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So recently the Widow Mine has gotten an upgrade that reduces burrow time from 3 to 1 second.
Ignoring any balance issues, I'm of the opinion this is an extremely poor change, because it ignores the fundamental reason of existence for the Widow Mine: that it's a positional area control unit. That means that the interaction with them should be something along the lines of "set and forget": you get them into an area, set them up, and then forget about them until you want to move them. How does this upgrade help with that at all? If you're moving into an uncontested area, it could even take them 20 seconds to burrow without it being a problem (not that I recommend such a change). It's only within contested areas that burrow time matters. 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. I can't say I support such things, as Terran does not need Banelings. A more suitable upgrade would be damage, splash radius, or range, all of which would allow the Mine to have more impact in the late game without making it overpowered early.
Would anyone else care to give their input on this upgrade?
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I think it's an upgrade that we should leave it in for the game to develop and see what strategies will evolve from there.
I also feel widow mines has a lot of potential in them, and can help tanks covering zones on maps that siege tanks don't do well enough
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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
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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.
This is exactly why I don't like the upgrade, and the direction blizzard is apparently going with the widow mine. An idea someone had early, a widow mine which slowly lays a minefield of actual mines around itself, or the current widow mine with multiple rockets which slowly replenish themselves, is what I expected the widow mine would be: A real positional unit you have to think about where to put it, and takes a while to reach its maximum effectiveness.
Not this using them as banelings: running into the enemy army and hope enough can burrow in time.
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Belgium1815 Posts
On December 15 2012 22:57 Tritanis wrote:Show nested quote +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
Perhaps an upgrade at the fusion core where the Widow mine can load 5 mines to launch at once.
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On December 15 2012 23:17 Seiniyta wrote:Show nested quote +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 Perhaps an upgrade at the fusion core where the Widow mine can load 5 mines to launch at once.
Haha, good one. Low tech units get always bad lategame, not every unit can be a marine. Thats why the upgrades make sense,the time is reduced so u can use it aggressive and free up supply.
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On December 15 2012 22:57 Tritanis wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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The upgrade is very good for the mine, it makes it so you can actually use it and get something out of it, where as before 90% of your mines would die b4 ever doing anything making them utter trash.
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Sure, the upgrade makes mines more effective in straight up engagements, but if that is the new direction for the widow mine then its design is a failure.
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On December 16 2012 09:37 Acritter wrote:Show nested quote +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.
The unit actually is great at being positional just like the siege tank. Yes you can include it in your core army however the only thing it does if the enemy responds properly is re position. I heavily like this upgrade and to be honest you need to be able to secure a position quick if there are enemy units present.
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On December 16 2012 09:37 Acritter wrote:Show nested quote +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.
The problem with the mine is it costs too much supply. if it was 1 supply or even 1.5 supply it would go along way of making mech armies viable vP along with the fast burrow upgrade.
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Agree with OP completely. It seems a counterproductive direction to take the widow mine.
How about a new functionality with its upgrade? Suppose it gains the ability to self-destruct, or kamikaze into a target like it used to, before being given an attack? Manual cast.
Or even as simple as giving it a second shot/reducing its reload time. If it needs an upgrade, burrow time is the wrong thing to improve.
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a 200/200 upgrade on the fusion core for +2 range would be a nice balanced way of making the widow mine better at controlling areas and being useful late game.
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United Arab Emirates439 Posts
If it's only role was to plant in positions that are under no immediate threat what a 1 dimensional unit it would be...
I do understand your point OP, that you feel like if the unit can just be brought with your army and planted right when the enemy engages it isn't really a positional unit as much as just some mobile splash, I just feel it's a bit ignorant of how games actually are played.
A couple examples: Sensor Tower + Widow Mine. A pretty effective combination right now. With good map awareness they can be in good position against attacks (Drops, or Runby's), the upgrade goes a long way in making this possible - especially against super fast units like Speed Prisms, Mutas, Oracles, Ling runby's, Hellion runby's, etc. Still positioning, just a more active form of it. Not like Chess.
Also, in the late game, as a Mech player, you just can't defend all of your expansions with stationary defenses. You can't just split your army into 3+ different groups to defend 3+ different sections of the map from your opponents entire army. You will have small amounts of units in good positions to defend from smaller attacks and keep some map control and slow down army movements, while you keep a large part of your army mobile to move back and forth to reinforce these positions as your opponent moves his entire army. This upgrade allows you to do that. It's still a positioning game, you need to be in position, you need to control space, but it's a more mobile and active form of positioning (side note: this is how Mech was played vs Protoss in BW).
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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.
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United Arab Emirates439 Posts
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.
Hmm... you think even against Toss? (Zerg and Terran, non-mech terran at least, I agree).
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On December 15 2012 22:57 Tritanis wrote:Show nested quote +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
Armory upgrade that need Fusion Core. Mines now auto cast nukes with 40 seconds delay.
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On December 16 2012 12:53 ZjiublingZ 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. Hmm... you think even against Toss? (Zerg and Terran, non-mech terran at least, I agree).
Mech in general sucks against protoss imo. The mine does too =/
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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.
I have used the mine enough to realize that it is actually a strong positional unit, and is essentially a lurker in functionality. I don't doubt that it is good, I just think that the 1 second burrow time actually detracts from its nature as a strong positional unit. A 3 second burrow mine means you have to predict where your opponent is going to go, as you cannot run mines into the enemy and burrow them. And I think it is good design that you cannot do this. There are already lots of assault type units, the widow mine does not need this functionality.
Allowing players to run mines close to enemy units and burrow them would undoubtedly raise its execution skill cap, but at the cost of the skill of predicting your opponent's movements beforehand.
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The upgrade they did great on, it adds alot of mid-late game usage with the unit.
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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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