Everyone has seen the current warhound on the "official" beta streams or has already had previous knowledge of it from betas at LANs or with the custom HOTS map.
Many of you now have probably read Falling's "Defense of Mech" (can be found here: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=360325) thread describing very succinctly what mech is and what it is not, and many will make the comparison that the warhound is simply a "marauder in a gundam suit" or a mech suit.
The warhound is a 1A unit right now that really adds no positional depth, skillcap, or really anything at all that "mech" needs.
This thread will be to bring the warhound issue to light, as well as to suggest a design change to the warhound that will make it a "mech" unit aka a unit that requires thought, precision, good decision making, and adds depth to the unit rather than adds another 1A unit to heart of the swarm.
The first thing I will point out is that when starcraft players think "mech" they think of the most iconic Terran brood war unit - the siege tank.
The siege tank was Terran's power unit, their core unit in Brood War. Along with the vulture and spider mines + missile turrets it created the "siege tank push" with leapfrogging tanks, requiring positioning and siege mode timing to be very important, along with spider mines on the flanks.
The reason I mention the siege tank first is because what the warhound currently does from a design perspective, regardless of it's current balance/stats, is the warhound essentially is "better" or replaces the siege tank as a unit.
The siege tank was previously nerfed in a balance patch during the "blizzard maps era" in Wings of Liberty. It used to be cost effective against protoss until after the change to tank damage as well as the change to zealot's armor type allowing it to tank 1-2 more tank shots.
The warhound is mobile, can run away, is less supply, and does about the same dps (or more) than the siege tank currently does, essentially with zero drawbacks. There is no reason to build tanks when you have such a good unit.
The problem is even in the case that the warhound's statistics/balance is changed, from a design perspective it's still that same "marauder in a gundam suit."
I am going to propose a design idea for the warhound that would make it a "mech" unit, a unit that adds more depth/difficulty to Terran rather than making Terran "easier" (as cloud put in an interview). This idea I will also try to keep in line with blizzard's past and present design ideas for the warhound's role.
Give the warhound a similar and effective long-range anti-air attack as originally conceived, but give the warhound a "siege mode" to go into this anti-air mode. Blizzard could even make this "warhound siege mode" a researchable upgrade on the tech lab, giving more avenues to balance the unit. Also make the warhound be completely immobile when in this mode, just like the siege tank. Leave it with an anti-mech type of ground attack similar to what it currently has as well, but make it it's default attack (and probably slightly weaker).
Nerf the widow mine to only affect ground units in accordance with these changes, but buff it's damage/splash so that it actually is worth making (currently it is not).
What does this do for the warhound, terran mech, and HOTS?
It does a few things. First of all, it adds depth to the unit and a distinct role. It will still have a ground attack to be a useful mech unit, but it will now be able to fill in the missing anti-air gap that mech previously had.
In order for the unit to do this, it would have to switch modes into siege mode, similar to how the siege tank/hellion currently work with their transformations. It also would become immobile meaning positioning matters when using the warhound, and decision making matters for when to siege it and when to not (just like the siege tank).
This makes it so it does not overshadow the siege tank as well.
Everyone has seen brood war games, even some SC2 games, where siege tanks have been out of position or in great positions, and it can make or break a game. Why not make the warhound a unit that performs a similar positional function in the game, but provides a different role to the mech army - anti-air.
I mentioned removing the widow mine's ability to attack air would be in-line with a design change like this because if a change like this were made the widow mine's and warhounds anti-air roles would overlap too much. The widow mine in it's current form is quite underwhelming overall, and should be looked at but that is for another thread.
Closing thoughts: I think everyone as a spectator/player wants interesting units that add depth to the game and are fun to use. Things like the widow mine, siege tank, and even the hellion in many cases all require good positional play to be useful and become cost efficient. The warhound and any mech unit should be designed with a similar goal in mind.
Make the warhound a positional unit that can go into siege mode to contribute an anti-air role to the mech army. Make it have the drawback that it is immobile in this state which promotes the user to position their unit well, and adds depth to Terran mech, instead of making it "ez 1A mode." This mode can be researchable to tweak balance on the unit.
Keep in mind that this is just a design idea that would be an example of how to make the warhound become a positional "mechy" unit. And yes, a change like proposed would call into question the role of the thor for anti-air.
Thoughts?
p.s./disclaimer: A beta is for feedback, hopefully people will see this as beta feedback and good discussion rather than "balance whine"
I agree completely, utterly, and totally. This is, without a doubt, the WORST concept for a unit in the entire history of Sc2 (yes! including Infestors and Roaches and Colossi!)
Where does leave the Thor? Why have the Warhound when you can just use a Thor which can do both without limiting it's movement?
Not suggesting (inb4 flamers), that it's balanced or that we should keep it, just that the proposal isn't a good one, or at least, isn't a fully thought out one.
yes colossus compared to the warhound is like reaver compared to colossus ^.^ , blizz shoul quit it asap, there is no way that unitat will fit the game
On September 06 2012 08:49 DKR wrote: Where does leave the Thor? Why have the Warhound when you can just use a Thor which can do both without limiting it's movement?
Suprisingly enough, the thors anti air is terrible that isn't super clumped up or mutalisks. If you go mech now you really badly need turrets as well as thors (even against pure mutalisk) or you just die.
I don't mind using vikings though however as you need the air upgrades to transition into BC with mech atm anyway.
On September 06 2012 08:49 DKR wrote: Where does leave the Thor? Why have the Warhound when you can just use a Thor which can do both without limiting it's movement?
Not suggesting (inb4 flamers), that it's balanced or that we should keep it, just that the proposal isn't a good one, or at least, isn't a fully thought out one.
Because a thor is damn expensive in every way imaginable.
On September 06 2012 08:49 DKR wrote: Where does leave the Thor? Why have the Warhound when you can just use a Thor which can do both without limiting it's movement?
Not suggesting (inb4 flamers), that it's balanced or that we should keep it, just that the proposal isn't a good one, or at least, isn't a fully thought out one.
Yes, I would have that question too, "where does it leave the thor?" Because the change i propose may overlap with the thor's AA role as well. Since none of us directly work for blizzard, that would be up to them to handle :D
The reason I mention the design idea I came up with is in line with blizzard's concept for the warhound is because originally they indeed were having a similar ideas for the role of the warhound to be an anti-air unit, to the point they previously considered removing the thor if necessary.
Suprisingly enough, the thors anti air is terrible that isn't super clumped up or mutalisks. If you go mech now you really badly need turrets as well as thors (even against pure mutalisk) or you just die.
I don't mind using vikings though however as you need the air upgrades to transition into BC with mech atm anyway.
Mech TvZ (if that's what we're looking at) requires defensive turrets sure, but a Meching player is going to have a mineral imbalance, so that's no bother. When you get that 2-2 Mech army, which should have around 7 Thor's, Muta doesn't seem too scary.
On September 06 2012 08:51 EtherealDeath wrote:
Because a thor is damn expensive in every way imaginable.
Mech units should be fairly expensive, I'm not aware of how much the Warhound costs? I'm sure if it is this effective a unit then, it's price will rise before it falls.
Suprisingly enough, the thors anti air is terrible that isn't super clumped up or mutalisks. If you go mech now you really badly need turrets as well as thors (even against pure mutalisk) or you just die.
I don't mind using vikings though however as you need the air upgrades to transition into BC with mech atm anyway.
Mech TvZ (if that's what we're looking at) requires defensive turrets sure, but a Meching player is going to have a mineral imbalance, so that's no bother. When you get that 2-2 Mech army, which should have around 7 Thor's, Muta doesn't seem too scary.
Because a thor is damn expensive in every way imaginable.
Mech units should be fairly expensive, I'm not aware of how much the Warhound costs? I'm sure if it is this effective a unit then, it's price will rise before it falls.
Honestly a ridiculous number of thors will die to a high number of mutas if they're magic boxed. I'm not even kidding.
At first glance, the wardhound does seem that way. But as always, I will wait at least a few weeks to see how things play out before reserving judgement.
Suprisingly enough, the thors anti air is terrible that isn't super clumped up or mutalisks. If you go mech now you really badly need turrets as well as thors (even against pure mutalisk) or you just die.
I don't mind using vikings though however as you need the air upgrades to transition into BC with mech atm anyway.
Mech TvZ (if that's what we're looking at) requires defensive turrets sure, but a Meching player is going to have a mineral imbalance, so that's no bother. When you get that 2-2 Mech army, which should have around 7 Thor's, Muta doesn't seem too scary.
On September 06 2012 08:51 EtherealDeath wrote:
Because a thor is damn expensive in every way imaginable.
Mech units should be fairly expensive, I'm not aware of how much the Warhound costs? I'm sure if it is this effective a unit then, it's price will rise before it falls.
Honestly a ridiculous number of thors will die to a high number of mutas if they're magic boxed. I'm not even kidding.
Well if you're arguing like this then we could say that a lot of marauders will die to a high number of banelings, if you have 60 supply of them. Stopping the Zerg from reaching this stage in economy is pretty important.
I appreciate that Thor's against Magic boxed Muta's aren't great, but that's a component of their positioning; something Mech should include.
PhD. Avilo going to work! But seriously though, yeah I was watching Ret's stream earlier and his roaches could not do anything to the mass of warhounds.
Suprisingly enough, the thors anti air is terrible that isn't super clumped up or mutalisks. If you go mech now you really badly need turrets as well as thors (even against pure mutalisk) or you just die.
I don't mind using vikings though however as you need the air upgrades to transition into BC with mech atm anyway.
Mech TvZ (if that's what we're looking at) requires defensive turrets sure, but a Meching player is going to have a mineral imbalance, so that's no bother. When you get that 2-2 Mech army, which should have around 7 Thor's, Muta doesn't seem too scary.
On September 06 2012 08:51 EtherealDeath wrote:
Because a thor is damn expensive in every way imaginable.
Mech units should be fairly expensive, I'm not aware of how much the Warhound costs? I'm sure if it is this effective a unit then, it's price will rise before it falls.
Honestly a ridiculous number of thors will die to a high number of mutas if they're magic boxed. I'm not even kidding.
Well if you're arguing like this then we could say that a lot of marauders will die to a high number of banelings, if you have 60 supply of them. Stopping the Zerg from reaching this stage in economy is pretty important.
I appreciate that Thor's against Magic boxed Muta's aren't great, but that's a component of their positioning; something Mech should include.
It's nothing to do with the positioning of the thors. Thors anti air sucks against anything that isn't stacked. That's not a lie, it's the truth. I'm just saying that's why you need turrets as well.
Suprisingly enough, the thors anti air is terrible that isn't super clumped up or mutalisks. If you go mech now you really badly need turrets as well as thors (even against pure mutalisk) or you just die.
I don't mind using vikings though however as you need the air upgrades to transition into BC with mech atm anyway.
Mech TvZ (if that's what we're looking at) requires defensive turrets sure, but a Meching player is going to have a mineral imbalance, so that's no bother. When you get that 2-2 Mech army, which should have around 7 Thor's, Muta doesn't seem too scary.
Because a thor is damn expensive in every way imaginable.
Mech units should be fairly expensive, I'm not aware of how much the Warhound costs? I'm sure if it is this effective a unit then, it's price will rise before it falls.
Thors are damn expensive in the context of mech when it comes to using them for anti air.
Suprisingly enough, the thors anti air is terrible that isn't super clumped up or mutalisks. If you go mech now you really badly need turrets as well as thors (even against pure mutalisk) or you just die.
I don't mind using vikings though however as you need the air upgrades to transition into BC with mech atm anyway.
Mech TvZ (if that's what we're looking at) requires defensive turrets sure, but a Meching player is going to have a mineral imbalance, so that's no bother. When you get that 2-2 Mech army, which should have around 7 Thor's, Muta doesn't seem too scary.
On September 06 2012 08:51 EtherealDeath wrote:
Because a thor is damn expensive in every way imaginable.
Mech units should be fairly expensive, I'm not aware of how much the Warhound costs? I'm sure if it is this effective a unit then, it's price will rise before it falls.
Honestly a ridiculous number of thors will die to a high number of mutas if they're magic boxed. I'm not even kidding.
Well if you're arguing like this then we could say that a lot of marauders will die to a high number of banelings, if you have 60 supply of them. Stopping the Zerg from reaching this stage in economy is pretty important.
I appreciate that Thor's against Magic boxed Muta's aren't great, but that's a component of their positioning; something Mech should include.
It's nothing to do with the positioning of the thors. Thors anti air sucks against anything that isn't stacked. That's not a lie, it's the truth. I'm just saying that's why you need turrets as well.
In defence, yes you do, but it's not a situation like TvT where you bring them with you. Thor AA is proven to be extremely viable by the vast number of Korean T players who use it extensively. As I said, it's a case of dictating the play so those numbers don't appear.
When I referred to positioning I meant that the Thor's placement matters in that, if you leave a bunch of Thor's in the middle of the map and 50 muta's fly over them in a magic box, you've placed them wrong.
On September 06 2012 09:05 -Duderino- wrote: I agree with avilo, but I do think terran deserve some ez mode 1a unit seeing as that is the catagory most toss and zerg units fall under.
i feel the same. it's time to get gm with amoving as terran as well.
Man, just chill out, Warhound is not a unit that will replace the tank and break positional play.
Goliath had a similar function as the Warhound. A fucking robot that counter a specific tech branch that can overwhelm Mech play if not adressed with a specific counter. they were in the air on SCbw, mutalisks, wraiths, shuttles, wtv. In SC2 they are in the Ground. Its the Immortal, the chargelot and other dumb units on the game that just roflstomp positional play and tanks.
The Warhound, in fact, seems ridiculous strong in the early game; But its a unit that doesn't have specific upgrades. It becomes weak when AoE and siege units come to the field. It can be forcefielded. Stimmed Bio roflstomp it.
You still need it if you going tanks without bio to support it. Pure Warhound owns pure tank. But Warhound+Tank owns even harder pure Warhound.
Just wait. People need to think outside of the box. some WoL strategies will just not work anymore, but a lot of new ones will appear as time passes on. =)
-I like the range and speed of the WarHound, which makes it as microable as a stalker in the early game. -I don't like the auto-cast abilities, the high damage, or the fact that you never have a reason to build a siege tank.
If WarHounds had low damage and lockdown from sc1 (or widow mines at their disposal) that would be fantastic. Turrets/Widow mines can still serve as anti-air, which WarHounds don't necessarily need.
Thors with double spinning armouries beat mutas. Either they have +2 and they 2 shot (instead of 3) mutas and/or their armour is too strong for mutas to get through. Even with magic box mass muta players don't beat thors reliably.
They will either redesign Thor to do this or remove it completely. I propose maybe a transform and not a stationary turret like "siege mode" but I agree with the basic IDEA behind this. Avilo has actually started to articulate and therefor make sense in his latest threads. Keep it up man.
What? Immobile anti-air? Turrets and thors already are immobile anti-air... that's not adding a useful function to the warhound, that's giving it hydralisk status.
I've watched a bit of HOTS (qxc!) and I'm actually excited seeing warhounds running at a zerg's base and engaging a pack of queens. It is a unit that has the potential to force Zerg away from the safe 3hatch many queen builds and back toward earlier speedling / less econ-focused openings. BUT ECON AND MANY BASES IS INDICATIVE OF GOOD PLAY!
...Sure, if you're comparing different leagues. At higher levels, it's fairly safe to add -safely- into that statement, showing that getting econ and many bases SAFELY is indicative of good play... but in the current metagame, ZvP and ZvT seem to be largely based around it currently being "safe" to focus econ until either one or both players have upwards of 3 bases. If Terran get a unit that starts forcing Zerg to get ling speed earlier to stay safe, Zerg now is in a situation where they don't have a competitive economy, but do have tech (ling speed) they wouldn't normally have which allows them to return pressure etc etc etc. Sure, there's nothing -wrong- with passive play and people getting many bases, but if Terran gets a unit that is allowed to pressure early and in small numbers -safely-, I don't think you'll find me objecting to the role of the unit too quickly. More active play is more fun to watch, and I don't think anyone can say for sure that TvZ warhound rush is 100% win. Let it develop, it should be fun to watch the new timings arise!
(No idea how Warhound functions vP or whether or not it is actually balanced. If it kept the same role but became balanced I wouldn't object. It reminds me of a really hefty mech reaper.)
On September 06 2012 09:00 Shadow_Dog wrote: PhD. Avilo going to work! But seriously though, yeah I was watching Ret's stream earlier and his roaches could not do anything to the mass of warhounds.
Isn't this like saying Avilo's siege tanks could not do anything to the mass of immortals? It's not the first hard counter in the game.
On September 06 2012 09:10 CikaZombi wrote: They will either redesign Thor to do this or remove it completely. I propose maybe a transform and not a stationary turret like "siege mode" but I agree with the basic IDEA behind this. Avilo has actually started to articulate and therefor make sense in his latest threads. Keep it up man.
I agree, this and the 1.5 fix not being a fix thread were well thought out even if I don't agree with it's suggestions
Agreed. I'm quite positive that it is the most boring unit I have ever seen in a Blizzard RTS. It looks boring, it plays boringly and it's really really boring to observe from a spectator's point of view.
I think your suggestion is nice. My gut feeling is that I would want something else and even more specific that doesn't overlap with other units, but I don't have anything better to suggest for now
I am curious, what role was the warhound supposed to fill? It made sense before when it was supposed to be like a goliath and they removed the thor... but if thor is still in the game, then.... why does the warhound exist?
I like the ideas in the OP. It's not a question of unit power, warhound just doesn't make for interesting gameplay right now. Giving it something like siege mode would be a great idea, though I'm not sure I'd tie that with the anti-air abilities.
On September 06 2012 09:05 -Duderino- wrote: I agree with avilo, but I do think terran deserve some ez mode 1a unit seeing as that is the catagory most toss and zerg units fall under.
No race should have easy mode 1a units. In Brood War, not even Protoss is an easy mode 1a2a3a race. Even Protoss is hard and interesting and fun to play as and against.
Even if P and Z end up being 1a2a3a ezmode with no micro, that doesn't mean Terran should be dragged down as well. Let us have at least one interesting race, instead of none.
As for the OP, I agree that the warhound is terribly designed, like a lot of SC2 units. It's just a marauder, but from the factory! It definitely needs to be given something to make it more interesting.
On September 06 2012 09:05 -Duderino- wrote: I agree with avilo, but I do think terran deserve some ez mode 1a unit seeing as that is the catagory most toss and zerg units fall under.
No race should have easy mode 1a units. In Brood War, not even Protoss is an easy mode 1a2a3a race. Even Protoss is hard and interesting and fun to play as and against.
Even if P and Z end up being 1a2a3a ezmode with no micro, that doesn't mean Terran should be dragged down as well. Let us have at least one interesting race, instead of none.
On September 06 2012 09:05 -Duderino- wrote: I agree with avilo, but I do think terran deserve some ez mode 1a unit seeing as that is the catagory most toss and zerg units fall under.
No race should have easy mode 1a units. In Brood War, not even Protoss is an easy mode 1a2a3a race. Even Protoss is hard and interesting and fun to play as and against.
Even if P and Z end up being 1a2a3a ezmode with no micro, that doesn't mean Terran should be dragged down as well. Let us have at least one interesting race, instead of none.
On September 06 2012 09:05 -Duderino- wrote: I agree with avilo, but I do think terran deserve some ez mode 1a unit seeing as that is the catagory most toss and zerg units fall under.
No race should have easy mode 1a units. In Brood War, not even Protoss is an easy mode 1a2a3a race. Even Protoss is hard and interesting and fun to play as and against.
Even if P and Z end up being 1a2a3a ezmode with no micro, that doesn't mean Terran should be dragged down as well. Let us have at least one interesting race, instead of none.
What race do you play btw ?
In SC1, I play Zerg (but Protoss vs Z, so ZvT, ZvP, PvZ). In SC2, I played Zerg, but if I ever go back to SC2 again I'll switch to Terran, because I am sick of ZvZ. To me, Terran has the only enjoyable mirror matchup.
Edit: Which I will do if HotS turns out to be good, by the way.
On September 06 2012 09:05 -Duderino- wrote: I agree with avilo, but I do think terran deserve some ez mode 1a unit seeing as that is the catagory most toss and zerg units fall under.
No race should have easy mode 1a units. In Brood War, not even Protoss is an easy mode 1a2a3a race. Even Protoss is hard and interesting and fun to play as and against.
Even if P and Z end up being 1a2a3a ezmode with no micro, that doesn't mean Terran should be dragged down as well. Let us have at least one interesting race, instead of none.
What race do you play btw ?
In SC1, I play Zerg (but Protoss vs Z, so ZvT, ZvP, PvZ). In SC2, I played Zerg, but if I ever go back to SC2 again I'll switch to Terran, because I am sick of ZvZ.
So you play zerg. Okey that's interesting. Why aren't you proposing changes for zergs ?
On September 06 2012 09:05 -Duderino- wrote: I agree with avilo, but I do think terran deserve some ez mode 1a unit seeing as that is the catagory most toss and zerg units fall under.
No race should have easy mode 1a units. In Brood War, not even Protoss is an easy mode 1a2a3a race. Even Protoss is hard and interesting and fun to play as and against.
Even if P and Z end up being 1a2a3a ezmode with no micro, that doesn't mean Terran should be dragged down as well. Let us have at least one interesting race, instead of none.
What race do you play btw ?
In SC1, I play Zerg (but Protoss vs Z, so ZvT, ZvP, PvZ). In SC2, I played Zerg, but if I ever go back to SC2 again I'll switch to Terran, because I am sick of ZvZ.
So you play zerg. Okey that's interesting. Why aren't you proposing changes for zergs ?
Are you saying I should be making threads about Zerg units? Or that I shouldn't talk about Terran? I may have played Zerg, but I have always appreciated what Terran has as well. I think Zerg and Terran are both designed evenly well, with Protoss being designed worse.
Why should I be "proposing changes for Zergs"? :D I want all the races to become more interesting, so that SC2 in general can become more interesting.
On September 06 2012 09:05 -Duderino- wrote: I agree with avilo, but I do think terran deserve some ez mode 1a unit seeing as that is the catagory most toss and zerg units fall under.
No race should have easy mode 1a units. In Brood War, not even Protoss is an easy mode 1a2a3a race. Even Protoss is hard and interesting and fun to play as and against.
Even if P and Z end up being 1a2a3a ezmode with no micro, that doesn't mean Terran should be dragged down as well. Let us have at least one interesting race, instead of none.
What race do you play btw ?
In SC1, I play Zerg (but Protoss vs Z, so ZvT, ZvP, PvZ). In SC2, I played Zerg, but if I ever go back to SC2 again I'll switch to Terran, because I am sick of ZvZ.
So you play zerg. Okey that's interesting. Why aren't you proposing changes for zergs ?
Are you saying I should be making threads about Zerg units? Or that I shouldn't talk about Terran? I may have played Zerg, but I have always appreciated what Terran has as well. I think Zerg and Terran are both designed evenly well, with Protoss being designed worse.
Why should I be "proposing changes for Zergs"? :D
What i am saying is you find 1 race interesting, but 2 others which aren't, then you would be more helpful trying to uplift those races in the very first place. Most people who complains about a-move units because they lack tactical depth never try to do a constructive criticism about his race a-move units, except if they are somewhat underpowered.
By the way, warhounds right now give a lot of microable harass options. Could be OP ? Could be. Could be it needs another role ? Could be. But there's no metagame expert on HOTS after 1 day to open and comment on a TL post about a unit. If you really want that tactical depth, you should already start with what you already know, and that's why i am asking you why aren't you asking for zergs change so it can fulfill your expectations regarding a-move units ?
On September 06 2012 09:05 -Duderino- wrote: I agree with avilo, but I do think terran deserve some ez mode 1a unit seeing as that is the catagory most toss and zerg units fall under.
No race should have easy mode 1a units. In Brood War, not even Protoss is an easy mode 1a2a3a race. Even Protoss is hard and interesting and fun to play as and against.
Even if P and Z end up being 1a2a3a ezmode with no micro, that doesn't mean Terran should be dragged down as well. Let us have at least one interesting race, instead of none.
As for the OP, I agree that the warhound is terribly designed, like a lot of SC2 units. It's just a marauder, but from the factory! It definitely needs to be given something to make it more interesting.
I would argue that every race has gained some anti amove stuff. For instance:
swarm host is nearly as positional as the siege tank
mass recall from MC allows for awesome tactics
widow mine requires positioning, and battle hellions are very beneficial to siege tank style mech, which is not A-move in the slightest (I am assuming the warhound is going to get nerfed down, probably in the form of reducing the fire rate) because they can both give map control AND defend the siege tanks.
but I guarantee with all the shit about the warhound already it WILL get nerfed.
On September 06 2012 09:05 -Duderino- wrote: I agree with avilo, but I do think terran deserve some ez mode 1a unit seeing as that is the catagory most toss and zerg units fall under.
No race should have easy mode 1a units. In Brood War, not even Protoss is an easy mode 1a2a3a race. Even Protoss is hard and interesting and fun to play as and against.
Even if P and Z end up being 1a2a3a ezmode with no micro, that doesn't mean Terran should be dragged down as well. Let us have at least one interesting race, instead of none.
What race do you play btw ?
In SC1, I play Zerg (but Protoss vs Z, so ZvT, ZvP, PvZ). In SC2, I played Zerg, but if I ever go back to SC2 again I'll switch to Terran, because I am sick of ZvZ.
So you play zerg. Okey that's interesting. Why aren't you proposing changes for zergs ?
Are you saying I should be making threads about Zerg units? Or that I shouldn't talk about Terran? I may have played Zerg, but I have always appreciated what Terran has as well. I think Zerg and Terran are both designed evenly well, with Protoss being designed worse.
Why should I be "proposing changes for Zergs"? :D
What i am saying is you find 1 race interesting, but 2 others which aren't, then you would be more helpful trying to uplift those races in the very first place. Most people who complains about a-move units because they lack tactical depth never try to do a constructive criticism about his race a-move units, except if they are somewhat underpowered.
By the way, warhounds right now give a lot of microable harass options. Could be OP ? Could be. Could be it needs another role ? Could be. But there's no metagame expert on HOTS after 1 day to open and comment on a TL post about a unit. If you really want that tactical depth, you should already start with what you already know, and that's why i point you to zergs.
I don't need to play Protoss to know that half their shit is terribly boring. It's uninteresting to watch, it's uninteresting to play against... and I can tell it's uninteresting to play as.
I don't need to use warpgates to realize why they're bad. Or colossi. Or having a lategame revolving around archons and vortex.
Anyway, I gave the OP's idea some more thought. At first I thought an "anti air siege mode" wasn't such a good idea, but vs broodlord infestor, it could be interesting. You'd have ravens to keep infestors away and vs broodlords like you already do, but you'd also have the warhounds to "zone" broodlords. It would add a lot of micro and positioning. Zerg could try to pull a few out with vipers, move around to force them to unsiege and siege, and so on. You could even move around to make them unsiege, then move in as they are sieging and pull them away with vipers!
Edit: Also, if mech becomes viable in TvP, which seems possible, maybe Tempests will become useful PvT. And in that case, the warhound proposed in this thread could be used against the tempest. It would create a situation where parts of both armies have longer range than the rest, and would be fighting each other alone, while the rest of the army threatens to enter. If a Terran was pushing with siege tanks, tempests could try to get some shots in and snipe a few units while the warhounds are re-deploying. Tempests could also try to find angles where the warhound coverage is weaker.
You could also have just one or two warhounds in your army for anti air (vs a protoss user going tempests, assuming they are actually going to be useful vs mech) just to force the air to come closer. If you have vikings above your army, and a few tempests just for the longer range, it would just sit there and bombard from long range while the vikings would protect it if anything actually gets close enough to attack it.
On the other hand, if you only get one, and it gets sniped, the push is delayed by a lot. But if you lose too many tempests trying to snipe it, it wasn't worth it. I was of course assuming that tempests outrange vikings and that warhounds outrange tempests, and that tempests will be useful vs mech. And that mech will be viable TvP.
But still, I actually think this idea could be quite good if done well.
On September 06 2012 09:05 -Duderino- wrote: I agree with avilo, but I do think terran deserve some ez mode 1a unit seeing as that is the catagory most toss and zerg units fall under.
No race should have easy mode 1a units. In Brood War, not even Protoss is an easy mode 1a2a3a race. Even Protoss is hard and interesting and fun to play as and against.
Even if P and Z end up being 1a2a3a ezmode with no micro, that doesn't mean Terran should be dragged down as well. Let us have at least one interesting race, instead of none.
What race do you play btw ?
In SC1, I play Zerg (but Protoss vs Z, so ZvT, ZvP, PvZ). In SC2, I played Zerg, but if I ever go back to SC2 again I'll switch to Terran, because I am sick of ZvZ.
So you play zerg. Okey that's interesting. Why aren't you proposing changes for zergs ?
Are you saying I should be making threads about Zerg units? Or that I shouldn't talk about Terran? I may have played Zerg, but I have always appreciated what Terran has as well. I think Zerg and Terran are both designed evenly well, with Protoss being designed worse.
Why should I be "proposing changes for Zergs"? :D
What i am saying is you find 1 race interesting, but 2 others which aren't, then you would be more helpful trying to uplift those races in the very first place. Most people who complains about a-move units because they lack tactical depth never try to do a constructive criticism about his race a-move units, except if they are somewhat underpowered.
By the way, warhounds right now give a lot of microable harass options. Could be OP ? Could be. Could be it needs another role ? Could be. But there's no metagame expert on HOTS after 1 day to open and comment on a TL post about a unit. If you really want that tactical depth, you should already start with what you already know, and that's why i point you to zergs.
I don't need to play Protoss to know that half their shit is terribly boring. It's uninteresting to watch, it's uninteresting to play against... and I can tell it's uninteresting to play as.
I don't need to use warpgates to realize why they're bad. Or colossi. Or having a lategame revolving around archons and vortex.
Anyway, I gave the OP's idea some more thought. At first I thought an "anti air siege mode" wasn't such a good idea, but vs broodlord infestor, it could be interesting. You'd have ravens to keep infestors away and vs broodlords like you already do, but you'd also have the warhounds to "zone" broodlords. It would add a lot of micro and positioning. Zerg could try to pull a few out with vipers, move around to force them to unsiege and siege, and so on. You could even move around to make them unsiege, then move in as they are sieging and pull them away with vipers!
You don't need to, but your feedback would be more accurate and useful ^^
Thors and vikings are already terran mech anti-air. Siege tanks are our positional unit. Mech needs some mobility aside hellions to be able to compete on maps withouth easy thirds/fourths. Warhound tries to give them that.
Remove Thor, give Warhound AA that does good damage against ALL air units, nerf their dmg/ms/stats - > buff tank anti-armor dmg a bit - > Mech rocks, viable all game
siege mode for anti air well you encourage them to turtle more lol....
because mech is fucking slow you have a hard time with mech these days yeah sure terran tanks epecialy terran tvt is all about postioning there terrans that love that shit i am not one of them
that postioning that you mention is very very unforgiving if you make a slight mistake
btw warhound is not the only 1A mech unit mass thor is the same and when warhound is not mech or bio what should it else be huh ?
Why are people so suprised by this? We've known this for months. David Kim said in his interview with teamliquid at MLG that terran mech was designed to give players the choice of a "protoss like" strategy of making a deathball instead of the more difficult bio style. The warhound is working as intended and I doubt it will be redesigned.
Suprisingly enough, the thors anti air is terrible that isn't super clumped up or mutalisks. If you go mech now you really badly need turrets as well as thors (even against pure mutalisk) or you just die.
I don't mind using vikings though however as you need the air upgrades to transition into BC with mech atm anyway.
Mech TvZ (if that's what we're looking at) requires defensive turrets sure, but a Meching player is going to have a mineral imbalance, so that's no bother. When you get that 2-2 Mech army, which should have around 7 Thor's, Muta doesn't seem too scary.
On September 06 2012 08:51 EtherealDeath wrote:
Because a thor is damn expensive in every way imaginable.
Mech units should be fairly expensive, I'm not aware of how much the Warhound costs? I'm sure if it is this effective a unit then, it's price will rise before it falls.
Honestly a ridiculous number of thors will die to a high number of mutas if they're magic boxed. I'm not even kidding.
Micro goes a long way; as it should. Marine spread will nullifie a huge number of banelings, I'm not even kidding.
I realised why the War Hound is such a shit unit now. If you look at how slow and cumbersome the thor is, it feels kind of realistic, in regards to the physics of a giant mech suit. The thing movies like you would expect.
The Warhound looks like a kid designed it and straight out of a video game. It's not cool, it's - well lame. It moves and animates far far too freely and quickly. Same with the colossus, the immortal the stalker. Think about it - for the most part, most of the units in the game move in a somewhat realistic manner for their estimated size and weight. The warhound COMPLETELY breaks that and just goes full, kiddy, Supreme Commander video game look and feel.
Despite the nature of the attack, if it's op or not, regardless - feedback needs to be made to Blizzard regarding the poor art of this unit.
Couldn't agree more. I find it curious that Blizzard thought we just wanted mechanical units. They don't seem to understand that we want a different playstyle based on positioning. We don't just want to play bio-style with mechanical units.
On September 06 2012 09:55 SnipedSoul wrote: Couldn't agree more. I find it curious that Blizzard thought we just wanted mechanical units. They don't seem to understand that we want a different playstyle based on positioning. We don't just want to play bio-style with mechanical units.
It shows a huge misunderstanding with the mechanics of the game and the community. I blame teamliquid for promoting the use of the word mech in balance discussions over the years without clear clarification for simple people (the developers) to understand the intention.
wow avilo I commend you for taking a stance against imbalance/stupid designs instead of just always defending Terran. I'll consider your words with more weight from now on.
On September 06 2012 09:24 aznball123 wrote: Who gives a shit, we finally get a good 1A unit.
I concur with this statement. Two years of dying to colossus... let's do it! :D
People with any sort of impact shouldn't be too careless with their jokes. Blizzard will see this and immediately seal the deal on the warhound D: Stop hurting ESPORTS!
As to Avilo, I like how much you've thought it through. I've got my own, simpler change proposition, though. First-off, I like the idea of building turrets in the field, so let's not get rid of the potential for such a cool tactic with your warhound change. Instead, let's remove the warhound and thor, then bring-in the goliath. Sounds good, huh? Your widow-mine change will work well with this, too. Pretty close to Brood War, but still an interesting, fun style of play -- mech!
There is no question, it is the "colossus" for Terran. No it doesn't have the range, nor does it have the same overall goal but basically it is "I attack, I move it back, I attack again" T.T mech is about siege lines and positioning, you win by dominating them like chess, not massing this ball together and pushing through. Mech wins becuase it is stronger stationary, not because it is stronger mobile T.T
On September 06 2012 10:02 neoghaleon55 wrote: wow avilo I commend you for taking a stance against imbalance/stupid designs instead of just always defending Terran. I'll consider your words with more weight from now on.
Considering he has to play TvT vs the fucking things don't think this is purely selfless.
Not that I'd blame him though, warhounds are fucking absurd.
Look, this is pointless. Dustin Browder has said he doesn't like positional play, he doesn't like the tank, he's doing everything he can to nerf tanks which are the epitome of positional play and mech-style play, Every race will be a-move so there are no boring stand-offs and more pew-pew action. That's what HotS will bring, like it or not.
What if Hayware missiles (or whatsitcalled) were the actual transformation of the warhound? Like some sort of deploy (similar to the Thor's CC cannon and not this autocast madness that it is now? That would make it less op without nerfing or removing that ability completely like they probably will. Don't get me wrong that won't change the design and it's core problems nor other statistical OPness of the unit, but it's a step in the right direction.
I hear you man but this isn't happening. For whatever reason, they refuse to give us the units that worked perfectly in brood war. Instead they give us almost the same thing but slightly different. Just enough to say that this is an original, fresh idea. (examples: swarm host/lurker, warhound/goliath, viper/defiler, mothership/arbiter, battle hellion/firebat, new mine/vulture). I dont know... pretty disappointed from what I've seen so far... I hope they do a good job and turn this around. Not impressed.
On September 06 2012 09:05 -Duderino- wrote: I agree with avilo, but I do think terran deserve some ez mode 1a unit seeing as that is the catagory most toss and zerg units fall under.
No race should have easy mode 1a units. In Brood War, not even Protoss is an easy mode 1a2a3a race. Even Protoss is hard and interesting and fun to play as and against.
Even if P and Z end up being 1a2a3a ezmode with no micro, that doesn't mean Terran should be dragged down as well. Let us have at least one interesting race, instead of none.
What race do you play btw ?
In SC1, I play Zerg (but Protoss vs Z, so ZvT, ZvP, PvZ). In SC2, I played Zerg, but if I ever go back to SC2 again I'll switch to Terran, because I am sick of ZvZ.
So you play zerg. Okey that's interesting. Why aren't you proposing changes for zergs ?
On September 06 2012 10:02 neoghaleon55 wrote: wow avilo I commend you for taking a stance against imbalance/stupid designs instead of just always defending Terran. I'll consider your words with more weight from now on.
Considering he has to play TvT vs the fucking things don't think this is purely selfless.
Not that I'd blame him though, warhounds are fucking absurd.
I suggest they either remove the marauder and reduce the size/cost/damage of the Warhound OR... are you ready for this? Remove the Thor and increase the size/cost/damage of the Warhound and give it a bad anti air attack.
Isn't mech a deathball in general? You sit behind tanks, turrets, PF's, and sensor towers until you have a maxed out deathball and then you move out.
sure you siege and unsiege every now and then but in general its just attack move. There are no spells to cast, no real micro besides siege and unsiege, and the person that makes a mistake first loses the game.
On September 06 2012 10:24 LgNKami wrote: Dont mean to start an argument but...
Isn't mech a deathball in general? You sit behind tanks, turrets, PF's, and sensor towers until you have a maxed out deathball and then you move out.
sure you siege and unsiege every now and then but in general its just attack move. There are no spells to cast, no real micro besides siege and unsiege, and the person that makes a mistake first loses the game.
Just playing devils advocate.
I dunno how you cam to this conclusion but I will argue from a BW perspective leading into SC2
In BW mech was relatively about positioning, you cut the map with "less" units that could hold positions against bigger armies and then eventually you either win the war of attrition or you create a big enough army to push (usually leap frog) across the map and win.
In SC2 mech has turned a lot more into a "deathball" and it kind of defeats the purpose mainly because tanks a) can't hold the positions they could in BW against armies that are frankly stronger than BW armies and b) you don't have positional mines (not these new stupid mines) that can hold areas for long periods of time so that protoss would have to clear the fields before moving foward giving you time to reposition etc etc.
Now with SC2 mech, it's going from a mix between "positional" and "deathball" to pure deathball, who would make tanks in TvP and if you do it won't be many because they blow and then you'll just get this giant ball of warhound/batltehellion/thor/scvs and move around the map...
On September 06 2012 10:24 LgNKami wrote: Dont mean to start an argument but...
Isn't mech a deathball in general? You sit behind tanks, turrets, PF's, and sensor towers until you have a maxed out deathball and then you move out.
sure you siege and unsiege every now and then but in general its just attack move. There are no spells to cast, no real micro besides siege and unsiege, and the person that makes a mistake first loses the game.
Just playing devils advocate.
It's actually very mechanical, as it's not really a deathball -- "deathball" implies an army on one hotkey that's on attack-move. You're asking to be destroyed if your tanks are too close; a good spread is needed. It might be a little less mechanical in execution than Brood War, but between the siege-leaping, constant re-positioning and eventual target-firing -- it will get to that point, at least on the semi-pro/pro level -- it's far more mechanical than a literal attack-moving ball-of-death. If you played competitive Terran in Brood War, you'd know the pain For real, though, once you start to be able to keep-up with the requirements of meching, it's a lot of fun.
On September 06 2012 10:24 LgNKami wrote: Dont mean to start an argument but...
Isn't mech a deathball in general? You sit behind tanks, turrets, PF's, and sensor towers until you have a maxed out deathball and then you move out.
sure you siege and unsiege every now and then but in general its just attack move. There are no spells to cast, no real micro besides siege and unsiege, and the person that makes a mistake first loses the game.
Just playing devils advocate.
I dunno how you cam to this conclusion but I will argue from a BW perspective leading into SC2
In BW mech was relatively about positioning, you cut the map with "less" units that could hold positions against bigger armies and then eventually you either win the war of attrition or you create a big enough army to push (usually leap frog) across the map and win.
In SC2 mech has turned a lot more into a "deathball" and it kind of defeats the purpose mainly because tanks a) can't hold the positions they could in BW against armies that are frankly stronger than BW armies and b) you don't have positional mines (not these new stupid mines) that can hold areas for long periods of time so that protoss would have to clear the fields before moving foward giving you time to reposition etc etc.
Now with SC2 mech, it's going from a mix between "positional" and "deathball" to pure deathball, who would make tanks in TvP and if you do it won't be many because they blow and then you'll just get this giant ball of warhound/batltehellion/thor/scvs and move around the map...
T.T
thats what im saying though. in sc2 whenever I see anyone play mech, they play "positional" mech until they max out and then just attack move. I have yet to see a full out positional mech game. Even in the GSL. If we were talking Marine Tank, that would be completely different but only in TvT as marine tank isn't an option vs toss and its starting to die out vs zerg as people are starting to use Mech or pure bio.
I agree the warhound is a problem, and is just a mechanical maurader(or landed viking), but I believe their is a failure in the understanding of why the warhound even exists.
The goal of the warhound was to help TvT become less tank-liney. (However, I don't even believe this was warrented, as Thors where shown to be useful and adapent at destroying tank lines.)
The result is this boring generic unit which is well-rounded and amazing in certain senarios(breaking tank lines and vs stalkers) at the same time.
Sadly, I don't belive their is a way to save this unit. I do think that mech is still viable with the Mine, Hellion, Tank and Thor. You can still do some cute early pushes with mines, hellions and tanks, and still have a great mech late game (Thors and Ravens).
I believe Blizzard should have used this spot to add a mech unit that supports bio or a true mech caster. There are tons of creative options that could have added more depth to terran than a walking viking that shoots missles.
What about making the Warhound a walking support mech unit, which had an AOE mech repair spell, protection matrix and some other support spell along with a crappy attack. Make it reasonable gas expensive. There is just a random idea that I thought of in 5 minutes and sounds like an infinitly better starting place than a gundam suit.
The warhound really need to be redesigned. I didn't watch a lot of HotS stream, but everytime that I did, I saw terrans expand their arsenal of all-ins. I saw a hellion, warhound all ins with scv pulled, and zergs didn't really had a answer to that lol =/.
There's no way the unit will get removed at this point sadly.. people have been complaining about marauders/roaches/collosus forever and its done nothing.. the only thing we can hope is that it'll be balanced properly =/
If Warhound isn't massively redesigned (not just buffed/nerfed), it will be a sad day for Terran mech and Starcraft 2.
The Warhound could provide a cool function of protecting siege tanks from immortals - but having an autocast spell is just...bad, and it's honestly too fast and too good - why should it be stuck protecting something when all you need is to move out with Battle Hellions, Thors and Warhounds?
It needs to be slowed, and haywire missile needs to turn into some sort of cool-down option and something you select to use on an individual unit to help against immortals but not be the most boring unit ever.
On September 06 2012 10:46 DrowSwordsman wrote: If Warhound isn't massively redesigned (not just buffed/nerfed), it will be a sad day for Terran mech and Starcraft 2.
The Warhound could provide a cool function of protecting siege tanks from immortals - but having an autocast spell is just...bad, and it's honestly too fast and too good - why should it be stuck protecting something when all you need is to move out with Battle Hellions, Thors and Warhounds?
It needs to be slowed, and haywire missile needs to turn into some sort of cool-down option and something you select to use on an individual unit to help against immortals but not be the most boring unit ever.
Fuckin hilarious to see stalkers running away from warhounds and being shot by haywire missiles the entire time. And by hilarious I mean absolutely retarded. Auto fire while walking and with a longer range than the normal attack? Lolz.
On September 06 2012 10:08 NeMeSiS3 wrote: There is no question, it is the "colossus" for Terran. No it doesn't have the range, nor does it have the same overall goal but basically it is "I attack, I move it back, I attack again" T.T mech is about siege lines and positioning, you win by dominating them like chess, not massing this ball together and pushing through. Mech wins becuase it is stronger stationary, not because it is stronger mobile T.T
It's weird to think about; I had no problem with simple micro units (as you say, you just attack with them or move them back) in the past in both BW and War3, but they really make SC2 more lackluster for some reason. Maybe it's just the better pathing, the smaller unit size, or the rapidity with which things die, but this type of micro doesn't entertain me nearly as much in SC2.
Zergs and Protoss have a good number of very good A + move units (some of them even require less micro than the warhound). Is that a reason to give terran a good A+move unit? Definitely not. However, a unit like the Warhound may attract more players to the terran race, which is something that needs to happen rather soon. This is sad, but a reason why Terran is losing players is because of how micro intensive it is. The Warhound can make the race more manageable for a lot of players. I know that from the perspective of top players this isn't reason enough to add this unit, but from the perspective of lower league players it is a good reason, and blizzard may be sensitive to it.
On September 06 2012 10:24 LgNKami wrote: Dont mean to start an argument but...
Isn't mech a deathball in general? You sit behind tanks, turrets, PF's, and sensor towers until you have a maxed out deathball and then you move out.
sure you siege and unsiege every now and then but in general its just attack move. There are no spells to cast, no real micro besides siege and unsiege, and the person that makes a mistake first loses the game.
Just playing devils advocate.
I dunno how you cam to this conclusion but I will argue from a BW perspective leading into SC2
In BW mech was relatively about positioning, you cut the map with "less" units that could hold positions against bigger armies and then eventually you either win the war of attrition or you create a big enough army to push (usually leap frog) across the map and win.
In SC2 mech has turned a lot more into a "deathball" and it kind of defeats the purpose mainly because tanks a) can't hold the positions they could in BW against armies that are frankly stronger than BW armies and b) you don't have positional mines (not these new stupid mines) that can hold areas for long periods of time so that protoss would have to clear the fields before moving foward giving you time to reposition etc etc.
Now with SC2 mech, it's going from a mix between "positional" and "deathball" to pure deathball, who would make tanks in TvP and if you do it won't be many because they blow and then you'll just get this giant ball of warhound/batltehellion/thor/scvs and move around the map...
T.T
thats what im saying though. in sc2 whenever I see anyone play mech, they play "positional" mech until they max out and then just attack move. I have yet to see a full out positional mech game. Even in the GSL. If we were talking Marine Tank, that would be completely different but only in TvT as marine tank isn't an option vs toss and its starting to die out vs zerg as people are starting to use Mech or pure bio.
Ok well I agree, the "tank" is the issue here because it does like 30-35 dmg? You get to 100 shot a colossus down, in BW it was 2 shot on 3-4 clumped dragoons but in SC2 you'd be lucky to kill a stalker with that many shots...
I really don't know though, they're taking the game in the wrong direction though with mech and turning it into the 200/200 protoss deathball with humans instead of aliens.
I feel like the longevity of the game will be what kills esports, not the industry. It'd be like having a professional league based around checkers or something, there are only so many "balanced" moves you can make ...
On September 06 2012 10:24 LgNKami wrote: Dont mean to start an argument but...
Isn't mech a deathball in general? You sit behind tanks, turrets, PF's, and sensor towers until you have a maxed out deathball and then you move out.
sure you siege and unsiege every now and then but in general its just attack move. There are no spells to cast, no real micro besides siege and unsiege, and the person that makes a mistake first loses the game.
Just playing devils advocate.
I dunno how you cam to this conclusion but I will argue from a BW perspective leading into SC2
In BW mech was relatively about positioning, you cut the map with "less" units that could hold positions against bigger armies and then eventually you either win the war of attrition or you create a big enough army to push (usually leap frog) across the map and win.
In SC2 mech has turned a lot more into a "deathball" and it kind of defeats the purpose mainly because tanks a) can't hold the positions they could in BW against armies that are frankly stronger than BW armies and b) you don't have positional mines (not these new stupid mines) that can hold areas for long periods of time so that protoss would have to clear the fields before moving foward giving you time to reposition etc etc.
Now with SC2 mech, it's going from a mix between "positional" and "deathball" to pure deathball, who would make tanks in TvP and if you do it won't be many because they blow and then you'll just get this giant ball of warhound/batltehellion/thor/scvs and move around the map...
T.T
thats what im saying though. in sc2 whenever I see anyone play mech, they play "positional" mech until they max out and then just attack move. I have yet to see a full out positional mech game. Even in the GSL. If we were talking Marine Tank, that would be completely different but only in TvT as marine tank isn't an option vs toss and its starting to die out vs zerg as people are starting to use Mech or pure bio.
Ok well I agree, the "tank" is the issue here because it does like 30-35 dmg? You get to 100 shot a colossus down, in BW it was 2 shot on 3-4 clumped dragoons but in SC2 you'd be lucky to kill a stalker with that many shots...
I really don't know though, they're taking the game in the wrong direction though with mech and turning it into the 200/200 protoss deathball with humans instead of aliens.
I feel like the longevity of the game will be what kills esports, not the industry. It'd be like having a professional league based around checkers or something, there are only so many "balanced" moves you can make ...
On September 06 2012 10:24 LgNKami wrote: Dont mean to start an argument but...
Isn't mech a deathball in general? You sit behind tanks, turrets, PF's, and sensor towers until you have a maxed out deathball and then you move out.
sure you siege and unsiege every now and then but in general its just attack move. There are no spells to cast, no real micro besides siege and unsiege, and the person that makes a mistake first loses the game.
Just playing devils advocate.
I dunno how you cam to this conclusion but I will argue from a BW perspective leading into SC2
In BW mech was relatively about positioning, you cut the map with "less" units that could hold positions against bigger armies and then eventually you either win the war of attrition or you create a big enough army to push (usually leap frog) across the map and win.
In SC2 mech has turned a lot more into a "deathball" and it kind of defeats the purpose mainly because tanks a) can't hold the positions they could in BW against armies that are frankly stronger than BW armies and b) you don't have positional mines (not these new stupid mines) that can hold areas for long periods of time so that protoss would have to clear the fields before moving foward giving you time to reposition etc etc.
Now with SC2 mech, it's going from a mix between "positional" and "deathball" to pure deathball, who would make tanks in TvP and if you do it won't be many because they blow and then you'll just get this giant ball of warhound/batltehellion/thor/scvs and move around the map...
T.T
thats what im saying though. in sc2 whenever I see anyone play mech, they play "positional" mech until they max out and then just attack move. I have yet to see a full out positional mech game. Even in the GSL. If we were talking Marine Tank, that would be completely different but only in TvT as marine tank isn't an option vs toss and its starting to die out vs zerg as people are starting to use Mech or pure bio.
Ok well I agree, the "tank" is the issue here because it does like 30-35 dmg? You get to 100 shot a colossus down, in BW it was 2 shot on 3-4 clumped dragoons but in SC2 you'd be lucky to kill a stalker with that many shots...
I really don't know though, they're taking the game in the wrong direction though with mech and turning it into the 200/200 protoss deathball with humans instead of aliens.
I feel like the longevity of the game will be what kills esports, not the industry. It'd be like having a professional league based around checkers or something, there are only so many "balanced" moves you can make ...
That's why we make maps.
What do you mean? Making maps won't increase the viablity of the tank... It may balance specific styles of play or races but in the long term if we just keep seeing "well he opened up FFE into stargate again while the zerg opened 3hatch into X again" for the first 10 minutes I can't see the interest staying. Maybe I'm biased because although BW had a lot of that, the viability of different styles and play were there because even tho they had "x counters y" that y could still be effective if used properly against the x unit. In this game, I made tank/marauder to counter your ultra army that actually transitioned in 30 seconds to a mass BL army? well let's start the next game ^^
would overlap with thor's role, and if you want mech to not have to get any vikings (if you want warhounds to do well against units like voids/carriers) then you could go pure mech (except maybe some ghosts), and blizz doesn't seem to want you to be able to go pure anymore (which is not a bad thing, since unit compositions are more diversified now and so terran can transition from 1 tech tree to another more easily -- example, look at bio in TvZ, you get tanks and usually vehicle attack, then when you max 3/3 on bio and you have 3/0 tanks you can start adding more and more mech as you get the defense upgrades too)
The warhound is really poor at the moment too much hp, too much damage and all for 2 supply. The only thing that makes it any way balanced is that it can't shoot up but still it would take ages for muta to kill them and thors are still a thing so it means thor warhound is pretty much uncounterable at the moment. Like ive seen on the streams people try a lot of compositions, hydra ling, hydra roach, infestor swarmhost and a few hydra and none that ive seen can handle it. Broodlords are the only thing that works.
As for the design its very much 1a and I think terran of all of the races should get a unit with micro like an additional spellcaster or a unit that makes the skill ceiling higher than it is currently. As a Zerg player im happy with the choices they have given me and I believe the skill cap was raised for us but seeing what they did for Terran makes me kinda angry about the design choices they are making. It just seems like they wanted to make specific things viable in HoTS and gave a unit that took 15 minutes and they went cool ship it.
On September 06 2012 08:46 Zenbrez wrote: Watching Drewbie rush Warhounds to (very easily and quickly) pick off Stephano's queens was a bit disheartening. They're strong as fu
Why shouldn't a 150/75 tier 2 attacking unit smash a tier 1 150 macro unit?
On September 06 2012 09:00 Shadow_Dog wrote: PhD. Avilo going to work! But seriously though, yeah I was watching Ret's stream earlier and his roaches could not do anything to the mass of warhounds.
Why shouldn't a 150/75 tier 2 unit smash a 75/25 tier 1.5 unit?
Has Z or P tried any of there new junk? Seems like all new units are OP...
On September 06 2012 11:06 FlukyS wrote: As for the design its very much 1a and I think terran of all of the races should get a unit with micro like an additional spellcaster or a unit that makes the skill ceiling higher than it is currently. As a Zerg player im happy with the choices they have given me and I believe the skill cap was raised for us but seeing what they did for Terran makes me kinda angry about the design choices they are making. It just seems like they wanted to make specific things viable in HoTS and gave a unit that took 15 minutes and they went cool ship it.
Seeing as how only Korean Terrans and Thorzain have only shown winning results Terran should be made harder?
On September 06 2012 11:06 Zealot Lord wrote: Whats the speed on warhounds?? I'm watching whitera's stream right now and it seems barely slower than a stalker o_O
it's also almost the same price and does a lot of dmg ^^ It's like a stalker that has features of a marauder
maybe this will be read by blizzard. i dont think the warhounds role fits in this game at all, i dislike it strongly and i dont want it to be implemented :/
On September 06 2012 11:06 Zealot Lord wrote: Whats the speed on warhounds?? I'm watching whitera's stream right now and it seems barely slower than a stalker o_O
it's also almost the same price and does a lot of dmg ^^ It's like a stalker that has features of a marauder
lol thats what it looks like to me at the moment hahaha ^_^
On September 06 2012 08:46 Zenbrez wrote: Watching Drewbie rush Warhounds to (very easily and quickly) pick off Stephano's queens was a bit disheartening. They're strong as fu
Why shouldn't a 150/75 tier 2 attacking unit smash a tier 1 150 macro unit?
On September 06 2012 09:00 Shadow_Dog wrote: PhD. Avilo going to work! But seriously though, yeah I was watching Ret's stream earlier and his roaches could not do anything to the mass of warhounds.
Why shouldn't a 150/75 tier 2 unit smash a 75/25 tier 1.5 unit?
Has Z or P tried any of there new junk? Seems like all new units are OP...
issue with going non-roach in TvZ (specifically talking about your second example) is that ling/infestor or more over ling/muta/bling can become very obsolete very fast against a 140-180 mech army and when you rush up to those you leave room for quick warhounds etc to snipe third/queens because lings can't get to them due to battle hellions/hellions covering, roaches are usually required to combat mech (though not always!)
This should be implemented and the Thor should be removed. Problem solved. This would also solve a fair amount of the mobility issues mech faces as well, since you aren't waiting for asthmatic Thors to catch up or stay with your army. I really hope Blizzard pulls their heads out of the sand on this.
it's a unit that can make mech play more Active to watch rather than simply turtling and securing bases and push out with a maxed mech.
But I do think that there are other ways to make more interesting than just making these relatively strong a move units because it makes mech style similar to a slightly slower, stronger mobile bio
They LOOK terrible. Their aesthetics are stupid, and don't feel starcraft-y at all. With speed hellions and warhounds, mech is ACTUALLY FASTER THAN NON STIMMED BIO.
On September 06 2012 10:24 LgNKami wrote: Dont mean to start an argument but...
Isn't mech a deathball in general? You sit behind tanks, turrets, PF's, and sensor towers until you have a maxed out deathball and then you move out.
sure you siege and unsiege every now and then but in general its just attack move. There are no spells to cast, no real micro besides siege and unsiege, and the person that makes a mistake first loses the game.
Just playing devils advocate.
I dunno how you cam to this conclusion but I will argue from a BW perspective leading into SC2
In BW mech was relatively about positioning, you cut the map with "less" units that could hold positions against bigger armies and then eventually you either win the war of attrition or you create a big enough army to push (usually leap frog) across the map and win.
In SC2 mech has turned a lot more into a "deathball" and it kind of defeats the purpose mainly because tanks a) can't hold the positions they could in BW against armies that are frankly stronger than BW armies and b) you don't have positional mines (not these new stupid mines) that can hold areas for long periods of time so that protoss would have to clear the fields before moving foward giving you time to reposition etc etc.
Now with SC2 mech, it's going from a mix between "positional" and "deathball" to pure deathball, who would make tanks in TvP and if you do it won't be many because they blow and then you'll just get this giant ball of warhound/batltehellion/thor/scvs and move around the map...
T.T
thats what im saying though. in sc2 whenever I see anyone play mech, they play "positional" mech until they max out and then just attack move. I have yet to see a full out positional mech game. Even in the GSL. If we were talking Marine Tank, that would be completely different but only in TvT as marine tank isn't an option vs toss and its starting to die out vs zerg as people are starting to use Mech or pure bio.
Ok well I agree, the "tank" is the issue here because it does like 30-35 dmg? You get to 100 shot a colossus down, in BW it was 2 shot on 3-4 clumped dragoons but in SC2 you'd be lucky to kill a stalker with that many shots...
I really don't know though, they're taking the game in the wrong direction though with mech and turning it into the 200/200 protoss deathball with humans instead of aliens.
I feel like the longevity of the game will be what kills esports, not the industry. It'd be like having a professional league based around checkers or something, there are only so many "balanced" moves you can make ...
Agreed, Blizzard needs to bring back the Siege Tank. In BW Terran was all about the tanks, and that's what made the race really unique.
My prediction: The warhound in its current form isn't going anywhere. Blizzard won't change it; they specifically stated they don't like strong siege tank lines, and the warhound is designed to rip through siege lines. They also stated they WANTED to give terran an 'attack move friendly' unit.
In other words, Blizzard is on record stating that their design of the warhound is purposely antithetical to positional mech play.
On September 06 2012 10:24 LgNKami wrote: Dont mean to start an argument but...
Isn't mech a deathball in general? You sit behind tanks, turrets, PF's, and sensor towers until you have a maxed out deathball and then you move out.
sure you siege and unsiege every now and then but in general its just attack move. There are no spells to cast, no real micro besides siege and unsiege, and the person that makes a mistake first loses the game.
Just playing devils advocate.
I dunno how you cam to this conclusion but I will argue from a BW perspective leading into SC2
In BW mech was relatively about positioning, you cut the map with "less" units that could hold positions against bigger armies and then eventually you either win the war of attrition or you create a big enough army to push (usually leap frog) across the map and win.
In SC2 mech has turned a lot more into a "deathball" and it kind of defeats the purpose mainly because tanks a) can't hold the positions they could in BW against armies that are frankly stronger than BW armies and b) you don't have positional mines (not these new stupid mines) that can hold areas for long periods of time so that protoss would have to clear the fields before moving foward giving you time to reposition etc etc.
Now with SC2 mech, it's going from a mix between "positional" and "deathball" to pure deathball, who would make tanks in TvP and if you do it won't be many because they blow and then you'll just get this giant ball of warhound/batltehellion/thor/scvs and move around the map...
T.T
thats what im saying though. in sc2 whenever I see anyone play mech, they play "positional" mech until they max out and then just attack move. I have yet to see a full out positional mech game. Even in the GSL. If we were talking Marine Tank, that would be completely different but only in TvT as marine tank isn't an option vs toss and its starting to die out vs zerg as people are starting to use Mech or pure bio.
Ok well I agree, the "tank" is the issue here because it does like 30-35 dmg? You get to 100 shot a colossus down, in BW it was 2 shot on 3-4 clumped dragoons but in SC2 you'd be lucky to kill a stalker with that many shots...
I really don't know though, they're taking the game in the wrong direction though with mech and turning it into the 200/200 protoss deathball with humans instead of aliens.
I feel like the longevity of the game will be what kills esports, not the industry. It'd be like having a professional league based around checkers or something, there are only so many "balanced" moves you can make ...
Yeah currently the tank is absolute garbage in TvZ / TvP past a certain point because its anti-armor damage is simply too low. Vs Z they are very weak late game, and vs P they're weak as soon as enough zealot/immortal/colossus is out. Tank needs a serious buff if we're ever going to see anything resembling strategic positional mech play again. I REALLY hope they listen this time around, but if units like Colossus still being in game are any indication they won't :/
Just get the guys who created and balanced DoW1 to take over sc2. GG /thread.
*one can dream*
Was watching SjoW last nite, he admitted numerous times the warhound is imba.
SC2 already relies on 1 or 2 big main battles, adding a 1A unit just adds to that dumb mechanic for a RTS. Diversify the RTS play, encourage non-1A type RTS please blizzard. That would mean having weaker units in diverse roles, so it comes down to player control and reaction to decide outcomes moreso than 1A hard unit counter type play.
On September 06 2012 11:19 HornyHerring wrote: Warhound threads everywhere!
just like the marauder threads back in the Wings beta, saying OP marauder, op op op, yet no change happened to the marauder ( within the first week of the WOL beta they made concus to an upgrade and stayed the same ever since)
The warhound is getting the same treatment, yet its hovering on the same lines, its actually not that great of a unit
Protoss's are now figuring out mainly zealot/archon/templar/mothership combos rape it, or some air units. just dont build to many stalkers and you are fine. Massing tempest late game works as well, ( like 6-7 of them)
for tvt, marines shred em apart, and "battlehellions" , dont really counter marines, due to the range differences. Both strats are around 50/50 % to eachother in regards to what you are going ( either full mech or marine tank etc)
and for tvz, they are basically only being used really early in the game to apply some pressure, generally they are a waste in this matchup.
all these retarded warhound threads, just calm down, keep playing folks. Save judgements for later.
I like the warhound more than the thor, but I don't like how the warhound is so fast, is beefy, and has a decently fast attack. this is the anti-tank? more like anti-early game unit, this thing massacres queens and any type of 1 base rax/warhound pressure in a TvP will be strong.
quite simply, mech needs to be reinvisioned imo.
mines need to have a greater emphasis on them. Why are they 2 supply and require an armory? the warhound should require an armory, the mine should be inexpensive, 1 supply and only attacks ground, but can be countered by strong micro, but still gives terran the map control they need to help get tank counts up. Warhounds need to be anti-air specialists, they essentially need to be a goliath. tanks need to be buffed, make them strong vs. everything, especially with vipers around. in TvP, mines will be essential against gateway units and in TvZ battle hellions will probably be a better choice to counter lings, while you mass tanks up for everything else.
the thor? keep it as it is, the thor is the ground walker that delivers a punch and has a long range anti-light anti air weapon. The warhound/goliath has a weaker ground attack like a vikings but packs a punch with it's anti-air missiles. maybe even keep haywire to attack ground, as long as it's primary role is for anti-air.\
mech doesn't need any more anti-ground units, the tank, battle hellion and mine are all designed for that.
I think like it's good to have a mech unit that actually has some micro involved when it's properly nerfed, but the problem is, mech gained so much with hots while bio hasn't at all, making me really wonder how much bio will we see in hots if things stay this way. I'm already prefering mech in ZvT current metagame, it's already strong in TvT and with hots, things for mech just get better.
On September 06 2012 11:19 The WingNut wrote: Blizzard won't change it; they specifically stated they don't like strong siege tank lines, and the warhound is designed to rip through siege lines. They also stated they WANTED to give terran an 'attack move friendly' unit.
In other words, Blizzard is on record stating that their design of the warhound is purposely antithetical to positional mech play.
Blizzard is such a joke these days. The 'we support eSports' is just PR spin. The only thing they care about is making the game more noob-friendly to tap into the casual market.
On September 06 2012 11:32 emc wrote: I like the warhound more than the thor, but I don't like how the warhound is so fast, is beefy, and has a decently fast attack. this is the anti-tank? more like anti-early game unit, this thing massacres queens and any type of 1 base rax/warhound pressure in a TvP will be strong.
quite simply, mech needs to be reinvisioned imo.
mines need to have a greater emphasis on them. Why are they 2 supply and require an armory? the warhound should require an armory, the mine should be inexpensive and 1 supply, but can be countered by strong micro, but still gives terran the map control they need to help get tank counts up. Warhounds need to be anti-air specialists, they essentially need to be a goliath. tanks need to be buffed, make them strong vs. everything, especially with vipers around.
the thor? keep it as it is, the thor is the ground walker that delivers a punch and has a long range anti-light anti air weapon. The warhound/goliath has a weaker ground attack like a vikings but packs a punch with it's anti-air missiles. maybe even keep haywire to attack ground, as long as it's primary role is for anti-air.
Agree absolutely but I seriously doubt they would give Warhounds AA since it would be too close to Goliath. The best I'm hoping for is Blizzard making Warhounds slower and giving Thors a strong AA versus all air units so I can finally go pure mech without needing Vikings. That way Thors aren't 100% replaced by Warhound since they have really similar roles.
Anyway, just take away Thor and this thing and bring back Goliath. Bring back things like marine range, firebats, science vessels, Valkyries, wraiths, vultures and medics and take away Thor, hellion, marauders, medivacs, ravens, banshees and Vikings.
On September 06 2012 11:47 antifan wrote: You kids do realize that this is a beta right?
Anyway, just take away Thor and this thing and bring back Goliath. Bring back things like marine range, firebats, science vessels, Valkyries, wraiths, vultures and medics and take away Thor, hellion, marauders, medivacs, ravens, banshees and Vikings.
keep the medivac, raven, banshee and viking. rest can go =)
Sigh, HoTS beta is so depressing thus far. At least WoL I felt excited watching it, even though many of the games were terrible. Just not getting that sign yet, albeit it's early days.
As I and many others predicted, warhound is terrible from a design perspective, and indeed it somehow also made it into the beta with broken stats to boot!
Knights were too complicated. Many lower level players found it difficult to take full advantage of the "L" shaped movement, so we decided to add a more user friendly piece to replace the Knight called the Executioner. He can move in all directions much like the Queen, but can also jump over units killing them in the process. We believe this will add fun and dynamic strategies into the game of Chess
On September 06 2012 11:19 The WingNut wrote: Blizzard won't change it; they specifically stated they don't like strong siege tank lines, and the warhound is designed to rip through siege lines. They also stated they WANTED to give terran an 'attack move friendly' unit.
In other words, Blizzard is on record stating that their design of the warhound is purposely antithetical to positional mech play.
Blizzard is such a joke these days. The 'we support eSports' is just PR spin. The only thing they care about is making the game more noob-friendly to tap into the casual market.
They do support eSports, though. Have you completely forgot this whole WCS thing? They just have their priorities a little skewed -- instead of designing so that higher-level games can be mechanically and intellectually fun, challenging and rewarding, as well as fun to watch, they're... well, doing as you said. You can't say they don't support eSports, though.
As has been mentioned, another problem with mech is simply the tank itself; immortals rip it to shreds. I do think that widow mines will hugely change how mech-vs-protoss battles will pan-out, though, assuming the warhound isn't in the picture. I've seen a pretty well-positioned mech army take-on an army of stalkers and immortals, with a huge number of the ladder, and I think if we threw mines in to the equation things would make mech a lot more viable. If not... well, something will either have to be done about the tank or the immortal.
In the end, though, the first step is to take the warhound out, or significantly change it. As I mentioned earlier, I'd love if the thor and warhound were replaced by the goliath. Bam, we have BW mech -- and being similar to BW is not a bad thing.
On September 06 2012 08:49 DKR wrote: Where does leave the Thor? Why have the Warhound when you can just use a Thor which can do both without limiting it's movement?
Not suggesting (inb4 flamers), that it's balanced or that we should keep it, just that the proposal isn't a good one, or at least, isn't a fully thought out one.
Yes, I would have that question too, "where does it leave the thor?" Because the change i propose may overlap with the thor's AA role as well. Since none of us directly work for blizzard, that would be up to them to handle :D
The reason I mention the design idea I came up with is in line with blizzard's concept for the warhound is because originally they indeed were having a similar ideas for the role of the warhound to be an anti-air unit, to the point they previously considered removing the thor if necessary.
The warhound would be good against smaller numbers of stronger air units, while Thors could support versus larger numbers of weaker air units. Thors would force mutas to split so that they're less effective against the warhound, etc.
Really, there just needs to be a seige tank upgrade available at the fusion core that makes them do 15-20 more damage or something. They're pretty good in WoL, but they feel WAY weaker in HotS.
With that being said, I'm actually impressed with the HotS beta, it's far better than I expected. Literally the only thing I actually STRONGLY dislike is the warhound, and even that is only a few minor changes away from being useful, balanced, and interesting.
I have to agree with pretty much everybody. So far I'm a little dissapointed with how the beta is turning out, especially with how the warhound looks like. Protoss will pretty much have the same unit composition, zergs are getting a bit better fortunately, it looks a lot more like defiler+lurker slow push sort of composition, but for the terran, they just made the race easier and less dynamic...let's see how things shape up!
On September 06 2012 09:04 iaguz wrote: Avilo you fool! The warhound is the first reasonably priced unit that lets us smack around queens early game, don't complain about it!
lmao, I know that's true too, it actually allows Terran to force Zerg larva into units other than drones @_@ and balances that aspect that's currently broken in WOL (imo and most other T's opinions).
But the beta is for feedback not "make my race imba."
On September 06 2012 11:23 Parcelleus wrote: Just get the guys who created and balanced DoW1 to take over sc2. GG /thread.
*one can dream*
Was watching SjoW last nite, he admitted numerous times the warhound is imba.
SC2 already relies on 1 or 2 big main battles, adding a 1A unit just adds to that dumb mechanic for a RTS. Diversify the RTS play, encourage non-1A type RTS please blizzard. That would mean having weaker units in diverse roles, so it comes down to player control and reaction to decide outcomes moreso than 1A hard unit counter type play.
my 2 cents.
I agree with this completely, but Blizzard wants this to be a 1A unit on purpose, which is pretty stupid in my opinion. It takes away the Terran feel from SC1 and revamps it into this boring 1a2a3a 1A play..
The whole point of the Warhound in TvT was that it would break siege lines and force Tank/Marine players to keep their units in a deathball if they wanted to combat Battle Hellion/Warhound. David Kim even said it in this video at 6:00:
"So obviously if all these Siege tanks and Marines were packed up tightly..." Nice David Kim, encourage dem deathballs!
So yes, they saw the 1a deathball combat in late game PvP and figured that was better than spreading out tanks strategically.
So this isn't some kind of secret, it is intended. I was actually going to make a thread on this and why HOTS is going to be awful, and this was one of my points. Blizzard clearly contradicts themselves when they say they didn't want to encourage deathball play with the new units, but then release units like this and destroy the one matchup that isn't dominated by deathball play.
Fact of the matter, Blizzard has no idea what is it doing (evidenced further by the ever changing widow mine, removal of the Shredder and Replicant and the changing role of the Tempest).
On September 06 2012 12:56 BronzeKnee wrote: The whole point of the Warhound was that it would break siege lines in TvT and force Tank/Marine players to keep their units in a deathball if they wanted to combat Battle Hellion/Warhound. David Kim even said it in this video at 6:00.
"So obviously if all these Siege tanks and Marines were packed up tightly..."
So yes, they saw the 1a deathball combat in late game PvP and figured that was better than spreading out tanks strategically.
So this isn't some kind of secret, it is intended.
Ah yes, the crux of my issues with what I'm seeing, a bit nail on the head there. It's not that there are these unintended changes that are being taken advantage of by the community, it's that they're meant to function in that way
On September 06 2012 12:56 BronzeKnee wrote: So yes, they saw the 1a deathball combat in late game PvP and figured that was better than spreading out tanks strategically.
whats wrong with terran getting a 1a unit though? protoss has colossus and zerg has roach and if you are so against amove are you gonna petition to remove those as well?
How about making the "haywire missiles" ability a targetable anti-mech area of effect that requires the entering of a "siege mode" of sorts? Just an idea...
On September 06 2012 13:07 zala2023 wrote: whats wrong with terran getting a 1a unit though? protoss has colossus and zerg has roach and if you are so against amove are you gonna petition to remove those as well?
Lot's of people think the game would be better without Collosus in it, me for one and I play Protoss. I'm not going to go around petitioning people, but sure be content with boring units when Blizzard can (and should) do better.
Is anyone surprised really? I mean Blizzard came out and said they wanted the terran to have a unit they can 1a and use the extra APM to micro other things. Make the warhound a siege unit? WTF that's so stupid. You've already said that terran has to think about where to position the widowmine, sieging tanks, and deciding which form the hellions need to be in, why do they need more micro or decision making??? If anything, other races need to catch up in microing instead of 1a'ing their deathball.
avilo's coming up with so many whiny post lately, no wonder people hate him.
I really feel like you could take a bunch of pros, few from NA, few from KOR, few from EUR and throw them in a room for 24 hours and they could make such a more complete/all around better SC2 game than Browder/Kim...
On September 06 2012 13:11 bucckevin wrote: Is anyone surprised really? I mean Blizzard came out and said they wanted the terran to have a unit they can 1a and use the extra APM to micro other things. Make the warhound a siege unit? WTF that's so stupid. You've already said that terran has to think about where to position the widowmine, sieging tanks, and deciding which form the hellions need to be in, why do they need more micro or decision making??? If anything, other races need to catch up in microing instead of 1a'ing their deathball.
avilo's coming up with so many whiny post lately, no wonder people hate him.
Perhaps he does, this was a pretty good post and well laid-out. 'No wonder people hate him' is a terrible way to end a post too.
If you had the patience to read the thread you'd know that players from other races have been advocating making the difficulty of playing Protoss/Zerg higher, at least the control aspect. Not many people are desiring Terran to have an equivalent a-move composition. Oh wow, positioning widowmines, sieging tanks before you a-move, that's where any difficulty lies.
On September 06 2012 13:12 Nizzy wrote: I really feel like you could take a bunch of pros, few from NA, few from KOR, few from EUR and throw them in a room for 24 hours and they could make such a more complete/all around better SC2 game than Browder/Kim...
for both new players and pro its pathetic
that is what the MOD kit is for...
anyone i know who bought WC3 in the past 5 years bought it to play DOTA and have not touched the core WC3 product. SC2 has a MOD kit and any one is free to build their own game.
I don't understand why Warhounds are mechanical counters. It seems very out of place for what's supposed to be a meat unit. It seems to give advantage over units that makes it really hard to balance. I'm all for seeing Warhound use in every matchup, but they'll always be way too good against Protoss and Terran ground. They get the benefit of complete ground dominance (like Colossi) but none of the disadvantages.
IF this is all true... And I can imagine Blizzard is too 1337 to recognice anything anyone tells them there is really no reason to keep up wasting time playing the precious game that is called starcraft 2.
This is unbelievable. Can please someone show them a game of pre patch zvt? Or a game of BW PvT? They need to get their shit together this is a huge mass.
Just fyi btw, I made this thread with the intention of discussing the design aspect of the warhound, not whether or not it's currently balanced.
It's too early to tell if people simply suck at HOTS or if the warhound is "too good" or "too bad." A few days from now we may find out warhounds actually suck lmao :D
On September 06 2012 15:42 avilo wrote: Just fyi btw, I made this thread with the intention of discussing the design aspect of the warhound, not whether or not it's currently balanced.
It's too early to tell if people simply suck at HOTS or if the warhound is "too good" or "too bad." A few days from now we may find out warhounds actually suck lmao :D
You're right about the very idea of the unit though, it doesn't matter at all how it goes against other units, it's the very IDEA of implementing a 1a unit into the game as a means of "improving" it that should offend absolutely anybody who actually cares about the game.
If you cater to nothing but people who are extremely casual, you'll drive away the core and the casual audience will move on anyway.
I for once, agree with Avilo. The Warhound is a boring a move unit kind of like roaches/marauders. I think blizzard just got lazy with the design especially with the warhound's looks.
as a more casual player and rather viewer, the warhound looks by far too similar to the marauder. it'S boring to watch. gib him something unique else than an auto cast anit mech attack... even making it non-auto cast would be boring
heres a little write up i did about the warhound in this thread.
I honestly think the warhound has no purpose anymore. Terran does not need a anti-mech "unit" to slaughter the protoss race (which is all mech). All it needed was battle hellions to make mech viable, and now terran has battle hellions AND nice reactored mines? mech should be totally viable now without warhounds. Warhounds should really just be removed.
Looking at this thread the scenario I suggest seems pretty nice. Each race gets 2 new units, terran gets 1 unit as a extension of the hellion but the trade-off is their second unit is mines which are pretty good early game at defending ground combined with a couple tanks
Warhound? Warhounds "fix" a problem (tank stalemate TvT) that does not exist.
Warhounds werent needed in TvP because the problem with TvP mech was there was no real viable tanking unit for the tanks (like mines in bw) to contest zealots. And the battle hellions solve that. With the introduction of battle hellions (which is essentially a entirely new unit, a mineral-only high-hp unit to soak damage for your tanks) mech should be fixed in TvP and warhounds are not needed.
Not only that, blizzard even added mines? i was against the mines at first thinking it didnt really need to exist and was just giving some free AoE dps on top of tanks for no reason. But now that their damage is alot weaker I think im slightly starting to like them. Make mines no longer target air units IMO, and I think they are a nice addition.
Warhounds are nothing more than a glorified roach/marauder with no reason to exist. Mech doesnt need something like warhound anymore in TvP, and in TvT its pointless. Its just a super buff marauder. It overlaps in role of the marauder, and its anti-mech missiles are a game-design void of purpose. It doesnt need to exist, terran doesnt need a anti-mech "unit" to slaughter the protoss race which is all mech. It forces protoss to get archon/chargelot with 100% of their minerals/gas in order to "avoid" the anti-mech missiles.
The warhound as a unit cannot be balanced to have combat stats allowing it to be use-able against zerg, while at the same time having free anti-mech missiles. This means the unit would be balanced to have strong stats, and then free missiles on top of it? making it overpowered against protoss. Or on the flip side, if the warhounds were balanced to be not overpowered against protoss with the missiles, then they would be underpowered against zerg with reduced stats and no missiles.
Either way the warhound cannot exist with its current design. One option could be to make the warhound missiles a transformation like the hellion where the user clicks the missiles to arm them, and then once armed with the missiles the warhound will have reduced strength in combat, but improved strength against mech with its missiles activated, making the unit balanced against protoss. And then the terran could de-activate his missiles against zerg since the missiles are useless against zerg.
Or the second option is to just remove the warhound and replace it with a better designed unit actually fitting a role that seems "terran-ish" or at least a role that seems "exciting to watch as an esport". Sure I guess the marauder is exciting in my eyes and i guess the role of the warhound which overlaps the marauder "can" in some ways be exciting. But it does a really bad job of it. In my opinion the marauder already fills the role of the warhound in a more exciting way, so sorry, but the warhound needs to be axed (or completely redesigned).
Where do I have to send my feedback of the warhound to be read by Blizzard? I can not stand the warhound... why does it have legs? Why is it so huge but but not massive?
I want it to be as big as the immortal and have wheels!
Haven't read Avilo's proposition. Not a big fan of the player neither.
But i completly agree against the WH. It has nothing to do in mech. What's making full mech fun to play and watch is leapfrogging, defensive position, strategic play. Which can be even more fun in Hots with news anti-tank units Protoss and Zerg got. But this unit just pass through it.
This unit just tell "everyone can play full mech, especially people who haven't have any fun with what mech IS: checkmate style" It just makes mech like bioplay.
Warhounds aesthetically doesn't look appealing to the spectator, that's for sure. I thought Blizzard was trying to create units that was anti-deathball but insisted on making a super 1a unit. Sure the beta has been out for a few days but It's generally agree that no one likes the Warhound. Will that change anything about Blizzard decision? Absolutely not!
The only thing now we can do is to propose to Blizzard is not balance the game based off their terrible map designs. That was the mistake they did with WOL, and now possible with HOTS.
Eh i feel the way to fix the warhound is to change its usage.
Since we all agree on the written post about the mech play is tank play, why not make the warhound when deployed, augments the tank in siegemode. (imagine it being like a techlab to a sieged-up tank)
Incenditary shells: tanks now have increased splash radius and burn enemy
i dont like the warhound but i really like the other unit. the mech one that replaces the thor. if it could hit air it would be perfect
On September 06 2012 17:39 FFW_Rude wrote: Did i miss something ? I read a lot of people talking about thorS but i thought thor would be a one time unit in HOTS. Did it change ?
It's kind of off topic but i can't really say much because of not having the beta.
Last year at Blizzcon it was announce that Thors would be a 1 hero unit but that change awhile back when they brought back the Beta at MLG Anaheim. Also back then warhound was originally going to be like the goliath in a way where it's an answer to anti-air for mech.
On September 06 2012 17:39 FFW_Rude wrote: Did i miss something ? I read a lot of people talking about thorS but i thought thor would be a one time unit in HOTS. Did it change ?
It's kind of off topic but i can't really say much because of not having the beta.
Last year at Blizzcon it was announce that Thors would be a 1 hero unit but that change awhile back when they brought back the Beta at MLG Anaheim. Also back then warhound was originally going to be like the goliath in a way where it's an answer to anti-air for mech.
Oh ok i never saw that it was reverted. Thank you for your answer
The only way I see blizzard removing warhound/totally changing it is if there would be a huge backlash. Like massive whine on the forums or something. A few good articles of why it's a bad unit won't solve anything.
I doubt blizzard even reads these boards -.-
And warhound reminds me of CNC for some reason, even the voice.
On September 06 2012 17:44 Andr3 wrote: The only way I see blizzard removing warhound/totally changing it is if there would be a huge backlash. Like massive whine on the forums or something. A few good articles of why it's a bad unit won't solve anything.
I doubt blizzard even reads these boards -.-
And warhound reminds me of CNC for some reason, even the voice.
Considering absolutely everybody is shitting all over the unit, people who only watch, people who are bad, pros of all races.
I think something will be done, probably nothing effective, but something.
On September 06 2012 09:00 Godwrath wrote: Best unit ever.
Supreme commander-esque ftw.
That is perhaps the least complementary comparison you could make to my mind. SupCom2 is everything that is wrong with modern RTS's. Sluggish a-move units with no rapid micro potential.
On September 06 2012 09:00 Godwrath wrote: Best unit ever.
Supreme commander-esque ftw.
That is perhaps the least complementary comparison you could make to my mind. SupCom2 is everything that is wrong with modern RTS's. Sluggish a-move units with no rapid micro potential.
But dont most modern-day RTSs fall victim to that category? and unfortunately.. SC2 is slowly falling victim to it given the current state of the expansion.
Cheap huge damage huge hp portion great speed who need siege tank if u can get this ....... warhound is just bullshit at this stage of him i see on beta streams. TvT warhound vs warhound is like pvp in wol colosi vs colosi who have more wins.......
On September 06 2012 09:54 Cabinet Sanchez wrote: C&P from the other thread.
I realised why the War Hound is such a shit unit now. If you look at how slow and cumbersome the thor is, it feels kind of realistic, in regards to the physics of a giant mech suit. The thing movies like you would expect.
The Warhound looks like a kid designed it and straight out of a video game. It's not cool, it's - well lame. It moves and animates far far too freely and quickly. Same with the colossus, the immortal the stalker. Think about it - for the most part, most of the units in the game move in a somewhat realistic manner for their estimated size and weight. The warhound COMPLETELY breaks that and just goes full, kiddy, Supreme Commander video game look and feel.
Despite the nature of the attack, if it's op or not, regardless - feedback needs to be made to Blizzard regarding the poor art of this unit.
I'm sorry to bump my own post but I really need to re-state this, it's a C&C or Supreme Commander idiot unit, the physics of it are broken in look / design / animation / realism - it's "just not Starcraft" for lack of a better term. Let alone the shitty attack types / strength of the unit.
On September 06 2012 16:17 kaokentake wrote: heres a little write up i did about the warhound in this thread.
I honestly think the warhound has no purpose anymore. Terran does not need a anti-mech "unit" to slaughter the protoss race (which is all mech). All it needed was battle hellions to make mech viable, and now terran has battle hellions AND nice reactored mines? mech should be totally viable now without warhounds. Warhounds should really just be removed.
Looking at this thread the scenario I suggest seems pretty nice. Each race gets 2 new units, terran gets 1 unit as a extension of the hellion but the trade-off is their second unit is mines which are pretty good early game at defending ground combined with a couple tanks
Warhound? Warhounds "fix" a problem (tank stalemate TvT) that does not exist.
Warhounds werent needed in TvP because the problem with TvP mech was there was no real viable tanking unit for the tanks (like mines in bw) to contest zealots. And the battle hellions solve that. With the introduction of battle hellions (which is essentially a entirely new unit, a mineral-only high-hp unit to soak damage for your tanks) mech should be fixed in TvP and warhounds are not needed.
Not only that, blizzard even added mines? i was against the mines at first thinking it didnt really need to exist and was just giving some free AoE dps on top of tanks for no reason. But now that their damage is alot weaker I think im slightly starting to like them. Make mines no longer target air units IMO, and I think they are a nice addition.
Warhounds are nothing more than a glorified roach/marauder with no reason to exist. Mech doesnt need something like warhound anymore in TvP, and in TvT its pointless. Its just a super buff marauder. It overlaps in role of the marauder, and its anti-mech missiles are a game-design void of purpose. It doesnt need to exist, terran doesnt need a anti-mech "unit" to slaughter the protoss race which is all mech. It forces protoss to get archon/chargelot with 100% of their minerals/gas in order to "avoid" the anti-mech missiles.
The warhound as a unit cannot be balanced to have combat stats allowing it to be use-able against zerg, while at the same time having free anti-mech missiles. This means the unit would be balanced to have strong stats, and then free missiles on top of it? making it overpowered against protoss. Or on the flip side, if the warhounds were balanced to be not overpowered against protoss with the missiles, then they would be underpowered against zerg with reduced stats and no missiles.
Either way the warhound cannot exist with its current design. One option could be to make the warhound missiles a transformation like the hellion where the user clicks the missiles to arm them, and then once armed with the missiles the warhound will have reduced strength in combat, but improved strength against mech with its missiles activated, making the unit balanced against protoss. And then the terran could de-activate his missiles against zerg since the missiles are useless against zerg.
Or the second option is to just remove the warhound and replace it with a better designed unit actually fitting a role that seems "terran-ish" or at least a role that seems "exciting to watch as an esport". Sure I guess the marauder is exciting in my eyes and i guess the role of the warhound which overlaps the marauder "can" in some ways be exciting. But it does a really bad job of it. In my opinion the marauder already fills the role of the warhound in a more exciting way, so sorry, but the warhound needs to be axed (or completely redesigned).
Yes I completly agree. Battle hellions + mines are absolutely enough to enable mech positional play in all matchups, mostly TvP. I don't see a single reason to add something as dumb as Warhound in its current state. I mean, only chargelots are problem in mech TvP in WoL - so you have Battle Hellions to fight that. Nothing else is problem, why include Warhound? To break beautiful Mech vs Bio TvT? To not use it TvZ? Or to absolutely break TvP?
The Warhound is actually a really good unit(A bit similar to roaches/stalkers since its really good at focusing down units like roaches and fast like stalkers) and can be used to slowly phase out Marauders as the game progresses for cost efficiency. The main problem with it is that it is a powerful unit that hits the field too early. Warhounds essentially come out as fast as the first siege tanks but have that insane 2.81 movespeed allowing them to immediately rush to the opponents base to dish their damage out. I love the concept of the Warhound(especially those badass melee skills) but I think it is simply to easy to tech to.
In terms of maybe balancing it, I would suggest nerfing how fast it can come out. The unit serves its role well enough so stat wise its pretty fine and doesn't need nerfing. The only problem like I mentioned before is it coming out on to the field too easy and fast. An armory requirement will help fix this. Maybe Haywire missiles would have to be researched from the tech lab?
My biggest annoyance about the unit is the fact that its almost a purely TvT, TvP unit having little use in TvZ similar to how the Viper's Dark Swarm ability is completely useless vs Protoss since they have no biological ranged units. IMO all units should be somewhat viable in every matchup to increase variety.
Other than that, I love everything about it and I will incorporate it into my play when I get my hands on HotS.
Remove Thor and WH, add Goliath. Solved. I despise both Thor and WH from an esport spectator POW. Blizzard painted themselves into a corner by trying to circumvent bringing BW units back.
On September 06 2012 20:32 HowardRoark wrote: Remove Thor and WH, add Goliath. Solved. I despise both Thor and WH from an esport spectator POW.
Kinda agree, but they definitely would need to add something to deal with Immortals to make mech viable in TvP.
But the WH really has to me removed since it doesn't fit mech at all. Usually mech should be a lot about positioning because the units are slow, but deal a lot of damage when positioned properly. Now terran has a VERY mobile force with hellion/WH that deals a fuckton of damage regardless of position which makes it feel like bioplay. Bad thing I think.
On September 06 2012 09:00 Godwrath wrote: Best unit ever.
Supreme commander-esque ftw.
That is perhaps the least complementary comparison you could make to my mind. SupCom2 is everything that is wrong with modern RTS's. Sluggish a-move units with no rapid micro potential.
To be honest, I agree and I don't agree. I agree that the Warhound DOES need a nerf in some way shape or form, it costs too little supply and comes out too early for it's strength. I don't agree that it should automatically be placed into the old style category of mech being a chess match style of play. Some people do enjoy being able to be mobile without having to dedicate themselves to bio, I like the fact that the warhound gives more versatility to mech and more of a guerilla tactic with it, I just think it needs to be nerfed a little to make it so using the old style of mech isn't redundant.
Just my 2 cents, make it so the Warhound costs 3 supply and make an armory requirement, maybe make the haywire researchable and I think the Warhound would be good. that way players can have a choice to play the standard positional, chess match style play of mech, or they can go for the rough and tumble guerilla warfare mech. Either way, I think mech needs some mobility, no sense in sticking to the same old fashioned style for the sake of tradition.
I respect the thought that Avilo put into this post, but I think he has things backwards.
IMO, the Warhound is NOT a deathball unit. The Siege tank is a deathball unit. Why? Because SC2 is not, and cannot be, BW.
Siege tanks in BW could be spread out across a map to control space because bad unit pathing and limited group selection made it harder to attack into an entrenched position. Both of those issues made it harder to pick off a group of isolated siege tanks cost-effectively. But in SC2, anyone can, with a couple of APM, grab a group of zealots or zerglings and a-move them into a spread-out area of tanks, picking them off easily. Or you can snipe spread-out tanks with Colossi, which have nearly as much range and much more mobility. The result? Mech in SC2 revolves around keeping your army together and making a big timing push before your opponent's tier 3 units overwhelm you.
In the beta games that I've seen, top players are not using the Warhound as a "deathball" unit. Thorzain and QXC, from what I saw of their games, were using warhounds to get early map control against stalkers and queens/roaches. Thorzain in particular did several small early pushes with hellions and Warhounds to deny a third base, push back creep tumors, and to contain Zerg players. Mech making an early, aggressive push with a limited number of units to obtain limited objectives? That's not what I would expect from a "deathball" unit.
While the Warhound may have balance problems or TvT issues, that stems from the units stats and from the relative weakness of siege tanks in SC2 as compared to BW. On the whole, I think the Warhound is a great addition to SC2 - it's a relatively fast, strong, mobile mech unit that makes mech play much more dynamic than simply poking with hellions and turtling on 3 bases until you do a pre-tier 3 timing push, which is how pretty much every game plays out with mech right now.
On September 06 2012 21:24 FortMonty wrote: To be honest, I agree and I don't agree. I agree that the Warhound DOES need a nerf in some way shape or form, it costs too little supply and comes out too early for it's strength. I don't agree that it should automatically be placed into the old style category of mech being a chess match style of play. Some people do enjoy being able to be mobile without having to dedicate themselves to bio, I like the fact that the warhound gives more versatility to mech and more of a guerilla tactic with it, I just think it needs to be nerfed a little to make it so using the old style of mech isn't redundant.
Just my 2 cents, make it so the Warhound costs 3 supply and make an armory requirement, maybe make the haywire researchable and I think the Warhound would be good. that way players can have a choice to play the standard positional, chess match style play of mech, or they can go for the rough and tumble guerilla warfare mech. Either way, I think mech needs some mobility, no sense in sticking to the same old fashioned style for the sake of tradition.
im sure some people would enjoy protoss to have a central production building to build all units or have terran have the ability to chronoboost, but thats not the point
the point is diversity. what do you gain by making mech viable but mech being just bio-playstyle with bigger units?
On September 06 2012 21:24 FortMonty wrote: To be honest, I agree and I don't agree. I agree that the Warhound DOES need a nerf in some way shape or form, it costs too little supply and comes out too early for it's strength. I don't agree that it should automatically be placed into the old style category of mech being a chess match style of play. Some people do enjoy being able to be mobile without having to dedicate themselves to bio, I like the fact that the warhound gives more versatility to mech and more of a guerilla tactic with it, I just think it needs to be nerfed a little to make it so using the old style of mech isn't redundant.
Just my 2 cents, make it so the Warhound costs 3 supply and make an armory requirement, maybe make the haywire researchable and I think the Warhound would be good. that way players can have a choice to play the standard positional, chess match style play of mech, or they can go for the rough and tumble guerilla warfare mech. Either way, I think mech needs some mobility, no sense in sticking to the same old fashioned style for the sake of tradition.
im sure some people would enjoy protoss to have a central production building to build all units or have terran have the ability to chronoboost, but thats not the point
the point is diversity. what do you gain by making mech viable but mech being just bio-playstyle with bigger units?
But what you have right now is a mech playstyle that has zero diversity. You just grab a few bases and turtle until your one big timing push. You can't exercise any early aggression. You can't poke out and try to deny a third base unless you invest really heavily into banshees, which become less effective as the game goes on. You just sit and macro and try to kill drones then push when you near max. The Warhound gives you the option of turtling OR exercising early aggression. It promotes a more dynamic, more fluid playstyle.
Also, it's a bit facile to say that Warhounds and battle hellions are "bio with bigger units." Bio is about drops and multitasking and throwing away cheap units to slow down your opponent's economy. You're not going to be dropping Warhounds in the main while you move more Warhounds up the ramp into the natural. You're not going to be dropping Warhounds to deny expansions in lategame TvZ. You're not going to sacrifice a small group of warhounds to snipe HTs or Sentries or other valuable targets. The fact that you can make a decent unit that can move and attack at the same time doesn't suddenly make mech into bio.
I'm playing HoTS vs the AI and holy shit 2 Warhounds just did things to a stalker and zealot that I just shouldn't repeat - I think I like 3 HP off one warhound and that was IT... ridiculous for the price.
On September 06 2012 20:32 HowardRoark wrote: Remove Thor and WH, add Goliath. Solved. I despise both Thor and WH from an esport spectator POW.
Kinda agree, but they definitely would need to add something to deal with Immortals to make mech viable in TvP.
But the WH really has to me removed since it doesn't fit mech at all. Usually mech should be a lot about positioning because the units are slow, but deal a lot of damage when positioned properly. Now terran has a VERY mobile force with hellion/WH that deals a fuckton of damage regardless of position which makes it feel like bioplay. Bad thing I think.
Just change how much damage harden shields can take per each hit, it's a dumb ability that just makes immortals too good vs mech and absorbing tank volleys. Change it so that the maximum damage per hit is increased to 17 - 20 so that it only absorbs half the number of tank volleys.
On September 06 2012 21:24 FortMonty wrote: To be honest, I agree and I don't agree. I agree that the Warhound DOES need a nerf in some way shape or form, it costs too little supply and comes out too early for it's strength. I don't agree that it should automatically be placed into the old style category of mech being a chess match style of play. Some people do enjoy being able to be mobile without having to dedicate themselves to bio, I like the fact that the warhound gives more versatility to mech and more of a guerilla tactic with it, I just think it needs to be nerfed a little to make it so using the old style of mech isn't redundant.
Just my 2 cents, make it so the Warhound costs 3 supply and make an armory requirement, maybe make the haywire researchable and I think the Warhound would be good. that way players can have a choice to play the standard positional, chess match style play of mech, or they can go for the rough and tumble guerilla warfare mech. Either way, I think mech needs some mobility, no sense in sticking to the same old fashioned style for the sake of tradition.
im sure some people would enjoy protoss to have a central production building to build all units or have terran have the ability to chronoboost, but thats not the point
the point is diversity. what do you gain by making mech viable but mech being just bio-playstyle with bigger units?
Indeed.
TvP "mech" in Hots seems to play out like MMM. Protoss massing colossus -> terran make vikings Protoss making templars and/or immortals -> terran make ghost
I could eventually accept the marauder as a unit in SC2. I told myself that it was needed and besides it makes sense to have anti-armor units in infantry armies. Also, in the BW intro video the lost marine is saved by a black dude with a rocket launcher - a marauder perhaps ?
However, this is no excuse for making a mechanical marauder overlapping the marauder. For 50 more gas you get a 2 supply unit with 95 more (repairable) hitpoints, longer range and higher dps. Kind of a good deal. It is nice that mech viability is a priority but this doesn't mean that mech should completely replace MMM. Large open maps might be more suitable for MMM. Maps with a lot of chokes and positional opportunites should be more suitable for mech.
We don't want herpedederp a-move mech without any need whatsoever to make tanks - which should be the core unit in a mech army by definition.
What is even more annoying is that Blizzard worked on this for 2 years, and this was the best they could come up with for terran. Allow me to say LOL.
On the positive side there seems to be at least some understanding at Blizzard why mech was awful in WoL since they introduced the mechanical firebat - battle hellion. This alone could have been enough to fix the actual problem. The addition of mines would have made mech even more attractive.
Sadly, I have to say that the negatives overshadow the positives. Blizzard needs to get rid of DK and DB. Track down whoever made BW and SC1 and pay them whatever they want to come back and fix this shit.
maybe the warhound is so OP right off the bat is because Blizz want beta testers to use the unit?
think about it, if warhound costs 300/100/5 60s build time and do 5 dmg flat with its haywire missle only doing 10 dmg nobody will use it. or it moves as slow as a thor, nobody will use it.
but I agree the current warhound stats need some nerf.
On September 06 2012 22:26 ref4 wrote: maybe the warhound is so OP right off the bat is because Blizz want beta testers to use the unit?
think about it, if warhound costs 300/100/5 60s build time and do 5 dmg flat with its haywire missle only doing 10 dmg nobody will use it. or it moves as slow as a thor, nobody will use it.
but I agree the current warhound stats need some nerf.
Discussion is not about the Warhound being OP, but being poorly designed in the first place. It just doesn't fit mech or terran in general
On September 06 2012 21:24 FortMonty wrote: To be honest, I agree and I don't agree. I agree that the Warhound DOES need a nerf in some way shape or form, it costs too little supply and comes out too early for it's strength. I don't agree that it should automatically be placed into the old style category of mech being a chess match style of play. Some people do enjoy being able to be mobile without having to dedicate themselves to bio, I like the fact that the warhound gives more versatility to mech and more of a guerilla tactic with it, I just think it needs to be nerfed a little to make it so using the old style of mech isn't redundant.
Just my 2 cents, make it so the Warhound costs 3 supply and make an armory requirement, maybe make the haywire researchable and I think the Warhound would be good. that way players can have a choice to play the standard positional, chess match style play of mech, or they can go for the rough and tumble guerilla warfare mech. Either way, I think mech needs some mobility, no sense in sticking to the same old fashioned style for the sake of tradition.
im sure some people would enjoy protoss to have a central production building to build all units or have terran have the ability to chronoboost, but thats not the point
the point is diversity. what do you gain by making mech viable but mech being just bio-playstyle with bigger units?
What you gain is an interesting new style for a different tech path. the bio Style isn't JUST about it's mobility, it's about multi pronged attacks and harass, attacking one area while harassing another. Adding mobility to mech wouldn't make it bio, it would make it versatile. When I go into a PvT, I always know almost for a fact that they Terran will go Bio-centric in their play, it doesn't even require a scout for that, if they go anything else, I can easily make a slight adjustment and then Roflstomp the Terran because they either went mech or bio mech or whatever. Occassionally a helion opening could get me, but that's disregarding if I scout at all, but quintessentially, a terran will always go Bio in TvP. It's sort of the same for TvT as well, you can almost always assume the game will come down to Rine/tank v Rine/Tank, trench warfare.
Trench warefare is all fine and dandy, but I like aggression, I like mobility TvT just reminds me of the American Revolution where everyone went out into a field with their guns and cannons stood there and then opened fire. To me it's boring, but that's just an opinion, I think the idea behind the Warhound is a great addition to introducing a new dynamic and breaking the monotony of the standard metagame and composition. For instance I like that TvZ you can go Marine Tank, Mech, and Bio and have all of them give you an equal chance at winning the game without an inherent weaknesses with the composition. Sure you can go Mech in TvT, but most of the time it still comes down to trench warefare or it just loses to marauder heavy bio and you literally only have Bio for an option vs Toss, maybe that's changed, but I still think TvP meching had more problems than just a BattleHelion could solve.
My suggestion for the Warhound was to make it an alternative to the Thor, a weaker, faster version that could still fullfill the same basic functions (Maybe give it an Anti-air attack instead of the haywire missle and keep it at factory tech with tech lab) That way it won't be outragiously strong vs mechanical (solving your tank problem and keeping them viable) but also introduces that same new dynamic. It's still pretty damn strong early game, but gain, that's all a work in progressI suppose.
I don't agree that Blizzard fucked up either, this IS the Beta, there are supposed to be flaws and I doubt Blizzard would want to get rid of the tanks lines simply because THEY alone dislike them. To me, TvT is a dreary uneventful match up that can easily be predicted throughout the game just based on how TvT is played. As I said, you can always assume it's gonna be Marine/Tank and 90% of the time, you'll be right. Again, that's my opinion.
It's sort of the same for TvT as well, you can almost always assume the game will come down to Rine/tank v Rine/Tank, trench warfare.
As someone who mechs every game, I meet quite a lot of fellow meching terrans and mech vs mech is one of the most exciting matchups there is. It was in Broodwar and it is now. It's all about zone control, positioning and controlling the movement of your opponent.
On September 06 2012 21:24 FortMonty wrote: To be honest, I agree and I don't agree. I agree that the Warhound DOES need a nerf in some way shape or form, it costs too little supply and comes out too early for it's strength. I don't agree that it should automatically be placed into the old style category of mech being a chess match style of play. Some people do enjoy being able to be mobile without having to dedicate themselves to bio, I like the fact that the warhound gives more versatility to mech and more of a guerilla tactic with it, I just think it needs to be nerfed a little to make it so using the old style of mech isn't redundant.
Just my 2 cents, make it so the Warhound costs 3 supply and make an armory requirement, maybe make the haywire researchable and I think the Warhound would be good. that way players can have a choice to play the standard positional, chess match style play of mech, or they can go for the rough and tumble guerilla warfare mech. Either way, I think mech needs some mobility, no sense in sticking to the same old fashioned style for the sake of tradition.
im sure some people would enjoy protoss to have a central production building to build all units or have terran have the ability to chronoboost, but thats not the point
the point is diversity. what do you gain by making mech viable but mech being just bio-playstyle with bigger units?
What you gain is an interesting new style for a different tech path. the bio Style isn't JUST about it's mobility, it's about multi pronged attacks and harass, attacking one area while harassing another. Adding mobility to mech wouldn't make it bio, it would make it versatile. When I go into a PvT, I always know almost for a fact that they Terran will go Bio-centric in their play, it doesn't even require a scout for that, if they go anything else, I can easily make a slight adjustment and then Roflstomp the Terran because they either went mech or bio mech or whatever. Occassionally a helion opening could get me, but that's disregarding if I scout at all, but quintessentially, a terran will always go Bio in TvP. It's sort of the same for TvT as well, you can almost always assume the game will come down to Rine/tank v Rine/Tank, trench warfare.
Trench warefare is all fine and dandy, but I like aggression, I like mobility TvT just reminds me of the American Revolution where everyone went out into a field with their guns and cannons stood there and then opened fire. To me it's boring, but that's just an opinion, I think the idea behind the Warhound is a great addition to introducing a new dynamic and breaking the monotony of the standard metagame and composition. For instance I like that TvZ you can go Marine Tank, Mech, and Bio and have all of them give you an equal chance at winning the game without an inherent weaknesses with the composition. Sure you can go Mech in TvT, but most of the time it still comes down to trench warefare or it just loses to marauder heavy bio and you literally only have Bio for an option vs Toss, maybe that's changed, but I still think TvP meching had more problems than just a BattleHelion could solve.
My suggestion for the Warhound was to make it an alternative to the Thor, a weaker, faster version that could still fullfill the same basic functions (Maybe give it an Anti-air attack instead of the haywire missle and keep it at factory tech with tech lab) That way it won't be outragiously strong vs mechanical (solving your tank problem and keeping them viable) but also introduces that same new dynamic. It's still pretty damn strong early game, but gain, that's all a work in progressI suppose.
I don't agree that Blizzard fucked up either, this IS the Beta, there are supposed to be flaws and I doubt Blizzard would want to get rid of the tanks lines simply because THEY alone dislike them. To me, TvT is a dreary uneventful match up that can easily be predicted throughout the game just based on how TvT is played. As I said, you can always assume it's gonna be Marine/Tank and 90% of the time, you'll be right. Again, that's my opinion.
Yeah, as he said - he plays Protoss. High level TvT has never been trench warfare and never will be. TvT overtook TvZ as the best matchup in WoL in my opinion.
It is the only matchup where defenders advantage actually is strong and where positional play with tanks is possible. Moreover, it requires tons and tons of skill and because of it the players that are among the absolute best will be able to really shine.
It's sort of the same for TvT as well, you can almost always assume the game will come down to Rine/tank v Rine/Tank, trench warfare.
As someone who mechs every game, I meet quite a lot of fellow meching terrans and mech vs mech is one of the most exciting matchups there is. It was in Broodwar and it is now. It's all about zone control, positioning and controlling the movement of your opponent.
Yeah so it's basically the same as normal marine tank where it's just trench warefare. I'm not saying exclusively Terran's only go rine tank, especially on the ladder, but the point is that I think TvT needs more of a dynamic rather than just stalemates with basically every match. Mech vs Mech CAN be fun to watch and play, but only because it's a bit more rare. Anywho, I don't want the warhounds to replace the tank, but rather add more variety to the match-up.
It's sort of the same for TvT as well, you can almost always assume the game will come down to Rine/tank v Rine/Tank, trench warfare.
As someone who mechs every game, I meet quite a lot of fellow meching terrans and mech vs mech is one of the most exciting matchups there is. It was in Broodwar and it is now. It's all about zone control, positioning and controlling the movement of your opponent.
Yeah so it's basically the same as normal marine tank where it's just trench warefare. I'm not saying exclusively Terran's only go rine tank, especially on the ladder, but the point is that I think TvT needs more of a dynamic rather than just stalemates with basically every match. Mech vs Mech CAN be fun to watch and play, but only because it's a bit more rare. Anywho, I don't want the warhounds to replace the tank, but rather add more variety to the match-up.
If the warhound just stops tank lines completely it'll ruin the matchup.
I've never, ever seen a stalemate in a TvT, it's so exciting for the zone control aspects and then tech up to air. TvT is the matchup that deserves to be like that and it's not boring in the slightest. Go back and watch Flash in various mech TvT's throughout BW and watch MVP play mech vs mech in SC2. It's super exciting with small pokes all over the place and the vision superiority makes it really easy to break tank lines too.
The other 2 mirror matchups have been awful in both SC2. They're not dynamic at all. PvP is either you die in the early game or it goes to collosus vs collosus and ZvZ is whoever gets the most infestors later game.
On September 06 2012 23:02 one-one-one wrote: The boring TvT tank stalemate is a myth.
I agree and I don't agree. I agree because it's true: TvT mech vs mech can be awesome and very fast. I don't agree because some terrans just decide to turtle really hard and smart. If the agressive mechterran misses the right window, the siegeline can't be broken anymore = long boring game. I play very agressive mech in WOL and somethimes I just miss the timing, and when my opponent is some boring player, the game will take 1 hour 100%.
On September 06 2012 22:26 ref4 wrote: maybe the warhound is so OP right off the bat is because Blizz want beta testers to use the unit?
think about it, if warhound costs 300/100/5 60s build time and do 5 dmg flat with its haywire missle only doing 10 dmg nobody will use it. or it moves as slow as a thor, nobody will use it.
but I agree the current warhound stats need some nerf.
On September 06 2012 23:02 one-one-one wrote: The boring TvT tank stalemate is a myth.
I agree and I don't agree. I agree because it's true: TvT mech vs mech can be awesome and very fast. I don't agree because some terrans just decide to turtle really hard and smart. If the agressive mechterran misses the right window, the siegeline can't be broken anymore = long boring game. I play very agressive mech in WOL and somethimes I just miss the timing, and when my opponent is some boring player, the game will take 1 hour 100%.
Transition into sky terran then?
And as you pointed out, even mech can be played aggressively. The same goes for marine tank vs marine tank. Want more aggressive play? Just stay more marineheavy. Wanna turtle? Favor a large siegetank count.
TvT doesn't need more variety in the form of a mechanical marauder.
On September 06 2012 21:24 FortMonty wrote: To be honest, I agree and I don't agree. I agree that the Warhound DOES need a nerf in some way shape or form, it costs too little supply and comes out too early for it's strength. I don't agree that it should automatically be placed into the old style category of mech being a chess match style of play. Some people do enjoy being able to be mobile without having to dedicate themselves to bio, I like the fact that the warhound gives more versatility to mech and more of a guerilla tactic with it, I just think it needs to be nerfed a little to make it so using the old style of mech isn't redundant.
Just my 2 cents, make it so the Warhound costs 3 supply and make an armory requirement, maybe make the haywire researchable and I think the Warhound would be good. that way players can have a choice to play the standard positional, chess match style play of mech, or they can go for the rough and tumble guerilla warfare mech. Either way, I think mech needs some mobility, no sense in sticking to the same old fashioned style for the sake of tradition.
im sure some people would enjoy protoss to have a central production building to build all units or have terran have the ability to chronoboost, but thats not the point
the point is diversity. what do you gain by making mech viable but mech being just bio-playstyle with bigger units?
What you gain is an interesting new style for a different tech path. the bio Style isn't JUST about it's mobility, it's about multi pronged attacks and harass, attacking one area while harassing another. Adding mobility to mech wouldn't make it bio, it would make it versatile. When I go into a PvT, I always know almost for a fact that they Terran will go Bio-centric in their play, it doesn't even require a scout for that, if they go anything else, I can easily make a slight adjustment and then Roflstomp the Terran because they either went mech or bio mech or whatever. Occassionally a helion opening could get me, but that's disregarding if I scout at all, but quintessentially, a terran will always go Bio in TvP. It's sort of the same for TvT as well, you can almost always assume the game will come down to Rine/tank v Rine/Tank, trench warfare.
Trench warefare is all fine and dandy, but I like aggression, I like mobility TvT just reminds me of the American Revolution where everyone went out into a field with their guns and cannons stood there and then opened fire. To me it's boring, but that's just an opinion, I think the idea behind the Warhound is a great addition to introducing a new dynamic and breaking the monotony of the standard metagame and composition. For instance I like that TvZ you can go Marine Tank, Mech, and Bio and have all of them give you an equal chance at winning the game without an inherent weaknesses with the composition. Sure you can go Mech in TvT, but most of the time it still comes down to trench warefare or it just loses to marauder heavy bio and you literally only have Bio for an option vs Toss, maybe that's changed, but I still think TvP meching had more problems than just a BattleHelion could solve.
My suggestion for the Warhound was to make it an alternative to the Thor, a weaker, faster version that could still fullfill the same basic functions (Maybe give it an Anti-air attack instead of the haywire missle and keep it at factory tech with tech lab) That way it won't be outragiously strong vs mechanical (solving your tank problem and keeping them viable) but also introduces that same new dynamic. It's still pretty damn strong early game, but gain, that's all a work in progressI suppose.
I don't agree that Blizzard fucked up either, this IS the Beta, there are supposed to be flaws and I doubt Blizzard would want to get rid of the tanks lines simply because THEY alone dislike them. To me, TvT is a dreary uneventful match up that can easily be predicted throughout the game just based on how TvT is played. As I said, you can always assume it's gonna be Marine/Tank and 90% of the time, you'll be right. Again, that's my opinion.
Yeah, as he said - he plays Protoss. High level TvT has never been trench warfare and never will be. TvT overtook TvZ as the best matchup in WoL in my opinion.
It is the only matchup where defenders advantage actually is strong and where positional play with tanks is possible. Moreover, it requires tons and tons of skill and because of it the players that are among the absolute best will be able to really shine.
The boring TvT tank stalemate is a myth.
My most played Race is Terran but my current race is Random. Yes TvT to me looks like trench warefare where basically what you do is poke and squeeze to gain ground on your opponent, maybe territory warefare would be better for you? Obviously it requires skills, patience, and good decision making, but to me it's the slowest match-up and can be the most boring to watch, again, that's only MY OPINION as I stated.
The warhound would break the monotony of the typical TvT game.
Personally I think ZvZ is a really fun high level match up, granted it makes it past the 8 minute mark because it's high speed reactionary play and I think it requires just as much skill in it's own regard as TvT, but again, opinion, opinion, opinion. Trench warefare is not a myth in TvT, it's a viewpoint.
On September 06 2012 23:02 one-one-one wrote: The boring TvT tank stalemate is a myth.
I agree and I don't agree. I agree because it's true: TvT mech vs mech can be awesome and very fast. I don't agree because some terrans just decide to turtle really hard and smart. If the agressive mechterran misses the right window, the siegeline can't be broken anymore = long boring game. I play very agressive mech in WOL and somethimes I just miss the timing, and when my opponent is some boring player, the game will take 1 hour 100%.
Transition into sky terran then?
And as you pointed out, even mech can be played aggressively. The same goes for marine tank vs marine tank. Want more aggressive play? Just stay more marineheavy. Wanna turtle? Favor a large siegetank count.
TvT doesn't need more variety in the form of a mechanical marauder.
That's what I do, but those really bad mannered boring terrans will turtle hard with a thick line of turrets. It can really take more then an hour to break that..
On September 06 2012 21:24 FortMonty wrote: To be honest, I agree and I don't agree. I agree that the Warhound DOES need a nerf in some way shape or form, it costs too little supply and comes out too early for it's strength. I don't agree that it should automatically be placed into the old style category of mech being a chess match style of play. Some people do enjoy being able to be mobile without having to dedicate themselves to bio, I like the fact that the warhound gives more versatility to mech and more of a guerilla tactic with it, I just think it needs to be nerfed a little to make it so using the old style of mech isn't redundant.
Just my 2 cents, make it so the Warhound costs 3 supply and make an armory requirement, maybe make the haywire researchable and I think the Warhound would be good. that way players can have a choice to play the standard positional, chess match style play of mech, or they can go for the rough and tumble guerilla warfare mech. Either way, I think mech needs some mobility, no sense in sticking to the same old fashioned style for the sake of tradition.
im sure some people would enjoy protoss to have a central production building to build all units or have terran have the ability to chronoboost, but thats not the point
the point is diversity. what do you gain by making mech viable but mech being just bio-playstyle with bigger units?
What you gain is an interesting new style for a different tech path. the bio Style isn't JUST about it's mobility, it's about multi pronged attacks and harass, attacking one area while harassing another. Adding mobility to mech wouldn't make it bio, it would make it versatile. When I go into a PvT, I always know almost for a fact that they Terran will go Bio-centric in their play, it doesn't even require a scout for that, if they go anything else, I can easily make a slight adjustment and then Roflstomp the Terran because they either went mech or bio mech or whatever. Occassionally a helion opening could get me, but that's disregarding if I scout at all, but quintessentially, a terran will always go Bio in TvP. It's sort of the same for TvT as well, you can almost always assume the game will come down to Rine/tank v Rine/Tank, trench warfare.
Trench warefare is all fine and dandy, but I like aggression, I like mobility TvT just reminds me of the American Revolution where everyone went out into a field with their guns and cannons stood there and then opened fire. To me it's boring, but that's just an opinion, I think the idea behind the Warhound is a great addition to introducing a new dynamic and breaking the monotony of the standard metagame and composition. For instance I like that TvZ you can go Marine Tank, Mech, and Bio and have all of them give you an equal chance at winning the game without an inherent weaknesses with the composition. Sure you can go Mech in TvT, but most of the time it still comes down to trench warefare or it just loses to marauder heavy bio and you literally only have Bio for an option vs Toss, maybe that's changed, but I still think TvP meching had more problems than just a BattleHelion could solve.
My suggestion for the Warhound was to make it an alternative to the Thor, a weaker, faster version that could still fullfill the same basic functions (Maybe give it an Anti-air attack instead of the haywire missle and keep it at factory tech with tech lab) That way it won't be outragiously strong vs mechanical (solving your tank problem and keeping them viable) but also introduces that same new dynamic. It's still pretty damn strong early game, but gain, that's all a work in progressI suppose.
I don't agree that Blizzard fucked up either, this IS the Beta, there are supposed to be flaws and I doubt Blizzard would want to get rid of the tanks lines simply because THEY alone dislike them. To me, TvT is a dreary uneventful match up that can easily be predicted throughout the game just based on how TvT is played. As I said, you can always assume it's gonna be Marine/Tank and 90% of the time, you'll be right. Again, that's my opinion.
Yeah, as he said - he plays Protoss. High level TvT has never been trench warfare and never will be. TvT overtook TvZ as the best matchup in WoL in my opinion.
It is the only matchup where defenders advantage actually is strong and where positional play with tanks is possible. Moreover, it requires tons and tons of skill and because of it the players that are among the absolute best will be able to really shine.
The boring TvT tank stalemate is a myth.
My most played Race is Terran but my current race is Random. Yes TvT to me looks like trench warefare where basically what you do is poke and squeeze to gain ground on your opponent, maybe territory warefare would be better for you? Obviously it requires skills, patience, and good decision making, but to me it's the slowest match-up and can be the most boring to watch, again, that's only MY OPINION as I stated.
The warhound would break the monotony of the typical TvT game.
Personally I think ZvZ is a really fun high level match up, granted it makes it past the 8 minute mark because it's high speed reactionary play and I think it requires just as much skill in it's own regard as TvT, but again, opinion, opinion, opinion. Trench warefare is not a myth in TvT, it's a viewpoint.
It doesn't break the monotomy of TvT at all,m TvT isn't monotonous in the slightest and all it'll do is TvT will be Warhound vs Warhound which is going to be incredibly boring to watch.
Tank lines, slowly squeezing land out of your opponent and going for the air switch IS exciting to play and watch. It's like chess and it comes down to your intelligent decision making long term rather than how well you can move one unit and not get them clumped up like PvP is.
On September 06 2012 21:24 FortMonty wrote: To be honest, I agree and I don't agree. I agree that the Warhound DOES need a nerf in some way shape or form, it costs too little supply and comes out too early for it's strength. I don't agree that it should automatically be placed into the old style category of mech being a chess match style of play. Some people do enjoy being able to be mobile without having to dedicate themselves to bio, I like the fact that the warhound gives more versatility to mech and more of a guerilla tactic with it, I just think it needs to be nerfed a little to make it so using the old style of mech isn't redundant.
Just my 2 cents, make it so the Warhound costs 3 supply and make an armory requirement, maybe make the haywire researchable and I think the Warhound would be good. that way players can have a choice to play the standard positional, chess match style play of mech, or they can go for the rough and tumble guerilla warfare mech. Either way, I think mech needs some mobility, no sense in sticking to the same old fashioned style for the sake of tradition.
im sure some people would enjoy protoss to have a central production building to build all units or have terran have the ability to chronoboost, but thats not the point
the point is diversity. what do you gain by making mech viable but mech being just bio-playstyle with bigger units?
What you gain is an interesting new style for a different tech path. the bio Style isn't JUST about it's mobility, it's about multi pronged attacks and harass, attacking one area while harassing another. Adding mobility to mech wouldn't make it bio, it would make it versatile. When I go into a PvT, I always know almost for a fact that they Terran will go Bio-centric in their play, it doesn't even require a scout for that, if they go anything else, I can easily make a slight adjustment and then Roflstomp the Terran because they either went mech or bio mech or whatever. Occassionally a helion opening could get me, but that's disregarding if I scout at all, but quintessentially, a terran will always go Bio in TvP. It's sort of the same for TvT as well, you can almost always assume the game will come down to Rine/tank v Rine/Tank, trench warfare.
Trench warefare is all fine and dandy, but I like aggression, I like mobility TvT just reminds me of the American Revolution where everyone went out into a field with their guns and cannons stood there and then opened fire. To me it's boring, but that's just an opinion, I think the idea behind the Warhound is a great addition to introducing a new dynamic and breaking the monotony of the standard metagame and composition. For instance I like that TvZ you can go Marine Tank, Mech, and Bio and have all of them give you an equal chance at winning the game without an inherent weaknesses with the composition. Sure you can go Mech in TvT, but most of the time it still comes down to trench warefare or it just loses to marauder heavy bio and you literally only have Bio for an option vs Toss, maybe that's changed, but I still think TvP meching had more problems than just a BattleHelion could solve.
My suggestion for the Warhound was to make it an alternative to the Thor, a weaker, faster version that could still fullfill the same basic functions (Maybe give it an Anti-air attack instead of the haywire missle and keep it at factory tech with tech lab) That way it won't be outragiously strong vs mechanical (solving your tank problem and keeping them viable) but also introduces that same new dynamic. It's still pretty damn strong early game, but gain, that's all a work in progressI suppose.
I don't agree that Blizzard fucked up either, this IS the Beta, there are supposed to be flaws and I doubt Blizzard would want to get rid of the tanks lines simply because THEY alone dislike them. To me, TvT is a dreary uneventful match up that can easily be predicted throughout the game just based on how TvT is played. As I said, you can always assume it's gonna be Marine/Tank and 90% of the time, you'll be right. Again, that's my opinion.
Yeah, as he said - he plays Protoss. High level TvT has never been trench warfare and never will be. TvT overtook TvZ as the best matchup in WoL in my opinion.
It is the only matchup where defenders advantage actually is strong and where positional play with tanks is possible. Moreover, it requires tons and tons of skill and because of it the players that are among the absolute best will be able to really shine.
The boring TvT tank stalemate is a myth.
My most played Race is Terran but my current race is Random. Yes TvT to me looks like trench warefare where basically what you do is poke and squeeze to gain ground on your opponent, maybe territory warefare would be better for you? Obviously it requires skills, patience, and good decision making, but to me it's the slowest match-up and can be the most boring to watch, again, that's only MY OPINION as I stated.
The warhound would break the monotony of the typical TvT game.
Personally I think ZvZ is a really fun high level match up, granted it makes it past the 8 minute mark because it's high speed reactionary play and I think it requires just as much skill in it's own regard as TvT, but again, opinion, opinion, opinion. Trench warefare is not a myth in TvT, it's a viewpoint.
Of course you can be of the opinion that TvT looks like trench warfare. Your definition of it sounds a lot like the common notion of "positional play".
Positional play as in what made BW the best RTS game to date. Positional play as being rewarded for strategic play allowing you to seize key areas of the map.
Not as in: Oh, you got 20 siege tanks - well that sucks for you because I can just amove my zealots , archons ,immortals and colossus and your positional advantage on the high ground behind a choke doesn't mean shit.
On September 06 2012 23:02 one-one-one wrote: The boring TvT tank stalemate is a myth.
I agree and I don't agree. I agree because it's true: TvT mech vs mech can be awesome and very fast. I don't agree because some terrans just decide to turtle really hard and smart. If the agressive mechterran misses the right window, the siegeline can't be broken anymore = long boring game. I play very agressive mech in WOL and somethimes I just miss the timing, and when my opponent is some boring player, the game will take 1 hour 100%.
Transition into sky terran then?
And as you pointed out, even mech can be played aggressively. The same goes for marine tank vs marine tank. Want more aggressive play? Just stay more marineheavy. Wanna turtle? Favor a large siegetank count.
TvT doesn't need more variety in the form of a mechanical marauder.
That's what I do, but those really bad mannered boring terrans will turtle hard with a thick line of turrets. It can really take more then an hour to break that..
Then make ghosts to nuke his turrets?
You will actually see long TvT stalemate games in bronze league and stuff. There is a reason why the play you describe above is not seen in prolevel games - it is a bad strategy.
On September 06 2012 23:02 one-one-one wrote: The boring TvT tank stalemate is a myth.
I agree and I don't agree. I agree because it's true: TvT mech vs mech can be awesome and very fast. I don't agree because some terrans just decide to turtle really hard and smart. If the agressive mechterran misses the right window, the siegeline can't be broken anymore = long boring game. I play very agressive mech in WOL and somethimes I just miss the timing, and when my opponent is some boring player, the game will take 1 hour 100%.
Transition into sky terran then?
And as you pointed out, even mech can be played aggressively. The same goes for marine tank vs marine tank. Want more aggressive play? Just stay more marineheavy. Wanna turtle? Favor a large siegetank count.
TvT doesn't need more variety in the form of a mechanical marauder.
That's what I do, but those really bad mannered boring terrans will turtle hard with a thick line of turrets. It can really take more then an hour to break that..
As someone who plays with a lot of tanks and turrets and against people who do that, I'm just going to come out and say that you don't know how to play.
Have you not heard of battlecruisers and ravens? Yamato the Turrets and also PDD above the turrets and your high BC count will rip through his tank line. This allows your ground forces to just push in for the win.
Currently it is warhound vs Warhound, because they need a Nerf so that they're not so damn over powering. Also I do think this game needs the A move "option". This game is more than just positioning and more than just who makes the best decision, it has a lot of different things that dictate the course of the game, macro, build order, micro, where to attack, when to attack, what to attack, composition, and control. It's easy to use the excuse that "this game is an RTS and BW did this and that, so it should be a chess-like game" Sorry, but this is a real time strategy game, not a chess game, sometimes the best strategy is to be really fast and really aggressive, sometimes it's better to be passive and expand territory, sometimes it's a mixture of both. I'm simply promoting the more mobile version, but I by no means wish to sacrifice the latter.
I personally dislike TvT currently, I'm only Platinum, maybe that's why, maybe cause I suck with Terran, who knows, either way, I think a change is never a bad thing, as long as it doesn't upset the balance of the game but also offers more versatility.
On September 06 2012 11:17 Thaniri wrote: Honestly warhounds need to be cut completely.
They LOOK terrible. Their aesthetics are stupid, and don't feel starcraft-y at all. With speed hellions and warhounds, mech is ACTUALLY FASTER THAN NON STIMMED BIO.
I, on the other hand, like the look of the warhound. Nice technical look.
On September 06 2012 11:17 Thaniri wrote: Honestly warhounds need to be cut completely.
They LOOK terrible. Their aesthetics are stupid, and don't feel starcraft-y at all. With speed hellions and warhounds, mech is ACTUALLY FASTER THAN NON STIMMED BIO.
I, on the other hand, like the look of the warhound. Nice technical look.
Yes, same here. Old Warhound model was terrible, but new seems quite good for my taste. Looks a lot like combination of some kind of Mech Warrior with Dreadnaught from Warhammer 40k.
Also, not talking about balance or design, just about look. Balance wise, it needs to be nerfed.
I don't find the model as ugly as people make it out, but still the unit is boring and overlaps too much with existing stuff :/
What about making it anti-air only? There are no ground to air only units in the game (except spores/turrets) so it would kinda make it more interesting. Would it make it useful though that's another question
What about an extra upgrade (like blue flames) but for siege tanks, like +10 damage (like an old school tank in BW) to make them more viable and remove this shitty unit which is the Warhound ?
I never really got why people said that TvT is boring because of siege tank lines (not stale mates, as that would be a draw). I'm a zerg player myself, but I have dabbled with playing mech occasionally and though it is indeed somewhat slow I find it quite interesting to play and watch. I guess some people only want to see things being melted by lasers.
On September 06 2012 23:56 734pot wrote: I never really got why people said that TvT is boring because of siege tank lines (not stale mates, as that would be a draw). I'm a zerg player myself, but I have dabbled with playing mech occasionally and though it is indeed somewhat slow I find it quite interesting to play and watch. I guess some people only want to see things being melted by lasers.
There was like a TINY time of like maybe a month where there were a few high profile games where siege lines were pretty hard to break and went on for awhile, but after that the metagame changed and I haven't seen anything David Kim describes as a "stale mate siege line" since MLG Anaheim 2011, probably.
On September 06 2012 23:56 734pot wrote: I never really got why people said that TvT is boring because of siege tank lines (not stale mates, as that would be a draw). I'm a zerg player myself, but I have dabbled with playing mech occasionally and though it is indeed somewhat slow I find it quite interesting to play and watch. I guess some people only want to see things being melted by lasers.
There was like a TINY time of like maybe a month where there were a few high profile games where siege lines were pretty hard to break and went on for awhile, but after that the metagame changed and I haven't seen anything David Kim describes as a "stale mate siege line" since MLG Anaheim 2011, probably.
Wasn't that also due to the maps as in Metalopolis it was so damned easy to section off your half of the map?
I think that the Warhound's speed needs to be reduced. Watching WhiteRa v QXC last night, I was distrubed that a "mech" unit (the warhound) is faster than a stalker (Protosses fast unit).
Im not in the Beta yet (i really want to be) but i kind of like the Warhound. it helps terran have an army outside of bio that we can Rely on.
since i for 1 can say that after 2 years of Bio im really looking forward to a REAL mech army. and to break open siege lines in TvT!
is it strong? Yes no doubt about that but on the same note i havent seen any protoss really using their oracles fully yet. its early Beta..still LOTS of room for adjustment.
Were going to have to just play/watch and enjoy what we have right now!
On September 06 2012 23:56 734pot wrote: I never really got why people said that TvT is boring because of siege tank lines (not stale mates, as that would be a draw). I'm a zerg player myself, but I have dabbled with playing mech occasionally and though it is indeed somewhat slow I find it quite interesting to play and watch. I guess some people only want to see things being melted by lasers.
I totally agree, TvT is great fun. Especially when you have bio vs Mech or tank Marine vs tank Marine. It's unforgiving (often the better player wins) and yet there are far more opportunities to come back or play safe without getting too far behind - unlike most other matchups.
Personally (perhaps ZvP and ZvT are also good) TvT may be my favourite WoL matchup. The fact that they are actively trying to remove mech from TvT makes me sad. Without Mech, TvT essentially becomes bio vs bio - which really isn't essentially much different to most other matchups. Mech is also a defining feature of Starcraft (both I and II) - it's sad to see a purposeful nerf.
(Btw, as implied, the Warhound is not a Mech unit... it's just a bigger marauder. In fact the marauder is a better unit because it has more micro options and is less A-movey.) Neither is the thor a mech unit - but at least the thor is slow and powerful, so it is closer to mech than the Warhound is....
On September 06 2012 09:10 Staboteur wrote: What? Immobile anti-air? Turrets and thors already are immobile anti-air... that's not adding a useful function to the warhound, that's giving it hydralisk status.
I've watched a bit of HOTS (qxc!) and I'm actually excited seeing warhounds running at a zerg's base and engaging a pack of queens. It is a unit that has the potential to force Zerg away from the safe 3hatch many queen builds and back toward earlier speedling / less econ-focused openings. BUT ECON AND MANY BASES IS INDICATIVE OF GOOD PLAY!
...Sure, if you're comparing different leagues. At higher levels, it's fairly safe to add -safely- into that statement, showing that getting econ and many bases SAFELY is indicative of good play... but in the current metagame, ZvP and ZvT seem to be largely based around it currently being "safe" to focus econ until either one or both players have upwards of 3 bases. If Terran get a unit that starts forcing Zerg to get ling speed earlier to stay safe, Zerg now is in a situation where they don't have a competitive economy, but do have tech (ling speed) they wouldn't normally have which allows them to return pressure etc etc etc. Sure, there's nothing -wrong- with passive play and people getting many bases, but if Terran gets a unit that is allowed to pressure early and in small numbers -safely-, I don't think you'll find me objecting to the role of the unit too quickly. More active play is more fun to watch, and I don't think anyone can say for sure that TvZ warhound rush is 100% win. Let it develop, it should be fun to watch the new timings arise!
(No idea how Warhound functions vP or whether or not it is actually balanced. If it kept the same role but became balanced I wouldn't object. It reminds me of a really hefty mech reaper.)
So you want a unit that forces Zergs to always do this one thing to put themselves behind because they're scared shitless of a unit. Seems legit.
Browder used to go to great lengths explaining the unit design in sc2, notably talking 'no unit overlap'. ie the reason why lurkers were removed from the game, to overlap with 'splash damage like the baneling'.
what do we end up with hots?
the original warhound was exactly a minature thor, but smaller, cheaper, faster. off to a good start browder. so they removed the antiair for beta. the unit is still ranged 7, but doesnt do as much damage as the thor, but is a bit less than half the price and a third of the supply. its not anti-muta but can basically hold its own against roaches nevertheless, succeeding the role of the thor, or even marauder, against a roaching zerg.
looking at the tempest now, a protoss 'siege unit'. isnt this exactly what the colossus is? 10 range, 30 damage, versus 9 range, 30 damage. yea, great, you can now have +1 range from vikings, minus the splash. also note the health/hp is exactly that from the carrier.
anyone trying to defend this in any way as competent design is fooling themselves. blizzard honest to god could not come up with anything better aside from these units which do nothing but pew pew, or rather in the case of the tempest, pew.
Warhound's definitely need some changes, but the role and application of the unit doesn't need to change:
Because of their health, size, and damage; warhounds should be 3 supply instead of 2 supply, but then something might have to be done to make siege tanks more efficient (like 60 vs armored instead of 50 or something smallish) simply because both those units would be more supply demanding.
The missile upgrade is also very strong, and redundant in some situations, I could see it being turned into a 50/50 or 100/100 upgrade in order to improve timing situations against mechanical armies (also the missile is unnecessary against zerg so this upgrade wouldn't change that match up)
However, while strong I feel like the current 2.81 speed and 200 hp are absolutely necessary to the design of the unit, relative to protoss units which have notoriously higher speed and health than terran units (i.e. zealot, stalker, archon, phoenix, warp prism, oracle etc etc) even though some excepts like the sentry or immortal exist.
On September 06 2012 09:10 Staboteur wrote: What? Immobile anti-air? Turrets and thors already are immobile anti-air... that's not adding a useful function to the warhound, that's giving it hydralisk status.
I've watched a bit of HOTS (qxc!) and I'm actually excited seeing warhounds running at a zerg's base and engaging a pack of queens. It is a unit that has the potential to force Zerg away from the safe 3hatch many queen builds and back toward earlier speedling / less econ-focused openings. BUT ECON AND MANY BASES IS INDICATIVE OF GOOD PLAY!
...Sure, if you're comparing different leagues. At higher levels, it's fairly safe to add -safely- into that statement, showing that getting econ and many bases SAFELY is indicative of good play... but in the current metagame, ZvP and ZvT seem to be largely based around it currently being "safe" to focus econ until either one or both players have upwards of 3 bases. If Terran get a unit that starts forcing Zerg to get ling speed earlier to stay safe, Zerg now is in a situation where they don't have a competitive economy, but do have tech (ling speed) they wouldn't normally have which allows them to return pressure etc etc etc. Sure, there's nothing -wrong- with passive play and people getting many bases, but if Terran gets a unit that is allowed to pressure early and in small numbers -safely-, I don't think you'll find me objecting to the role of the unit too quickly. More active play is more fun to watch, and I don't think anyone can say for sure that TvZ warhound rush is 100% win. Let it develop, it should be fun to watch the new timings arise!
(No idea how Warhound functions vP or whether or not it is actually balanced. If it kept the same role but became balanced I wouldn't object. It reminds me of a really hefty mech reaper.)
So you want a unit that forces Zergs to always do this one thing to put themselves behind because they're scared shitless of a unit. Seems legit.
he wants a unit that forces zerg to take risks to get ahead or stay same on eve instead of always doing the same booming/powering every single game
Thanks Avilo for this post, I like your idea a lot. I would just like to add that it seems to me very strange that the warhoud is only costing 2 supply considering it completly destroys all the other 2, 3 supply units. Wouldn't it seems normal to make it cost 4 supply? Also, maybe instead of lowering its damage output ( which in my opinion is part of why it may become interesting) why not increase the build time so that it's a unit you want to have, but that takes a long time to produce in the numbers required.
The warhound just seems too good. I thought the new units were designed to fill holes in the game balance or create interesting new match-ups. I see neither of that here with the warhound... it takes all of the interesting parts of a matchup and replaces them with A-move
I just played around with the unit editor in the beta as it workswithout a key (check thread on hots forum)
You know what, I honestly think the hayfire missiles could work if they didn't have autocast and a longer cooldown. The cooldown is only 6 seconds, but with a 20 second cooldown+ without an autocast it could be pretty cool.
I honestly think if they upped the supply and removed autocast from the warhound it could be a really cool support unit it'd mean it wouldn't be massable and with a decent cooldown on hayfire (it's only 6 seconds right now) it could have a really interesting place in the mech army
On September 07 2012 01:48 Qikz wrote: I honestly think if they upped the supply and removed autocast from the warhound it could be a really cool support unit it'd mean it wouldn't be massable and with a decent cooldown on hayfire (it's only 6 seconds right now) it could have a really interesting place in the mech army
If you remove Auto-cast, then it is better to stay 6 seconds and just nerf the Warhound. It will result in more APM and more micro overall.
On September 07 2012 01:10 JimmyJRaynor wrote: I'd like to see teh Warhound be a viable early-mid game unit that can be used against all 3 races.
Then, the "hay wire missile" is a tech upgrade that is 200//200 with a research time of 180.
So the Warhound is viable mid to late game in T v. T and T v. P.
The HP, Supply, and Damage should be in proportion to its cost and only this beta test will verify its proper stats.
Having watched ThorZaIN, DeMusliM, SjoW and fOrGG play these past few days, I can tell you that the Warhound is already a viable early-mid game unit that can be used against all 3 races. Not just early-mid game, but for the whole game. One of it's problems is that it's simply too good. But that's fine, we're in a beta, things aren't going to be as well balanced as WoL. Or maybe people just aren't using the right strategies/tactics/compositions.
Either way, that is not the issue here. The issue is that regardless of balance the Warhound is a very badly designed unit. It is essentially a better Marauder. Seeing how Blizzard has increased the options and viability of "mech", or rather what they perceive to be mech, we'll be seeing a lot more factories. And those factories can produce this better version of a Marauder.
It's boring. It's a boring unit with almost no room for micromanagement to allow it to perform better. Some argue that the Marauder has the same issues and while I'd respectfully disagree (they start out slow but you can upgrade stim and concussive shells; you can use them in drops; there are marauder-centric openings, as we've seen in the GSL earlier today; etc) the problem at hand is that the Warhound is even worse from this standpoint. You get a unit that has even less potential than the Marauder in terms of micromanagement because it's too bloody efficient against almost anything on its own, and then you add to it a very powerful auto-cast ability. It's not really the Warhound that's redundant, it's the Marauder in the current HotS build. Which has a great potential to make bio close to obsolete. And you can say "well mech isn't popular right now either, why should bio be always the one that people need to go in order to win?". Well, I'm not saying that, but what Blizzard has in the current HotS build that they call "mech" is really boring and nothing like the positional-based chess-like game that we had in Brood War with mech.
TL;DR: The issue at hand is not balance, but the fact that the Warhound is very poorly designed, unimaginative, not fun to watch or play.
Sorry if I'm rambling; I'm pretty sure most if not all of what I said has been posted already but I felt like adding my 2 cents. ^^
The problem with the Warhound is that it's either too powerful or too cost effective, I think Blizzard would be better off removing the current Thor and the Warhound and replacing it with the original "Goliath" concept.
Say, 150 Minerals, 100 Vespene Gas, 3 Supply and just scale down the power level of the Thor by 50%, if you have like 200hp, range 6 ground, range 9 air and 2 shots for a Zergling kill and 3 shots for a Marine kill with around 2 movement speed that's already pretty on par. This 2.85 movement speed is bullshit, it's ridiculous to have a mech unit faster than a Kenyan sprinter. If they want to make the Warhound a rapid A-move unit, just give it like 2 movement and let it attack and move at the same time like the Diamondback. Or fuck it, just give us a Diamondback, that unit was awesome.
i love the warhound i hope they add more units like that. will make the game much more interesting. i love that sc2 has so many units that can be used vs every race.
On September 06 2012 08:46 Zenbrez wrote: Watching Drewbie rush Warhounds to (very easily and quickly) pick off Stephano's queens was a bit disheartening. They're strong as fu
A rush should be strong though so that it can do damage. If the opponent is able to defend then that rush is basically game over.
And furthermore, these new units require new ways to play. Stephano was probably droning super hard like he has been allowed to do in WoL for the past several months. In that case, he kinda deserved to have his queens die. Did he even have a single spine?
It is a bit a-movish though, not an incredibly difficult unit to use effectively.
The warhound is to beastly right now, but Blizzard will nerf it down to a land of reasonable. Personally, I think it should be a long range, sniper styled, glass cannon. A low HP unit with high damange and long range would be in a mech like army would fill a roll without allow the ball like pushes we know from bio. And the low HP would mean they could not make several pushes in a row.
Also, the best part of the HotS forums are all the BW experts we never knew we had. So many sub 1000 post that joing 5 months ago who are clearly experts on the potential of BW units and the glory of prefect mech play. There must have been some secret community of BW players that TL was not aware of. It is great they decided to join the community bring their points of view to us all. I don't know how their ideas of control and mirco match up with Flash's, who said that SC2 units were more responsive and less slugish than BW units.
So terran gets one A move unit and everyone loses their minds? Edit: Ok that was a little rash, I rescind on the protoss/zerg comment. It just gets annoying when lings/roaches/banes take 20 minutes of army building and destroy it in 10 seconds. Yea, I'm biased, so what?
Personally, I don't get behind the warhound as a 1-a unit at all. Watching QXC and Thorzain use it, it has some amazing hit and run potential with 2-4 of them in the mid/lategame. QXC even did a rush with two that did good economic suppression on a zerg.
Terran doesn't need more micro-able units. For god's sakes, that's ALL we have. Our bio needs splitting and micro like nothing else in the game, tanks need tons of micro, now we have to micro hellions, ravens are coming back into the mix, and overall positioning is hugely important, and much more work than either of the other races have. Not saying terran is harder or worse, but we don't need more micro opportunities, is all.
Wait a minute guys. Imagine a world where heart of the swarm has been out for longer than a day and a half. Imagine in this world, people have come up with legitimate strategies to deal with warhounds. Now imagine that crying for potential nerfs might be a little premature at this point. The game is evolving, and people have just gotten their feet wet with this new stuff. A terran player actually pressuring a zerg early game for mass droning? OH MY GOD.
On September 07 2012 02:50 Honeybadger wrote: Personally, I don't get behind the warhound as a 1-a unit at all. Watching QXC and Thorzain use it, it has some amazing hit and run potential with 2-4 of them in the mid/lategame. QXC even did a rush with two that did good economic suppression on a zerg.
Terran doesn't need more micro-able units. For god's sakes, that's ALL we have. Our bio needs splitting and micro like nothing else in the game, tanks need tons of micro, now we have to micro hellions, ravens are coming back into the mix, and overall positioning is hugely important, and much more work than either of the other races have. Not saying terran is harder or worse, but we don't need more micro opportunities, is all.
That is because the community labeled it a-move unit due to videos released by Blizzard. Then people created 8-15 threads about how bad the unit was, lower skill ceilings, that it was not "mech" and so on. After a while, it became accepted fact that it was a microless a-move unit that would ruin mech, TvT and steal Idra's cat Hobbs.
Personally, I think the unit should be made more fragile and act more as a hit and run unit like how QXC and Thorzain are using it. You can see the potential of a unit that can run out, pick off workers, HP light units or casters, and then fall back behind the tank line. It should have a lot of potential if they focus on its speed and range.
On September 06 2012 08:45 Shiori wrote: I agree completely, utterly, and totally. This is, without a doubt, the WORST concept for a unit in the entire history of Sc2 (yes! including Infestors and Roaches and Colossi!)
Although infestors are controversially an OP unit (I still think not) I think they were one of the coolest units implemented. Roach I will agree with, but I sense a bit of bias in your post (Perhaps terran).
Other than that, Warhound is a terrible unit. I feel Blizzard are trying to lower the skill cap for terran.
On September 07 2012 02:50 Honeybadger wrote: Personally, I don't get behind the warhound as a 1-a unit at all. Watching QXC and Thorzain use it, it has some amazing hit and run potential with 2-4 of them in the mid/lategame. QXC even did a rush with two that did good economic suppression on a zerg.
Terran doesn't need more micro-able units. For god's sakes, that's ALL we have. Our bio needs splitting and micro like nothing else in the game, tanks need tons of micro, now we have to micro hellions, ravens are coming back into the mix, and overall positioning is hugely important, and much more work than either of the other races have. Not saying terran is harder or worse, but we don't need more micro opportunities, is all.
That is because the community labeled it a-move unit due to videos released by Blizzard. Then people created 8-15 threads about how bad the unit was, lower skill ceilings, that it was not "mech" and so on. After a while, it became accepted fact that it was a microless a-move unit that would ruin mech, TvT and steal Idra's cat Hobbs.
Personally, I think the unit should be made more fragile and act more as a hit and run unit like how QXC and Thorzain are using it. You can see the potential of a unit that can run out, pick off workers, HP light units or casters, and then fall back behind the tank line. It should have a lot of potential if they focus on its speed and range.
I will accept the unit as a hit and run if they make it look less retarded. It's current skin does not suit a speed unit <___________<
On September 07 2012 02:50 Honeybadger wrote: Personally, I don't get behind the warhound as a 1-a unit at all. Watching QXC and Thorzain use it, it has some amazing hit and run potential with 2-4 of them in the mid/lategame. QXC even did a rush with two that did good economic suppression on a zerg.
Terran doesn't need more micro-able units. For god's sakes, that's ALL we have. Our bio needs splitting and micro like nothing else in the game, tanks need tons of micro, now we have to micro hellions, ravens are coming back into the mix, and overall positioning is hugely important, and much more work than either of the other races have. Not saying terran is harder or worse, but we don't need more micro opportunities, is all.
That is because the community labeled it a-move unit due to videos released by Blizzard. Then people created 8-15 threads about how bad the unit was, lower skill ceilings, that it was not "mech" and so on. After a while, it became accepted fact that it was a microless a-move unit that would ruin mech, TvT and steal Idra's cat Hobbs.
Personally, I think the unit should be made more fragile and act more as a hit and run unit like how QXC and Thorzain are using it. You can see the potential of a unit that can run out, pick off workers, HP light units or casters, and then fall back behind the tank line. It should have a lot of potential if they focus on its speed and range.
I will accept the unit as a hit and run if they make it look less retarded. It's current skin does not suit a speed unit <___________<
Even with those long, lanky legs? That thing could haul if it wanted to.
Suprisingly enough, the thors anti air is terrible that isn't super clumped up or mutalisks. If you go mech now you really badly need turrets as well as thors (even against pure mutalisk) or you just die.
I don't mind using vikings though however as you need the air upgrades to transition into BC with mech atm anyway.
Mech TvZ (if that's what we're looking at) requires defensive turrets sure, but a Meching player is going to have a mineral imbalance, so that's no bother. When you get that 2-2 Mech army, which should have around 7 Thor's, Muta doesn't seem too scary.
On September 06 2012 08:51 EtherealDeath wrote:
Because a thor is damn expensive in every way imaginable.
Mech units should be fairly expensive, I'm not aware of how much the Warhound costs? I'm sure if it is this effective a unit then, it's price will rise before it falls.
Honestly a ridiculous number of thors will die to a high number of mutas if they're magic boxed. I'm not even kidding.
Add a few marines and mutas go poof faster than you can say "I'm not even kidding". Can we please discuss balance & changes after HotS is released to the public. I mean WoL is still in public beta ;-)
On September 07 2012 01:36 7mk wrote: never thought id go to an avilo blog just to point out that I agree with him, but here i am. Blizzard, why so bad at making interesting units
To answer your question... who is the lead designer of SC2 right now and what other games has he worked on?
On September 07 2012 03:15 blug wrote: Listening to DeMuslims stream I have to agree with him... For what reason should anyone go Bio anymore?
Well it is beta. I am sure we all expected everything to be totally broken when it came out. I am sure they will tone down mech. But they can't release units that are worthless or too weak. Then no-one will use them. The only real way to make sure they get tested it to make them too strong and then bring them in line with all the other units.
On September 07 2012 02:46 Plansix wrote: The warhound is to beastly right now, but Blizzard will nerf it down to a land of reasonable. Personally, I think it should be a long range, sniper styled, glass cannon. A low HP unit with high damange and long range would be in a mech like army would fill a roll without allow the ball like pushes we know from bio. And the low HP would mean they could not make several pushes in a row.
Not sure if sarcastic, but a long range, low hp, anti ground mech unit already exists, its called the Siege Tank.
And you don't have to be a BW ex pro to understand why this unit isn't mech. You just need common sense. Battle Hellions and Warhounds is Bio without drops.
On September 07 2012 03:15 blug wrote: Listening to DeMuslims stream I have to agree with him... For what reason should anyone go Bio anymore?
Well it is beta. I am sure we all expected everything to be totally broken when it came out. I am sure they will tone down mech. But they can't release units that are worthless or too weak. Then no-one will use them. The only real way to make sure they get tested it to make them too strong and then bring them in line with all the other units.
It's not even really about it being to strong or to weak. It's more about the idea behind the unit. I know it's not fair to call balance when the beta has just been released, but you certainly can't argue that mech is supposed have shitty mobility but makes up for it with packing a punch and having the ability to cover vast amounts of area. Now they have given mech a mobile unit that still packs quite a punch. It just seems really counter productive. Mech as it currently is is awesome, but what they are trying to do is change the whole idea behind mech. I think they should add a hint of spice to mech, something that adds utility to it (Something like the raven), but as it currently stands they are changing the way mech plays completely.
I agree it might be speculation, but I think there is a lot of merit to it.
On September 07 2012 03:15 blug wrote: Listening to DeMuslims stream I have to agree with him... For what reason should anyone go Bio anymore?
Well it is beta. I am sure we all expected everything to be totally broken when it came out. I am sure they will tone down mech. But they can't release units that are worthless or too weak. Then no-one will use them. The only real way to make sure they get tested it to make them too strong and then bring them in line with all the other units.
Or first make them have interesting uses and room for creative play and then re-balance them.
On September 07 2012 03:29 IPA wrote: Lol @ sweeping balance statements 2 days after a beta-release. Do you hear yourselves?! Play the fucking game, it's brand new.
Jesus....
Well durr, it is the beta. People should be voicing their opinions about balance.
I am really really afraid that blizzard will be VERY stubborn and refuse to change the warhound. They will make it maybe 3 supply and higher the cost, while they should bring the goliath instead..
On September 07 2012 03:29 IPA wrote: Lol @ sweeping balance statements 2 days after a beta-release. Do you hear yourselves?! Play the fucking game, it's brand new.
Jesus....
We are just complaining about the DESIGN of the unit, who cares about balance at this point, that can easily be tweaked by changing numbers. As people have mentioned previously, the warhound is a boring unit. I just watched a TvT on Demuslim's stream and it was just warhound vs warhound. TvT is the new PvP, whoever makes more warhounds wins...how boring.
Wouldnt it be better if they make the warhound like the goliath (as has been suggested many times), but keep the thor, but make that an anti mech unit or give it atleast a different role (and no more anti air splash). So you have earlier anti air with mech (and no early mech rushes/a move armies), and thors (late game) with a way to break seige tank lines
The warhound should be an engineering unit, builds temporary walls for defense / map control, with limited ground melee attack and can clean up viper gas bombs.
People may not like this but, terran already has A LOT of micro intensive units! Even leapfrogging siege tanks and kiting with hellions/bio is much more than a zerg player has to do with their "roach hug" maneuver. Basically Terran's have got a colossus equivalent unit, finally. I mean I have always experessed discontent at the fact that in TvP your bio MUST kite to be effective, ghost vs HT war is fair, viking vs stalker/colossus war is fair but zealots vs bio is not even, with the terran player needing more APM to be effective in this part of the fight (for those of you saying stutter step is easy, don't forget that you can't do it in just one large clump, you need to move back units that are being hit by colossus/keep the bio ball split up, in fact a "bio ball" is the exact opposite of what you want).
I'm not denying that the warhound is OP from what I've seen from the beta, is it ridiculous! But like others have said it just needs a nerf in terms of changing the numbers around a bit, I've heard a lot of talk about a speed decrease, they are a bit too fast yes, kiting stalkers is pretty ridiculous and even in TvT, kiting bio before stim is out is pretty silly too. To me Terran has always had a higher skill ceiling because of unit control (among other things) than the other two races, which at the highest level any pro player regardless of which race they actually play, do have. People may disagree with me on this but I switch races a lot, and after a long stint of terran, going back to protoss and zerg I found myself much more aware of unit control in terms of splitting against splash damage and flanking etc. because imo being clumped agasint splash damage is the most detrimental to a terran bio force than any other races army in WoL.
Also I hate that as mech is so rare and gimmicky in WoL TvP, the pressure is on T to react to P's build, P can choose many builds, 3 nexus mass gateway, double forge, fast HT, colossus etc. and just very safely assume that terran is going bio, there is very little (besides techy 1 base allins) that you can do to surprise a protoss player. The possibility of early warhound pressure (when its a little less OP) now forces protoss to think more carefully about scouting and reacting to terran, finally allowing the terran to have more control over the game rather than being forced to find weaknesses in the protoss defence, he can now force the protoss to do the same (I want warp prism harassment to become an every game thing in PvT just as medivac drops are in WoL). Some cool things I've seen in beta streams showcasing this are a warhound expand into MMM tech switch etc.
In WoL mech and bio are both viable options in TvT and TvZ, why not TvP too the warhound is the answer (and partly the battle hellion but less so) but not yet the right one I feel. Before the beta came out I really thought warhounds would suck in TvZ and I still think that they should not have a place in that MU, but oddly they do, I hope that a simple stat nerf can fix this, but I fear it may be more complex than this.
TL;DR The Warhound still has a place in HoTS, terran don't have enough A movey units they need roach/zealot/colossus equivalents to take some strain off the already mechanically taxing unit control required to use their existing units effectively.
Can't understand when people say warhound have to much health, all terran units have dirt low health and damage being pretty low compared to armies like zerg there they have high health high speed and high dps.
just comparing mineral cost health dps on terran army it's just dirt low compared to both zerg. If terran gets 1unit with 220health it aint like the world is going to end, this argument is totaly damn stupid. One can argue that health compared to damage and mobilityh is to high, but when you say that ye. health to high, that sounds stupid.
Making boring units is one way to kill Starcraft Esports. I hope Blizzard see's what they're producing at the moment, because i don't want Starcraft to die.
Ayo my only friend with the beta is currently MIA so hopefully I could ask you guys something in here. Simple question really - how many warhounds can you fit in a dropship?
Just scrap the warhound/thor all together and revive a GtA mech unit (range 9, but start with range 6 and can be upgraded to +3) that can handle sky T in a sense that you dont have to end up having viking wars anymore. I really dont get why they dont provide this option instead of forcing the other player to get more vikings OR thors which are too costly/clumsy for this role. Its GtG can be mediocre but thats what the tank is for. They need to go back to the drawing board and revolve mech around the tank, just like how bio is revolved around the marine.
And seeing as there are so many things that kills siege tanks now e.g viper abuct, tempests etc, the tank should be buffed in some sort of way e.g. supply 3->2 or tank damage to 55 (to armoured and bonus to massive also so massive units dont eat all of the tank shots) or they deal full damage to shields or they gain access to that upgrade from SP where the target is dealt +40 more damage (obviously numbers can be changed).
On September 07 2012 05:04 Granter wrote: Can't understand when people say warhound have to much health, all terran units have dirt low health and damage being pretty low compared to armies like zerg there they have high health high speed and high dps.
just comparing mineral cost health dps on terran army it's just dirt low compared to both zerg. If terran gets 1unit with 220health it aint like the world is going to end, this argument is totaly damn stupid. One can argue that health compared to damage and mobilityh is to high, but when you say that ye. health to high, that sounds stupid.
your argument is completely invalid. Toss units are designed to have higher health than zerg/terran because shields do not get upgraded with armor.
Terran/zerg have similar healthed units.
Warhounds currently at 2food almost kill 2 roaches which are 4food. This means a 200deathball with warhounds is overpowered. Warhounds with the current statline must cost at least 4food and have its missiles removed to be balanced (as in roaches are immune to missiles). With the missiles the warhound are as strong as a 5food unit.
Warhounds are equal to 2roaches and practically the same cost. This is retarded as roaches are the most cost effective unit in the game and terran/protoss are not allowed to have units that equal the roach in cost effectiveness (because the roach is high supply but cost effective meaning it is not supply effective, thats its design). For example 4roaches at 300/100 will destroy an immortal that costs 250/100 (but costs twice the food). Roaches are supposed to be cost effective but high in supply. Because warhounds are AS COST EFFECTIVE as roaches, thats overpowered. Cost also needs to be increased
thor 300/200/6 400health (in comparison, 3 roaches at equal food beats out the thor by 40health which isnt bad considering thors 7range and higher DPS)
1 ultralisk 300/200/6 500health 1 BC 400/300/6 550health BC is alot more expensive but they fly and are ranged and have yamato
warhound will be nerfed heavily or removed, no point in even debating it. Warhound anywhere near its current state destroys the game. Ill take 5000 dollar bets at 30 to 1 odds on it.
"Hey guys, I know we've had like 4 fucking years to design a unit. Here's what we've come up with: It's a maruader in a gundam suit. He shots pew-pew lasers and runs like mech-Maradona. Now Terrans have a roach! Pay me 50$, yo!"
Remove both and invent something new. BW had so many AMAZING units. What other game had a fucking ARBITER? Or how about something as cool as the Ghost!? Shuttle sucked and so did scout - but you win some - reinvent some. Warp prism is cool. Back to the drawing boards guys. The game is boring as hell right now.
I watched 4-5 games of White Ra vs. Qxc last night. What is written all over here does not mesh with what I saw. Qxc did not make them look "A-movey".
I'm not saying they're fine - after all he was often able to kill 4-6 gateway units kiting with a single Warhound, but I find the complaints that Warhounds are "A-movey" and Marines are "micro intensive" to be weird. What makes them so? Is it the stim? Or is it how pros have used marines? If so, I'd take a look at how pros are using Warhounds. They do not appear to be a-moving, and using the rest of their time to... macro?
My biggest issue with some of the things being said is the fact that people keep adding some type of satndard to "mech" play. Yes, the traditional meching style is to gain position and slowly gain ground on your opponent until you're sieging their base. However, I don't think this automatically requires mech to BE slow moving and chess like. I think the idea behind the Warhound is nice, to give mech some more versatility, the ability to be more mobile with stronger units and be hyper aggressive instead of super passive. Now people have said "You can be super aggressive with current mech, just aggressive leap frog tanks" which is just stupid.
I think mech should have the option of being able to move around easier without having to buy a fucking engagement ring for their position, but I don't think this would take the role of Bio, since bio comes down to a lot of micro, drop harass, and multi-pronged attacks. Again, I just feel that the idea behind this unit is not a bad one, even if it's design is overall slightly worse, I think it adds a whole new dynamic to mech and I feel people need to stop looking to broodwar to emulate some sort of source material and be hell set on sticking to the standard slow style of mech simply for the sake of tradition.
On September 07 2012 02:58 Odinsphere wrote: Wait a minute guys. Imagine a world where heart of the swarm has been out for longer than a day and a half. Imagine in this world, people have come up with legitimate strategies to deal with warhounds. Now imagine that crying for potential nerfs might be a little premature at this point. The game is evolving, and people have just gotten their feet wet with this new stuff. A terran player actually pressuring a zerg early game for mass droning? OH MY GOD.
Your missing the point. Fuck balance. Fuck whether the warhound is OP or not. What matters is the design of the unit (and I am not talking about the appearance). And its absolutely terrible. Warhound will never be an interesting unit, just like the collosus never will be, and the roach never will be. As a terran player I want to switch race.
On September 07 2012 05:38 Treehead wrote: I watched 4-5 games of White Ra vs. Qxc last night. What is written all over here does not mesh with what I saw. Qxc did not make them look "A-movey".
I'm not saying they're fine - after all he was often able to kill 4-6 gateway units kiting with a single Warhound, but I find the complaints that Warhounds are "A-movey" and Marines are "micro intensive" to be weird. What makes them so? Is it the stim? Or is it how pros have used marines? If so, I'd take a look at how pros are using Warhounds. They do not appear to be a-moving, and using the rest of their time to... macro?
On September 07 2012 05:44 Deleuze wrote: Nice one avilo, I really like your style and effort, totally agree. The a-move mech needs to stop and stop FAST.
These two posts are the best part of this thread and all others about the warhound.
On September 07 2012 05:38 Treehead wrote: I watched 4-5 games of White Ra vs. Qxc last night. What is written all over here does not mesh with what I saw. Qxc did not make them look "A-movey".
I'm not saying they're fine - after all he was often able to kill 4-6 gateway units kiting with a single Warhound, but I find the complaints that Warhounds are "A-movey" and Marines are "micro intensive" to be weird. What makes them so? Is it the stim? Or is it how pros have used marines? If so, I'd take a look at how pros are using Warhounds. They do not appear to be a-moving, and using the rest of their time to... macro?
Marines are very lowhp and very versatile due to drops. The difference between a toppro and someone in masters or w/e using the marine is HUGE while its relatively easy to use the warhound properly because of its incredible range/speed/beefyness.
On September 07 2012 05:36 Emon_ wrote: Warhound = Roach.
"Hey guys, I know we've had like 4 fucking years to design a unit. Here's what we've come up with: It's a maruader in a gundam suit. He shots pew-pew lasers and runs like mech-Maradona. Now Terrans have a roach! Pay me 50$, yo!"
Remove both and invent something new. BW had so many AMAZING units. What other game had a fucking ARBITER? Or how about something as cool as the Ghost!? Shuttle sucked and so did scout - but you win some - reinvent some. Warp prism is cool. Back to the drawing boards guys. The game is boring as hell right now.
You know how come people aren't just remaking their own game and playing on it?(No not sc2bw). Start a new revolution similar to DOTA in the w3 custom. I really would really love it if a game developer out there remade Starcraft in a different name and show the world "this is how it's supposed to be". :D
On September 07 2012 05:38 Treehead wrote: I watched 4-5 games of White Ra vs. Qxc last night. What is written all over here does not mesh with what I saw. Qxc did not make them look "A-movey".
I'm not saying they're fine - after all he was often able to kill 4-6 gateway units kiting with a single Warhound, but I find the complaints that Warhounds are "A-movey" and Marines are "micro intensive" to be weird. What makes them so? Is it the stim? Or is it how pros have used marines? If so, I'd take a look at how pros are using Warhounds. They do not appear to be a-moving, and using the rest of their time to... macro?
The warhound can stutter step micro just like a bio unit can. But when you reach mid-later portions of the game with higher scaled armies it in effect becomes a roach/marauder a-move type of unit.
What you're seeing is stutter step micro early on in games because the warhound outranges most early game options from all three races (including in TvT) and is as fast as a bio unit with stim. Yes, that is micro, but once again, design-wise, that's stutter step micro.
The only good things you can take from the warhound so far are that it forces Zergs in TvZ to build something other than drones and queens. They have to build spines/roaches/speedlings to defend adequately which fixes the "get 80 drones + queens and defend literally everything."
But once again, this thread is more about the design of the unit rather than it's use in the metagame or it's balance statistically.
You'll also notice as I described in the OP in this thread that the warhound completely makes the siege tank / positional mech play obsolete. If you are playing in the beta right now or watching streams, try and keep track of how many siege tanks you see/make...or rather how many aren't there when players are "going mech."
On September 07 2012 05:38 Treehead wrote: I watched 4-5 games of White Ra vs. Qxc last night. What is written all over here does not mesh with what I saw. Qxc did not make them look "A-movey".
I'm not saying they're fine - after all he was often able to kill 4-6 gateway units kiting with a single Warhound, but I find the complaints that Warhounds are "A-movey" and Marines are "micro intensive" to be weird. What makes them so? Is it the stim? Or is it how pros have used marines? If so, I'd take a look at how pros are using Warhounds. They do not appear to be a-moving, and using the rest of their time to... macro?
You'll also notice as I described in the OP in this thread that the warhound completely makes the siege tank / positional mech play obsolete. If you are playing in the beta right now or watching streams, try and keep track of how many siege tanks you see/make...or rather how many aren't there when players are "going mech."
Tzain barely holding off warhound pushes with tanks/bio vs random players is pretty silly. The vZ allins are super silly too.
Removing the Thor and making the Warhound an AA competent ground unit is more effective and logical than simply replacing tanks with Warhounds and keeping the Thor in the game.
I feel the Warhound drastically effects TvT and TvP, but as for TvZ, if the Zerg opened a Speedling expand, they can hold it and generally I see Tanks as a better alternative to Warhounds in the TvZ match up, just based on watching Demuslim and some others.
On September 07 2012 02:30 MoonCricket wrote:This 2.85 movement speed is bullshit, it's ridiculous to have a mech unit faster than a Kenyan sprinter.
Ignoring the hellion, and the stalker and any flying mechanical units that go over 2.25 speed right??? The warhound speed is fine, changing it's supply to better represent its threat and adding a mild research cost to create delays for missile timings would solve the problem... if anything else was added, it would be a raw damage nerf from 23 -> 22/21/20...
The slowness of mech has always been it's least attractive feature relative to stim and medivacs...
On September 07 2012 06:58 avilo wrote: You'll also notice as I described in the OP in this thread that the warhound completely makes the siege tank / positional mech play obsolete. If you are playing in the beta right now or watching streams, try and keep track of how many siege tanks you see/make...or rather how many aren't there when players are "going mech."
Tzain barely holding off warhound pushes with tanks/bio vs random players is pretty silly. The vZ allins are super silly too.
Removing the Thor and making the Warhound an AA competent ground unit is more effective and logical than simply replacing tanks with Warhounds and keeping the Thor in the game.
Tanks are also awful because they serve only 1 successful purpose outside of the mirror matchup: killing banelings.
Positional play with tanks is basically dead, because small numbers of tanks don't have the same effect that they did in broodwar. While sieged tanks allow a player to lock down 1 specific area, it is much too easy to circumvent tanks or catch them in vulnerable positions that make their high supply and resource costs unrewarding.
If terran had a better way of killing banelings that siege tanks, siege tanks would almost never be used outside of TvT. Now that warhounds are becoming stapple in TvT and dispite the fact that warhounds need a nerf, the siege tank needs something to restore the incentive of that investment in place of the mobile WarMarine/BioHound play.
Make warhounds 3 supply from 2 Make the mech-missile require the an upgrade like concussive shell for marauders (never bought in TvZ rofl) aaannnd give tanks 60 vs armored, instead of 50
Warhounds are to good. Just watched them make a protoss army look silly. Storms do very little to them too. I think if anything needs to be nerfed its their rate of fire and their range. They just poke in... shoot and run away.
On September 07 2012 07:45 wizshaw2 wrote: Warhounds are to good. Just watched them make a protoss army look silly. Storms do very little to them too. I think if anything needs to be nerfed its their rate of fire and their range. They just poke in... shoot and run away.
since when has storm ever threatened units with more than 100 hp? especially units that can actually move *cough cough siege tanks*...
I'm pretty much giving up until warhounds are patched. I have lost 3 games total to non-terrans, even beating some GM's in PvP. And then promptly losing to 0/0 mass warhounds.
Slower, less range, 3 supply, increase costs, missiles are an upgrade, less base damage, 0 base armor. I think with all that it may, very small chance, but may not be insanely OP. I'm really surprised at how balanced most of the game that this version of the warhound got through.
On September 07 2012 05:56 FortMonty wrote: My biggest issue with some of the things being said is the fact that people keep adding some type of satndard to "mech" play. Yes, the traditional meching style is to gain position and slowly gain ground on your opponent until you're sieging their base. However, I don't think this automatically requires mech to BE slow moving and chess like. I think the idea behind the Warhound is nice, to give mech some more versatility, the ability to be more mobile with stronger units and be hyper aggressive instead of super passive. Now people have said "You can be super aggressive with current mech, just aggressive leap frog tanks" which is just stupid.
Your reason is fundamentally flawed. Mech shouldn't be able to be as mobile and aggressive (overall) as bio is. That's not why it's not bio.
If bio and mech have the same capabilities then diversity and game depth is taken away. Mech is not bio in gundams. This is what Blizzard doesn't understand, and what the old BW dev team did.
On September 07 2012 05:56 FortMonty wrote: My biggest issue with some of the things being said is the fact that people keep adding some type of satndard to "mech" play. Yes, the traditional meching style is to gain position and slowly gain ground on your opponent until you're sieging their base. However, I don't think this automatically requires mech to BE slow moving and chess like. I think the idea behind the Warhound is nice, to give mech some more versatility, the ability to be more mobile with stronger units and be hyper aggressive instead of super passive. Now people have said "You can be super aggressive with current mech, just aggressive leap frog tanks" which is just stupid.
Your reason is fundamentally flawed. Mech shouldn't be able to be as mobile and aggressive (overall) as bio is. That's not why it's not bio.
If bio and mech have the same capabilities then diversity and game depth is taken away. Mech is not bio in gundams. This is what Blizzard doesn't understand, and what the old BW dev team did.
exactly. they should fucking remove bio (which essentially the warhound is doing) if they want to turn mech into bio with this gigantic marauder
On September 06 2012 23:26 [F_]aths wrote: I, on the other hand, like the look of the warhound. Nice technical look.
I always thought it was impossible for an opinion to be objectively wrong, but there you go.
I like their look too. They are better looking than Goliath and fit more the Terran we know in the Lore right after WoL with a recup part look. The shield is a bit weird but it's okay
On September 07 2012 08:02 1st_Panzer_Div. wrote: I'm really surprised at how balanced most of the game that this version of the warhound got through.
It's actually not that amazingly good like people make it out to be. Even mass roaches beat them.
Actually I tested it out and 200food armies with warhounds in them SLAUGHTER any composition you can provide simply because marauders are too strong on the ground.
The only thing that reasonably works well against warhounds is mass broodlords for the fact that warhounds cant shoot up AND broodlords swarm with infinite spawns of free broodlings. But remove broodlords and warhounds are again OP
toss has no broodlords. They have air units but what makes the broodlords strong is that they swarm with tons of free created units, not just the fact that they fly.
warhounds, food-for-food, will ABSOLUTELY SLAUGHTER AND DECIMATE -- ANY -- ground unit.
Thats just not fair. for each ground unit, there needs to be a unit in the opposing race that, food-for-food, counters it given a equal food fight between 10-25 food
for example, 3 collossi (18food) die to 9 marauders (18food)
3 collossi (18food) die if they try to engage 6 sieged tanks (18food)
18 marines (18food) die to 3collossi (18food) even if you spread the marines
On September 07 2012 08:02 1st_Panzer_Div. wrote: I'm really surprised at how balanced most of the game that this version of the warhound got through.
It's actually not that amazingly good like people make it out to be. Even mass roaches beat them.
Actually I tested it out and 200food armies with warhounds in them SLAUGHTER any composition you can provide simply because marauders are too strong on the ground.
The only thing that reasonably works well against warhounds is mass broodlords for the fact that warhounds cant shoot up AND broodlords swarm with infinite spawns of free broodlings. But remove broodlords and warhounds are again OP
toss has no broodlords. They have air units but what makes the broodlords strong is that they swarm with tons of free created units, not just the fact that they fly.
warhounds, food-for-food, will ABSOLUTELY SLAUGHTER AND DECIMATE -- ANY -- ground unit.
Thats just not fair. for each ground unit, there needs to be a unit in the opposing race that, food-for-food, counters it given a equal food fight between 10-25 food
for example, 3 collossi (18food) die to 9 marauders (18food)
3 collossi (18food) die if they try to engage 6 sieged tanks (18food)
18 marines (18food) die to 3collossi (18food) even if you spread the marines
Why are people saying mech should be more versatile. This is not about BW. Why have mech be same as bio. Is retarded? SC2 is the representative of RTS in esports, they have to do better than this. War hound is an absolute lazy idea. Design something that fires like a tank in CnC
On September 07 2012 05:56 FortMonty wrote: My biggest issue with some of the things being said is the fact that people keep adding some type of satndard to "mech" play. Yes, the traditional meching style is to gain position and slowly gain ground on your opponent until you're sieging their base. However, I don't think this automatically requires mech to BE slow moving and chess like. I think the idea behind the Warhound is nice, to give mech some more versatility, the ability to be more mobile with stronger units and be hyper aggressive instead of super passive. Now people have said "You can be super aggressive with current mech, just aggressive leap frog tanks" which is just stupid.
Your reason is fundamentally flawed. Mech shouldn't be able to be as mobile and aggressive (overall) as bio is. That's not why it's not bio.
If bio and mech have the same capabilities then diversity and game depth is taken away. Mech is not bio in gundams. This is what Blizzard doesn't understand, and what the old BW dev team did.
Actually it's not, the fact is people have placed labels and standards on specific strategies and simply assume that mech must be slow (despite the fact that they totally ignore that Helions are the fastest terran unit, A.K.A, a mech unit is the fastest terran unit). Mech doesn't have to be as fast or aggressive as bio, I still think Bio has more mobility than the Warhound presents, granted the Warhound is a bit quick, but there are a lot of things that make the warhound as strong as it is. What I'm saying is mech should be able to choose between a quicker more mobile force that doesn't necessarily have the mobility or harass potential of bio but has a bit more standing power than bio but just under the standing power of pure passive territoric mech.
I'd like to see a new dynamic to mech play that doesn't involve, slow, turtlish, deathballish, trench warfare. Also, people need to stop talking about what BW did right and what Blizzard is doing Wrong, it's the Beta, we've seen what BroodWar has to offer and it was great, but that doesn't mean it needs to be brought back and that doesn't mean we need to stay strung to the same basic mechanics for the sake of tradition.
On September 07 2012 08:02 1st_Panzer_Div. wrote: I'm really surprised at how balanced most of the game that this version of the warhound got through.
It's actually not that amazingly good like people make it out to be. Even mass roaches beat them.
Actually I tested it out and 200food armies with warhounds in them SLAUGHTER any composition you can provide simply because marauders are too strong on the ground.
The only thing that reasonably works well against warhounds is mass broodlords for the fact that warhounds cant shoot up AND broodlords swarm with infinite spawns of free broodlings. But remove broodlords and warhounds are again OP
toss has no broodlords. They have air units but what makes the broodlords strong is that they swarm with tons of free created units, not just the fact that they fly.
warhounds, food-for-food, will ABSOLUTELY SLAUGHTER AND DECIMATE -- ANY -- ground unit.
Thats just not fair. for each ground unit, there needs to be a unit in the opposing race that, food-for-food, counters it given a equal food fight between 10-25 food
for example, 3 collossi (18food) die to 9 marauders (18food)
3 collossi (18food) die if they try to engage 6 sieged tanks (18food)
18 marines (18food) die to 3collossi (18food) even if you spread the marines
On September 07 2012 08:02 1st_Panzer_Div. wrote: I'm really surprised at how balanced most of the game that this version of the warhound got through.
It's actually not that amazingly good like people make it out to be. Even mass roaches beat them.
Actually I tested it out and 200food armies with warhounds in them SLAUGHTER any composition you can provide simply because marauders are too strong on the ground.
The only thing that reasonably works well against warhounds is mass broodlords for the fact that warhounds cant shoot up AND broodlords swarm with infinite spawns of free broodlings. But remove broodlords and warhounds are again OP
toss has no broodlords. They have air units but what makes the broodlords strong is that they swarm with tons of free created units, not just the fact that they fly.
warhounds, food-for-food, will ABSOLUTELY SLAUGHTER AND DECIMATE -- ANY -- ground unit.
Thats just not fair. for each ground unit, there needs to be a unit in the opposing race that, food-for-food, counters it given a equal food fight between 10-25 food
for example, 3 collossi (18food) die to 9 marauders (18food)
3 collossi (18food) die if they try to engage 6 sieged tanks (18food)
18 marines (18food) die to 3collossi (18food) even if you spread the marines
there NEEDS to be a ground unit in each race that FOOD FOR FOOD beats the warhound
warhound food-for-food will beat ANY zerg ground unit, even ultralisks, assuming its a even-food battle with food numbers between 10-25
warhound food-for-food will beat ANY protoss ground unit, assuming its a even-food battle with food numbers between 10-25
you cannot find A SINGLE GROUND UNIT in ANY RACE that in even food amounts kills EVERY OTHER GROUND UNIT of another race.
except, until the warhound was released.
Its incredibly overpowered, each race needs at least 1 ground unit that can beat the warhound food for food
Why does it have to be a ground unit? And why are you comparing it with single unit compositions?
because all the general purpose air units (mutalisks, voidrays) are terrible? because people will mass it since it's not feasible to overmake air units and attack them, when the meching player can produce a pile of thors?
On September 07 2012 08:02 1st_Panzer_Div. wrote: I'm really surprised at how balanced most of the game that this version of the warhound got through.
It's actually not that amazingly good like people make it out to be. Even mass roaches beat them.
Actually I tested it out and 200food armies with warhounds in them SLAUGHTER any composition you can provide simply because marauders are too strong on the ground.
The only thing that reasonably works well against warhounds is mass broodlords for the fact that warhounds cant shoot up AND broodlords swarm with infinite spawns of free broodlings. But remove broodlords and warhounds are again OP
toss has no broodlords. They have air units but what makes the broodlords strong is that they swarm with tons of free created units, not just the fact that they fly.
warhounds, food-for-food, will ABSOLUTELY SLAUGHTER AND DECIMATE -- ANY -- ground unit.
Thats just not fair. for each ground unit, there needs to be a unit in the opposing race that, food-for-food, counters it given a equal food fight between 10-25 food
for example, 3 collossi (18food) die to 9 marauders (18food)
3 collossi (18food) die if they try to engage 6 sieged tanks (18food)
18 marines (18food) die to 3collossi (18food) even if you spread the marines
On September 07 2012 05:56 FortMonty wrote: My biggest issue with some of the things being said is the fact that people keep adding some type of satndard to "mech" play. Yes, the traditional meching style is to gain position and slowly gain ground on your opponent until you're sieging their base. However, I don't think this automatically requires mech to BE slow moving and chess like. I think the idea behind the Warhound is nice, to give mech some more versatility, the ability to be more mobile with stronger units and be hyper aggressive instead of super passive. Now people have said "You can be super aggressive with current mech, just aggressive leap frog tanks" which is just stupid.
Your reason is fundamentally flawed. Mech shouldn't be able to be as mobile and aggressive (overall) as bio is. That's not why it's not bio.
If bio and mech have the same capabilities then diversity and game depth is taken away. Mech is not bio in gundams. This is what Blizzard doesn't understand, and what the old BW dev team did.
Actually it's not, the fact is people have placed labels and standards on specific strategies and simply assume that mech must be slow (despite the fact that they totally ignore that Helions are the fastest terran unit, A.K.A, a mech unit is the fastest terran unit). Mech doesn't have to be as fast or aggressive as bio, I still think Bio has more mobility than the Warhound presents, granted the Warhound is a bit quick, but there are a lot of things that make the warhound as strong as it is. What I'm saying is mech should be able to choose between a quicker more mobile force that doesn't necessarily have the mobility or harass potential of bio but has a bit more standing power than bio but just under the standing power of pure passive territoric mech.
I'd like to see a new dynamic to mech play that doesn't involve, slow, turtlish, deathballish, trench warfare. Also, people need to stop talking about what BW did right and what Blizzard is doing Wrong, it's the Beta, we've seen what BroodWar has to offer and it was great, but that doesn't mean it needs to be brought back and that doesn't mean we need to stay strung to the same basic mechanics for the sake of tradition.
High agree!
If you look at interviews and battel report and such, it is CLEAR that they are trying to give each style/unit-composition (mainly bio/mech in Terran) different styles!
Look at bio. There are 2 main styles; aggressive, and defensive. There are much more specific style beyond that, but these are the MAIN kinds. Aggressive has to pressure and harass, while defensive just turtles and possibly pushes out.
Now look at bio... YOU CAN ALREADY DO THIS. MMM = more aggressive variant. MMM + Tank = more defensive variant.
Why cannot mech be like this too?
Mech already has thor/banshee/hellion, yes, which is more mobile than tank heavy mech compositions, it can be pretty aggressive, but it doesn't work so well later in the game without ghosts for HTs or for high immortal counts.
Why not add the warhound? It will make such a mech composition more mobile, while also making your army more flexible (and thus alleviates the concept of hard-counters in SC2 which MANY people have complained about) and thus makes mech more viable.
It is NOT as mobile as bio! It is still a different style. You are not dropping all over the place, you are not splitting your marines all over. It is a different style. Does it share similarities? Sure. But what about bio in WoL? Does anyone complain that Marine/Tank was so popular and is still popular in TvZ even though it looks so much like mech due to the positioning/pushing nature thanks to the tanks and sometimes thors? Is marine tank mech? No, it is bio. Most of the supply /upgrades/tech is still bio.
So why not have more kinds of mech? What's the problem?
Now the stats of a warhound in relation to tanks are a different story; these can always be adjusted. However, warhounds will also help those who want to play the more traditional tank-heavy styles of mech. But if you want to play a more mobile style, with tanks supporting instead of being the core of the army, now you can do that too.
On September 07 2012 05:56 FortMonty wrote: My biggest issue with some of the things being said is the fact that people keep adding some type of satndard to "mech" play. Yes, the traditional meching style is to gain position and slowly gain ground on your opponent until you're sieging their base. However, I don't think this automatically requires mech to BE slow moving and chess like. I think the idea behind the Warhound is nice, to give mech some more versatility, the ability to be more mobile with stronger units and be hyper aggressive instead of super passive. Now people have said "You can be super aggressive with current mech, just aggressive leap frog tanks" which is just stupid.
Your reason is fundamentally flawed. Mech shouldn't be able to be as mobile and aggressive (overall) as bio is. That's not why it's not bio.
If bio and mech have the same capabilities then diversity and game depth is taken away. Mech is not bio in gundams. This is what Blizzard doesn't understand, and what the old BW dev team did.
Actually it's not, the fact is people have placed labels and standards on specific strategies and simply assume that mech must be slow (despite the fact that they totally ignore that Helions are the fastest terran unit, A.K.A, a mech unit is the fastest terran unit). Mech doesn't have to be as fast or aggressive as bio, I still think Bio has more mobility than the Warhound presents, granted the Warhound is a bit quick, but there are a lot of things that make the warhound as strong as it is. What I'm saying is mech should be able to choose between a quicker more mobile force that doesn't necessarily have the mobility or harass potential of bio but has a bit more standing power than bio but just under the standing power of pure passive territoric mech.
I'd like to see a new dynamic to mech play that doesn't involve, slow, turtlish, deathballish, trench warfare. Also, people need to stop talking about what BW did right and what Blizzard is doing Wrong, it's the Beta, we've seen what BroodWar has to offer and it was great, but that doesn't mean it needs to be brought back and that doesn't mean we need to stay strung to the same basic mechanics for the sake of tradition.
High agree!
If you look at interviews and battel report and such, it is CLEAR that they are trying to give each style/unit-composition (mainly bio/mech in Terran) different styles!
Look at bio. There are 2 main styles; aggressive, and defensive. There are much more specific style beyond that, but these are the MAIN kinds. Aggressive has to pressure and harass, while defensive just turtles and possibly pushes out.
Now look at bio... YOU CAN ALREADY DO THIS. MMM = more aggressive variant. MMM + Tank = more defensive variant.
Why cannot mech be like this too?
Mech already has thor/banshee/hellion, yes, which is more mobile than tank heavy mech compositions, it can be pretty aggressive, but it doesn't work so well later in the game without ghosts for HTs or for high immortal counts.
Why not add the warhound? It will make such a mech composition more mobile, while also making your army more flexible (and thus alleviates the concept of hard-counters in SC2 which MANY people have complained about) and thus makes mech more viable.
It is NOT as mobile as bio! It is still a different style. You are not dropping all over the place, you are not splitting your marines all over. It is a different style. Does it share similarities? Sure. But what about bio in WoL? Does anyone complain that Marine/Tank was so popular and is still popular in TvZ even though it looks so much like mech due to the positioning/pushing nature thanks to the tanks and sometimes thors? Is marine tank mech? No, it is bio. Most of the supply /upgrades/tech is still bio.
So why not have more kinds of mech? What's the problem?
Now the stats of a warhound in relation to tanks are a different story; these can always be adjusted. However, warhounds will also help those who want to play the more traditional tank-heavy styles of mech. But if you want to play a more mobile style, with tanks supporting instead of being the core of the army, now you can do that too.
Why not have more options?
Reason being, that the warhound is a god marauder, and the hellion is a firebat, the strategy then becomes almost identical to bio, without the anti air. It is also FASTER than non-stimmed bio if you transform hellions.
The warhound should fill an AA role such as the goliath, and then the thor should be given stronger anti ground attacks. This way, a strong force of mechawarriors FEELS different than bio, because it is slower.
Are not vultures also faster than non-stimmed bio, probably faster than also stimmed bio (?) in BW? What set rule is there that no mech units can be faster than un-stummed bio?
Also the important part is that in an engagement, bio is faster and more mobile -- cus they stim. That heavily shapes the strategy. They can run away usually without too many losses, but with a slower force, it will be harder to retreat (in this case, warhounds or basically mech that isn't tank heavy)
Also again, balance wise the warhound can be changed. But design wise, it is pretty interesting.
Again, the strategy is not identical. The speed is different. You don't have medivacs that heal your units and also allow you to drop all over the place. You also don't have good anti-air (especially compared to stim marines). Tempests are probably more effective against warhounds than bio because of medivac's fast healing, and even if you bring SCVs with your mech army, it still probably won't alleviate that.
Well, hellions are already faster than non-stimmed bio. Why complain now instead of earlier? Again, why can't there be mech units faster than non-stimmed bio?
Again, it already is slower. You also don't need to micro (stutter-step kind at least) as much, which makes the style quite different (instead of relying so much on stutter stepping, you have more APM to spend on other things like making sure your positioning/engages/defense is good).
Also, I quite myself from earlier:
On September 06 2012 11:04 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: would overlap with thor's role, and if you want mech to not have to get any vikings (if you want warhounds to do well against units like voids/carriers) then you could go pure mech (except maybe some ghosts), and blizz doesn't seem to want you to be able to go pure anymore (which is not a bad thing, since unit compositions are more diversified now and so terran can transition from 1 tech tree to another more easily -- example, look at bio in TvZ, you get tanks and usually vehicle attack, then when you max 3/3 on bio and you have 3/0 tanks you can start adding more and more mech as you get the defense upgrades too)
It would be against SC2's design to have pure bio or pure mech. It would basically give even more incentive to play mech, since you can't go pure bio without increasing difficulty later in the game (and counting medivacs as bio is already generous -- imagine bio without medivacs in the late game)
On September 07 2012 05:56 FortMonty wrote: My biggest issue with some of the things being said is the fact that people keep adding some type of satndard to "mech" play. Yes, the traditional meching style is to gain position and slowly gain ground on your opponent until you're sieging their base. However, I don't think this automatically requires mech to BE slow moving and chess like. I think the idea behind the Warhound is nice, to give mech some more versatility, the ability to be more mobile with stronger units and be hyper aggressive instead of super passive. Now people have said "You can be super aggressive with current mech, just aggressive leap frog tanks" which is just stupid.
Your reason is fundamentally flawed. Mech shouldn't be able to be as mobile and aggressive (overall) as bio is. That's not why it's not bio.
If bio and mech have the same capabilities then diversity and game depth is taken away. Mech is not bio in gundams. This is what Blizzard doesn't understand, and what the old BW dev team did.
Actually it's not, the fact is people have placed labels and standards on specific strategies and simply assume that mech must be slow (despite the fact that they totally ignore that Helions are the fastest terran unit, A.K.A, a mech unit is the fastest terran unit). Mech doesn't have to be as fast or aggressive as bio, I still think Bio has more mobility than the Warhound presents, granted the Warhound is a bit quick, but there are a lot of things that make the warhound as strong as it is. What I'm saying is mech should be able to choose between a quicker more mobile force that doesn't necessarily have the mobility or harass potential of bio but has a bit more standing power than bio but just under the standing power of pure passive territoric mech.
I'd like to see a new dynamic to mech play that doesn't involve, slow, turtlish, deathballish, trench warfare. Also, people need to stop talking about what BW did right and what Blizzard is doing Wrong, it's the Beta, we've seen what BroodWar has to offer and it was great, but that doesn't mean it needs to be brought back and that doesn't mean we need to stay strung to the same basic mechanics for the sake of tradition.
High agree!
If you look at interviews and battel report and such, it is CLEAR that they are trying to give each style/unit-composition (mainly bio/mech in Terran) different styles!
Look at bio. There are 2 main styles; aggressive, and defensive. There are much more specific style beyond that, but these are the MAIN kinds. Aggressive has to pressure and harass, while defensive just turtles and possibly pushes out.
Now look at bio... YOU CAN ALREADY DO THIS. MMM = more aggressive variant. MMM + Tank = more defensive variant.
Why cannot mech be like this too?
Mech already has thor/banshee/hellion, yes, which is more mobile than tank heavy mech compositions, it can be pretty aggressive, but it doesn't work so well later in the game without ghosts for HTs or for high immortal counts.
Why not add the warhound? It will make such a mech composition more mobile, while also making your army more flexible (and thus alleviates the concept of hard-counters in SC2 which MANY people have complained about) and thus makes mech more viable.
It is NOT as mobile as bio! It is still a different style. You are not dropping all over the place, you are not splitting your marines all over. It is a different style. Does it share similarities? Sure. But what about bio in WoL? Does anyone complain that Marine/Tank was so popular and is still popular in TvZ even though it looks so much like mech due to the positioning/pushing nature thanks to the tanks and sometimes thors? Is marine tank mech? No, it is bio. Most of the supply /upgrades/tech is still bio.
So why not have more kinds of mech? What's the problem?
Now the stats of a warhound in relation to tanks are a different story; these can always be adjusted. However, warhounds will also help those who want to play the more traditional tank-heavy styles of mech. But if you want to play a more mobile style, with tanks supporting instead of being the core of the army, now you can do that too.
Why not have more options?
Reason being, that the warhound is a god marauder, and the hellion is a firebat, the strategy then becomes almost identical to bio, without the anti air. It is also FASTER than non-stimmed bio if you transform hellions.
The warhound should fill an AA role such as the goliath, and then the thor should be given stronger anti ground attacks. This way, a strong force of mechawarriors FEELS different than bio, because it is slower.
Again, I think you're setting up a specific standard to Mech. Mech is only slow because the current units are very slow and the current optimal play style of mech is slow, it's not like there are rules set in place that make needs to be slow, and there's more to bio than just movement speed. I do agree that maybe the Warhound is a bit quick, but that's not the point, the point is if you play mech you have to buy an engagement ring for your position and you really don't have the option of moving too far from your base and you have to rely on Static defences to defend multiple bases, this is similar to others races, however, with Zerg you have extreme mobility for just about every unit, and for Toss you have warp ins, but Terran mech has no ability to defend multiple bases without either thinning out their army, which makes mech weaker, or investing large quantities into static defence.
Overall this isn't an issue because mech tends to lead to large mineral bank, but the point is, giving mech mobility doesn't make it bio, bio is not pure movement speed and mech is not pure positioning. So ok, maybe the Warhound needs a nerf here or there, maybe slightly slower, cost more supply, and perhaps give it an AA attack instead of an attack that shreds mechanical units. Either way, it'd be a good addition to the game and would give Terran players more options in the TvP match up and even the TvT match up.
On September 07 2012 10:14 Shikyo wrote: Well SC2 design being what it is I really don't think that going against SC2 design should be considered a negative.
Warhound isn't interesting at all design-wise. I challenge you to think of a more boring unit design.
On September 07 2012 05:56 FortMonty wrote: My biggest issue with some of the things being said is the fact that people keep adding some type of satndard to "mech" play. Yes, the traditional meching style is to gain position and slowly gain ground on your opponent until you're sieging their base. However, I don't think this automatically requires mech to BE slow moving and chess like. I think the idea behind the Warhound is nice, to give mech some more versatility, the ability to be more mobile with stronger units and be hyper aggressive instead of super passive. Now people have said "You can be super aggressive with current mech, just aggressive leap frog tanks" which is just stupid.
Your reason is fundamentally flawed. Mech shouldn't be able to be as mobile and aggressive (overall) as bio is. That's not why it's not bio.
If bio and mech have the same capabilities then diversity and game depth is taken away. Mech is not bio in gundams. This is what Blizzard doesn't understand, and what the old BW dev team did.
Actually it's not, the fact is people have placed labels and standards on specific strategies and simply assume that mech must be slow (despite the fact that they totally ignore that Helions are the fastest terran unit, A.K.A, a mech unit is the fastest terran unit). Mech doesn't have to be as fast or aggressive as bio, I still think Bio has more mobility than the Warhound presents, granted the Warhound is a bit quick, but there are a lot of things that make the warhound as strong as it is. What I'm saying is mech should be able to choose between a quicker more mobile force that doesn't necessarily have the mobility or harass potential of bio but has a bit more standing power than bio but just under the standing power of pure passive territoric mech.
I'd like to see a new dynamic to mech play that doesn't involve, slow, turtlish, deathballish, trench warfare. Also, people need to stop talking about what BW did right and what Blizzard is doing Wrong, it's the Beta, we've seen what BroodWar has to offer and it was great, but that doesn't mean it needs to be brought back and that doesn't mean we need to stay strung to the same basic mechanics for the sake of tradition.
It sounds like you don't understand how the term "mech" is used. It doesn't simply mean factory units, it refers to a particuar style of play based around positional control. Talking about slow units in mech strategies isn't some arbitrary assumption, it's the core of what mech is.
That's not to say that the whole composition should be immobile, there's a place for high-mobility harassment units such as hellions as well. But for something to be a true mech strategy, the main strength of the composition has to be positioning with powerful units.
Wow, thats pretty great. Hopefully they can find a roll for the warhound that is mech like. I wouldn't mind a mech sniper, with some longer range, pin point damage. A range 10 missile and a crappy basic attack wouldn't be a bad unit with low HP wouldn't be a horrible unit.
Edit: MY GOD HIS BATTLE NET PORTRAIT IS DESTRUCTIBLE ROCKS! WE HAVE REACHED THE EVENT HORIZON!
Btw... I was wondering why you thought Rock was Dustin Browder instead of Dustin BRowder being Dustin Browder, but then I looked at the name again, and then the profile picture...
On September 07 2012 11:33 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Btw... I was wondering why you thought Rock was Dustin Browder instead of Dustin BRowder being Dustin Browder, but then I looked at the name again, and then the profile picture...
lolololololol
It is so good. It should renew our faith in HotS in every way.
Yeah. Going from Goliath to Warhound is like going from Reaver to Colossus.
Here's what I'd like to see with mech in HOTS:
1. Remove Widow Mines and Hunter Seeker Missile. Instead, give Ravens a new spell "Deploy Widow Mine", which requires a 150/150/110 reseach at a Starport tech lab, and costs 75 energy. But make it immobile, and only target ground units. This would allow Ravens to fill the role of late-game Vultures in SC1 (mines not costing supply was a big factor in their strength). This would really improve lategame TvZ and TvP without making Terran's already stupidly strong 1-2 base timing pushes even stronger. Currently we only have one viable caster unit, Ghost, and its use is entirely limited to TvP. Such a spell would be useful in all three matchups.
2. Remove the Warhound's anti-mechanical missiles, and give it a single target anti-air attack that matches its ground attack. Nerf it from 2 supply to 3 supply.
3. Remove Strike Cannons from the game. Give Thors a new tech, "Hammer Mode", 150/150/110, researched at Factory tech lab. When Hammered(lawl), Thors become immobile, but their armor increases from 1 to 3, their air attack range increases from 10 to 13, and their air attack damage changes from 6(+6 vs Light)x4 to 50 vs all. Ground attack remains the same. 3.5 sec to enter/exit Hammer Mode, just like Siege Mode. Basically this would give mech an anti-air equivalent of what siege mode does for ground.
4. Change it so Hellions always rally out of Factories in mobile mode. Add 1 sec to the time it takes to Transform to Battle Mode. Subtract 1 sec from the time it takes to Transform to Mobile Mode. Improve the range of the Battle Hellion cone attack from 2 to 3 to make it a little better vs everything-not-speedlings-or-zealots.
I think all of these changes would make SC2's factory units feel more like SC1 mech without adding SC1 units back into the game. I think the essence of mech is that it is incredibly strong when in position, but incredibly weak when out of position.
The most important issue imo is that the Factory needs better anti-air. There is no such thing as pure mech in SC2, you must get either Marines or Vikings for antiair in all three matchups.
How about simply let warhound counter Immortals. Immortals is the biggest weakness of mech. We can change the warhound into light armor, and reduce it's HP to about 125. so the warhound can protect the tanks and thors from immotals, but the other units can beat warhound easier.
Wish I had seen this post before I wrote my own post with the same kind of opinion. It fits in this thread though, so even if it get's burrowed I guess it belongs here instead of making a new thread. Here it is:
Intro
I'd like to share my thoughts on the concept of the Heart of the Swarm terran unit the Warhound. Let me just stress that this is not a post about balance, as the power of the unit will be tweaked as time passes regardless, making it fit into the games balance sooner or later. This is also not a post about the visual design of the unit.
Blizzards intent with the Warhound
1) The unit is meant to be an option to break siege lines in TvT. Blizzard felt at the time of the reveal that TvTs took too long to finish or that you had too few options in situations where both players set up siege line fronts.
2) Giving mech play more options or general solid choices so that we would see mech more often in every matchup. The Warhound is considered to be an option as a core mech unit, while in WoL mech-armies usually depend on the Siege Tank as the core of the army (granted, there are some expections).
My respons to These Reasons
1) The TvTs of today have moved quite a bit away from the "old days" (when the HotS units were revealed) of massive siege lines with the occational drop or tricky play as aggression. First off we do still see mech a healthy amount of times in pro games in TvT, with bio-mech as an option that is also used quite frequently. However due to the metagame changes, general improvement in skills and especially the map pool changes, the cold war style of TvTs are not that common anymore. Today we see players focus more on slow lategame switches to air (ravens with seeker missile and pdd, mass vikings and some BCs/banshees) or just simply army movement, multipronged attacks and positional chess as the newer maps offer more diversity in terms of attack paths and harder-to-cover-expansion positions. Maps like Shakuras Plateau are almost completely extinct.
2) Mech has the recent few months become a more common strategy in the other matchups. This has been done both with pure mech styles as well as hybrid styles (bio-tank vs Protoss for example). The need to give mech more options to become a valid choice has been significantly reduced. Three new options for factory-play seems like an overkill to fullfill whatever need of options is left.
The Overall Concept of the Warhound in Gameplay
Let me put it bluntly: the Warhound is an extremely boring concept. What we have here might be the least interesting unit in the game regardless of race. Blizzards intent with Sc2, at least according to them before WoL was released, was to make the units in Sc2 more interesting than in Sc1 by making them more complex and open for players to experiment with in terms of ways to use them. Granted, some units had good intentions but didn't work out to be that interesting in actual gameplay, but at least most units had some sort of flavor. Let me give a couple of examples:
What worked
The Baneling. If the unit only was a rolling suicide-bomb it wouldn't be as interesting, but through burrow, overlord drops and being able to detonate without direct contact with something the unit got a lot more depth and possibilities to explore. Through the history of Sc2 we have certainly seen a lot of interesting gameplay with this unit, making it one of the most loved units in the game.
What didn't work that well, but had a decent concept
The Viking. It has an option to land and become a ground unit making it a much more interesting concept than just an air-to-air long range attacker. Speculations both from Blizzard and players early went towards play where the unit would be used both as a normal fighting unit and a harass unit, however in the end the landing part never really became a significant part of the unit in gameplay. Still, even if the concept wasn't that successful, it wasn't a bad effort. Some concepts will give you expected results, some will fail and some will give you totally unexpected results.
And what about the Warhound?
With all the exciting new units in HotS like the Viper, the Oracle, the Swarm Host, the Widow Mine etc we can only dream of all the possible ways they can be used in actual gameplay as players get to fully explore their potential.
Then there's the Warhound. It's a unit that does more damage against mech-units with a different animation when attacking these units. That's it. There is nothing else that makes this unit stand out, that makes you think of different possiblities in using it other than simply as a damage dealer in your army. If you sit down and think of what an amazing player can do with this unit, it's basically that he can focus fire mech units to provide maximum damage output.
If you think of what units you consider boring in WoL, what units come to mind? Many will say the roach. Sure it's used a lot, but mostly it's just used as a unit to absorb and deal damage (without going into specifics on strategies like trading units to free up supply etc). Even the "boring" roach had a ton more potential in it's concept though. Burrow movement, increased regeneration when burrowed and even the speed upgrade gave it a lot more potential in terms of uses. Even if it never actually became a big part of the unit except for a short time to deal with a specific strategy (burrow vs non-observer ZvP timing attacks), it still had the design there and the possibility. The Warhound make the Roach look like an amazingly complex and exciting unit in my opinion, and yes I don't think the Roach is very exciting at all.
Some would also point at the Marauder as a boring unit. Much like the roach it has been a big part of the Sc2 history, but not for giving interesting ways to play the game. But again it has way more depth than the Warhound, as the Marauder at least has stim and concusive shells to give it some more flavor than just a robust damage dealer. Again the Warhound makes the Marauder look like a complex machinery in comparison.
My plead to Blizzard
Please make the Warhound a more interesting unit in terms of concept, or remove it from the game. HotS should give us new and exciting units that tickles the mind in what crazy possibilities there will be, and in large part the new units bring that....except for the Warhound. Broodwar gave Sc1 a whole new range of interesting units that in large part gave the game a lot more depth, and the same should be the most important goal with HotS for multiplayer, for every single new addition.
tl;dr: The concept of the Warhound as a unit is as boring and uninspiring as can be. Either change it or remove it completely.
For the Warhound, we wanted to create a really core and solid unit from the factory vs. Protoss and Terran.
This core unit is supposed to be the Tank, which requires a buff in either or better in reduced supply / gas cost (like in BW).
So which roles / holes have to be filled for mech? - Some kind of cheap map / space control tool like Spider Mines. Widow Mines dont fullfill this role imo (I believe they are at 2 supply in the current HOTS build), imo they are just weired, hitting air and being produced directly instead of from some unit. - Solid anti-armored air unit like the Goliath from BW. The Thor is an anti-light air specialist and to counter air one needs Vikings, which require different upgrades. I dont this concept, but I guess it would be decent to have another anti-air support unit, which suggested to be the WH.
Personal idea, feel free to disregard: A mine laying missile launcher truck / robot / walker whatever, which fullfills the the points above: - Can produce (like the Reaver can produce Scarabs) and lay mines. Mines cost 25-50 minerals and are similiar (or equal) to Spider Mines, they dont hit air and do moderate damage (less than Widow Mines currently) and hurt your own units caught in the splash radius. - Has an long range anti armor air attack (with splash?), which requires them to go into some kind of stationary siege mode (great idea by Avilo for the WH). This still leaves room for the Viking, as it is much more mobile and better suited to be combined with bio or additional support for mech.
The application would be to be able to mine up important areas of the map and protect your push from flanks, therefore give it a speed similiar as the Siege Tank or slightly faster. If required they go into anti air mode in the lategame if the opponent starts to produce capital flying units. With this unit the Warhound and Widow Mine can be removed obviously.
Haven't seen much of the warhound, but to me it seems ugly, too fast, too strong, not enough micro intensive.
My idea for a better warhound: High dps ground attack Low HP + Ability: Range is decreasing the more the unit moves. If it stays still, the range of it's attacks increases slowly until it can hit sieged tanks.
This would make it a strong siege line/collossus breaker, but because of it's speed it could be repositioned quicker to give it some defensive purposes aswell.
-> Means that I expect certain aspects of the metagame (pointing to the role of a "classic" mech army in BW) to be carried over to SC2. Simple as that! What happens right now is they try to make SC easier and easier for casuals which pushs it not only away from eSports, but also away from being the unique experience SC always offered to me!
The warhound however can be fixed just by changing some numbers. I.e. make it suck against most things that aren't immortals simply by changing its type to light (so that it doesn't receive bonus damage from immortals) and reducing the warhound's attack damage to 10 (so that both with its main attack and with its ability it doesn't trigger immortal's shields). Then adjust the attack speed to ensure that warhound is just a reactionary unit to mass immortals/stalkers, and is not build in large quantities otherwise. This way the core mech unit will be tank, and warhounds/helions will be built mostly as meat shields for tanks with ratio between warhounds/helions depending on whether a protoss player is stalker/immortal or zealot/archon heavy. Probably also make warhound take less gas and more minerals, so that it doesn't take gas from tank production.
Only problem I see with the warhound so far is that it has just a tad too much HP. Other than that, I think this is mostly just whining from zergs who have gotten used to being able to drone to 80 FOR FREE and are worried that they may not be able to do so in HotS.
It has a hard counter for crying out loud people, it cant shoot air....
On September 07 2012 20:28 CaptainCrush wrote: Only problem I see with the warhound so far is that it has just a tad too much HP. Other than that, I think this is mostly just whining from zergs who have gotten used to being able to drone to 80 FOR FREE and are worried that they may not be able to do so in HotS.
It has a hard counter for crying out loud people, it cant shoot air....
If you really think that you fail to understand the discussion thats going on. Most of the discussion is NOT about the balance, but general unit design that seems very flawed to most people. Try to read the OP bro.
Also it's really Protoss thats QQing because the Warhound counters every composition they can build basically.
really good post Avilio, hope Blizzard will hear you.
I think mech also is a strategy where you have to be cautious and methodical, to have a good understanding of what's happening and position your unit in a way that matters. I think the warhound is bad because, combined with the battle-hellion and thor composition, it gives you a all-around mobile army...don't you think it is a remake of a protoss death ball (stalkers, zealots, Colli) ? This is the main reason why I don't like to play protoss... when you play terran mech, I find it more interesting because it is not just building a big army and a-click in the face of your opponent, it is methodicaly climb the map to the throat of him.
that's why I think Warhound mobility should be nerfed, I think it should be a siege/unsiege unit (like tanks) able to deal huge damage to mech unit like you said
and by the way I also find the design is ugly and I would change it like a ion-cannon or something like that :
On September 07 2012 20:28 CaptainCrush wrote: Only problem I see with the warhound so far is that it has just a tad too much HP. Other than that, I think this is mostly just whining from zergs who have gotten used to being able to drone to 80 FOR FREE and are worried that they may not be able to do so in HotS.
It has a hard counter for crying out loud people, it cant shoot air....
If you really think that you fail to understand the discussion thats going on. Most of the discussion is NOT about the balance, but general unit design that seems very flawed to most people. Try to read the OP bro.
Also it's really Protoss thats QQing because the Warhound counters every composition they can build basically.
I dont fail to see what is being discussed here, I just dont agree with you. There's a pretty big difference. I was merely stating what I see wrong with the unit and NOT agreeing with most of the other complaints in this thread. The warhound will be fine against toss as well, especially once Blizz takes the HP down a bit. Immortals do somewhat well against them now, they will destroy them by the time the beta ends.
Totally agree with the notion that the Warhound is a really badly designed unit. Not too sure about another siege mode, I would prefer something different, but still something that encourages strategic thinking instead of 1Aing. How about something like a flip-over mode that would greatly limit the speed (maybe like queen off creep) and possibly lowering its hit points. This way, it would be an effective counter to air units AND also encouraging opponent to counter these fearsome anti-air units with something on the ground. And what counters ground? Siege tanks!
On September 07 2012 21:19 phisku wrote: why not making the mech attack like snipe and working with a cooldown like the thor strike cannon.
you mean manually sniping Immortals and other mech units ? that would be more interesting that's right. Because in a protoss Army what matters when you play mech is Immortals and colossi : you would have to snipe about 6 units, that's achievable I believe.
On September 07 2012 21:19 phisku wrote: why not making the mech attack like snipe and working with a cooldown like the thor strike cannon.
you mean manually sniping Immortals and other mech units ? that would be more interesting that's right. Because in a protoss Army what matters when you play mech is Immortals and colossi : you would have to snipe about 6 units, that's achievable I believe.
Yeah, it would be good to remove the auto-cast from the anti-mech missiles forcing players to use them like snipe. That would make warhounds still be useful at breaking tank lines and fighting mech units like immortals and collossi but at least require some kind of management from the player. As is the warhound seems really OP and basically requires no micro at all :/
I don't know, I personally like the design of the Warhound simply because it DOES branch off from the common "mech is slow" standard that has been set. I'd like to be more agile with my mech, ya know, have something to compliment my Helions when rolling around, so that maybe I'm not just doing a harass, I'm actually pushing with the helions and a warhound, I do agree the warhound needs a buff, I like the idea of making it light and giving it 125 HP, while also making it 3 supply, that sounds like a good idea to me.
On September 06 2012 08:49 DKR wrote: Where does leave the Thor? Why have the Warhound when you can just use a Thor which can do both without limiting it's movement?
Not suggesting (inb4 flamers), that it's balanced or that we should keep it, just that the proposal isn't a good one, or at least, isn't a fully thought out one.
Because a thor is damn expensive in every way imaginable.
I can't believe the Thor is still in the game. Having two mechwarrior style units is just redundant. One of the two should be removed.
I'm just going to comment by saying - I hate the warhound and everything about it, especially it's appearance... I don't like its face. I really hope they decide to change it.
Tactical fun. Why doesn't this game have any of this? This unit can completely fufil the thor role, become a walking turret, be given a jump jet to respond to harassment, and they could allow it to siege to fulfill mechs slowpush obligation and make able to disparate crowds with narrow beam AOE. Just attach negative mana for using abilites and then it can complement hellion transformation or slow push. Add some upgrades to mech lab for additional handles later on.
On September 07 2012 23:59 FortMonty wrote: Pheonix can pick up Warhounds yes.
I don't know, I personally like the design of the Warhound simply because it DOES branch off from the common "mech is slow" standard that has been set. I'd like to be more agile with my mech, ya know, have something to compliment my Helions when rolling around, so that maybe I'm not just doing a harass, I'm actually pushing with the helions and a warhound, I do agree the warhound needs a buff, I like the idea of making it light and giving it 125 HP, while also making it 3 supply, that sounds like a good idea to me.
That's the point of mech. You want mech to be the same as bio....except better. That's stupid. You think they need a buff? Are we playing the same beta? You'r esupposed to be harrassing with hellions while building up a huge deathball mech army in your base made of thors and tanks. That's mech style. If you want an agile army you go bio. You shouldn't get both in one.
Your missing the point. Fuck balance. Fuck whether the warhound is OP or not. What matters is the design of the unit (and I am not talking about the appearance). And its absolutely terrible. Warhound will never be an interesting unit, just like the collosus never will be, and the roach never will be. As a terran player I want to switch race.
Why don't you interpolate this? I'm tired of reading "its a terrible design". What the hell does this mean? It was supposed to be an anti mech unit but apparently its normal attack seems a little overpowered. You make units interesting by what you do with them. How you use them with the rest of your army makes it interesting. 1a is never interesting, but lets not pretend like protoss and zerg never had similar units.
The WarHound just ruins the game. No tactial finesse involved. Every unit in WoL seemed to be well thought through, but this warhound is the opposite. Seems Blizzard just couldnt think of a new interesting unit.
What I don't understand is Blizzard saying the warhound is supposed to be a good core unit for mech. I always seen Mech as having the TANK as it core unit...
Im gonna ignore the design philosophy of this unit for a second, but how the hell they thought 2 supply is what Warhound should be. Jesus, 1 supply roach from WoL beta seems underpowered compared to this.
its so funny/sad to see a stalker against a warhound xD in wol they can kite marines, escape marauder without cs but now they are FUCKED. every aspect of this unit sucks.
the current state of sc2 hots is very depressing. and im starting to lose faith because none of the issues wol had have been fixed/changed. the new units are just more shit to the shit pile.
On September 08 2012 04:26 Noocta wrote: What I don't understand is Blizzard saying the warhound is supposed to be a good core unit for mech. I always seen Mech as having the TANK as it core unit...
It would be nice if tanks were a core unit, but they only serve 1 function outside of the mirror matchup, where yes technically tanks and marines are the core.
Against zerg, tanks are made specifically to fight banelings, since marines with micromanagement and positioning can trade for nearly everything else (not if infestors and vipers have anything to say about that!)...
If the raven or ghost were actually a respectable caster unit with usable spells against bio, you would likely never see more than 3 tanks or so built in this matchup ever again. Since both snipe and the seeker missile are both horrible, the only answer to anti-bio from zerg is the tank. My guess is that we will still see marine tank, but we will also see a larger conglomerate of mech units included, like hellions and warhounds in order to absorb damage and provide higher mobility.
Against protoss, tanks have always been pretty bad because they deal "burst" damage at long intervals, and also protoss units tend to be fatter and sturdier so they minimize the effects of splash. Also, tanks can't deal with the mobility of protoss heavy hitters like the colossus and the archon, as well as the speedy stalkers and charglots.
While the warhound IS going to be nerfed, and what is going to be nerfed is up for debate... probably some raw damage, maybe 23 -> 22 or 21... probably missiles requiring an upgrade / and or requiring energy (letting ghosts / Htemplars fight against them)... probably a supply cost increase (though that is less likely since tanks cost tons of supply)
however, what this does bring up, is that the warhound OVERperforms, and the siege tank UNDERperforms... so I wouldn't be surprised if you see a supply switch, for tanks being 2 supply, and warhounds being 3 supply...
BUT since this is all speculation, its still beta, and perhaps protoss just hasn't learned to be annoying enough with oracles and tempests?? We'll see whats going on soon!
On September 07 2012 21:19 phisku wrote: why not making the mech attack like snipe and working with a cooldown like the thor strike cannon.
you mean manually sniping Immortals and other mech units ? that would be more interesting that's right. Because in a protoss Army what matters when you play mech is Immortals and colossi : you would have to snipe about 6 units, that's achievable I believe.
Yeah, it would be good to remove the auto-cast from the anti-mech missiles forcing players to use them like snipe. That would make warhounds still be useful at breaking tank lines and fighting mech units like immortals and collossi but at least require some kind of management from the player. As is the warhound seems really OP and basically requires no micro at all :/
Except that both snipe and thor cannons are fucking awful mechanics. The easiest way to deal with the missile autocast system is to give each shot a small energy cost:
Warhound is made with 50/200 energy, every shot takes 10-20 energy... then using abilities like EMP for terran, and feedback for protoss would allow non-mech styles to perform better against warhounds. With zerg, it wouldn't matter anyway...
Man, they want the Warhound to be a Core unit. That means they will be like Marines, Stalkers, Roaches.
It'll never be a Spellcaster, ou a Siege Tank ou whatever "tatical" shit that some of you want to be. It's just a unit that you can a-move and don't stress about what is doing. It won't suicide itself. And still, if you kite'em and properly position them, their utility will be improved. Just watch Demu Stream. His adjusting the position of his Warhounds all fucking time trying to get a better concave.
It's not because it's a simple unit that simplifies strategies and game play. You still can do fun stuff as control map, drop it, flankat same time that smart taticals manauvers work against them. What won't work is blind counters. You don't have a "baneling" or a "collossi" that just melts it.
And, more, their attack will be nerfed, so pure warhoud compositons will probably vanish.
On September 08 2012 06:50 Herect wrote: Man, they want the Warhound to be a Core unit. That means they will be like Marines, Stalkers, Roaches.
Ya, exactly, that's the problem with them. The initial plans blizzard had with them were actually ok. First they were meant to kill mutas, void rays and stuff, much like ol' goliath (which was an uninteresting "not mech" a-move unit btw.). Then zerg players found out that infestors are better than mutas, so blizz made them the anti-stalker weapon. But they kill pretty much everything now. I think if Blizzard really sticked to their initial ideas they would actually be fine (no matter if a-move dumbcausal, or hardcore micro skillcap, or whatever...).
There are actually 2 all-round factory units already. Tank (kills everything on ground), and Thor (kills everything, except bcs and stuff). Warhounds just need to be support units. Something like nerf the railgun a lot, buff haywire and add anti-air. (Maybe nerf hitpoints) People would just made them to fill the gaps in their mechball then.
To bring back real mech, three things need to be done:
1. Remove sentries 2. So that we can remove roaches and marauders 3. So that we can remove stalker blink
There are two reasons why mass stalker blink is not viable in the late game a. They get crushed by fungal b. They get crushed by both core bio units (M and M)
But do you see the issue with mech vs blink stalker? T doesn't have fungal. AND hellion/tank BOTH lose to blink stalker. That's why Blizzard has added in Warhound, to overpower stalker completely. This is really awful unit design, but they've really worked themselves into a hole.
Basically the way the game is right now is because Blizzard refuses to remove things that have been awful.
BW was largely balanced because it focused on core RTS mechanics: positioning/speed/production. There wasn't too much gimmick, you might only 1-2 types of spellcaster, and only 3 units or so in most compositions.
SC2, Blizzard just keeps introducing poorly thought out mechanics, that require even more complex workarounds. The REAL solution is to strip out the garbage that did not work.
Your missing the point. Fuck balance. Fuck whether the warhound is OP or not. What matters is the design of the unit (and I am not talking about the appearance). And its absolutely terrible. Warhound will never be an interesting unit, just like the collosus never will be, and the roach never will be. As a terran player I want to switch race.
Why don't you interpolate this? I'm tired of reading "its a terrible design". What the hell does this mean? It was supposed to be an anti mech unit but apparently its normal attack seems a little overpowered. You make units interesting by what you do with them. How you use them with the rest of your army makes it interesting. 1a is never interesting, but lets not pretend like protoss and zerg never had similar units.
There are 16 pages or so of this thread, read the posts, there's PLENTY there discussing the design aspects people are unhappy with.
Protoss and Zerg players, or at least the majority of ones I've heard from would rather have less A-move centric armies and more ways to make their mechanics and control shine. It's not as if everyone just wants to turtle, chrono to 3/3 and A-move to victory, we want to feel we've earned wins in good back-and-forth games. Giving Terran A-move compositions is a fucking terrible idea for longevity of the game, especially as an E-sport.
There are 16 pages or so of this thread, read the posts, there's PLENTY there discussing the design aspects people are unhappy with.
Protoss and Zerg players, or at least the majority of ones I've heard from would rather have less A-move centric armies and more ways to make their mechanics and control shine. It's not as if everyone just wants to turtle, chrono to 3/3 and A-move to victory, we want to feel we've earned wins in good back-and-forth games. Giving Terran A-move compositions is a fucking terrible idea for longevity of the game, especially as an E-sport.
Yea, its obviously about balance though, which the guy I responded to said "fuck balance" and that its just the design of the unit that was messed up. I've read the posts. All the dream theories and nerfs for it. Everything from somewhat sensible changes to downright "give it a harpoon to latch onto air units and then kamikaze". I wanted to know if it wasn't about balance then why are these changes are being proposed?
On September 07 2012 23:59 FortMonty wrote: Pheonix can pick up Warhounds yes.
I don't know, I personally like the design of the Warhound simply because it DOES branch off from the common "mech is slow" standard that has been set. I'd like to be more agile with my mech, ya know, have something to compliment my Helions when rolling around, so that maybe I'm not just doing a harass, I'm actually pushing with the helions and a warhound, I do agree the warhound needs a buff, I like the idea of making it light and giving it 125 HP, while also making it 3 supply, that sounds like a good idea to me.
That's the point of mech. You want mech to be the same as bio....except better. That's stupid. You think they need a buff? Are we playing the same beta? You'r esupposed to be harrassing with hellions while building up a huge deathball mech army in your base made of thors and tanks. That's mech style. If you want an agile army you go bio. You shouldn't get both in one.
Have you been paying attention? I think it needs to be nerfed, but still serve the same function of being strong against immortals and being a mobile mech unit. You guys have this issue where you feel that mech NEEDS to be slow chess like, sorry, but this isn't brood war. So yes, Warhound needs a nerf, but it's function, I think it's fine how it is in terms of it's role. No, it won't be bio, sorry, but that arguement is getting old, if you don't know what bio is then I'm sorry, I just can't keep explaining.
There are 16 pages or so of this thread, read the posts, there's PLENTY there discussing the design aspects people are unhappy with.
Protoss and Zerg players, or at least the majority of ones I've heard from would rather have less A-move centric armies and more ways to make their mechanics and control shine. It's not as if everyone just wants to turtle, chrono to 3/3 and A-move to victory, we want to feel we've earned wins in good back-and-forth games. Giving Terran A-move compositions is a fucking terrible idea for longevity of the game, especially as an E-sport.
Yea, its obviously about balance though, which the guy I responded to said "fuck balance" and that its just the design of the unit that was messed up. I've read the posts. All the dream theories and nerfs for it. Everything from somewhat sensible changes to downright "give it a harpoon to latch onto air units and then kamikaze". I wanted to know if it wasn't about balance then why are these changes are being proposed?
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.
There are 16 pages or so of this thread, read the posts, there's PLENTY there discussing the design aspects people are unhappy with.
Protoss and Zerg players, or at least the majority of ones I've heard from would rather have less A-move centric armies and more ways to make their mechanics and control shine. It's not as if everyone just wants to turtle, chrono to 3/3 and A-move to victory, we want to feel we've earned wins in good back-and-forth games. Giving Terran A-move compositions is a fucking terrible idea for longevity of the game, especially as an E-sport.
Yea, its obviously about balance though, which the guy I responded to said "fuck balance" and that its just the design of the unit that was messed up. I've read the posts. All the dream theories and nerfs for it. Everything from somewhat sensible changes to downright "give it a harpoon to latch onto air units and then kamikaze". I wanted to know if it wasn't about balance then why are these changes are being proposed?
Because the unit is just stupid, it makes the siege tank obsolete on par with the carrier; it is just a marauder made from the factory.
It has nothing to do with balance, its just a shitty unit that should not be in the game. It makes Terran not fun to play.
On September 07 2012 23:59 FortMonty wrote: Pheonix can pick up Warhounds yes.
I don't know, I personally like the design of the Warhound simply because it DOES branch off from the common "mech is slow" standard that has been set. I'd like to be more agile with my mech, ya know, have something to compliment my Helions when rolling around, so that maybe I'm not just doing a harass, I'm actually pushing with the helions and a warhound, I do agree the warhound needs a buff, I like the idea of making it light and giving it 125 HP, while also making it 3 supply, that sounds like a good idea to me.
That's the point of mech. You want mech to be the same as bio....except better. That's stupid. You think they need a buff? Are we playing the same beta? You'r esupposed to be harrassing with hellions while building up a huge deathball mech army in your base made of thors and tanks. That's mech style. If you want an agile army you go bio. You shouldn't get both in one.
Have you been paying attention? I think it needs to be nerfed, but still serve the same function of being strong against immortals and being a mobile mech unit. You guys have this issue where you feel that mech NEEDS to be slow chess like, sorry, but this isn't brood war. So yes, Warhound needs a nerf, but it's function, I think it's fine how it is in terms of it's role. No, it won't be bio, sorry, but that arguement is getting old, if you don't know what bio is then I'm sorry, I just can't keep explaining.
What is the point you're making? Mech doesn't need a mobile unit, nor does this game need more units that specifically counter other units. It should be at the stage where we are moving to diverse and balanced compositions that reward positioning and other skillful aspects of play. Not 'I made more of a counter-unit'. We already see the downsides of this in TvP and TvZ with techswitches, vikings are needed to counter Collosus and Broodlord comps. If you beat that threat those two races can techswitch to leave you with a lot of paperweight vikings doing nothing. That's not strategy, it's not intelligent play it's just glorified rock vs scissors.
If you want every single composition to be functionally and aesthetically close-to-identical then that's your perogative. Not everybody who desires something different is a Broodwar fanboy.
I wonder if the Blizzard devs are even reading these forums, I hope so... if not, then it maybe worth raising some of these points on the Blizzard HOTS beta forum.
OP is one of the best game design suggestions I've seen on here.
Turning the Warhoud into a transforming, position-based anti-air tank support role is brilliant.
When in melee mode - get rid of the legs. Put it on treads rolling, have it swivel when turning to fire. This gets rid of that dorky walk it has currently and gives it a classic "Robbie the Robot" look.
When transforming to support tank lines, it leans down on it's forearms and lifts anti-air turrets from it's back. When supported by Widow Mines and other units, this gives fun dynamic positional play to Terran.
On September 08 2012 13:03 Aetherial wrote: I wonder if the Blizzard devs are even reading these forums, I hope so... if not, then it maybe worth raising some of these points on the Blizzard HOTS beta forum.
It's worth a go, but only go to post. Don't attempt to read too much or your brain will liquify and start to ooze out of your ears.
On September 08 2012 13:04 Von wrote: OP is one of the best game design suggestions I've seen on here.
Turning the Warhoud into a transforming, position-based anti-air tank support role is brilliant.
When in melee mode - get rid of the legs. Put it on treads rolling, have it swivel when turning to fire. This gets rid of that dorky walk it has currently and gives it a classic "Robbie the Robot" look.
When transforming to support tank lines, it leans down on it's forearms and lifts anti-air turrets from it's back. When supported by Widow Mines and other units, this gives fun dynamic positional play to Terran.
Tweak stats and upgrades to balance. Done.
FUCK TRANSFORMING, terran has way too much stupid pointless transforming stuff... Don't add to it FFS
SC2 doesn't need a Goliath. The Thor already fulfill that role and it's a better unit overall (It's big, slow, which makes positioning really importantt and its splash AA promote cool things like Magic Boxing). Vikings fulfill it even better. In all BW Mech, it's the most dumb unit, it's just an AA counter. You have to micro it, (but you have to micro anything in BW tbh) and that wouldn't be transfered to SC2. In SC2, the goliath would be just a dumb AA hard counter. And i'm tired of hard counters in this game.
Please, stop sayin' "i want an AA unit". This only reveals that you know nothing about the issues of Mech in SC2. An AA unit wouldn't make Mech viable in PvT. It just don't adress its real problems (Immortal, Chargelots, Blinkstalkers, and they don't fly if i remember correctly). It's just a bunch of BW nostalgia mixed with Blizzard hate.
I agree with Avilo, warhound is plain and boring, and we or at least i don't like that (it also feels so c&c-ih or is it just me? -,.-). Anyway the change would be really good in my opinion, it would add depth to the unit not just "a-move" role.
For Design, I think it is a good idea for warhound to be something similar to the A.R.E.S. Tanks are vehicle, thors are mech walker and Warhound could fulfill a tank tread mech unit.
I hope they are looking to fix warhound completely, right now it is not interesting too watch at all, it looks ugly, the function is not dynamic....
I feel as though adding an anti-air siege tank would be rather runderwhelming. I also feel as though the Thor was an attempt at this. A slow moving meat shield with a Valkyrie esque attack and powerful ground attacks. Mech to me mis all about positioning, not simply because siege tanks are immobile in siege mode but because the army is slow. Warhounds don't really have that disadvantage. How would they feel if they were slower? I can't help but look at things from a bit of a K.I.S.S perspective. the simple solution is often the best one. Thoughts?
Honestly i was just throwing out an idea lol. The warhound doesn't seem OP right now at all to be honest, it's the first three days, they slightly nerfed it's attack speed which is good.
People already figured out you simply can't be greedy as hell now. Honestly instead of the idea i put in this thread about AA, they should combine the warhound and the mine, sorta like how vultures lay mines, then there would be more depth. Not to mention the widow mine feels like it's terrible right now :D
On September 08 2012 16:33 LuminousWoe wrote: I feel as though adding an anti-air siege tank would be rather runderwhelming. I also feel as though the Thor was an attempt at this. A slow moving meat shield with a Valkyrie esque attack and powerful ground attacks. Mech to me mis all about positioning, not simply because siege tanks are immobile in siege mode but because the army is slow. Warhounds don't really have that disadvantage. How would they feel if they were slower? I can't help but look at things from a bit of a K.I.S.S perspective. the simple solution is often the best one. Thoughts?
I am a terran player myself and I too think mech should be a slow but powerful army. Adding warhound into the mix is cheat/lazy way to fix mech in TvP. No one will go tanks, or thors in TvP because blizzard simply just add a new unit. Blizzard didn't fix mech. And the new mech is not slow at all compare to bio force.
Even though the warhound is nerfed now, I still really dislike that it's just an a-move unit that is still strong enough to replace tanks. IMHO reduce their base damage even further and reduce their gas cost, so that they become simply anti-mech-focused meat-shields for tanks (while battle helions are anti-bio meat-shields for tanks) and so that warhounds don't take up gas that is needed for tanks.
i am sick of dustin browders red alert units. collossus, warhound, immortal, tempest does not suit the game. they don't require micro they only require positioning. we didn't play starcraft 1 like this. there were awesome units like reaver. i think we should increase our voice.
Still watching more hots today and still more good ol' Hound vs Hound match up. Was this Browder way of fixing the "stale tvt"?.Anyways I like the idea Avilo proposed about transforming warhound into a rolling/transforming anti-air unit....you know what fuck it BRING BACK THE GOLIATH and get rid of the big fat thor. lol honestly why create these semi bw esque units and then make them so terrible. Sorry just ranting again on =/..
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.
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.
On September 09 2012 13:33 GTR wrote: 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.
I think 220HP is kinda OK if you nerf their damage enough. Then they can become just meat shields for siege tanks, and mech composition would look like:
1) siege tanks for damage. 2) warhounds as meat shields vs mechanical and battle hellions as meat shields vs light. 3) widow mines and vikings as anti-air.
This compositions will encourage positional play and will be real fun for spectators.
You now already have Hellion/Battlehellion as a very decent meatshield. Also Thors work in that regard. There is absolutely no need for a 220HP meatshield when usually nothing can engage a well positioned mechposition anyways. Other than Immortals ofc but they will pretty much fuck mech up anyways if you nerf the Warhound damage again.
On September 09 2012 13:33 GTR wrote: 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.
I think this is a pretty good point but price is still a MAJOR issues... Tank: 150/125/3/45s 160hp 1 armor ~14.4 dps (+9.6dps) 7range speed 2.25+ Show Spoiler +
If the WH were something like 200/100/4/45s it would make more sense to me - and as I think we've all seen in TvT mech Thors are still the best ground answer for breaking siege lines. It seems in HotS so far: Siege > WH > Thor > Siege so increasing the WH price would still allow it to be made as a response to Thors and getting more Siege tanks (or Mauraders) would be an appropriate response to WHs.
I completely agree, I feel like when I to mech (granted i'm no gm) I usually lose to early game muta or banshee. It would be nice to have an anti-air meching unit instead of having to wait for thor's which can easily be magic boxed anyway. In fact, I still think blizzard was on to something removing the thor and putting in a goliath type replacement that this warhound would be perfect for. Nice post : ) you should be a balance designer!
I don't know if this idea has been pointed out yet, but why not make the Thor the Terran "uber unit" as Blizz had originally planned and implement the change proposed in the OP?
WarHound DPS should be high against Mech, not against all, and it is ridiculous that WarHounds enter in game BEFORE any Siege unit has been done (even Siege Tank), when "help to brake siege lines" was it's role
On September 10 2012 19:54 Sogetsu wrote: WarHound DPS should be high against Mech, not against all, and it is ridiculous that WarHounds enter in game BEFORE any Siege unit has been done (even Siege Tank), when "help to brake siege lines" was it's role
Hoping to get my idea across and more feedback relaing to the warhound originally posted on the blizz forums http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6521293507 I dont think adjusting health & dps values is enough to fix this issue
Swap role of Thor & Warhound instead
Current state Thors: Anti air for terran mech primarily vs muta and also a front line unit to soak up damage
Warhounds: Designed to be a siegebreaker - anti mech but ends up being a major anti protoss However, currently it is also being used very effectively as a reaver and effective base D due to speed
Suggestion Thor: In WoL, thors arent used against protoss because theyre too slow, expensive and countered by immortals & chargelot. They are used vs zerg and sometimes in TvT for anti viking or to soak up damage against tank lines. If blizz wanted an anti siegeline unit, this should be it. It takes a lot of tank fire and isnt splashed much due to its' size, so a small group of would be capable of breaking siege lines if they were given haywire that HOTS warhounds have now. It would again be limited by cost, size and slow movement, which would make it not seen vs Protoss and would be difficult to mass unlike the warhound.
Take away its' anti air ability and it will be used for purely anti ground mech vs terran. It would still do ok against zerg with the normal auto attack, be used vs T against other mech (also effective vs warhounds) but too slow and expensive to make a large number of to be the primary army. An ability such as haywire SHOULD NOT be able to be massed
Warhound: Give the warhound the ability to shoot air but due to the lower cost than thors either take away the splash or reduce the anti air damage significantly thus making the warhound the AA for mech play. Given their current speed, it is better suited to fend off fast moving mutas or drops for which mech is vulnerable. It would also still do sufficient damage against ground units and is easily massable.
With the proposed changes, the matchups would be affected as follows Against T: Warhounds to act as the anti air and the main fodder in a mech army. Thors could be moved in or medivac dropped to haywire tanks if an opening is left or to flank effectively thus requiring positioning and careful use of the haywire ability to break siege lines rather than a simple A move warhounds. It would also make players have to balance between expensive, high dps units like tanks & thors with fodder units like marine, hellion and warhound rather than just massing warhounds.
A hard counter to a unit should not be more of that unit (see warhound vs warhound…). As such, if a lot of thors are made marine, marauder should be able to shred it so a balance has to be made in mech with tanks and hellions vs MM. Warhounds would just be the mech AA and fast response to drops.
Against Z: AA against muta would be still achieved using warhounds. Thors would likely not be made, therefore matchup stays similar to how it is currently. Furthermore, siegeline breakers would remain to be broodlords as it is currently, in addition to burrow charge ultra or swarmhost.
Also due to the viper cloud, it would be easy to blind the thors and have mutas mop up ALL of the mech if thors were left as the primarly mech AA. However, with more warhounds out on the field it would be harder to just hard counter mech with 1 spell on and a muta flock. This would also be augmented by the fact that thors are SLOW, which would make it difficult to move out of an AOE spell that prevents them from shooting air. Mutas should remain as harass units, not the hard counter to mech along w the viper. Z has a lot of options to break siege lines already.
Against P: No more massable haywire and makes thors slightly more viable due to their heavy anti mech ability so well placed thors would do significant damage to a deathball (which blizz wants to go away from). Mech will be extremely viable due to battle hellions vs zealot; tanks vs armored; haywire vs immortals and would take micro to make sure each units is attacking the right thing to pick apart a deathball, while a deathball would still do heavy damage, thus making this matchup a huge slugfest rather then deathball "A" moving over mech in WoL or warhounds+hellion "A" moving over deathball in HOTS. Taking away haywire from wahounds would prevent mech as anti everything protoss as it is right now. New protoss units have no effect
Also to note that terran ground AA is limited to marines. While probably the best AA in the game, late game marines have too low of HP which very die fast thus causing the problem of T having a weak end game. They need marines, but marines don't fare as well late game as the end game units of other races. For a stronger late game T, they can eventually replace marines with warhounds.
Also for ground AA Protoss: stalker, archon, sentry Zerg: queen, hydra, infested terran Terran: marine, autoturret, thor
Turrets are so rarely seen and marines end up being the main AA for terran, yet are an inflated food supply much like a zerg army maxed on roaches seem like a high food count army, but do much less than you would expect. Swap out the thor in that list and put warhound in and you have a better late game ground AA that doesnt die in 1 hit and isnt dreadfully slow
EDIT: Reader solutions from the change added here so more people will see it DeadWombat
The Thor was originally billed to be a "tip of the spear" unit anyway, which is ironically what the Warhound is doing now. Giving the Thor the Haywire would really let it fulfill the intended function that it originally had. I am rather certain no one would miss the Thor's 250mm cannons, either. Fun idea but it was never really able to be utilized that well. So if the Thor loses the cannons (and its energy), that would leave High Templar with one less thing to counter as well, making Thors even MORE viable against protoss.
Laowai
Protoss and Terran players with the skill to outposition the thor user and target-fire it down before it can do much damage will force thor users in higher leagues to turn off autocast and spend their haywire missiles on high-priority units, like siege tanks or colossi. This micro would not be required at a lower level, but would add depth to the game... for better players than me, anyway.
Another issue it would fix is one that was actually brought up in the early design stages of HotS, and the reason the warhound was conceptualized in the first place: Thors are pretty bad against mutalisks. Two warhounds are less magic-boxable than one thor, on top of being smaller and more mobile. Their speed would also make them very useful against the new-and-improved air harass from Protoss, leading to small-army map control battles away from the deathball.
With that much health, dps and speed the warhound definitely should have been designed as a melee unit. The fact that they gave such a unit more range than any of the other non siege unit makes the warhound a deathball unit that just replaces everything.
Why make tanks, thors, helions or marauders, if you can have a unit that has more health per cost, more dps per cost, more speed, and more range (except for sieged tanks). Thats the reason why warhounds win against everything in that unit tester video. Since they are faster and have more range, micro would even add to that opness.
Blizzard fails at making basic design choices and thats why we get stupid units like the colossus, roach, marauder and now the warhound. Units that have a lot of splash and range, need to be slower than other units otherwise you get the colossus and are forced to give it a hard counter drawback like being susceptible to air attack, which negates the unit and makes for a boring game.
Same thing with roaches. They just took hydras, buffed their health and armor and speed and thereby basically removed hydras from the game. They were on to something when roaches still had range 3, were 1 supply, had more armor and had more life regen, but instead of keeping that design and making it an interesting unit, they made it the better generic ranged unit. If they had given roaches something like 1 range and built upon the life regen aspect with armor, their roles woukdnt have overlapped so much with hydras, making for a better designed unit.
The only way to explain why these basic design flaws are in the game is that blizzard is incompetent, and given their recent titles and how badly they are designed, im honestly believing that they just suck.
let's make warhounds a melee unit that can only hit air (and colossus) bonus to light and massive
special ability howl of courage (get it? hound?) that increase friendly units' current HP by 50% of their max HP. Expires after 15 second, 60 second cool down. Not stackable.
also increases its speed to 4 and decreases its hp to 75 and armor to 0, supply to 1. costs 90/75/30sec
EPT
For real, though, once you start to be able to keep-up with the requirements of meching, it's a lot of fun.
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