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Many people currently discuss if the Widow Mine is a good 'unit'. The main arguement is that you get a unit which deals 160 damage + now 60 splash for 75/25/2 in 20 sek buildtime. In fact David Kim says this more or less directly:
Widow mine is a 160 damage unit that instantly 2-4 shots the strongest, latest tier units in the game. Not to mention you can build them two at a time with a 20 sec build time on each. We don't think it'll be a good idea to have these guys be 1 pop especially for the 200/200 supply cases.
First of it is not guaranteed damage, in the 200/200 case every opponent has options to spot them, which makes them either less relevant in a maxed battle or harder to use (you might have to focus on sniping obs units, which cannot be guaranteed to work). With the current design one is pressed to make every single Widow Mine count, because otherwise you wasted a lot of resources (mainly supply cost) on a unit which does nothing and which takes away from your main army.
This is important to note, but it also displays a wrong perception of the Widow Mine in my opinion. At this point I want to highlight the usages of Spider Mines, which may offend some people, because it is a different game, but you can get a pretty good idea of how the Widow Mine is supposed to work in my and others opinion.
- Gain map control early, by mining up attack paths and expansions.
- Use them to protect against harassment in your own base.
- Mine up your front against counter attacks, once you move out with your army.
- And very importantly heavily mine up paths along you push, such that your army cannot be flanked easily.
These are just a few usages of the top of my head, there more of course. Having these options is currently missing from SC2 Terran mech play and it wont get much better with the Widow Mine, because it is simply too precious to use it like this.
One might argue that the current design follows another intention than the design of the BW Spider Mine and I cant say anything against that, but please note the potential in terms of gameplay of a Spider Mine'esque Widow Mine.
Personally I would give a new unit (Warhound or whatever) the ability to lay mines, but at least rework the Widow Mine too become less precious and therefore also less deadly (to keep the people happy who just look at the numbers).
As a finaly sidenote, Spider Mines also gave a huge entertaiment factor for the viewers, because they dealt friendly fire/ splash, so that badly placed mines / dragged mines could hurt the Terran player himself.
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On September 21 2012 19:13 puissance wrote:Many people currently discuss if the Widow Mine is a good 'unit'. The main arguement is that you get a unit which deals 160 damage + now 60 splash for 75/25/2 in 20 sek buildtime. In fact David Kim says this more or less directly: Show nested quote +Widow mine is a 160 damage unit that instantly 2-4 shots the strongest, latest tier units in the game. Not to mention you can build them two at a time with a 20 sec build time on each. We don't think it'll be a good idea to have these guys be 1 pop especially for the 200/200 supply cases. First of it is not guaranteed damage, in the 200/200 case every opponent has options to spot them, which makes them either less relevant in a maxed battle or harder to use (you might have to focus on sniping obs units, which cannot be guaranteed to work). With the current design one is pressed to make every single Widow Mine count, because otherwise you wasted a lot of resources (mainly supply cost) on a unit which does nothing and which takes away from your main army.
Widow mines can unburrow, therefore it is possible to make every mine count unlike with the spider mine.
On September 21 2012 19:13 puissance wrote:
This is important to note, but it also displays a wrong perception of the Widow Mine in my opinion. At this point I want to highlight the usages of Spider Mines, which may offend some people, because it is a different game, but you can get a pretty good idea of how the Widow Mine is supposed to work in my and others opinion.
- Gain map control early, by mining up attack paths and expansions.
- Use them to protect against harassment in your own base.
- Mine up your front against counter attacks, once you move out with your army.
- And very importantly heavily mine up paths along you push, such that your army cannot be flanked easily.
These are just a few usages of the top of my head, there more of course. Having these options is currently missing from SC2 Terran mech play and it wont get much better with the Widow Mine, because it is simply too precious to use it like this.
One might argue that the current design follows another intention than the design of the BW Spider Mine and I cant say anything against that, but please note the potential in terms of gameplay of a Spider Mine'esque Widow Mine.
That is a question of balancing. If the widow mine would be lower supply, this might be possible, if very few widow mines are very powerful (the way blizzard approaches it right now with the huge splash buff) you will also just need very few of them to - at least - strongly weaken any flanks. Also you don't need a lot of (spider) mines to gain that mapcontrol. "Vision doesn't stack".
Furthermore widow mines are extremly strong for base protection in terms of design, because you can reposition them and they attack flyers. It's just a question of balancing them properly so that this works out.
Personally I would give a new unit (Warhound or whatever) the ability to lay mines, but at least rework the Widow Mine too become less precious and therefore also less deadly (to keep the people happy who just look at the numbers).
Well, how precious a unit is, is a question of how much it does. Make it cheap on the supply and cost is one way, the other one is to make it really powerful. Blizzard goes the second route right now and hopefully will continue to do so until the mine works. (or do the first route, but it doesn't look like they will try to)
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I am starting to hate blizzard more and more as they update and patch HOTS. I have seen current stream from gold to grandmasters HOTS beta players. I HAVE to say mine are completely USELESS in tvp. there's no point in even having them
once toss gets a single observer out. at which point stalkers outrange them and start picking them off and you cant even take out the freaking observers cuz their line of sight outranges the mines attack range. WIDOW MINES ARE THE MOST USELESS ATTEMPTS AT TVP MECH EVER. I can understand zerg and tvt where mines have somewhat more viability but honestly tanks and scans will dispose of mines QUICKLY. Honestly I see zerg as the only race that will have problems dealing with mines. anyways mines need MUCH more balance/buffs than what they offer currently. honestly removing mines and replacing it with another unit would be more reasonable than the current metatrash blizzard has created thus far.
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
Don't forget about manual targeting for mines. With that they can't be unmixed by lings or roaches, meaning that terrans will always them target only to a big groups of units.
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The best idea I've heard until now was to give the ability to lay spider mines to the Reaper. One Reaper, one mine, no supply requierement. It would fit the role of the reaper, it's kind of a "half-supply-requirement" because the Reaper needs supply, but you can throw them away and build new ones.
Consider this, Blizzard!
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On September 21 2012 19:47 pampelmus wrote:
The best idea I've heard until now was to give the ability to lay spider mines to the Reaper. One Reaper, one mine, no supply requierement. It would fit the role of the reaper, it's kind of a "half-supply-requirement" because the Reaper needs supply, but you can throw them away and build new ones.
Consider this, Blizzard!
that is 25 gas more. noone will build reapers for that :D
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On September 21 2012 19:45 hiimjimmeh wrote:
I have seen current stream from gold to grandmasters HOTS beta players. I HAVE to say mine are completely USELESS in tvp.
drop defense.
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The main advantage of the widow mine is wierdly enough, its cost efficiency. At 2 supply it will almost always trade cost efficiently with every other unit in the game. If it hits 2 marines (and it'll hit more than that) it has already traded supply for supply.
A widow mine at the back of an expansion can quite easily take out a medivac with no difficulty at all. Or it can take out 3/4s of the entire drop in the process of killing the medivac. Or it can snipe a banshee instantly. Two of them and a turret can take out most of a flock of mutas.
I'm seriously looking forward to using it with the additional splash it has. Sparing 20 supply for ten widow mines is basically trading 20 supply for several thousand damage. Yeah, a really careful deathball can snipe them, in which case the priority becomes removing their detection and keeping the widow mines in path where it is hugely cost inefficient to put down detection. For example, if I force an additional detector out of protoss just to clear a path, I've already cost them 1 supply that is in completely useless units.
With the addition of splash, the only units that can safely and cost effectively clear widow mines are siege range units. Sure, you can send zerglings in to clear them, but put them on hold position and keep a single hellion or two flitting around and they can't hope to clear them. And if they send a swarm in, detonate the widow mines and remove 50 supply's worth of units for 10.
There has been almost no exploration of positional play in Starcraft 2. Siege tanks move in big clumps and do huge volumes of damage and I frequently see pros die to run bys where their tanks get off one volley at most. A widow mine restricts the distance that a zerg in particular can get in front of their detection. Do they really want to lead with their banelings over a widow minefield? Do they want to take the risk of early expanding without first checking for widow mines? One of the more popular busts is to go and sit on a terran's third and morph all your banelings there. That's not going to work if the first thing that happens in a TvZ is for the terran to shove 2 widow mines on their third the moment they realize you're going to bust them.
There are so many possible uses for them, I can't wait to see what happens.
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Russian Federation216 Posts
On September 21 2012 20:18 Yoduh wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2012 19:45 hiimjimmeh wrote:
I have seen current stream from gold to grandmasters HOTS beta players. I HAVE to say mine are completely USELESS in tvp. drop defense.
bio terran is enough mobile to carry about drops in tvp
and dont say bout mech in tvp, it doesnt exist right now
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I tend to agree that 1pop sounds kind of expensive, they could change the cost structure (a bit less than double maybe) and have them be 0.5 food each and give you 2 at a time (so 1pop/2 produced - similar to zerglings)
I think not having a population cost is probably too strong though, given how much better than a burrowed baneling they are. Perhaps such a compromise could be an option?
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why was the timer on the widow miens removed? if 10secs to detonation was too long couldnt they change it to 2 secs?
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Mech in TvP revolves around the tank, you need a near 150 army supply to really move out safely against a maxed out Protoss with all tech available (except perhaps carriers). Having widow mines cost 2 supply means you either have to skip these mines late game, so you still end up in the same spot as in WOL where counter attacks and base trades will lose you the game.
And no you can't move out earlier just because there are battlehellions now, Archons and Immortals are still going to crush small (100 army supply and under) mech armies, which can't move out early because you also need to bring ghosts to deal with these 2 threats.
I hope mech gets buffed just enough to allow for smaller engagements which aren't terrible for mech players, where widow mines finally do help in slowing down counter attacks. I just don't see that happening right now.
Against Zerg mech has already been viable and with battlehellions this has gotten even better. Mines don't play a big part later in the game due to again the supply issue. Early game is where these mines have to do their work, fend off early attacks from both zerg and protoss and do so cost effectively at times. Maybe even do suicide missions with hellion/mine combo's to deny mining and/or kill workers.
Mines can stop warp prism/overlord drops I suppose, so thats another good thing!
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On September 21 2012 22:06 Fen1kz wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2012 20:18 Yoduh wrote:On September 21 2012 19:45 hiimjimmeh wrote:
I have seen current stream from gold to grandmasters HOTS beta players. I HAVE to say mine are completely USELESS in tvp. drop defense. bio terran is enough mobile to carry about drops in tvp and dont say bout mech in tvp, it doesnt exist right now
also warpprisms and overlords have 200 hp, i would suicide those if there was hope that someone uses 2 mines on them xD
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What I perceive from the discussion is that most of you agree that 2 supply is too much and limits their usage in the lategame. Also dont get me wrong, I dont think that there is no scenario where WM can be good, but these are very few and certainly not like Spider Mines. Catching a drop looks like the ideal scenario and one of their few applications, but that even that can be doubtful. Imagine 3 mines per base on 3 base, thats 18 supply or 6 Tanks less you can get. 0.5 - 1 seems more appropriate.
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On September 21 2012 20:29 Evangelist wrote:
The main advantage of the widow mine is wierdly enough, its cost efficiency. At 2 supply it will almost always trade cost efficiently with every other unit in the game. If it hits 2 marines (and it'll hit more than that) it has already traded supply for supply.
A widow mine at the back of an expansion can quite easily take out a medivac with no difficulty at all. Or it can take out 3/4s of the entire drop in the process of killing the medivac. Or it can snipe a banshee instantly. Two of them and a turret can take out most of a flock of mutas.
I'm seriously looking forward to using it with the additional splash it has. Sparing 20 supply for ten widow mines is basically trading 20 supply for several thousand damage. Yeah, a really careful deathball can snipe them, in which case the priority becomes removing their detection and keeping the widow mines in path where it is hugely cost inefficient to put down detection. For example, if I force an additional detector out of protoss just to clear a path, I've already cost them 1 supply that is in completely useless units.
With the addition of splash, the only units that can safely and cost effectively clear widow mines are siege range units. Sure, you can send zerglings in to clear them, but put them on hold position and keep a single hellion or two flitting around and they can't hope to clear them. And if they send a swarm in, detonate the widow mines and remove 50 supply's worth of units for 10.
There has been almost no exploration of positional play in Starcraft 2. Siege tanks move in big clumps and do huge volumes of damage and I frequently see pros die to run bys where their tanks get off one volley at most. A widow mine restricts the distance that a zerg in particular can get in front of their detection. Do they really want to lead with their banelings over a widow minefield? Do they want to take the risk of early expanding without first checking for widow mines? One of the more popular busts is to go and sit on a terran's third and morph all your banelings there. That's not going to work if the first thing that happens in a TvZ is for the terran to shove 2 widow mines on their third the moment they realize you're going to bust them.
There are so many possible uses for them, I can't wait to see what happens.
The thing with the widow mine is it has it's strong points but are definitely not going to be as effective in positional play than spider mines though. Just with the sheer number of spider mines that can be placed in BW because of the vulture's cost, it slows down other lanes of avenue and, for until they get taken out, keeps the terran player aware of areas where the opponent is and isn't.
With that said, I still think there is a place for them in the game, especially if people just turn off the auto-attack (though that might be more useful if the mine is placed at the back of the base for drops.
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United Kingdom12027 Posts
On September 21 2012 22:06 Fen1kz wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2012 20:18 Yoduh wrote:On September 21 2012 19:45 hiimjimmeh wrote:
I have seen current stream from gold to grandmasters HOTS beta players. I HAVE to say mine are completely USELESS in tvp. drop defense. bio terran is enough mobile to carry about drops in tvp and dont say bout mech in tvp, it doesnt exist right now
Watch Morrow. How many times am I going to have to repeat myself?
Not only is it viable, it WORKS. It's completely possible to play mech at a pro-level in HoTS right now and morrow is doing it every game.
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Basically its a gimped spider mine that costs supply and minerals.
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How can you guys even argue that the mine is bad.
It does 60 splash damage! holy cow thats allot i can almost 2-3 shot everything! ( with splash ).
And whats up with all thoose BW "Elitists" i want some unit to lay them down? Why?
I think the current mine is strong and will be used allot.
And why is everyone comparing them to spider mines? Why not compare them to Petards (from age of empires) makes just as much sense
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If you just have the mines under you army/ beside tanks they won't be free to snipe so that gives them garranteed damage, but even if they don't have garranted damage so don't most units, for example a storm could kill marines before they do any damage, same with collosus, the only units that have pretty much garanted damage are the ones with very long range, reducing the supply on the spider mines would be lunacy, for example in pvp if controlled properly each spider mine can oneshot a stalker plus they do splash damage, a spider mine is 75/25 and a stalker is 125/50 eve though they share the amount of supplies if controlled properly both die which leads to you having a 50 mineral 25 gas lead for every spider mine that killed a stalker.
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The Widow mine is perfect, don't even dare touching it. If you have to change it at all, tweak something negligible, but for the love of all that is holy, don't turn it into a damn spider mine.
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EPT
