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On December 16 2012 10:10 DaveVAH wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2012 09:37 Acritter wrote:On December 15 2012 22:57 Tritanis wrote:This means that the upgrade is only relevant for people who use the Widow Mine as a direct offensive unit, which is the antithesis of a positional area control unit. I can't see how this upgrade can ever contribute to the unit outside of allowing people to mass Widow Mines and run them into the enemy's face to try to do massive damage with a single volley. That's exactly why this upgrade exists. If you are not going to use the mines offensively along with the rest of your army, simply don't bother with researching it. That said, I don't think that WM is an ideal unit. Perhaps, it needs another late-game upgrade to be viable outside the early-mid game, but I don't really know what the upgrade should do. edit: typo I think you missed the point. This is a BADLY DESIGNED upgrade, because it goes against the primary design of the unit and turns it into what is essentially a Baneling. It's like giving the Immortal an upgrade to enable a splash-damage attack with a bonus against Light. Regardless of how strong it is, it's completely the opposite of what the unit is supposed to do. What do you know of the primary design of the unit? David kim who actually designed the unit wants to be a core unit like the marine. both good in offense and defense.
Well the widow mine is the reincarnation of the shredder, which was specifically introduced to be static flank defense, while not being with the main army. However people started dropping them in enemy mineral lines (big surprise there...), so it was replaced with the widow mine. Which is pretty poor as flank defense and still being dropped in mineral lines, and generally with your main army (besides some to shoot down drops/mutas).
I think we can conclude that David Kim has also no clue which direction he wants to go with it.
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On December 16 2012 12:49 avilo wrote:
People here that are saying the upgrade is bad or bad direction, I don't think you've used the mine enough. It adds a pretty high skill cap, and in lategame you have to constantly move these things around.
It's terrible if you leave them in one place too long because that is very supply inefficient but if you constantly move them into better positions and with your army, they become pretty good because of the new burrow upgrade.
The design is a success I would say. It suffered the problem of being good early/mid-game, and being absolutely bad lategame, but the ability to burrow in one second means in lategame it's usable now.
edit: Though, will a 2 supply mine ever be anywhere near as good as a 0 supply mine that dies after use? Probably not. Spider mine > all.
Yes, Avilo is right.
With the upgrade, the WM becomes a mini-siege tank.
The same way in the current MU where marines dart in and out of engagements while under the cover of sieged tank range.
I've been pondering about the viability of mid game push with marauder/WM+1s, since marauders now have air cover thanks to WM and concussive shells have synergy with WM+1s.
Mass chargelot/archon will now have a run for their money with WM+1/marauder slowing down incoming zealots as the WM burrow and cream them. 
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I like the unit and the upgrade is great. Moving with army to cover bioball or tank, controlling shoke, good harass, map control. It's very fun to use and it's a nightmare for my opponent, i like that
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I think the OP makes a great point. I agree that the widow mine upgrade is exactly the opposite of what Terran positional play is all about. It hardly increases any depth to the game, but just makes it a better unit to include into a deathball.
If anything, the widow mine should have a even LONGER burrow time (in exchange for faster recharge of course).
This game needs more units/abilities that act as force multipliers in small numbers when in an advantageous position against an enemy. The only unit that does this is the seige tank, which is pretty terrible these days.
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I think that this upgrade will create a problem that we've seen when they first changed the Widow Mine into non-suicidal unit, we saw QXC massing only Widow Mines and charging into enemies where they couldn't kill them on time and everything got demolished. After that, Blizzard changed the burrow time from 2 to 3 seconds, and then from they included upgrade that put it even in the stronger state than it was before with 2 seconds burrow time.
We have to wait and see, upgrade definitely makes Widow Mine more viable in the late game and overall for aggressive play, I just think it will potentially be too strong.
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On December 16 2012 18:08 Hattori_Hanzo wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2012 12:49 avilo wrote:
People here that are saying the upgrade is bad or bad direction, I don't think you've used the mine enough. It adds a pretty high skill cap, and in lategame you have to constantly move these things around.
It's terrible if you leave them in one place too long because that is very supply inefficient but if you constantly move them into better positions and with your army, they become pretty good because of the new burrow upgrade.
The design is a success I would say. It suffered the problem of being good early/mid-game, and being absolutely bad lategame, but the ability to burrow in one second means in lategame it's usable now.
edit: Though, will a 2 supply mine ever be anywhere near as good as a 0 supply mine that dies after use? Probably not. Spider mine > all. Yes, Avilo is right. With the upgrade, the WM becomes a mini-siege tank. The same way in the current MU where marines dart in and out of engagements while under the cover of sieged tank range. I've been pondering about the viability of mid game push with marauder/WM+1s, since marauders now have air cover thanks to WM and concussive shells have synergy with WM+1s. Mass chargelot/archon will now have a run for their money with WM+1/marauder slowing down incoming zealots as the WM burrow and cream them.
It's not a Siege Tank. With Siege Tanks, you move them slowly forward and siege at the slightest move from your opponent. With Widow Mines, you run them in pre-emptively and try to crush the entire enemy force in one giant volley. That is what the Baneling does. It is an offensive unit, not a defensive unit. It is as far from a positional unit as you can get. The Widow Mine was created as a replacement for the Spider Mine. The Spider Mine was a positional unit designed to close off routes of attack, or at the very least slow the attacking force down. This is not what the burrow upgrade does. The burrow upgrade is diluting Terran down even further from the Tank race. With the incredible weakness of the Tank, positional play is all but gone from the Terran arsenal. This makes Mech into nothing more than Zerg 2.0, with Hellions performing Zergling runbys, Widow Mines acting as Banelings, and Thors pretending to be Brood Lords. A sad state indeed.
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In bw spider mines could be used aggressively by dropping them in front of the enemy units.. I don't think this 1 sec burrow is bad, I think that that its 2 supply is the issue as well its damage/splash ratio. I understand blizzard are trying to make it a strong core unit. But the problem is that it can be hard-countered so much so that it does absolutely no damage. Furthermore there are quite a few hard-counters to it (detection, hallucinations, 1 zergling, zerg's free units, long range units, changling, etc). A core unit should not be so easily countered in the mid to late game. On a side note, it still seems ridiculous that it can attack air. It really messes with drop/mutalisk/etc play too easily. Terran don't need this gimmicky sort of AA for mech.
IMO mines should be dropped to 1 supply, make damage around 60 and splash around 30. This works out to less damage but more splash per 2 supply. Not sure about cost of mine!?
EDIT: A 30 sec cooldown could also be nice :-)
Also like the idea of a unit that has the sole role of laying/deploying mines..
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As zerg, playing against the widow mine is fun and adds a big skill gap to manage it effectively. Finally, i really like the unit design. I would just prefer a 1 supply window mine, doing 80 damages instead of 160. And it shouldnt hit air.
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Then it is pretty much useless. Yeah you can spread them out a bit more, but for any serious damage you will need at least 2 anyway to kill it. And it hitting air isnt as bad as some people claim it to be. I often wonder when people tell that mutas are useless due to widow mines if they are zerg players who want even stronger mutas, or if they are terran players who like that not too many zergs use widow mines. Yeah widow mines kill mutas, but there is no way that they kill all your mutas like some claim.
Also in TvT I kinda like them against banshees, it forces you to watch your banshees when they move. Then when you see them appear, you got to press your cloak hotkey very fast 
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On December 16 2012 23:40 Sissors wrote:Then it is pretty much useless. Yeah you can spread them out a bit more, but for any serious damage you will need at least 2 anyway to kill it. And it hitting air isnt as bad as some people claim it to be. I often wonder when people tell that mutas are useless due to widow mines if they are zerg players who want even stronger mutas, or if they are terran players who like that not too many zergs use widow mines. Yeah widow mines kill mutas, but there is no way that they kill all your mutas like some claim. Also in TvT I kinda like them against banshees, it forces you to watch your banshees when they move. Then when you see them appear, you got to press your cloak hotkey very fast
Mutas don't have a cloak.. ;-) And now they 4x regen probably because of mines. The problem isn't so much the splash as it is the 1-shot kill.. 1 muta vs 1 mine is pretty bad for zerg.. And you don't even get the mine if you don't have detection slowing down your mutas. Also 4 mines can take out a lot of mutas, regen is useless in this case.
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On December 16 2012 23:01 winsonsonho wrote:
In bw spider mines could be used aggressively by dropping them in front of the enemy units.. I don't think this 1 sec burrow is bad,
This.
You don´t have to limit yourself by "pseudo" designs. Tanks should be to control space too, but what if used to kill workers in drops like bw? Whats the problem?
The window mine upgrade add a cool mechanic that you have to atack and in the same time flank/burrow the mines offensively like we used to do with lurkers in attacks too.
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EPT
