I have to see more "good" TvP matches to make a better idea about how good (or way too good) is the new unit (warhound).
