As I posted in the HOTS Beta forum at Blizzard- I'm essentially trying to sum up all the problems the widow mines create in PvT. Let me know what you all think.
My thread got locked for "emotional feedback" where there was none.
I think I made a very legitimate point- if I see an early gas on terran, I cannot literally defend all of his options anymore. If he goes for a quick stim push, that's stoppable. If he goes for hellion drop, that's stoppable. If he goes for widow mines, that's stoppable.
But I'm locked out from his base once that first marine pops, until I manage to get observers. And I fail to see how I can defend all three of those main options the terran has without scouting before my first observer pops. Even if I test his front with the usual stalker-zealot, I still don't have enough information.
Is the widow mine OP as well? Yes. But it wouldn't be so bad if I could actually get an observer out before he's already building them. Then I just toss down a cannon in both mineral lines, put my probes in a hotkey group, and be ready to pull them if he drops.
My complaint was that the SPEED with which the widow mine pops, and the near impossibility of me scouting after my probe leaves, and the multiple options a terran has off of a quick gas essentially make it impossible for me to defend everything. He HAS to screw up in some way (revealing his hand too early, letting me run by stalkers, etc.) for me to handle PvT early game.
And the worst thing is that even if I know he's dropping widows, even if I build a cannon (because if you just leave an observer around, it dies instantly) I have to respond INSTANTLY to not lose 10+ probes on a saturated base.
So toss got a cute little lockdown from the Oracle that just stops mining for 45 seconds, AT BEST, but like 5-10 against a high level player, and terran got a unit that, at worst, makes me spend like 300 per base on static defense and/or observers and still probably lose 10+ probes, and even if I pull instantly, I lose more time mining than what any Oracle I have does against him.
So yeah. Call my criticism emotional. But the widow mine is so OP its just kind of absurd.
Oh, and if I throw down a cannon against a terran rushing widow mines, and then he just switches into MMM and drops with medivacs, the cannon is totally useless, AND I have to rebuild the cannon in case he deices to drop widow mines next time.
You see my point? Widow mines are unbalanced because the response they necessitate is so useless against other terran harassment options, and it makes the early game an incredible, almost unmanageable strain, on Protoss.
Look, either buff slightly protoss early game and give us another detection option that the widow mine doesn't smash to pieces, because throwing down cannons in my base just does nothing if he then switches to MMM. And if he knows I cannoned, he can just post his two widow mines at his front and in the middle of his production lines (and then rotate them around his base at intervals) and if I'm not checking my observer every thirty seconds, POOF, there goes all my scouting info.
Seriously, this isn't emotional feedback. This is just pure gameplay analysis. Dealing with MMM drops w/o blink was already difficult enough, and now he has a unit that requires an entirely different response to defend, AND if used well can essentially deny all my scouting? I even had a game where the guy just rushed 4 widow mines, and then stutter walked the pairs up my front lol. If I tried to attack while they were burrowing, poof goes all my zealots. If I try to just attack with my stalkers, they don't do enough damage to kill them, and then I have to wait for my observer, while he takes his natural and I'm bottled up in my base.
Basically I'm reduced to rushing a MSc and a bunch of stalkers and using high ground vision to hit his base that way. Of course, if he just plays it cool, pulls his units back and lets me snipe a couple of depots, and waits for the widow mines to pop, I have to pull back and now I've got like 8 stalkers, a MSc, no sentries, and no zealots (such a great unit comp if he goes MMM right? Sarcasm, fyi).
Look, I'm high diamond in WOL because I out think my opponents. My macro is meh, my micro is decent, and my build orders are really loose and usually not well tailored to what I end up going. I play high level competitive chess and am studying game theory- that's my basis for this essay. This is not an idle complaint- HOTS PvT is broken. My honest opinion is that a perfectly playing Toss, against a perfectly playing Terran, is just playing rock-paper-scissors. You have to get lucky and guess correctly what he's going to do with that gas. You have to GUESS. A terran just rotating between hellion-drop, quick stim push, and widow-drop should theoretically win 66% of the time, just straight up. The necessary responses from Toss are too different, and Toss tech switches and early gas usage too high, to defend all 3 well.
Anyways, lock me again if you like? I figured the purpose of HOTS beta was to get detailed feeback on the matchup problems and balancing issues. That's what I'm giving- Toss has too long a period where they can't scout (so we have to build in the dark), too high gas usage (I need sentries against stim-push, but lots of early gas for robo and chronoed observers+ stalkers against widow), and almost no ability to "re-orient" tech (not enough gas on one base to even attempt a tech switch, too long a build time on Nexus not to be behind substantially against a Terran tech switch [like widow drop into MMM]), and one of our vision options, the observer, can get sniped by widows (and, as I pointed out, cannons are a giant waste of minerals against MMM and will die instantly to stim-drop) (and then have to be rebuilt anyways because he can just drop widows the next time).
This match-up is basically broken right now. End. of. Story. If a blizz rep wants to come have a dialogue with me, either in here or via messaging/email, I would love to hear another side to the debate. Maybe they think MSc use+Stalker rush (the only thing I have success with right now) is the counter to one basing Terran. If anyone wants to take Blizzard's side of the debate, I'd love to hear that too. I'm not claiming I'm 100% right, but I haven't heard a single argument from a blizz rep, or even another player, that PvT is a balanced matchup in HOTS.
Anyways, looking forward to the next patch, and seeing what changes get made. I still think the Oracle is fairly useless (mainly because of the necessity of detection in both PvT and PvZ right now) and I honestly haven't used a tempest once (I play gateway expand pressure builds against zerg, so I either win or lose by the time they're relevant).
I get how its hard to defend them early game, but I feel like you can get a robo pretty quick too. Now granted there are a ton of options when a terran is getting gas.
One thing is that it definitely does stop nexus or 1 gate expands from being viable,ever. Because he just proxy factory in your face and then burrows one spidermine at each base, and you won't be able to kill it before it burrows even if it is focused by all your probes and stalkers.
Need to poke with the first Zealot and Stalker, classic scouting to count the Marines and may be a Marauder. To scout Reactor openings, seriously the game changes and if you just sit in your base and do nothing, I have no sympathy.
I feel like you can hold all three of the pressure you're claiming 'require completely different responses' with a standard 1 gate fe into 3 gate robo. Get at least 3-5 stalkers (stalker + obs can outrange widow mines and deal with hellion drops, they also deal with cloak banshee, reapers, and almost any other tech you might see from a gas terran) and if they go for a 3 rax stim all-in you can use the MsC ability (the one that makes the nexus attack) to buy yourself time as you get more zealots / immortals / sentries out. Cannons are completely unnecessary against widow mines in the early game, and you'll be getting cannons up in the mid-late game anyway.
Honestly, I feel like you're just struggling against the new mechanics of the widow mine and venting your frustrations. Which is fine. But the new widow mine has only been out for 3 days; I agree it needs some tweaking (I personally think armory requirement and have the attack scale with vehicle upgrades- right now it's too strong in the early game and too weak in the late game), but I haven't seen anything that suggests it's op in my games (playing T and P mostly).
Edit: And if losing your observers is a problem, you really just need to work on minimap awareness / unit control. Losing an observer to a widow mine shouldn't be an issue unless you're moving your observer around recklessly.
On October 08 2012 03:36 aaycumi wrote: Need to poke with the first Zealot and Stalker, classic scouting to count the Marines and may be a Marauder. To scout Reactor openings, seriously the game changes and if you just sit in your base and do nothing, I have no sympathy.
? I said I did that. The point is that hellion drop, quick stim, and widows will all show the same thing damn thing (unless he's a retard and builds his factory right where I can see it).
I remember people saying stuff like "oh it's impossible to defend against terran because you can't scout their base early on" in Starcraft 2. Do you people really have this short of a memory? People are leveling all of the same whiny, made up complaints about the game now that they did before...
its been like a few days man, you said yourself that your only diamond level, lets give it some time to see what the pros do? In WOL, terran has to worry about blink stalkers, dts, void rays, etc etc etc and it can be very hard to account for all of these things at leagues lower than highish master. I havent even played hots but ive watched plenty of it, there are plenty of new and changing strats that we see every day. lets give it a little time, saying that "pvt is broken end of story" has no place in the discussion at this point
? I said I did that. The point is that hellion drop, quick stim, and widows will all show the same thing damn thing (unless he's a retard and builds his factory right where I can see it).
correct me if i'm wrong but protoss is the same. 1 gas taken when scout goes in can mean a lot of different things (4 gate, early robo immortal push, fast blink all in, void ray, etc...)
granted terran have a scan. however, the scan comes at a risk as well because if it misses what it needs to see then the terran is out 1 mule.
The fact that you cannot instantly tell what an opponent is doing from 1 gas gives the game some depth. how boring would this be if all you had to do was walk into your opponents base with your first scout, see a gas, and say "alright this is exactly what's going on, here is how i counter it." The game is more fun when it is played out like "alright this is what i THINK my opponent can do and here is a response that can protect me from xyz and understand that I am still weak to abc and know how to deal with those situations if it were to come up."
Don't play the game like rock paper scissors. Sometimes rock needs to beat paper.
what's kinda annoying is if you expand 30 food or later they can plant a widow mine at your nat and you can't take it until you get an observer. Before the patch you could just run a probe into it but now it seems you have to rush expo (and be semi-vulnerable to window mine rushes into your main mineral line) or be content to be behind on macro.
Man, this does seem emotional! If you didn't type things like End. of. Story., put question marks at the end of statements, have your title in all caps, or type things like So yeah, then it would not seem as emotional.
what's kinda annoying is if you expand 30 food or later they can plant a widow mine at your nat and you can't take it until you get an observer. Before the patch you could just run a probe into it but now it seems you have to rush expo (and be semi-vulnerable to window mine rushes into your main mineral line) or be content to be behind on macro.
i think this could be an issue of using old build orders against the new units. If we were to theory craft here could you assume that terran had to cut a lot of corners defensively to get the widow mine out that quickly (ie: less barracks, delayed stim, etc...) . Would it be possible to transition into something aggressive like an early immortal timing and just kill them?
They don't have to cut any corners to get widow mines early, think of it as the same as a hellion build but without having to get the reactor (still could get it if they want) just gas->rax->factory. I think an old school 1 gate expo would get the nexus up just barely before the mine gets there, but I've been mostly doing builds that involve a mothership core before expo which slows the nexus down by 15-20 seconds.
On October 08 2012 03:16 TennesseeNA wrote: As I posted in the HOTS Beta forum at Blizzard- I'm essentially trying to sum up all the problems the widow mines create in PvT. Let me know what you all think.
My thread got locked for "emotional feedback" where there was none.
I think I made a very legitimate point- if I see an early gas on terran, I cannot literally defend all of his options anymore. If he goes for a quick stim push, that's stoppable. If he goes for hellion drop, that's stoppable. If he goes for widow mines, that's stoppable.
But I'm locked out from his base once that first marine pops, until I manage to get observers. And I fail to see how I can defend all three of those main options the terran has without scouting before my first observer pops. Even if I test his front with the usual stalker-zealot, I still don't have enough information.
Is the widow mine OP as well? Yes. But it wouldn't be so bad if I could actually get an observer out before he's already building them. Then I just toss down a cannon in both mineral lines, put my probes in a hotkey group, and be ready to pull them if he drops.
My complaint was that the SPEED with which the widow mine pops, and the near impossibility of me scouting after my probe leaves, and the multiple options a terran has off of a quick gas essentially make it impossible for me to defend everything. He HAS to screw up in some way (revealing his hand too early, letting me run by stalkers, etc.) for me to handle PvT early game.
And the worst thing is that even if I know he's dropping widows, even if I build a cannon (because if you just leave an observer around, it dies instantly) I have to respond INSTANTLY to not lose 10+ probes on a saturated base.
So toss got a cute little lockdown from the Oracle that just stops mining for 45 seconds, AT BEST, but like 5-10 against a high level player, and terran got a unit that, at worst, makes me spend like 300 per base on static defense and/or observers and still probably lose 10+ probes, and even if I pull instantly, I lose more time mining than what any Oracle I have does against him.
So yeah. Call my criticism emotional. But the widow mine is so OP its just kind of absurd.
Oh, and if I throw down a cannon against a terran rushing widow mines, and then he just switches into MMM and drops with medivacs, the cannon is totally useless, AND I have to rebuild the cannon in case he deices to drop widow mines next time.
You see my point? Widow mines are unbalanced because the response they necessitate is so useless against other terran harassment options, and it makes the early game an incredible, almost unmanageable strain, on Protoss.
Look, either buff slightly protoss early game and give us another detection option that the widow mine doesn't smash to pieces, because throwing down cannons in my base just does nothing if he then switches to MMM. And if he knows I cannoned, he can just post his two widow mines at his front and in the middle of his production lines (and then rotate them around his base at intervals) and if I'm not checking my observer every thirty seconds, POOF, there goes all my scouting info.
Seriously, this isn't emotional feedback. This is just pure gameplay analysis. Dealing with MMM drops w/o blink was already difficult enough, and now he has a unit that requires an entirely different response to defend, AND if used well can essentially deny all my scouting? I even had a game where the guy just rushed 4 widow mines, and then stutter walked the pairs up my front lol. If I tried to attack while they were burrowing, poof goes all my zealots. If I try to just attack with my stalkers, they don't do enough damage to kill them, and then I have to wait for my observer, while he takes his natural and I'm bottled up in my base.
Basically I'm reduced to rushing a MSc and a bunch of stalkers and using high ground vision to hit his base that way. Of course, if he just plays it cool, pulls his units back and lets me snipe a couple of depots, and waits for the widow mines to pop, I have to pull back and now I've got like 8 stalkers, a MSc, no sentries, and no zealots (such a great unit comp if he goes MMM right? Sarcasm, fyi).
Look, I'm high diamond in WOL because I out think my opponents. My macro is meh, my micro is decent, and my build orders are really loose and usually not well tailored to what I end up going. I play high level competitive chess and am studying game theory- that's my basis for this essay. This is not an idle complaint- HOTS PvT is broken. My honest opinion is that a perfectly playing Toss, against a perfectly playing Terran, is just playing rock-paper-scissors. You have to get lucky and guess correctly what he's going to do with that gas. You have to GUESS. A terran just rotating between hellion-drop, quick stim push, and widow-drop should theoretically win 66% of the time, just straight up. The necessary responses from Toss are too different, and Toss tech switches and early gas usage too high, to defend all 3 well.
Anyways, lock me again if you like? I figured the purpose of HOTS beta was to get detailed feeback on the matchup problems and balancing issues. That's what I'm giving- Toss has too long a period where they can't scout (so we have to build in the dark), too high gas usage (I need sentries against stim-push, but lots of early gas for robo and chronoed observers+ stalkers against widow), and almost no ability to "re-orient" tech (not enough gas on one base to even attempt a tech switch, too long a build time on Nexus not to be behind substantially against a Terran tech switch [like widow drop into MMM]), and one of our vision options, the observer, can get sniped by widows (and, as I pointed out, cannons are a giant waste of minerals against MMM and will die instantly to stim-drop) (and then have to be rebuilt anyways because he can just drop widows the next time).
This match-up is basically broken right now. End. of. Story. If a blizz rep wants to come have a dialogue with me, either in here or via messaging/email, I would love to hear another side to the debate. Maybe they think MSc use+Stalker rush (the only thing I have success with right now) is the counter to one basing Terran. If anyone wants to take Blizzard's side of the debate, I'd love to hear that too. I'm not claiming I'm 100% right, but I haven't heard a single argument from a blizz rep, or even another player, that PvT is a balanced matchup in HOTS.
Anyways, looking forward to the next patch, and seeing what changes get made. I still think the Oracle is fairly useless (mainly because of the necessity of detection in both PvT and PvZ right now) and I honestly haven't used a tempest once (I play gateway expand pressure builds against zerg, so I either win or lose by the time they're relevant).
1. Its a beta test for a reason. They are testing the new widow mine concept where it burrows and attacks every 40 seconds. They can easily tweak the damage numbers to balance this. 2. You should try getting faster robo 3. You do sound emotional, so I think they made the right call in locking your thread
I think the problem is with conflicting Robo timings. If you see their gas and they are going for fast widow mines then you need that robo directly after your first gate. You will stop the widows with an obs if you do this, but the problem then if they are going say some kind of fast 3 rax or delayed 2 rax tech-reactor push then you won't have enough units off of 1 gate to stop it, since your gates 2 & 3 will be delayed because of the necessarily fast robo. You could alternatively get the robo later, and use sentries to stop the widow mines from coming close, but that means being stuck in your base, letting the Terran do what they want at your own natural until you have an obs out (deny mining, bunker your nexus, kill your nexus even if they are particularly aggressive). It's bringing PvT back to the same robo-dependent restrictiveness that we see in Wings of Liberty, which is the complete opposite of their intentions of diversifying the match-ups (this is after all why the Oracle got a detection ability). Personally I think they either need to make Widow Mines require an Armory, or make them cost enough gas that fast widow mines require an unusually early gas timing like 11 gas that would tip the protoss off.
ya have to agree with serenity (post above this). gateway units+robo after expo still hold all of the terran 1 base tech stuff anyway (marine/widow mine/tank pushes off 1 reactor rax 2 factory might actually be super tough to stop but haven't seen them yet). Just need to keep stalkers in your main to ward off medivacs with widow mines mine (same as you would vs hellion drop and banshee).
Here's a fix. When the Widow Mine Shots it's missle, it reveals itself for a short while, Giving the Protoss a quick second to be able to disable the mine without the need for detection. However, Protoss have to have lightning reflexes in order to do so.
Much like how Protoss would eliminate Spiders pre-Obs in BW.
Look, I'm high diamond in WOL because I out think my opponents. My macro is meh, my micro is decent, and my build orders are really loose and usually not well tailored to what I end up going. I play high level competitive chess and am studying game theory- that's my basis for this essay. This is not an idle complaint- HOTS PvT is broken. My honest opinion is that a perfectly playing Toss, against a perfectly playing Terran, is just playing rock-paper-scissors. You have to get lucky and guess correctly what he's going to do with that gas. You have to GUESS. A terran just rotating between hellion-drop, quick stim push, and widow-drop should theoretically win 66% of the time, just straight up. The necessary responses from Toss are too different, and Toss tech switches and early gas usage too high, to defend all 3 well.
keep yourself out of the arguements, especially if your trying to claim that its a purely factual, non emotional post.
If you keep your units spread they can only kill a single unit every 40 seconds. You aren't powerless to a mine in your minerals.. It will probably do damage, but its the protoss' fault for letting it get into the mineral line. There isn't a perfect save against a DT that gets in. there shouldn't be for a widow mine. It's all mitigatable.
Look, I'm high diamond in WOL because I out think my opponents. My macro is meh, my micro is decent, and my build orders are really loose and usually not well tailored to what I end up going. I play high level competitive chess and am studying game theory- that's my basis for this essay. This is not an idle complaint- HOTS PvT is broken. My honest opinion is that a perfectly playing Toss, against a perfectly playing Terran, is just playing rock-paper-scissors. You have to get lucky and guess correctly what he's going to do with that gas. You have to GUESS. A terran just rotating between hellion-drop, quick stim push, and widow-drop should theoretically win 66% of the time, just straight up. The necessary responses from Toss are too different, and Toss tech switches and early gas usage too high, to defend all 3 well.
keep yourself out of the arguements, especially if your trying to claim that its a purely factual, non emotional post.
If you keep your units spread they can only kill a single unit every 40 seconds. You aren't powerless to a mine in your minerals.. It will probably do damage, but its the protoss' fault for letting it get into the mineral line. There isn't a perfect save against a DT that gets in. there shouldn't be for a widow mine. It's all mitigatable.
I disagree with most of the OP, but you can't compare a cloaked unit that comes really late with a unit that comes from reactored factory.
On October 08 2012 05:02 GinDo wrote: Here's a fix. When the Widow Mine Shots it's missle, it reveals itself for a short while, Giving the Protoss a quick second to be able to disable the mine without the need for detection. However, Protoss have to have lightning reflexes in order to do so.
Much like how Protoss would eliminate Spiders pre-Obs in BW.
This is actually a good idea.
Another would be to make it cheaper in terms of supply/cost (or even the re-arming time) but making it so that not only it reveals itself when it attacks but also its projectile can also be taken out.
On October 08 2012 04:14 iS.Axslav wrote: what's kinda annoying is if you expand 30 food or later they can plant a widow mine at your nat and you can't take it until you get an observer. Before the patch you could just run a probe into it but now it seems you have to rush expo (and be semi-vulnerable to window mine rushes into your main mineral line) or be content to be behind on macro.
Can't you stop the widow mine from getting to your natural with your initial stalkers? I have to say I haven't played against this yet, but it seems like it shouldn't be too hard.
I dont like mines auto killing cloaked units without detection, I mean, at the same time while blocking sneak attack paths with them, even cloaked units cant do shit, and without a single drop of detection
On October 08 2012 04:14 iS.Axslav wrote: what's kinda annoying is if you expand 30 food or later they can plant a widow mine at your nat and you can't take it until you get an observer. Before the patch you could just run a probe into it but now it seems you have to rush expo (and be semi-vulnerable to window mine rushes into your main mineral line) or be content to be behind on macro.
Can't you stop the widow mine from getting to your natural with your initial stalkers? I have to say I haven't played against this yet, but it seems like it shouldn't be too hard.
At 90 health, it takes 10 shots from 1 stalker, 5 shots from 2 to kill a widow mine. With the 2 second burrow time and the stalkers 1.44 attack rate, they can only fire once before it burrows. If you're lucky and see the mine before it burrows you might get a second volley off, but as mentioned it's still not enough to kill it, even with 3 stalkers you need 3 shots per stalker from the 3 stalkers before it dies. And needless to say zealots and sentries won't help any more in killing them.
As an aside, I think part of the problem is also that the splash damage is 40, as this is exactly enough to kill probes and drones en masse.
On October 08 2012 05:36 MerdaPura wrote: I dont like mines auto killing cloaked units without detection, I mean, at the same time while blocking sneak attack paths with them, even cloaked units cant do shit, and without a single drop of detection
I agree, this is kind of stupid. Only reason i liked mines attacking cloaked units is because fast DT or Lurker was super painful without an acadamy or Ebay.
Seems a lot less justified with scans being available in almost 100% of games
Widow mines are just incredibly retarded now. How the gell toss can destroy mines with sieged tanks behind. Also, mines just destroyed build diversity of protoss. No fast expo, no gateways opening. The fix is, after shooting missile, widow mine should have a minimum 6-7 second reburrow time, so they are actually possibly to destroy.
On October 08 2012 03:16 TennesseeNA wrote: As I posted in the HOTS Beta forum at Blizzard- I'm essentially trying to sum up all the problems the widow mines create in PvT. Let me know what you all think.
My thread got locked for "emotional feedback" where there was none.
I think I made a very legitimate point- if I see an early gas on terran, I cannot literally defend all of his options anymore. If he goes for a quick stim push, that's stoppable. If he goes for hellion drop, that's stoppable. If he goes for widow mines, that's stoppable.
But I'm locked out from his base once that first marine pops, until I manage to get observers. And I fail to see how I can defend all three of those main options the terran has without scouting before my first observer pops. Even if I test his front with the usual stalker-zealot, I still don't have enough information.
Is the widow mine OP as well? Yes. But it wouldn't be so bad if I could actually get an observer out before he's already building them. Then I just toss down a cannon in both mineral lines, put my probes in a hotkey group, and be ready to pull them if he drops.
My complaint was that the SPEED with which the widow mine pops, and the near impossibility of me scouting after my probe leaves, and the multiple options a terran has off of a quick gas essentially make it impossible for me to defend everything. He HAS to screw up in some way (revealing his hand too early, letting me run by stalkers, etc.) for me to handle PvT early game.
And the worst thing is that even if I know he's dropping widows, even if I build a cannon (because if you just leave an observer around, it dies instantly) I have to respond INSTANTLY to not lose 10+ probes on a saturated base.
So toss got a cute little lockdown from the Oracle that just stops mining for 45 seconds, AT BEST, but like 5-10 against a high level player, and terran got a unit that, at worst, makes me spend like 300 per base on static defense and/or observers and still probably lose 10+ probes, and even if I pull instantly, I lose more time mining than what any Oracle I have does against him.
So yeah. Call my criticism emotional. But the widow mine is so OP its just kind of absurd.
Oh, and if I throw down a cannon against a terran rushing widow mines, and then he just switches into MMM and drops with medivacs, the cannon is totally useless, AND I have to rebuild the cannon in case he deices to drop widow mines next time.
You see my point? Widow mines are unbalanced because the response they necessitate is so useless against other terran harassment options, and it makes the early game an incredible, almost unmanageable strain, on Protoss.
Look, either buff slightly protoss early game and give us another detection option that the widow mine doesn't smash to pieces, because throwing down cannons in my base just does nothing if he then switches to MMM. And if he knows I cannoned, he can just post his two widow mines at his front and in the middle of his production lines (and then rotate them around his base at intervals) and if I'm not checking my observer every thirty seconds, POOF, there goes all my scouting info.
Seriously, this isn't emotional feedback. This is just pure gameplay analysis. Dealing with MMM drops w/o blink was already difficult enough, and now he has a unit that requires an entirely different response to defend, AND if used well can essentially deny all my scouting? I even had a game where the guy just rushed 4 widow mines, and then stutter walked the pairs up my front lol. If I tried to attack while they were burrowing, poof goes all my zealots. If I try to just attack with my stalkers, they don't do enough damage to kill them, and then I have to wait for my observer, while he takes his natural and I'm bottled up in my base.
Basically I'm reduced to rushing a MSc and a bunch of stalkers and using high ground vision to hit his base that way. Of course, if he just plays it cool, pulls his units back and lets me snipe a couple of depots, and waits for the widow mines to pop, I have to pull back and now I've got like 8 stalkers, a MSc, no sentries, and no zealots (such a great unit comp if he goes MMM right? Sarcasm, fyi).
Look, I'm high diamond in WOL because I out think my opponents. My macro is meh, my micro is decent, and my build orders are really loose and usually not well tailored to what I end up going. I play high level competitive chess and am studying game theory- that's my basis for this essay. This is not an idle complaint- HOTS PvT is broken. My honest opinion is that a perfectly playing Toss, against a perfectly playing Terran, is just playing rock-paper-scissors. You have to get lucky and guess correctly what he's going to do with that gas. You have to GUESS. A terran just rotating between hellion-drop, quick stim push, and widow-drop should theoretically win 66% of the time, just straight up. The necessary responses from Toss are too different, and Toss tech switches and early gas usage too high, to defend all 3 well.
Anyways, lock me again if you like? I figured the purpose of HOTS beta was to get detailed feeback on the matchup problems and balancing issues. That's what I'm giving- Toss has too long a period where they can't scout (so we have to build in the dark), too high gas usage (I need sentries against stim-push, but lots of early gas for robo and chronoed observers+ stalkers against widow), and almost no ability to "re-orient" tech (not enough gas on one base to even attempt a tech switch, too long a build time on Nexus not to be behind substantially against a Terran tech switch [like widow drop into MMM]), and one of our vision options, the observer, can get sniped by widows (and, as I pointed out, cannons are a giant waste of minerals against MMM and will die instantly to stim-drop) (and then have to be rebuilt anyways because he can just drop widows the next time).
This match-up is basically broken right now. End. of. Story. If a blizz rep wants to come have a dialogue with me, either in here or via messaging/email, I would love to hear another side to the debate. Maybe they think MSc use+Stalker rush (the only thing I have success with right now) is the counter to one basing Terran. If anyone wants to take Blizzard's side of the debate, I'd love to hear that too. I'm not claiming I'm 100% right, but I haven't heard a single argument from a blizz rep, or even another player, that PvT is a balanced matchup in HOTS.
Anyways, looking forward to the next patch, and seeing what changes get made. I still think the Oracle is fairly useless (mainly because of the necessity of detection in both PvT and PvZ right now) and I honestly haven't used a tempest once (I play gateway expand pressure builds against zerg, so I either win or lose by the time they're relevant).
1. Its a beta test for a reason. They are testing the new widow mine concept where it burrows and attacks every 40 seconds. They can easily tweak the damage numbers to balance this. 2. You should try getting faster robo 3. You do sound emotional, so I think they made the right call in locking your thread
^ This sums up my thoughts about 3-4paragraphs in
EDIT: In other words stop the QQ about OP widow mines. They will tweak down every patch or find alternatives until they are satisfied with the result or if not they will take it out like the warhound or change it completely like they did TWO FREAKING DAYS AGO.
Unemotional post = "Problem: Reason: Solution:" Emotional post = a huge wall of text, waffling about what league you're in and why this has ruined your life. Good God man, get a grip!
It's been out for a day. Give it some time. Of course there are issues with it - It's been out for a single day. And it's an unusual unit that will take time to correct for all the problems it creates, so you might deal with some frustration for a while, that's what the beta is for.
On October 08 2012 04:00 alexanderzero wrote: I remember people saying stuff like "oh it's impossible to defend against terran because you can't scout their base early on" in Starcraft 2. Do you people really have this short of a memory? People are leveling all of the same whiny, made up complaints about the game now that they did before...
As soon as any option becomes viable for any race there is bound to be shit loads of QQ from the opposing races
On October 08 2012 06:22 RoberP wrote: Unemotional post = "Problem: Reason: Solution:" Emotional post = a huge wall of text, waffling about what league you're in and why this has ruined your life. Good God man, get a grip!
On October 08 2012 04:14 iS.Axslav wrote: what's kinda annoying is if you expand 30 food or later they can plant a widow mine at your nat and you can't take it until you get an observer. Before the patch you could just run a probe into it but now it seems you have to rush expo (and be semi-vulnerable to window mine rushes into your main mineral line) or be content to be behind on macro.
Can't you stop the widow mine from getting to your natural with your initial stalkers? I have to say I haven't played against this yet, but it seems like it shouldn't be too hard.
Simple answer is no. It can burrow faster than two stalkers can ff it down. Not only that but if they wait until they have two they can burrow and then you are forced to withdraw or you lose two stalkers as they are one shotted.
I don't see why if Terran goes factory before expand, it's unreasonable for Protoss to one gate robo expand to get an obs. In theory obviously.
Also alexanderzero's post is completely right. Back in the time of 1-1-1 there were dozens of "you can't reliably scout a Terran so you can never beat them" posts all over teamliquid an screddit. This post is emotional, whoever locked your last thread did the right thing.
On October 08 2012 04:14 iS.Axslav wrote: what's kinda annoying is if you expand 30 food or later they can plant a widow mine at your nat and you can't take it until you get an observer. Before the patch you could just run a probe into it but now it seems you have to rush expo (and be semi-vulnerable to window mine rushes into your main mineral line) or be content to be behind on macro.
Can't you stop the widow mine from getting to your natural with your initial stalkers? I have to say I haven't played against this yet, but it seems like it shouldn't be too hard.
At 90 health, it takes 10 shots from 1 stalker, 5 shots from 2 to kill a widow mine. With the 2 second burrow time and the stalkers 1.44 attack rate, they can only fire once before it burrows. If you're lucky and see the mine before it burrows you might get a second volley off, but as mentioned it's still not enough to kill it, even with 3 stalkers you need 3 shots per stalker from the 3 stalkers before it dies. And needless to say zealots and sentries won't help any more in killing them.
As an aside, I think part of the problem is also that the splash damage is 40, as this is exactly enough to kill probes and drones en masse.
Yeah, but your stalkers will have all the way from the Terran's base to your base to kite them if you're doing a standard zealot / stalker poke. This is definitely doable. Although I agree that 90 hp seems a bit high, something like 60 might be more reasonable.
I'm pretty sure the splash damage was buffed to 60 in a previous patch. But honestly I don't see how this is a problem, with decent control that's 1 probe / drone / scv every 40 seconds until detection is out IF it gets into your mineral line.
On October 08 2012 04:14 iS.Axslav wrote: what's kinda annoying is if you expand 30 food or later they can plant a widow mine at your nat and you can't take it until you get an observer. Before the patch you could just run a probe into it but now it seems you have to rush expo (and be semi-vulnerable to window mine rushes into your main mineral line) or be content to be behind on macro.
Can't you stop the widow mine from getting to your natural with your initial stalkers? I have to say I haven't played against this yet, but it seems like it shouldn't be too hard.
At 90 health, it takes 10 shots from 1 stalker, 5 shots from 2 to kill a widow mine. With the 2 second burrow time and the stalkers 1.44 attack rate, they can only fire once before it burrows. If you're lucky and see the mine before it burrows you might get a second volley off, but as mentioned it's still not enough to kill it, even with 3 stalkers you need 3 shots per stalker from the 3 stalkers before it dies. And needless to say zealots and sentries won't help any more in killing them.
As an aside, I think part of the problem is also that the splash damage is 40, as this is exactly enough to kill probes and drones en masse.
Yeah, but your stalkers will have all the way from the Terran's base to your base to kite them if you're doing a standard zealot / stalker poke. This is definitely doable. Although I agree that 90 hp seems a bit high, something like 60 might be more reasonable.
I'm pretty sure the splash damage was buffed to 60 in a previous patch. But honestly I don't see how this is a problem, with decent control that's 1 probe / drone / scv every 40 seconds until detection is out IF it gets into your mineral line.
edit: sorry for double post, meant to edit and hit quote instead >.<
On October 08 2012 04:14 iS.Axslav wrote: what's kinda annoying is if you expand 30 food or later they can plant a widow mine at your nat and you can't take it until you get an observer. Before the patch you could just run a probe into it but now it seems you have to rush expo (and be semi-vulnerable to window mine rushes into your main mineral line) or be content to be behind on macro.
Can't you stop the widow mine from getting to your natural with your initial stalkers? I have to say I haven't played against this yet, but it seems like it shouldn't be too hard.
At 90 health, it takes 10 shots from 1 stalker, 5 shots from 2 to kill a widow mine. With the 2 second burrow time and the stalkers 1.44 attack rate, they can only fire once before it burrows. If you're lucky and see the mine before it burrows you might get a second volley off, but as mentioned it's still not enough to kill it, even with 3 stalkers you need 3 shots per stalker from the 3 stalkers before it dies. And needless to say zealots and sentries won't help any more in killing them.
As an aside, I think part of the problem is also that the splash damage is 40, as this is exactly enough to kill probes and drones en masse.
Omg I had no idea that they had 90hp. That's messed up! I thought they had some reasonable amount of health like 50.
This is a classic case of trying to use WoL openings against HoTS content. If we have to become secure before we expand then that's what we have to do. If that means [TvP] a second rax (to deny msc scouting) or [PvT] a robo (to detect mines) before, or [TvT] marauder first (to deflect reaper) before expand then do it.
WoL is at the point where on a daily basis people say that if you don't fast expand you are all-in, or if you make any attacks before you have 3 bases you are all-in. This mentality makes for boring max vs max games. I hope the changes to HoTS can force us to delay our natural and then our 3rd a little for safety and encourage more harassment and skirmishes.
I don't see why everyone is so stuck on the widow mine. It is obviously OP, and will be nerfed. They just changed it, ofc it is going to have problems. The raw numbers on it (damage, health, cost) are absolutely ridiculous. It isn't going to stay the way it is, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it changed by the end of the week. Additionally, I'm pretty sure it isn't supposed to see cloaked units on its own (just a hunch).
Until then, just prepare for it. Almost every terran I play now is trying to abuse it in some way (which is probably good for the game long-term), and if you know it is coming it isn't that hard to deal with.
I didn't realise you couldn't snipe the things before they exploded? I mean, without wishing to harp on about BW, Spidermines functioned pretty well, they had a little burrow time where you could snipe them, and you could abuse their AI to drag them in. I do quite like the widowmine ideas, just need a bit of refinement. There is no way they should automatically wipe out cloaked units though, especially given that Protoss scouting is extremely reliant on observers.
Anyway I think Blizz have somewhat given themselves a lot of problems with HoTS by insisting that everything they add has to be a 'unit'. The Mothership Core and Widow Mine are being changed over and over again by virtue of this. If the MSC was in its previous form, tethered to a nexus it would be easier to balance it without taking lots of abuse possibilites into account (i.e early close air MS recall all-ins).
That said, it is good that the Widow mine isn't trash, and that people are using it. It has been seen time and time again that giving a race something abuseably powerful in Beta is conducive to good testing, given that they actually use it and you can tone it downwards from there. Contrast this with the oracles/tempests in early builds, or even phase shield, which, while not terrible just didn't see much use and got scrapped
On October 08 2012 10:52 Wombat_NI wrote: I didn't realise you couldn't snipe the things before they exploded? I mean, without wishing to harp on about BW, Spidermines functioned pretty well, they had a little burrow time where you could snipe them, and you could abuse their AI to drag them in. I do quite like the widowmine ideas, just need a bit of refinement. There is no way they should automatically wipe out cloaked units though, especially given that Protoss scouting is extremely reliant on observers.
Anyway I think Blizz have somewhat given themselves a lot of problems with HoTS by insisting that everything they add has to be a 'unit'. The Mothership Core and Widow Mine are being changed over and over again by virtue of this. If the MSC was in its previous form, tethered to a nexus it would be easier to balance it without taking lots of abuse possibilites into account (i.e early close air MS recall all-ins).
That said, it is good that the Widow mine isn't trash, and that people are using it. It has been seen time and time again that giving a race something abuseably powerful in Beta is conducive to good testing, given that they actually use it and you can tone it downwards from there. Contrast this with the oracles/tempests in early builds, or even phase shield, which, while not terrible just didn't see much use and got scrapped
Or even the new mineral siphon ability... How can they make the widow mine stupidly powerful and make the oracle spell so bad it's not even funny? It doesn't help anyone (testers or Blizzard) to add an ability that's only worth it in .01% of cases. They will get no feedback because no one wants to use that crap.
On October 08 2012 11:17 Fig wrote: Or even the new mineral siphon ability... How can they make the widow mine stupidly powerful and make the oracle spell so bad it's not even funny? It doesn't help anyone (testers or Blizzard) to add an ability that's only worth it in .01% of cases. They will get no feedback because no one wants to use that crap.
Which is exactly why it's gonna get tossed out next week.
On October 08 2012 05:02 GinDo wrote: Here's a fix. When the Widow Mine Shots it's missle, it reveals itself for a short while, Giving the Protoss a quick second to be able to disable the mine without the need for detection. However, Protoss have to have lightning reflexes in order to do so.
Much like how Protoss would eliminate Spiders pre-Obs in BW.
Mines were free in BW they cost in SC2. They're no different then baneling bombs. So, I don't understand why your proposing such a silly idea.
I don't even know why people compare SC1 and SC2 mines. They are nothing like each other. Even the earlier versions which exploded were nothing like SC1 mines. They have a completely different role, and can not be used for any of the SC1 uses. In fact if they decide to keep the current 'shoots a missile' concept I hope they remove the word 'mine' from the unit name just to stop the bad comparisons.
you have to send a zeal + stalker in to scout. If terran forgos stim then he has only a few rines while hes rushing widow mines... if your zealot + stalker evaporate up the ramp then he's going for some mmm or stim push. These are early game decisions that both of you make... and you mentioning your league was really unnecessary because now you have no credibility.
On October 08 2012 03:16 TennesseeNA wrote:I still think the Oracle is fairly useless (mainly because of the necessity of detection in both PvT and PvZ right now)
If detection is a necessity, how is the Oracle useless? O_o
On October 08 2012 12:15 Zaurus wrote: Just make them appear before impact. So they can be Sniped. This makes them weak alone but strong when used together with tank support!
That already happens. they are revealed for 1-1.5 seconds when shooting their payload just like bw spider mines.
Just goes to show how little folks know about the new game mechanics and are still crying OP.
I hope they add an Armory requirement for Widow mines - that will force 1 additional building, hopefully giving the opponent time to actually CONSIDER doing something about these stupidly-OP "units"
On October 08 2012 12:15 Zaurus wrote: Just make them appear before impact. So they can be Sniped. This makes them weak alone but strong when used together with tank support!
That already happens. they are revealed for 1-1.5 seconds when shooting their payload just like bw spider mines.
Just goes to show how little folks know about the new game mechanics and are still crying OP.
first know the facts please.
Check if they can be sniped first before posting a reply??
On October 08 2012 12:15 Zaurus wrote: Just make them appear before impact. So they can be Sniped. This makes them weak alone but strong when used together with tank support!
That already happens. they are revealed for 1-1.5 seconds when shooting their payload just like bw spider mines.
Just goes to show how little folks know about the new game mechanics and are still crying OP.
first know the facts please.
Check if they can be sniped first before posting a reply??
On October 08 2012 12:15 Zaurus wrote: Just make them appear before impact. So they can be Sniped. This makes them weak alone but strong when used together with tank support!
That already happens. they are revealed for 1-1.5 seconds when shooting their payload just like bw spider mines.
Just goes to show how little folks know about the new game mechanics and are still crying OP.
first know the facts please.
THIS you can if you don't blindly move your units forward actually move back with them before the mine hits ( not even that hard done it with Banshees , Reapers , Helions before ). You just have to see it and react fast enough. Hell you can even kill it if you have enough stuff in range before it's shooting.
People are not used to playing against things that force you to not 1A units across the map.
You now have to pay attention to your units, watch your observer, and be...careful. The widow mine is doing exactly what blizzard wanted and fans wanted - break up the deathball, make the game have more depth.
There is a replay of me playing protoss defending against a proxy factory widow mine shinanigan. Notice pylon walls. Notice I don't 1A stalkers into widow mines and then complain like a lot of people are when they are losing units for no reason. Also notice the amount of observers I built.
It will become standard for protoss to build at least 3 observers (should have been doing that already). But going up to 5-6 I can see being much more common as well.
On October 08 2012 11:17 Fig wrote: Or even the new mineral siphon ability... How can they make the widow mine stupidly powerful and make the oracle spell so bad it's not even funny? It doesn't help anyone (testers or Blizzard) to add an ability that's only worth it in .01% of cases. They will get no feedback because no one wants to use that crap.
Which is exactly why it's gonna get tossed out next week.
On October 08 2012 11:17 Fig wrote: Or even the new mineral siphon ability... How can they make the widow mine stupidly powerful and make the oracle spell so bad it's not even funny? It doesn't help anyone (testers or Blizzard) to add an ability that's only worth it in .01% of cases. They will get no feedback because no one wants to use that crap.
Which is exactly why it's gonna get tossed out next week.
What should it be replaced with?
better question is that is crawdad a blizzard employee?
On October 08 2012 14:21 avilo wrote: People are not used to playing against things that force you to not 1A units across the map.
You now have to pay attention to your units, watch your observer, and be...careful. The widow mine is doing exactly what blizzard wanted and fans wanted - break up the deathball, make the game have more depth.
There is a replay of me playing protoss defending against a proxy factory widow mine shinanigan. Notice pylon walls. Notice I don't 1A stalkers into widow mines and then complain like a lot of people are when they are losing units for no reason. Also notice the amount of observers I built.
It will become standard for protoss to build at least 3 observers (should have been doing that already). But going up to 5-6 I can see being much more common as well.
sure thats just want protoss want......more forcing of going robo first on unscoutable builds. Does no one read the OP?
On October 08 2012 14:21 avilo wrote: People are not used to playing against things that force you to not 1A units across the map.
You now have to pay attention to your units, watch your observer, and be...careful. The widow mine is doing exactly what blizzard wanted and fans wanted - break up the deathball, make the game have more depth.
There is a replay of me playing protoss defending against a proxy factory widow mine shinanigan. Notice pylon walls. Notice I don't 1A stalkers into widow mines and then complain like a lot of people are when they are losing units for no reason. Also notice the amount of observers I built.
It will become standard for protoss to build at least 3 observers (should have been doing that already). But going up to 5-6 I can see being much more common as well.
sure thats just want protoss want......more forcing of going robo first on unscoutable builds. Does no one read the OP?
OH NO you have to go robo against their gas. It's not as though you're forced to go robo against CC first or anything. You might be slightly behind if getting gas is a fake or they're going 2/3 rax it might be tough, but in no way is it impossible to respond to.
On October 08 2012 14:21 avilo wrote: People are not used to playing against things that force you to not 1A units across the map.
You now have to pay attention to your units, watch your observer, and be...careful. The widow mine is doing exactly what blizzard wanted and fans wanted - break up the deathball, make the game have more depth.
There is a replay of me playing protoss defending against a proxy factory widow mine shinanigan. Notice pylon walls. Notice I don't 1A stalkers into widow mines and then complain like a lot of people are when they are losing units for no reason. Also notice the amount of observers I built.
It will become standard for protoss to build at least 3 observers (should have been doing that already). But going up to 5-6 I can see being much more common as well.
sure thats just want protoss want......more forcing of going robo first on unscoutable builds. Does no one read the OP?
Watch brood war. It was standard to build a robo for observers to deal with mines. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
The reason I say there's nothing wrong with that is because widow mines are going to be common occurrences now. So the entire unit interactions change because you have to realize the widow mine is not mobile and itself cannot "kill you" unless you horribly mess something up.
If you go stalkers with observers vs someone making widow mines, it's highly possible you kill 3-6 mines without even losing any units.
Lots of things are going to change, people just have to adapt.
Well husky recently uploaded a video with Qxc vs Zerg and it looked kinda rediculous (Qxc went mass mine).
Anyhow that is TvZ, in PvT i thnk if you get quick 2 gass + centry & hallucination you can get a super quick scout and see what is in his base really quickly. Right?
On October 08 2012 12:15 Zaurus wrote: Just make them appear before impact. So they can be Sniped. This makes them weak alone but strong when used together with tank support!
That already happens. they are revealed for 1-1.5 seconds when shooting their payload just like bw spider mines.
Just goes to show how little folks know about the new game mechanics and are still crying OP.
first know the facts please.
Check if they can be sniped first before posting a reply??
if they can be seen they can be sniped.
Wrong, you cannot attack the mine even though you can see it.
you said urslef that you have loose build orders, so basically how could you have any idea of what is to fast? Plus im sure there are other ways to scout other than having an observer in Ts base, lets try i dont know, useing the mother ship core to scout the ramp and check the marine count? o look he has X amount of marines that means he has a factory, which means its either fast banchies or widow mine drop or helein drop, what beats all of them a cannon... maybe put a prob where the dropship or banchie will fly and say, well he doesn't have an exspo and its 6 min in the game, i supose one cannon wont hurt me to bad as i am already ahead econmicly and if he. Not everything has to be a fast patch because you are not sure how to deal with it quite yet, i would say that the widow mine is overpower atm but that doesn't mean it should be nerffed just yet, if we nerf every unit and change that 'breaks the game' then what the hell is the point of the exspation, the game NEEDs to be broken, so that it can be rebuilt.
Man I just got into Beta and got to experience what its like facing the widowmine... To say the least the widowmine is very powerful and forces Protoss into robo early which puts us at a severe weakness to early pushes. The can scan and snipe observers so easy that in my opinion widowmine is going to need to be changed. Widowmines vaporize gateway units so fast that if you blink you will miss it!
On October 08 2012 21:39 JediZealot wrote: Man I just got into Beta and got to experience what its like facing the widowmine... To say the least the widowmine is very powerful and forces Protoss into robo early which puts us at a severe weakness to early pushes. The can scan and snipe observers so easy that in my opinion widowmine is going to need to be changed. Widowmines vaporize gateway units so fast that if you blink you will miss it!
Its interesting to see how much opinions change when you actually experience something first hand. I wonder how many people that comment are actually in the beta. People should state whether they have beta and experienced it first hand or are simply theory-crafting.
Personally, I have beta, and its really hard for me to face terran right now as they can easily expand behind widow mine openings. A fast window mine opening can mean macro or aggression. Not only that, but each widow mine is extremely cost efficient, at least till mid game.
On October 08 2012 14:21 avilo wrote: People are not used to playing against things that force you to not 1A units across the map.
You now have to pay attention to your units, watch your observer, and be...careful. The widow mine is doing exactly what blizzard wanted and fans wanted - break up the deathball, make the game have more depth.
There is a replay of me playing protoss defending against a proxy factory widow mine shinanigan. Notice pylon walls. Notice I don't 1A stalkers into widow mines and then complain like a lot of people are when they are losing units for no reason. Also notice the amount of observers I built.
It will become standard for protoss to build at least 3 observers (should have been doing that already). But going up to 5-6 I can see being much more common as well.
Thing about the widow mine is it will gurantee damages. 2 widow mines can kill a pack of marines/workers with splash dmg. Even if you reveal it and kill it the dmg was done and the mine paid for itself. Burrowed banelings on the other hand the player controls them, he decides if he should pop them on a group of 5 marines or wait for a larger pack. Also it rewards players for keeping ravens/obs/overseers with the army. Widow mines still get at least one shot off (if not on CD) on your army or even the raven b4 u kill it.
On October 08 2012 23:48 HeeroFX wrote: Thing about the widow mine is it will gurantee damages. 2 widow mines can kill a pack of marines/workers with splash dmg. Even if you reveal it and kill it the dmg was done and the mine paid for itself. Burrowed banelings on the other hand the player controls them, he decides if he should pop them on a group of 5 marines or wait for a larger pack. Also it rewards players for keeping ravens/obs/overseers with the army. Widow mines still get at least one shot off (if not on CD) on your army or even the raven b4 u kill it.
You know why they have nearly gurantteed damage? Cause they need it. They would be useless in their form if they hadnt. Thats the concept of the Mine since Broodwar. Also: You can kill it with a detector and a Unit with higher Range than 5. They only shoot when you run into them carelessly. And thats the purpose of the mine.
On October 08 2012 14:21 avilo wrote: People are not used to playing against things that force you to not 1A units across the map.
You now have to pay attention to your units, watch your observer, and be...careful. The widow mine is doing exactly what blizzard wanted and fans wanted - break up the deathball, make the game have more depth.
There is a replay of me playing protoss defending against a proxy factory widow mine shinanigan. Notice pylon walls. Notice I don't 1A stalkers into widow mines and then complain like a lot of people are when they are losing units for no reason. Also notice the amount of observers I built.
It will become standard for protoss to build at least 3 observers (should have been doing that already). But going up to 5-6 I can see being much more common as well.
sure thats just want protoss want......more forcing of going robo first on unscoutable builds. Does no one read the OP?
Watch brood war. It was standard to build a robo for observers to deal with mines. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
The reason I say there's nothing wrong with that is because widow mines are going to be common occurrences now. So the entire unit interactions change because you have to realize the widow mine is not mobile and itself cannot "kill you" unless you horribly mess something up.
If you go stalkers with observers vs someone making widow mines, it's highly possible you kill 3-6 mines without even losing any units.
Lots of things are going to change, people just have to adapt.
Yeah, but the difference in Hots is that mines come out much earlier. In BW you didn't have to rush out detection to deal with spider mines since they needed a weapons shop upgrade before they were available. And most of the times siege mode would have to be upgraded before spider mines. At least in TvP.
What's gonna happen now is that the widow mine is balanced so that it is not too strong in the early game, which is retarded. It needs to be strong mid - lategame which is where terran mech suffers the most.
On October 08 2012 14:21 avilo wrote: People are not used to playing against things that force you to not 1A units across the map.
You now have to pay attention to your units, watch your observer, and be...careful. The widow mine is doing exactly what blizzard wanted and fans wanted - break up the deathball, make the game have more depth.
There is a replay of me playing protoss defending against a proxy factory widow mine shinanigan. Notice pylon walls. Notice I don't 1A stalkers into widow mines and then complain like a lot of people are when they are losing units for no reason. Also notice the amount of observers I built.
It will become standard for protoss to build at least 3 observers (should have been doing that already). But going up to 5-6 I can see being much more common as well.
sure thats just want protoss want......more forcing of going robo first on unscoutable builds. Does no one read the OP?
Watch brood war. It was standard to build a robo for observers to deal with mines. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
The reason I say there's nothing wrong with that is because widow mines are going to be common occurrences now. So the entire unit interactions change because you have to realize the widow mine is not mobile and itself cannot "kill you" unless you horribly mess something up.
If you go stalkers with observers vs someone making widow mines, it's highly possible you kill 3-6 mines without even losing any units.
Lots of things are going to change, people just have to adapt.
Yeah, but the difference in Hots is that mines come out much earlier. In BW you didn't have to rush out detection to deal with spider mines since they needed a weapons shop upgrade before they were available. And most of the times siege mode would have to be upgraded before spider mines. At least in TvP.
What's gonna happen now is that the widow mine is balanced so that it is not too strong in the early game, which is retarded. It needs to be strong mid - lategame which is where terran mech suffers the most.
Would making widow mines require an engineering bay push the timing back far enough? I feel that the armory is to far down the tech tree, but the engineering bay the middle of the road between armory and instantly. That way, the unit that requires detection is connected to the building that allows static detection. It’s not like a factory with a reactor is bad, since it can also make hellions.
On October 08 2012 14:21 avilo wrote: People are not used to playing against things that force you to not 1A units across the map.
You now have to pay attention to your units, watch your observer, and be...careful. The widow mine is doing exactly what blizzard wanted and fans wanted - break up the deathball, make the game have more depth.
There is a replay of me playing protoss defending against a proxy factory widow mine shinanigan. Notice pylon walls. Notice I don't 1A stalkers into widow mines and then complain like a lot of people are when they are losing units for no reason. Also notice the amount of observers I built.
It will become standard for protoss to build at least 3 observers (should have been doing that already). But going up to 5-6 I can see being much more common as well.
sure thats just want protoss want......more forcing of going robo first on unscoutable builds. Does no one read the OP?
Watch brood war. It was standard to build a robo for observers to deal with mines. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
The reason I say there's nothing wrong with that is because widow mines are going to be common occurrences now. So the entire unit interactions change because you have to realize the widow mine is not mobile and itself cannot "kill you" unless you horribly mess something up.
If you go stalkers with observers vs someone making widow mines, it's highly possible you kill 3-6 mines without even losing any units.
Lots of things are going to change, people just have to adapt.
Yeah, but the difference in Hots is that mines come out much earlier. In BW you didn't have to rush out detection to deal with spider mines since they needed a weapons shop upgrade before they were available. And most of the times siege mode would have to be upgraded before spider mines. At least in TvP.
What's gonna happen now is that the widow mine is balanced so that it is not too strong in the early game, which is retarded. It needs to be strong mid - lategame which is where terran mech suffers the most.
Would making widow mines require an engineering bay push the timing back far enough? I feel that the armory is to far down the tech tree, but the engineering bay the middle of the road between armory and instantly. That way, the unit that requires detection is connected to the building that allows static detection. It’s not like a factory with a reactor is bad, since it can also make hellions.
If we restrict ourselves to TvP I think it depends. Currently it is very hard to fast expand and hold a MsC blink stalker allin. The mine seems to be useful in defending this though. If this strat is nerfed I don't see why an engineering bay requirement shouldn't be OK.
But then again, there might be no issue at all with MsC+blink allins on proper non-blizzard maps.
So ... I guess requiring an e-bay for mines would be OK.
I havent had the opportunity to play against mines yet, but I am very much looking forward to it from a Protoss perspective. I've been watching it on streams, and it really seems to add a fun new dynamic to a game that has gotten long stale. The long macro games that end with deathball vs deathball, and no conflict until then needs to stop. Anything that kills the deathball painfully is a good thing if you ask me. If it makes 1a-ing across the map a dangerous and risky ordeal then it can't come soon enough if you ask me. If it forces scouting and area control, then this shit is long overdue. And I feel all this is the case with the new widow mine. I think it should come with armory though, just so that it doesn't force fast tech to lair and force obs before expand every game. I also think the cost should be increased a little. Just a little though, not too much, and lower their HP. I like the idea that there could be mines everywhere and anywhere. I suspect I will be alone in this one, but I would like to see Immortal shields block SOME of the damage from this shot. Maybe make it do 50 shield damage, or deal 10+the splash damage to the shields.
I think the widow mine could be on it's way to solving one of the biggest problems with SC2 today. At least in one matchup...
On October 08 2012 14:21 avilo wrote: People are not used to playing against things that force you to not 1A units across the map.
You now have to pay attention to your units, watch your observer, and be...careful. The widow mine is doing exactly what blizzard wanted and fans wanted - break up the deathball, make the game have more depth.
There is a replay of me playing protoss defending against a proxy factory widow mine shinanigan. Notice pylon walls. Notice I don't 1A stalkers into widow mines and then complain like a lot of people are when they are losing units for no reason. Also notice the amount of observers I built.
It will become standard for protoss to build at least 3 observers (should have been doing that already). But going up to 5-6 I can see being much more common as well.
sure thats just want protoss want......more forcing of going robo first on unscoutable builds. Does no one read the OP?
Watch brood war. It was standard to build a robo for observers to deal with mines. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
The reason I say there's nothing wrong with that is because widow mines are going to be common occurrences now. So the entire unit interactions change because you have to realize the widow mine is not mobile and itself cannot "kill you" unless you horribly mess something up.
If you go stalkers with observers vs someone making widow mines, it's highly possible you kill 3-6 mines without even losing any units.
Lots of things are going to change, people just have to adapt.
Yeah, but the difference in Hots is that mines come out much earlier. In BW you didn't have to rush out detection to deal with spider mines since they needed a weapons shop upgrade before they were available. And most of the times siege mode would have to be upgraded before spider mines. At least in TvP.
What's gonna happen now is that the widow mine is balanced so that it is not too strong in the early game, which is retarded. It needs to be strong mid - lategame which is where terran mech suffers the most.
Would making widow mines require an engineering bay push the timing back far enough? I feel that the armory is to far down the tech tree, but the engineering bay the middle of the road between armory and instantly. That way, the unit that requires detection is connected to the building that allows static detection. It’s not like a factory with a reactor is bad, since it can also make hellions.
If we restrict ourselves to TvP I think it depends. Currently it is very hard to fast expand and hold a MsC blink stalker allin. The mine seems to be useful in defending this though. If this strat is nerfed I don't see why an engineering bay requirement shouldn't be OK.
But then again, there might be no issue at all with MsC+blink allins on proper non-blizzard maps.
So ... I guess requiring an e-bay for mines would be OK.
How about just making "unstable payload" an upgrade you need to research. That way early game you would have mines that have one time use; it suicides on the unit it attacks. Then later when you research the upgrade the mine rebuilds itself after every use.
The main problem I see now with the widow mine (besides its ability to walk to an army and burrow there, but that means just they need larger burrow time imo), is that it is a great unit early/mid game, and becomes obsolete later in the game (at least with the current metagame of deathballs). And I think most terrans wanted the exact opposite in a new unit.
My ideas about widow mines (of course subject to balance changes, only rough mechanics): Half the damage done by its missiles. Make it require tech lab Double its price Increase burrow time
Don't worry, those were just the first half: Make it store up to 4 missiles. They start with zero, and a new missile is produced every 10/15 seconds when burrowed. If they keep their stored missiles when unburrowing and walking is up to debate, imo not (or a max of 2).
Add a tech lab research with increases stored missiles to 6 (possibly also build speed).
Result would be that cost per damage stays roughly equal (until upgrade), they cost less population per damage, and they arent really great for dropping in mineral line shenanigans. Because lets face it, while it is funny to see an entire mineral line explode, that was exactly the reason the shredder was removed. This way the widow mine becomes significantly more powerful per population, but at the same time you really need to consider where you place it, since you cant simply use it as a mobile minefield. And it isnt limitted to an early game semi-cheese unit. Also more missiles = more explosions.
On October 09 2012 18:45 Sissors wrote: The main problem I see now with the widow mine (besides its ability to walk to an army and burrow there, but that means just they need larger burrow time imo), is that it is a great unit early/mid game, and becomes obsolete later in the game (at least with the current metagame of deathballs). And I think most terrans wanted the exact opposite in a new unit.
My ideas about widow mines (of course subject to balance changes, only rough mechanics): Half the damage done by its missiles. Make it require tech lab Double its price Increase burrow time
Don't worry, those were just the first half: Make it store up to 4 missiles. They start with zero, and a new missile is produced every 10/15 seconds when burrowed. If they keep their stored missiles when unburrowing and walking is up to debate, imo not (or a max of 2).
Add a tech lab research with increases stored missiles to 6 (possibly also build speed).
Result would be that cost per damage stays roughly equal (until upgrade), they cost less population per damage, and they arent really great for dropping in mineral line shenanigans. Because lets face it, while it is funny to see an entire mineral line explode, that was exactly the reason the shredder was removed. This way the widow mine becomes significantly more powerful per population, but at the same time you really need to consider where you place it, since you cant simply use it as a mobile minefield. And it isnt limitted to an early game semi-cheese unit. Also more missiles = more explosions.
That's a terrible idea.
The only reason the widowmine is good now is if the opponent is stupid they actually get punished for it.
Nobody would build a mine if it did barely any damage because it's a stationary unit.
While I am open to the option that I just have terrible ideas, I don't see how it would do barely any damage. It would still do good damage (same per cost, twice per population, and that would be before their upgrade). Only the difference would be that you need to wait a bit until a burrowed widow mine becomes effective, instead of running it to the enemy and immediatly having 160 damage dealt.
At least that is assuming the goal of the unit is to have a stationary unit to protect flanks, expansions, etc. If it was to have a mobile ultra high burst damage unit, then yes my idea is terrible. But then imo they just need to throw away the mine part.
What if widow mines were a spell cast by ravens without a duration limit or cost of supply, cast 2 at a time at 150 energy, initially burrowed but able to unburrow, detector, manually castable suicide attack that destroys the mine again? You'd have more utility when you'd be able to drop them at key points to serve as watchtowers with detection with the ability of being able to decide your self if the units that walk over them are worth killing while losing sight at that point. Even if they didn't cost supply you wouldn't be able to mass them without sacrificing resources to get ravens, time and energy so that the raven can't get a seeker missile off after a while.
This seems very emotional to me :/ Don't get me wrong, though. I'm willing to assume that your previous thread had no emotional feedback or biased opinions.
Anyways, it's way too early to judge it quite yet. I don't think a nerf will be in order until Friday at least, and with very good reason, although I do agree that the best solution will probably turn out to be either nerfing Widow Mines so they can't target cloaked or nerf so they can't target air, preferably the first option. Even as Zerg I am very much so hoping that the Widow Mine remains a very interesting and very deadly unit, like Tanks and Mines from BW.
The mine in its current design is great for Starcraft. It punishes players for being careless with their army and will force more micro from both sides - Terran will have to constantly rearrange their widow mines once the missiles are shot, they can set up traps and baits, or just control new spaces. Any race facing the mines will have to be careful with their observers, overlords, or ravens as well as their army itself when traversing Terran territory. If it's too strong it will be nerfed. My hope is that it isn't nerfed too much.
The reason why people are even remotely considering this OP is simply because they don't know how to stop it. I have been doing this proxy widow mines vs Protoss a lot lately and I noticed that most of them have no clue wtf to do. Protoss are just illiterate because they just panic, pull all their probes to attack the mine, loses 10+ workers. Screams OP and balance and leaves the game. It seems from my perspective that the mine attacks the nearest units and that it attacks interval of 40 secs, so by simply knowing when to avoid the mine is hardly a rocket science. I stream regular and will be in about 3-4 hours or so and if you watched that majority of protoss really have no clue wtf to do, but to rather just blame the op ness of the mine and how it should get nerfed, but when in reality ITS NOT. This certain protoss, he was gm with a korean name to it, totally forgot what it was, but he placed a probe under it every 40 secs, long enough for him to get a obs out to completely stop the rush, take it that I won because i'm baller, but there you have it
On October 10 2012 02:48 DrowSwordsman wrote: The mine in its current design is great for Starcraft. It punishes players for being careless with their army and will force more micro from both sides - Terran will have to constantly rearrange their widow mines once the missiles are shot, they can set up traps and baits, or just control new spaces. Any race facing the mines will have to be careful with their observers, overlords, or ravens as well as their army itself when traversing Terran territory. If it's too strong it will be nerfed. My hope is that it isn't nerfed too much.
My thoughts exactly.
Nerfing the burrow time and cost would be enough imo. Also, I don't know how I feel about hitting air too since it hard counters muta pretty hard, but let's see.
I was about to suggest what I saw GinDo suggest as well. The Widow Mine being visible while recharging its unstable payload might be something interesting. Maybe even add in a reduced movement speed while recharging that payload. You could even buff the damage/recharge time if you changed things like this. Makes the mines a lot more one-shotty, true, but this would reinforce its defensive task while reducing its ridiculous offensive capability.
The widow mine must change in its current state. It is so ridiculously overpowered in pvt that the entire match up centers around how terran is going to abuse the widow mine (drops, pushes, etc). If you lose an observer, you instantly lose the game. Having a unit that completely dominates one match-up is horrible design, and if you genuinely believe the unit is going to make it in as-is... I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
All these "ideas" about how to deal with widow mines are, frankly, stupid. The unit has been in the game for about 5 days, and in those fives days 3-4 variants (that I've seen) of all-ins or just harass have developed around one unit. All of which end the game if you don't handle it 100% correctly.
The closest thing that it reminds me of is the infestor in PvZ just after the infestor buff. You knew 100% that zerg was going to go infestor, b/c it was good against every single thing protoss could do at the time, so you just had to prepare as best you could for some kind of infestor play. And you still would probably lose.
It has to change. It is going to change. And in my opinion, they need to revert it back to something that kills itself and go from there.
^ It will be changed alright. If nothing else, it's AA should be removed. This will be nothing but, T's doing mine contains and expanding comfortably around the map. No thank you.
On October 10 2012 03:15 HardlyNever wrote: The widow mine must change in its current state. It is so ridiculously overpowered in pvt that the entire match up centers around how terran is going to abuse the widow mine (drops, pushes, etc). If you lose an observer, you instantly lose the game. Having a unit that completely dominates one match-up is horrible design, and if you genuinely believe the unit is going to make it in as-is... I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
All these "ideas" about how to deal with widow mines are, frankly, stupid. The unit has been in the game for about 5 days, and in those fives days 3-4 variants (that I've seen) of all-ins or just harass have developed around one unit. All of which end the game if you don't handle it 100% correctly.
The closest thing that it reminds me of is the infestor in PvZ just after the infestor buff. You knew 100% that zerg was going to go infestor, b/c it was good against every single thing protoss could do at the time, so you just had to prepare as best you could for some kind of infestor play. And you still would probably lose.
It has to change. It is going to change. And in my opinion, they need to revert it back to something that kills itself and go from there.
Its hardly OP at all, you probably just one of those protoss that sends all the workers at the mine hoping it will die, loses about 12+ probes and rage qq =/. it honestly needs a different buff to make it a core unit imo
On October 10 2012 03:31 Phoenix2003 wrote: ^ It will be changed alright. If nothing else, it's AA should be removed. This will be nothing but, T's doing mine contains and expanding comfortably around the map. No thank you.
it needs a bigger splash imo, we need something early game because our late game isn't as favored as p and z are
On October 10 2012 03:15 HardlyNever wrote: The widow mine must change in its current state. It is so ridiculously overpowered in pvt that the entire match up centers around how terran is going to abuse the widow mine (drops, pushes, etc). If you lose an observer, you instantly lose the game. Having a unit that completely dominates one match-up is horrible design, and if you genuinely believe the unit is going to make it in as-is... I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
All these "ideas" about how to deal with widow mines are, frankly, stupid. The unit has been in the game for about 5 days, and in those fives days 3-4 variants (that I've seen) of all-ins or just harass have developed around one unit. All of which end the game if you don't handle it 100% correctly.
The closest thing that it reminds me of is the infestor in PvZ just after the infestor buff. You knew 100% that zerg was going to go infestor, b/c it was good against every single thing protoss could do at the time, so you just had to prepare as best you could for some kind of infestor play. And you still would probably lose.
It has to change. It is going to change. And in my opinion, they need to revert it back to something that kills itself and go from there.
Its hardly OP at all, you probably just one of those protoss that sends all the workers at the mine hoping it will die, loses about 12+ probes and rage qq =/. it honestly needs a different buff to make it a core unit imo
On October 10 2012 03:31 Phoenix2003 wrote: ^ It will be changed alright. If nothing else, it's AA should be removed. This will be nothing but, T's doing mine contains and expanding comfortably around the map. No thank you.
it needs a bigger splash imo, we need something early game because our late game isn't as favored as p and z are
I've seen these things annihilate late-game air armies (Morrow's stream). I don't think it's fair to say with a unit like this that late game balance is set in stone in HOTS.
On October 10 2012 03:15 HardlyNever wrote: The widow mine must change in its current state. It is so ridiculously overpowered in pvt that the entire match up centers around how terran is going to abuse the widow mine (drops, pushes, etc). If you lose an observer, you instantly lose the game. Having a unit that completely dominates one match-up is horrible design, and if you genuinely believe the unit is going to make it in as-is... I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
All these "ideas" about how to deal with widow mines are, frankly, stupid. The unit has been in the game for about 5 days, and in those fives days 3-4 variants (that I've seen) of all-ins or just harass have developed around one unit. All of which end the game if you don't handle it 100% correctly.
The closest thing that it reminds me of is the infestor in PvZ just after the infestor buff. You knew 100% that zerg was going to go infestor, b/c it was good against every single thing protoss could do at the time, so you just had to prepare as best you could for some kind of infestor play. And you still would probably lose.
It has to change. It is going to change. And in my opinion, they need to revert it back to something that kills itself and go from there.
Its hardly OP at all, you probably just one of those protoss that sends all the workers at the mine hoping it will die, loses about 12+ probes and rage qq =/. it honestly needs a different buff to make it a core unit imo
Please stop trolling this thread.
How am I trolling? You scream op because you haven't stopped it.. have you tried stopping it in anyway shape or form?
On October 10 2012 03:31 Phoenix2003 wrote: ^ It will be changed alright. If nothing else, it's AA should be removed. This will be nothing but, T's doing mine contains and expanding comfortably around the map. No thank you.
it needs a bigger splash imo, we need something early game because our late game isn't as favored as p and z are
I've seen these things annihilate late-game air armies (Morrow's stream). I don't think it's fair to say with a unit like this that late game balance is set in stone in HOTS.
its like banels, do terran complains that we lose 20 marines to 5 banel mines?
On October 10 2012 03:44 Salient wrote: Maybe the mine could be balanced by making it slower and not transportable by medivac (because it's too unstable).
That way, the mine could still be powerful and useful for positional play, but not so much for difficult to balance early attacks.
Its fast I would have to admit, but how slow is slow? overlord speed?
On October 10 2012 03:31 Phoenix2003 wrote: ^ It will be changed alright. If nothing else, it's AA should be removed. This will be nothing but, T's doing mine contains and expanding comfortably around the map. No thank you.
it needs a bigger splash imo, we need something early game because our late game isn't as favored as p and z are
I've seen these things annihilate late-game air armies (Morrow's stream). I don't think it's fair to say with a unit like this that late game balance is set in stone in HOTS.
its like banels, do terran complains that we lose 20 marines to 5 banel mines?
I have no idea how that relates in any way to me saying late game balance in HOTS is not yet determined and acting like it is is silly.
On October 10 2012 03:31 Phoenix2003 wrote: ^ It will be changed alright. If nothing else, it's AA should be removed. This will be nothing but, T's doing mine contains and expanding comfortably around the map. No thank you.
it needs a bigger splash imo, we need something early game because our late game isn't as favored as p and z are
I've seen these things annihilate late-game air armies (Morrow's stream). I don't think it's fair to say with a unit like this that late game balance is set in stone in HOTS.
its like banels, do terran complains that we lose 20 marines to 5 banel mines?
I have no idea how that relates in any way to me saying late game balance in HOTS is not yet determined and acting like it is is silly.
cost-effectiveness? I guess we should all just 1 a without looking at the screen or build detection right/
On October 10 2012 03:31 Phoenix2003 wrote: ^ It will be changed alright. If nothing else, it's AA should be removed. This will be nothing but, T's doing mine contains and expanding comfortably around the map. No thank you.
it needs a bigger splash imo, we need something early game because our late game isn't as favored as p and z are
I've seen these things annihilate late-game air armies (Morrow's stream). I don't think it's fair to say with a unit like this that late game balance is set in stone in HOTS.
its like banels, do terran complains that we lose 20 marines to 5 banel mines?
I have no idea how that relates in any way to me saying late game balance in HOTS is not yet determined and acting like it is is silly.
cost-effectiveness? I guess we should all just 1 a without looking at the screen or build detection right/
I understand you're from vietnam and English may not be your first language but if you can't understand what I'm saying, you need to stop posting. I made a reply four replies above your original post saying I think the widow mine is a great addition to Heart Of The Swarm. Your posts are nonsensical.
On October 10 2012 03:31 Phoenix2003 wrote: ^ It will be changed alright. If nothing else, it's AA should be removed. This will be nothing but, T's doing mine contains and expanding comfortably around the map. No thank you.
it needs a bigger splash imo, we need something early game because our late game isn't as favored as p and z are
I've seen these things annihilate late-game air armies (Morrow's stream). I don't think it's fair to say with a unit like this that late game balance is set in stone in HOTS.
its like banels, do terran complains that we lose 20 marines to 5 banel mines?
I have no idea how that relates in any way to me saying late game balance in HOTS is not yet determined and acting like it is is silly.
cost-effectiveness? I guess we should all just 1 a without looking at the screen or build detection right/
I understand you're from vietnam and English may not be your first language but if you can't understand what I'm saying, you need to stop posting. I made a reply four replies above your original post saying I think the widow mine is a great addition to Heart Of The Swarm. Your posts are nonsensical.
so I re-read >.>. OPPPSSS, but it has been determine P and Z are still favored late game vs t
On October 10 2012 03:15 HardlyNever wrote: It is so ridiculously overpowered in pvt that the entire match up centers around how terran is going to abuse the widow mine (drops, pushes, etc). If you lose an observer, you instantly lose the game.
I don't see how this is the case and I agree with PrideTV about people not countering it properly. Watching PrideTV do the same strategies you're referring to, it seems like a lot of players don't actually know how the widow mine works. The targeting system cannot be controlled by the player, so its attack can be baited by a single probe or zealot, and then it's 40 seconds before it can attack again.
Regarding the widow mines for harassing economy, I've seen a lot of players react by pulling probes to try to attack it, thus, clumping them up and making them more susceptible to AoE. The splash will not kill nearly as many probes when the workers are mining as normal.
The mine will probably be tweaked, as you say, but I don't see why they have to revert it to a suicidal unit. Lowering the splash so that it can't one shot more than one probe, making the mine more immobile, tacking on an armory requirement, preventing them from being reactored, and/or increasing its burrow time are all balance tweaks that can be done without fundamentally changing the unit again.
On October 10 2012 03:15 HardlyNever wrote: The widow mine must change in its current state. It is so ridiculously overpowered in pvt that the entire match up centers around how terran is going to abuse the widow mine (drops, pushes, etc). If you lose an observer, you instantly lose the game. Having a unit that completely dominates one match-up is horrible design, and if you genuinely believe the unit is going to make it in as-is... I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
All these "ideas" about how to deal with widow mines are, frankly, stupid. The unit has been in the game for about 5 days, and in those fives days 3-4 variants (that I've seen) of all-ins or just harass have developed around one unit. All of which end the game if you don't handle it 100% correctly.
The closest thing that it reminds me of is the infestor in PvZ just after the infestor buff. You knew 100% that zerg was going to go infestor, b/c it was good against every single thing protoss could do at the time, so you just had to prepare as best you could for some kind of infestor play. And you still would probably lose.
It has to change. It is going to change. And in my opinion, they need to revert it back to something that kills itself and go from there.
Its hardly OP at all, you probably just one of those protoss that sends all the workers at the mine hoping it will die, loses about 12+ probes and rage qq =/. it honestly needs a different buff to make it a core unit imo
Please stop trolling this thread.
How am I trolling? You scream op because you haven't stopped it.. have you tried stopping it in anyway shape or form?
How you are trolling:
1) You suggest buffing a unit that is almost universally regarded as broken, currently. 2) You know nothing about me, what level of play I'm at, or what I have or haven't tried "stopping," but make claims about it anyhow.
When the widow mine is nerfed next patch, can I come back here and shove it in your face? Because right now, I'm feeling like I'm going to.
Edit: For something resembling a balanced reaction (from a terran) to the widow mine, and how it is currently overpowered against protoss, see this guy's post:
On October 10 2012 03:44 Salient wrote: Maybe the mine could be balanced by making it slower and not transportable by medivac (because it's too unstable).
That way, the mine could still be powerful and useful for positional play, but not so much for difficult to balance early attacks.
Its fast I would have to admit, but how slow is slow? overlord speed?
Maybe it should have a similar movement speed to the mech units it is desiged to support (tanks or thors) and not be capable of transport by medivac. The unit has the potential to make mech play more viable. I think it would be best to make sure any nerfs don't take away from its ability to support mech. The high damage and ability to kill air units makes it a good addition to mech. So, if it needs to be nerfed, it eould be best to nerf its mobility. That way the unit can still complement mech, even if it loses its potential for gimmicky play and early attacks.
On October 10 2012 03:31 Phoenix2003 wrote: ^ It will be changed alright. If nothing else, it's AA should be removed. This will be nothing but, T's doing mine contains and expanding comfortably around the map. No thank you.
it needs a bigger splash imo, we need something early game because our late game isn't as favored as p and z are
This is your problem. You don't need anymore early game help against either Z or P. T already has many early game options against toss already. T players like you are just being greedy. Pure and simple. You don't need another AA detector. If you need late game assistance, that's a horse of a different color. The widow mine should a late game unit.
On October 10 2012 03:15 HardlyNever wrote: The widow mine must change in its current state. It is so ridiculously overpowered in pvt that the entire match up centers around how terran is going to abuse the widow mine (drops, pushes, etc). If you lose an observer, you instantly lose the game. Having a unit that completely dominates one match-up is horrible design, and if you genuinely believe the unit is going to make it in as-is... I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
All these "ideas" about how to deal with widow mines are, frankly, stupid. The unit has been in the game for about 5 days, and in those fives days 3-4 variants (that I've seen) of all-ins or just harass have developed around one unit. All of which end the game if you don't handle it 100% correctly.
The closest thing that it reminds me of is the infestor in PvZ just after the infestor buff. You knew 100% that zerg was going to go infestor, b/c it was good against every single thing protoss could do at the time, so you just had to prepare as best you could for some kind of infestor play. And you still would probably lose.
It has to change. It is going to change. And in my opinion, they need to revert it back to something that kills itself and go from there.
Its hardly OP at all, you probably just one of those protoss that sends all the workers at the mine hoping it will die, loses about 12+ probes and rage qq =/. it honestly needs a different buff to make it a core unit imo
Please stop trolling this thread.
How am I trolling? You scream op because you haven't stopped it.. have you tried stopping it in anyway shape or form?
How you are trolling:
1) You suggest buffing a unit that is almost universally regarded as broken, currently. 2) You know nothing about me, what level of play I'm at, or what I have or haven't tried "stopping," but make claims about it anyhow.
When the widow mine is nerfed next patch, can I come back here and shove it in your face? Because right now, I'm feeling like I'm going to.
Edit: For something resembling a balanced reaction (from a terran) to the widow mine, and how it is currently overpowered against protoss, see this guy's post:
It is also pretty sad I have to go to the b.net forums of all places to get a level-headed discussion of the beta.
I find the last sentence very ironic given the way you are arguing.
Only because a unit is "almost" universally regarded as broken doesn't make it so. He is right in that most of the complaints are caused by people who are terrible and thus doesn't know how to stop mine abuse.
The widow mine might be tweaked a little bit next patch so you will probably be right. It wouldn't be the first time they knee-jerk nerfed terran because the other races were whining too much if that is what they will do. Though it would be reasonable to keep its stats or even buff them a bit but delay the tech so that mines are out a bit later. This could be motivated by design arguments alone completely disregarding any balance analysis. If that happens will you still come and "rub it in his face"?
Blizzard should let this play out and it will eventually show if the mine is OP or not. It has had its current stats for less than 4 days and everyone is screaming OP, jeez.
Even if you happen to be the best protoss on earth it doesn't give you the right to call OP. As long as there are strategies and tactics yet to be tried no one can claim such a thing.
I think that it is possible to defend mine aggression with a large number of protoss and zerg builds. But right now protoss players go 1 gate expand and die to mine aggression and rage about it. Guess what? 1 gate expand might end up like 1 rax expand in WoL TvP - a build that could hold all aggression but requires a lot of skill if you are going to hold allins like 4 gate blink or 3 gate void ray.
Last time I played WoL 6 out of 7 protosses went blind 4 gate blink because how common 1 rax expand is. I do it almost every game for instance. I tell myself that I get a lot more valuable practice trying to hold abusive allins than my opponent does performing the allin.
You should try to be creative and find solutions to problems. That is what the beta should be about. Have you tried to fast expand with a forge like protoss were doing in WoL some time ago? That build should be safe vs all mine openers except unscouted proxy inbase factory strats.
The widow mine does not need a change right now. What needs to change is protoss player's mentalities. You can't just 1A units anymore guys. Get over it.
The Starcraft community has to realize, we asked blizzard for more depth, and they are giving it to us with a lot of the new units. When they finally do this, over half of you immediately go, "omg this is OP as fuck, i have to pay attention to my units now?"
Everyone, everyone here. If you have this game called starcraft brood war. Go load it up, and get someone good to play a tvp/pvt against. Play a few games against spider mines and try and play Protoss like you do in wings of liberty just walking across the map without observers, and just watch what happens. You're going to lose every game horribly.
Even worse...the spider mines are 0 supply and they give you the fastest unit in the game to harrass probes with. This shit is "OP." But remember? Every Protoss learned to clear mines, always have an obs with dragoons that they sent out onto the map, it became standard occurrence and necessary.
Don't ask for more depth from HOTS and then say "OP" when it's given to you.
It's been what, 3 days? Protoss players literally suck at dealing with mines. Most of my games so far are Protosses walking into them and claiming imbalance. Wait 2-3 weeks. It's going to take a while for people to get out of the habits they have in wings of liberty where it doesn't matter where they move their army. And not building more than 2 observers.
On October 10 2012 05:25 avilo wrote: Even worse...the spider mines are 0 supply and they give you the fastest unit in the game to harrass probes with. This shit is "OP." But remember? Every Protoss learned to clear mines, always have an obs with dragoons that they sent out onto the map, it became standard occurrence and necessary.
You may be right about Protoss needing to learn to deal with the mines before we call OP, but I wouldn't bother with BW comparisons like this. The games are so different that any specific unit comparisons of this sort are pointless. Take just one of the differences that matter in this case - Observers in SC2 share build times with Colossi that you need to mass unlike in BW.
Just saying 'Build more Observers!' doesn't take the big picture into account.
Terrans don't care for the big picture. They just want their race to be OP again,prior to WoL release. They just want to go back to 90% win rates, TvX again.
On October 10 2012 03:15 HardlyNever wrote: The widow mine must change in its current state. It is so ridiculously overpowered in pvt that the entire match up centers around how terran is going to abuse the widow mine (drops, pushes, etc). If you lose an observer, you instantly lose the game. Having a unit that completely dominates one match-up is horrible design, and if you genuinely believe the unit is going to make it in as-is... I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
All these "ideas" about how to deal with widow mines are, frankly, stupid. The unit has been in the game for about 5 days, and in those fives days 3-4 variants (that I've seen) of all-ins or just harass have developed around one unit. All of which end the game if you don't handle it 100% correctly.
The closest thing that it reminds me of is the infestor in PvZ just after the infestor buff. You knew 100% that zerg was going to go infestor, b/c it was good against every single thing protoss could do at the time, so you just had to prepare as best you could for some kind of infestor play. And you still would probably lose.
It has to change. It is going to change. And in my opinion, they need to revert it back to something that kills itself and go from there.
Its hardly OP at all, you probably just one of those protoss that sends all the workers at the mine hoping it will die, loses about 12+ probes and rage qq =/. it honestly needs a different buff to make it a core unit imo
Please stop trolling this thread.
How am I trolling? You scream op because you haven't stopped it.. have you tried stopping it in anyway shape or form?
How you are trolling:
1) You suggest buffing a unit that is almost universally regarded as broken, currently. 2) You know nothing about me, what level of play I'm at, or what I have or haven't tried "stopping," but make claims about it anyhow.
When the widow mine is nerfed next patch, can I come back here and shove it in your face? Because right now, I'm feeling like I'm going to.
Edit: For something resembling a balanced reaction (from a terran) to the widow mine, and how it is currently overpowered against protoss, see this guy's post:
It is also pretty sad I have to go to the b.net forums of all places to get a level-headed discussion of the beta.
Finally someone agrees..
On October 10 2012 05:25 avilo wrote: The widow mine does not need a change right now. What needs to change is protoss player's mentalities. You can't just 1A units anymore guys. Get over it.
The Starcraft community has to realize, we asked blizzard for more depth, and they are giving it to us with a lot of the new units. When they finally do this, over half of you immediately go, "omg this is OP as fuck, i have to pay attention to my units now?"
Everyone, everyone here. If you have this game called starcraft brood war. Go load it up, and get someone good to play a tvp/pvt against. Play a few games against spider mines and try and play Protoss like you do in wings of liberty just walking across the map without observers, and just watch what happens. You're going to lose every game horribly.
Even worse...the spider mines are 0 supply and they give you the fastest unit in the game to harrass probes with. This shit is "OP." But remember? Every Protoss learned to clear mines, always have an obs with dragoons that they sent out onto the map, it became standard occurrence and necessary.
Don't ask for more depth from HOTS and then say "OP" when it's given to you.
It's been what, 3 days? Protoss players literally suck at dealing with mines. Most of my games so far are Protosses walking into them and claiming imbalance. Wait 2-3 weeks. It's going to take a while for people to get out of the habits they have in wings of liberty where it doesn't matter where they move their army. And not building more than 2 observers.
This thread has become a haven for terran fan-boys that don't give a rat's ass about actual balance, lead by the biggest terran qq'er in the NA community, Avilo.
It is getting nerfed. Prepare your qq now. If you can't see how broken the unit currently is for its cost/tech level then you have absolutely no clue how to design a game at the most basic level.
I'll be back when it gets nerfed to soak up the sweet, sweet terran tears. Until then, I'm done with this discussion.
And the comparisons to BW are genuinely hilarious. Spider mines can't kill observers. Nor can they be directly put in dropships/medivacs. That alone is a world of difference. That line of reasoning is made out of pure fail.
On October 10 2012 06:15 HardlyNever wrote: This thread has become a haven for terran fan-boys that don't give a rat's ass about actual balance, lead by the biggest terran qq'er in the NA community, Avilo.
It is getting nerfed. Prepare your qq now. If you can't see how broken the unit currently is for its cost/tech level then you have absolutely no clue how to design a game at the most basic level.
I'll be back when it gets nerfed to soak up the sweet, sweet terran tears. Until then, I'm done with this discussion.
And the comparisons to BW are genuinely hilarious. Spider mines can't kill observers. Nor can they be directly put in dropships/medivacs. That alone is a world of difference. That line of reasoning is made out of pure fail.
you must be a silver, probalby losing a zealot to a marine, which i don't even know how its possible but it is apparently.
I'm streaming right now, and you can watch as all the protoss qq at me for OP ness when all they simply pull all their workers to attack the mine. I bet after watching a few games you finally realized that it itsn't op as everyone claims it to be .. SMART.
Instead of some knee-jerk reaction, Blizzard should probably wait at least another month or so before re-balancing the WM stats. I would like to see more pro player usage of the WM first.
On October 10 2012 06:15 HardlyNever wrote: This thread has become a haven for terran fan-boys that don't give a rat's ass about actual balance, lead by the biggest terran qq'er in the NA community, Avilo.
It is getting nerfed. Prepare your qq now. If you can't see how broken the unit currently is for its cost/tech level then you have absolutely no clue how to design a game at the most basic level.
I'll be back when it gets nerfed to soak up the sweet, sweet terran tears. Until then, I'm done with this discussion.
And the comparisons to BW are genuinely hilarious. Spider mines can't kill observers. Nor can they be directly put in dropships/medivacs. That alone is a world of difference. That line of reasoning is made out of pure fail.
you must be a silver, probalby losing a zealot to a marine, which i don't even know how its possible but it is apparently.
I'm streaming right now, and you can watch as all the protoss qq at me for OP ness when all they simply pull all their workers to attack the mine. I bet after watching a few games you finally realized that it itsn't op as everyone claims it to be .. SMART.
I would try having a real discussion about why the widow mine is currently broken (centered around how it dictates what the protoss must do to an extreme degree), but that clearly isn't something you are capable of, and have constantly resorted to erroneous ad hominem attacks.
I have this replay here that is driving me absolutely nuts. Apparently the koreans don't have beta in their region, or I'm just too stupid and lazy to bother finding out:
I proxy a factory and stick it in his base. I build a mine, put it in his mineral line without him noticing a thing, and...gather about 5 probe kills. He attacks the proxy factory, my mine burrows and autokills a sentry while being shot at by a core and virtually every unit he had out at the time. He has already built an expansion and robo and has an obs on the way.
Total result of shenaniganry: 5 probe kills, 1 sentry kill. Kind of weak, but every game where someone doesn't go straight for a robo results in an autoloss for them when I do this strategy.
I have mediocre macro, and attempt to transition into a 5 rax. The guy has stalkers in the main, sentry / immortal / core in the natural, and is able to convincingly defend, even while spinning 2 forges after building a stargate to get an oracle. Said oracle caps my minerals as soon as I move out. It's almost too perfect. Yeah, I know the attack was shitty, but still...
What I'm reading from this game, is that if I play passively, he'll just juice up his forges via Energize and murder me with some sort of 3/3 thingy of sorts (if you haven't figured out by now, I have no clue how TvP works). If I do attack, then he hits purify and I have to back off. I don't think I can just "come back", because he'll have his second or third collosus by the time I'm able to attack more than one spot simultaneously.
Every time I've used mines for non-gimmicky purposes in TvP, mech or bio, I just get rolled. I could imagine trying to snipe obs with vikings so that they don't just a-move kill the mines before attacking the tanks...but...it just doesn't sound good.
Sounds like Widow Mine's counters will be buffed (they're thinking about it anyways). So a possibility indirectly nerfing the Widow Mines (by buffing their counters) rather than directly nerfing them.
Sounds like Widow Mine's counters will be buffed (they're thinking about it anyways). So a possibility indirectly nerfing the Widow Mines (by buffing their counters) rather than directly nerfing them.
On October 10 2012 07:00 PrideTV wrote: they have not figured out a way to deal with it. Exciting. I hope so.. its not a core unit yet, it needs to get buff. YOu the man dustin!
Sounds like Widow Mine's counters will be buffed (they're thinking about it anyways). So a possibility indirectly nerfing the Widow Mines (by buffing their counters) rather than directly nerfing them.
Yeah. I think they need to buff it significantly for it to be useful beyond rushes. Something like its reload time reduced to 10s or sth.
It is retarded that they even consider balancing it around the early game. It should require an armory so that it is deployed later in the games and becomes a more accentuated mech unit, not a unit you spam out in the early game only to follow up with the usual MMM bullshit.
Buffing spore crawlers and MsC will nerf banshee openers. Terran already has that opener to punish detectionless greedy openers, we dont need more.
Not sure if this idea has been thrown around at all but maybe widow mines could function in similar behavior to spider mines from BW, in that workers can not trigger the mines but if the workers are in range when the widow mine fires on an army unit, the workers can be killed by the splash damage. It would alleviate some of the problems being seen with using the widow mines to econ harass and people not being able to respond quickly!
On October 10 2012 07:33 Inf-badguy wrote: Not sure if this idea has been thrown around at all but maybe widow mines could function in similar behavior to spider mines from BW, in that workers can not trigger the mines but if the workers are in range when the widow mine fires on an army unit, the workers can be killed by the splash damage. It would alleviate some of the problems being seen with using the widow mines to econ harass and people not being able to respond quickly!
Removing the Evo requirement for spores is a bit extreme isn't it? That'll have repercussions both in other scenarios where you want detection (DTs, Banshees) as well as emergency anti-air (Mutas, Phoenixes).
On October 10 2012 07:33 Inf-badguy wrote: Not sure if this idea has been thrown around at all but maybe widow mines could function in similar behavior to spider mines from BW, in that workers can not trigger the mines but if the workers are in range when the widow mine fires on an army unit, the workers can be killed by the splash damage. It would alleviate some of the problems being seen with using the widow mines to econ harass and people not being able to respond quickly!
That's a great idea. Post it on the Bnet forums!
I wish I could.
If anyone does have beta access, I'd be happy if you could forward it along to one of the active widow mine threads; that is if it hasn't already been suggested.
On October 10 2012 07:00 PrideTV wrote: they have not figured out a way to deal with it. Exciting. I hope so.. its not a core unit yet, it needs to get buff. YOu the man dustin!
Sounds like Widow Mine's counters will be buffed (they're thinking about it anyways). So a possibility indirectly nerfing the Widow Mines (by buffing their counters) rather than directly nerfing them.
Yeah. I think they need to buff it significantly for it to be useful beyond rushes. Something like its reload time reduced to 10s or sth.
It is retarded that they even consider balancing it around the early game. It should require an armory so that it is deployed later in the games and becomes a more accentuated mech unit, not a unit you spam out in the early game only to follow up with the usual MMM bullshit.
Buffing spore crawlers and MsC will nerf banshee openers. Terran already has that opener to punish detectionless greedy openers, we dont need more.
They should make widow mines require an armory and battle hellions not require it.
On October 10 2012 07:41 archon256 wrote: Removing the Evo requirement for spores is a bit extreme isn't it? That'll have repercussions both in other scenarios where you want detection (DTs, Banshees) as well as emergency anti-air (Mutas, Phoenixes).
well, in current pvz metagame dts hit the field late enough that an evo chamber is absolutely in play
banshee builds involving cloak border on cheese so even if i a 2port banshee vs zerg way more often than i should, it's not a build i would be sad to lose
moving overseers to hatchery tech makes more sense than spores having no requirements though
On October 10 2012 07:33 Inf-badguy wrote: Not sure if this idea has been thrown around at all but maybe widow mines could function in similar behavior to spider mines from BW, in that workers can not trigger the mines but if the workers are in range when the widow mine fires on an army unit, the workers can be killed by the splash damage. It would alleviate some of the problems being seen with using the widow mines to econ harass and people not being able to respond quickly!
Sounds like Widow Mine's counters will be buffed (they're thinking about it anyways). So a possibility indirectly nerfing the Widow Mines (by buffing their counters) rather than directly nerfing them.
If that spore crawler change goes through, that is gigantic with a capital g for the way cloakshees and DTs play out.
On October 10 2012 07:33 Inf-badguy wrote: Not sure if this idea has been thrown around at all but maybe widow mines could function in similar behavior to spider mines from BW, in that workers can not trigger the mines but if the workers are in range when the widow mine fires on an army unit, the workers can be killed by the splash damage. It would alleviate some of the problems being seen with using the widow mines to econ harass and people not being able to respond quickly!
That's a great idea. Post it on the Bnet forums!
Don't waste your time not happen
Well well. I guess someone is being a pessimist today.
It's completely possible that this idea could go through. Blizz keeps a very watchful eye on the HotS forums, after all.
A lot of Zergs may be having trouble with the mine as well because they are playing standard greed and expecting to not have to scout or build any defense.
The warhound was similar in this respect, because Zerg usually had to build 1 spine against such aggression.
Zergs complaining about widow mines are the ones that think it's perfectly fine to drone up to 80 with only queens and no units. Newsflash: in HOTS there are things now that make it so you can't play greedy 100% of the time. Oracle entomb is similar - try and mass up to 80 drones no units and watch your minerals be entombed over and over again.
People need to realize doing the same thing you did in wings of liberty isn't necessarily going to work anymore. Or if it does, it's going to take a bit for people to develop the proper defense for certain things.
In 2-3 weeks, wait till you guys see how good tempests are and how common they will be in every match-up. I can guarantee you everyone will be complaining about tempests when they realize how good they can be. Same with vipers cloud thing.
And guess what? The new units should all be strong - welcome to 1998 spider mines, lurkers, dark swarm, corsairs...etc. Remember corsairs? You guys remember that? Those were terrible everyone said! Absolute trash!
Then later...oh mai gawd, dt corsair and corsairs become completely standard and incredibly strong! Initially vultures were thought to suck as well, especially in TvZ, and then years down the road vultures were used in TvZ with valkries as well.
This stuff did not happen after 3 days. Nor when these metagame changes occurred did people immediately find a counter in 3 days time.
Basically i'm saying, if you're going to complain (not saying i haven't before) make it about the design of the units rather than the balance. The warhound was poorly designed. The mothership core blizzard is still tinkering with the design. Balance is going to change repeatedly and is also dependent on the map pool, which hopefully blizzard changes very soon.
On October 10 2012 09:41 Chrono000 wrote: this unit is OP for sure.
Quite stimulating thoughts for this discussion. Thank you for the contribution to the forums and all of humanity. Let me help you out.
One thing i noticed from playing some PvTs is that observer detection range is quite small and that it requires extremely fine unit control to not lose observers. If you just 1A you can lose an obs if you're not paying attention.
They could introduce the observer sight range upgrade like the one in brood war and that would indirectly nerf the mine while keeping it a strong new unit.
On October 10 2012 09:45 TheLunatic wrote: Its realistic not pessimistic
Yeah, that's what everyone calls themselves...
May I note that there are many changes offered by the players, not to mention the huge change on the Widow Mine which we are currently discussing? (Here) It was even thought of by someone who is not a progamer. What's to say that Blizz won't take another suggestion?
On October 10 2012 09:41 Chrono000 wrote: this unit is OP for sure.
Quite stimulating thoughts for this discussion. Thank you for the contribution to the forums and all of humanity. Let me help you out.
One thing i noticed from playing some PvTs is that observer detection range is quite small and that it requires extremely fine unit control to not lose observers. If you just 1A you can lose an obs if you're not paying attention.
They could introduce the observer sight range upgrade like the one in brood war and that would indirectly nerf the mine while keeping it a strong new unit.
Exactly, I have no idea why they didn't have an observer range upgrade in the game from the get go. I would get it every time I survive into midgame. It would also be useful against terrans because you would actually be able to spy on their army without necessarily losing it to a quick scan. And vs zerg, with the new swarm host and tempest being introduced, this upgrade would be very appreciated by tosses.
OP back. Lemme lay down some sweet logical tunes right now.
Not sure if my point got across. #1. You can't go anything but robo now against Terran. #2. You have 0 scouting information until observer #2(a). Since you only see a gas go down, you have no idea whether widow mines, fast stim/shield push, hellion drop, widow drop, or banshees are coming. #2(a)(1). If you fast expand off of one gate, one robo, a quick stim/shield push will blow your brains out on maps with wide chokes (which all but one of the HOTS maps have) #2(a)(2). If you don't fast expand, and he does, you will be behind tremendously in economy. #2(a)(3). Even if you test his front with zealot-stalker, he can easily fake you out with a bunker+4 marines with no CC going down behind it, so you, again, won't know if he's going macro or early attack (and if you GUESS [because it is a guess if he plays well] you will either die to his harass or be way behind macro. #3. Mid and Late game, a terran can easily pump out a few widow mines (regardless of what he's doing) whenever he wants- hanging an observer + a few units at every single mineral line is ridiculously inefficient, so ideally you just lay down a cannon in each line. #3(a). But if he drops MMM, a cannon is just useless and dies immediately. #3(b). Let's say you kill the drop, but the advantage isn't enough that you can push and kill him. Guess what- next time he'll drop widow mines. #3(b)(1). So you can either build another observer and leave units there to snipe the mines, or build another cannon. #3(b)(2). Then he can easily scan (and if this is 3+ base macro game, that costs him very little) and if you have an obs- he drops two mines which blow up your mineral line before they get killed (because widows have way too much health) OR he sees another cannon, and just drops MMM (which might take your nexus or a bunch of workers) #3(c) so ideally the answer is to just use templar to feedback the medivac #3(c)(1)- but if the medivac doesn't die and it's carrying widow mines, the templar is useless (storm not so great against 2 widow mines) #3(d)- So how the damn hell do I defend both at once without committing like 5+ units plus an observer to every damn mineral line?
So let's review- I think PvT is now just one base all-ins v. a one gas Terran. Nothing else is practical against a high level player. One gas spotted doesn't mean he can't fast expand. But the only way to check is with a zealot-stalker poke (so far). But he can just lay down a bunker with his first set of marines, but not actually expand. So if I want to be sure he's macroing, I have to sack a zealot and probably lose half my health on the stalker. But since that's obviously impractical, I have to go gate-robo-gate-gate every damn game in case he's either rushing early stim, or going widows (or hellion drop, or banshees). And when my observer finally comes out, if I see he faked me out and did go fast expand, I have no choice but to all-in (probably the 3 immortal+gate units before stim finishes).
And again, the late game harass problem. The ideal solution on a 3 base+ macro game is vastly different against MMM and Widows. And he can just check which one I did. Or I can just dedicate like 10 supply to every damn mineral line in units+observers, and then when he pushes my front, I die because I'm down 20 supply in my main army.
So, to sum up- there are massive problems with the widow right now. It adds another layer to the early game for Terrans against toss that basically forces us to wait until and obs pops to fast expand. But HE can fast expand without us knowing (if he plays well). So then I'm sitting there with 2/3rds his income and no choice but to go all in. AND it makes PvT so fucking boring. I HAVE to get a robo first. He doesn't even have to scan me to see if I go robo first- he knows that I have to because of widow mines. Even if he doesn't kill me early, he can just start pumping out vikings at the ten minute mark because he knows I have to go colossi to stop a MMM push (or defend perfectly with chargelot-archon after blowing a ton of gas on a robo and two observers early). This makes the game far more boring, and easy for him. Does he even need to scout before the 10 minute medivac MMM push?
All of this, and he just needs to go one gas when I scout with my probe. My CHOICES are FORCED. I have no options. I have to go robo. I have to send an observer to scout him. I almost certainly have to build another to keep at my base in case he drops widows. I CANNOT fast expand until I know he does, and I SHOULDNT know that (unless he's playing badly) until my first observer gets over there. And that might be two minutes after the CC has started.
Protoss is reduced to playing blindly against a wild range of options, and it makes the game skill-less. It's rock paper scissors. Maybe I go chargelot archon and he is doing standard MMM, and I crush him. But I just got lucky. I didn't respond to what he was doing. I just blindly went a path that turned out to be right. That isn't skill, it's pure dumb luck.
I'd just like to point out that the common play TvZ right now is hellion-banshees into blue flame hellion-mech. And the goal there is to just smash so many drones the zerg is contained. Right now, is there even a reason to get hellions? Widow mines+ 1 medivac for drops do damage to mineral lines and light units way better, faster, more efficiently, and require detection to spot. The developers decided that hey, the Terran didn't have powerful enough harassment options with hellions or MMM, so screw it, let's give them units that can kill 10 probes/drones instantly and require detection to spot (and don't require more tech than hellions?)? Huh?
Add that on to the fact that they gave Toss two new Stargate units, only to make stargate tech an even more useless path against Terran? And now you can't even go fast templar or chargelot archon without just getting lucky?
yeah you guys are right. I should just say nothing and accept that a game built around skill and interacting choices of players is turning into a freaking linear rpg.
there is some seriously inconsistent logic in your argument A)
#1. You can't go anything but robo now against Terran.
B)
Protoss is reduced to playing blindly against a wild range of options, and it makes the game skill-less. It's rock paper scissors.
these statements are in complete conflict with each other in every possible way, from protoss playing blind (you have obs) to there being a wild range of options (because you have to go obs)
finally
a freaking linear rpg.
no, it's called standard play
eventually the game will be boiled down to a science where all experimentation is done for and there is "the build" and a few variations of said build for each matchup, with the interaction of deviation from standard play where in some games one player attempts to cuts corners in order to gain an advantage over the player doing the standard build, and in some games a player does an aggressive build to punish players who attempt to cut said corners, and then you have the next tier which consists of players like flash who cut corners so at such a perfect science that they make any attempts to punish them for being greedy look downright silly
it seems like you do not understand this tension at all, otherwise you would not be complaining that you need the robo.
Your logic is flawed, you exaggerate to much, are filled with bias, and are to emotional, that is why your thread was locked in b.net forums. The deves find your points moot as do I and any other tl member not enveloped in bias. Masters terran and protoss player here die swarm!
I am not fortunate enough to have a HOTS beta key but I agree that this new widow mine unbalances the game.
It lowers the skill cap for terran players. They have a unit which is essentially unmicro-able because of the forced auto-cast. It is a unit that only requires three functions by the user: Build it, move it, burrow it. This makes the game easier for terran players. (not counting mirror matchups)
As it makes the game easier for terran players, it makes it slightly more difficult for protoss and zerg players. Non-terrans are forced to build more detectors and be more active with them to spot the mines. And because widow mines can attack cloaked flying units, they can destroy any observer that flies within range. (not sure if it one hit kills overseers) Basically terrans can afford to do less and protoss and zerg are forced to do more.
I think the widow mine would be much more balanced if it had no auto-target. Zergs have already been doing that sort of thing with burrowed banelings. There is no auto-cast on burrowed banelings, they must be manually detonated which raises the skill cap as it requires an extra action. Having an no autocast would also prevent the mines from detonating wastefully as it would be the users choice when to detonate.
Let me know your thoughts. I'm not the smartest guy in the world but I think my idea is at least in the right direction for widow mines. The warhound was already taken out because it was an a-click unit, a unit that wasn't really microed which is what I believe we are seeing with the current widow mine.
It's only been a few days. Give it some time before you claim it's hopeless. Also, it was pretty emotional feedback.
You know, I just realized something kinda funny about this thread. I never thought I would see the day where a thread that wasn't good enough for the Blizzard forums would get reposted on TL. I guess they have high standards for beta feedback threads or something. Either way, it's just not something I thought I would ever see, ever.
Wow, let me just say that Oracle has soft detection and cannons are detection, not sure if that makes a huge difference, but I feel like Protoss isn't forced to go observers in the early game.
In BW, where the mine mechanic was similar enough to allow for comparisom, Protoss had to get a robo becuase of the threat of mines. If you consider the fact that for every mine killed with careful observer/stalker play Terran loses a 75/25 unit without doing any damage the attractiveness of many observers increases.
Also Observers are cheap and many Protoss would go 2gate robo in WoL anyway because it was the safest build. I remember Artosis saying many times that the more Obervers the better in WoL.
Avilo has been offracing as Protoss to show the weaknesses of Mech and mines. Please watch the video from 20mins. If you have legitimate criticism of his play as Protoss in that game then please post it.
On October 10 2012 10:12 Crawdad wrote: IMO, giving soft detection to MsC is a good idea, removing the Evo requirement for Spores is a bad idea.
Giving the MsC detection is a terrible idea. There's already a problem right now with 3-4 gate blink stalker all-ins + the mothership core, can you imagine if you give it detection too -_-
People just aren't used to the mines, i'm off racing right now and as hilarious as it is when I'm Terran to watch protosses 1A into mines, it's equally hilarious watching Terrans send out just mines onto the map to your base expecting freewins. You can kite back to your base with stalkers, and if you kill all the mines Terran isn't left over with much and there's a chance to kill them right back.
I think the things we're seeing right now are simply because people aren't used to handling the unit or didn't play brood war. In 2-3 weeks I think it'll be more uncommon to see Terrans doing the mine walk to the front of your base because it's way too predictable and those are the only units for Terran on the map around that time.
On October 10 2012 11:30 Zykor wrote: It lowers the skill cap for terran players. They have a unit which is essentially unmicro-able because of the forced auto-cast. It is a unit that only requires three functions by the user: Build it, move it, burrow it. This makes the game easier for terran players. (not counting mirror matchups)
I don't see how, conceptually, that's different than spider mines, and players still have to practice good mine placement. The autocast prevents you from selecting a target, sure, but it also prevents a Terran player from getting the most potential out of the unit, and it also ensures that Zerg or Protoss players can bait out the mine's attack using a cheap unit. Thus, the autocast has an additional counter built into it intrinsically; whether or not you think this is sufficient is a different conversation to have.
Also, the mines have potential to help lockdown an avenue of approach, which is a role siege tanks have trouble filling relative to BW. And in BW, locking down an area with a few siege tanks and mines wasn't necessarily easy to deal with either, and neither siege tanks, nor spider mines had to be manually controlled in order to fulfill this role.
On October 10 2012 11:30 Zykor wrote: As it makes the game easier for terran players, it makes it slightly more difficult for protoss and zerg players. Non-terrans are forced to build more detectors and be more active with them to spot the mines. And because widow mines can attack cloaked flying units, they can destroy any observer that flies within range. (not sure if it one hit kills overseers) Basically terrans can afford to do less and protoss and zerg are forced to do more.
I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing. Not every strategy is as easy to execute as its counter in Starcraft 2, and what matters is how it affects balance as a whole. I think punishing players for not practicing good army positioning and situational awareness is good for the game, and I think the argument should revolve around what level of punishment is acceptable, rather than if such a mechanic should exist at all.
I was wondering if it would be useful if widow mines had to be toggled whether they attacked air/ground. Meaning if I have a bunch in my base set on air, as soon as units are dropped down they are unaffected. It could give mech play (a bit) more micro, as well as more position involved with setting up widow mines.
Also how do carriers do against vikings? Anyone have numbers for how many vikings are required for x amount of unupgraded carriers? If they really are the counter to the new HoTS terran mech then they should be able to handle a decent amount of vikings. This might allow the tempest to go back to an anti light air to air splash unit like it was in alpha (although that may be wishful thinking from me)
On October 10 2012 14:43 ButteryBoo wrote: I was wondering if it would be useful if widow mines had to be toggled whether they attacked air/ground. Meaning if I have a bunch in my base set on air, as soon as units are dropped down they are unaffected. It could give mech play (a bit) more micro, as well as more position involved with setting up widow mines.
Also how do carriers do against vikings? Anyone have numbers for how many vikings are required for x amount of unupgraded carriers? If they really are the counter to the new HoTS terran mech then they should be able to handle a decent amount of vikings. This might allow the tempest to go back to an anti light air to air splash unit like it was in alpha (although that may be wishful thinking from me)
I have seen some replays of the widow mine on TvsZ in pro games and i think is a banneling with biggest damage and who doesn't dies when it hits for 25 more cristals and attacks to the air, and don't even need to move... I think it should be nerfed and probably it would be done, because HoTS is on beta, or at least I hope so, it seems strong against every unit. I hope blizzard do something to this retarded unit
On February 04 2013 08:18 tyranolol wrote: I have seen some replays of the widow mine on TvsZ in pro games and i think is a banneling with biggest damage and who doesn't dies when it hits for 25 more cristals and attacks to the air, and don't even need to move... I think it should be nerfed and probably it would be done, because HoTS is on beta, or at least I hope so, it seems strong against every unit. I hope blizzard do something to this retarded unit
Are you really serious about this? You bump a several months old thread, which was created like 4-6 patches ago to post this entirely baseless argument? Comparing Mines to Banes is just stupid. Call me when you can morph your Marines into Mines and a-move then into your enemy once you detect a weakness.
EPT
