[D] Widow Mines, Tanks, and Space Control - Page 3

On December 28 2012 10:57 a176 wrote:
someone help me out here

On December 28 2012 13:35 SC2John wrote:


And I do enjoy this immensely lol. Yeah, widow mines are not really as responsive as spider mines were...would be nice to see Blizzard work on the physics of the widow mine to prevent things like speedlings and chargelots from waltzing over them like they're not there. Probably need to add overkill and give widow mine a much shorter cooldown.

On December 28 2012 20:07 Evangelist wrote:
The widow mine just isn't working in its current form. Its a cool idea but I don't think it'll ever be completely balanced because of the binary nature of its usage. Spider mines worked because they were free in a sense. Widow mines are a commitment which relies on your opponent making a really big mistake. If they do not make this mistake, they easily take out a huge amount of supply.

However I don't think the widow mine should be completely given up on. Personally I like the idea of widow mines and siege tanks working together to hold space but I think 3 things need to happen:

1. Late game tanks need dramatically more damage than they currently have. Add the shaped charge upgrade to the fusion core which increases single target damage.
2. Widow mines should have a single target high damage attack when burrowed.
3. Widow mines should be able to lay spider mines ala vultures, at 25 minerals a pop.

Widow mines are only effective in large enough numbers to cut into your tank count. Having spider mines will deal with the Immortal syndrome - Protoss can no longer a move into tank lines.

On December 28 2012 23:13 Rabiator wrote:

Widow Mines arent even as fun to watch as the "eeek ... a Spider Mine just unburrowed ... run away run away" slapstick comedy that arises from their whole mechanics and movement. Spider Mines also required some skill and could be used "offensively" by riding your Vultures into the enemy lines to burrow the mines there. You can do the same with Widow Mines, BUT the control for that is much easier and you dont have a Vulture to risk at the same time.



1. Not only late game tanks ... at 35 base damage there probably is a timing where they wont even kill a Zergling with one shot (when Zerglings have 1 armor and Tanks 0 attack upgrades). They also need to deal damage equally well against every type of unit, because it is already reduced for the splash and having some units take close to zero damage from such an expensive unit is a joke ... and a bad implementation of rock-paper-scissors.

2. Widow Mines are a lackluster and boring unit, which should be replaced by the funny squealing Spider Mine ...

3. TERRIBLE idea, because you can just spam the skill if you have the resources for it.

On December 28 2012 16:05 ledarsi wrote:
Anyone who says that tanks beat immortals is completely out of their gourd. In real games, immortals absolutely obliterate tank based play. I cannot even believe this is up for debate.

Protosses with enough immortals will happily A-move into tank lines and CRUSH them. It is so one-sided that the Protoss doesn't even have to get cute with flanks, warp prisms, or even trying to micro to get tanks to shoot a particular target. They just blindly A-move in and straight up defeat tank lines.

Ghosts help massively to deal with the hardened shields. However apart from the EMP the ghost is not useful in the slightest, and the need for them does cut into your already pathetic maximum tank count due to them being 3 supply each. However, honestly, I would rather have infantry, or thor+hellion, or be sky terran.

You cannot attack quickly with tanks, you cannot retreat with tanks, you will suffer massive casualties when attacked, and there is no way to rebuild them quickly enough to avoid losing the game when you do suffer serious losses. There's too many different ways Protoss can cheaply cripple or straight up murder your tank count even if it is already a huge amount of supply and resource investment. I'd rather have MMM and Ghosts to deal with the Templar, and Vikings to deal with the Colossi. It's cheaper, has higher HP per cost and supply (and medivacs), has higher damage per cost and supply (and stim), and much greater movespeed and versatility, especially anti-air. It gives you great mobility and map control, lets you expand safely and defend by moving your entire army to defend rather than posting defenders that just get killed for free and aren't a part of your main army in the meantime. And MMM beats pretty much everything except those two Protoss splash dealers- Colossi and HTs.

Furthermore, you are going to make Ghosts and Vikings either way, so I'd rather have MMM+VG than mech+VG. The only difference is you EMP the HTs instead of the Immortals, and the Vikings shoot Colossi instead of Skytoss units.

On December 29 2012 01:14 Habitus wrote:


I could see 3. working if it basically the Widow Mine's only ability was freezing for 3(1 with upgrade) seconds to lay a mine that did the current Widow Mine attack once and then was used up. Rather than resources, a 40 second cooldown (or what ever the current cooldown on the attack is).

On December 29 2012 05:44 dreamsmasher wrote:
why not make the tank dependent on a different unit, such as mm a ghost or raven that helps 'spot' or 'paint the target' for the tank.

enemies caught by the laser or aoe on the ground take extra damage for the tank.

this helps balance something like making an extra powerful 111 by placing the bonus damage that a tank does on a different, more high tech unit (maybe it requires research if you really need to balance things like this).

an idea could be a research added on top of EMP like 'buffed EMP" (change the name obviously). targets affected by EMP take an additional 25 (number if variable obviously) damage from splash damage for x number of seconds.

you could even tie it to a different 'shot' if you wanted.

i think in this way the game can be desinged around a bio centric force (imagine MMMghost/viking/raven tech support) and mech styles where ghosts (or ravens) are added on as wel as biomech type of forces. the ghost/raven would function as the ultimate unit in a way by series of 'tech' to equalize to the power of Z or P in end game.

On December 29 2012 15:16 xPrimuSx wrote:
In order to increase the tank's ability to control space, what about making it a pseudo-mine layer? The Siege Tank (only in siege mode) can fire a targeted round (cannot target units, only terrain) that immediately buries itself into the ground and then works similar to the Shredders from the HotS annoucement, dealing damage to enemy units that enter their field of effect (units leaving the field could even continue taking damage for a few seconds). The round would be a timed life structure/unit. The ability would need to be on a cooldown since adding energy to tanks is a bad idea. Make it an upgrade on Tech Labs that is unlocked when an Armory is built.

On December 29 2012 15:58 Rabiator wrote:

If you do that you will have Terran bases VERY safe, because you can simply build 4-5 Widow Mines early and then cover every base with spawned Spider Mines every 40 seconds. So a cooldown isnt a good regulator either. The only working one would be "3 charges", but thats an idea "stolen from BW", so Browder will never ever consider it and why should a Widow Mine lay Spider Mines at all?

Apart from that having the "Spider Mine" attack like the Widow Mine would be terribly dull, because the attack method of the Spider Mine - sounds and movement - was half the fun of it to watch ... just as the "random flight pattern attack" of the Reaver was.

On December 30 2012 04:39 People_0f_Color wrote:
Like many others, I think most of the problems have to do on the Protoss side. I had made these suggestions on improving PvZ and PvT. I will repost them here to figure out how people feel.

The Problems with protoss in PvT and PvZ:

1. Warp In is terrible. As a result of warp in, there is no defender's advantage and Protoss is pressured do early all ins disproportionately, because of how weak gateways are mid/late game, and how good warp in is early game.

2. Mothership metagame sucks.

3. Too many counter units that require no micro/boring play and counter more exciting play (siege tanks).


Solution to Warpage:
Take away warpgate research and bring it in the late game. Buff all gateway units.

I offer the following method that could be interesting: We bring about warpins with a new unit (lets call it the arbiter for the sake of argument).

Properties of the Arbiter:
1. produces large warp in field.
2. small aoe "stasis" (or some other spell if you guys think of a better one)
3. passive ability, aoe cloak.


The Arbiter is built FROM the Mothership (making the mother ship a real "mother" ship). This helps limit the number of Arbiters one can make allowing them to be fairly powerful.

Reworking the Mothership
1. take away vortex. It sucks.
2. Increase its speed, lower its health/shields and cost.
3. Give it two forms of recall. Targeted Recall, which works as it currently does, and Mass Recall, which costs more energy but brings back every unit near Arbiters to the Mothership.
4. Give it the ability to produce Arbiters.

Fixing the Immortal
The "Mech Killer". Its a boring unit, durable as hell, powerful, good range, easy to protect. Its the perfect "A move and dont worry" unit.

-Change it's stats to be 200 shield, 25 health.
-Take away Hardened Shields.
-give it a Bonus 50 vs. Buildings stat.
-Increased Regeneration. The Immortal recharges its shield out of combat much faster than other units (keeping true to its name).

This makes the immortal a better harass unit, less durable, and more likely to be protected in combat situations. It would also have great synergy with warp prisms, not only for harassing, but to drop them into battle and pull them out quickly while they recharge their shields in the transport.

Changing the Warp Prism
Ever transport unit needs an ability in starcraft 2. My suggestion about the Arbiter makes warp prism warping redundant. I think the warp prism warp in area should only be big enough for 1 or 2 dts but warpins in HOTS should be at arbiters, not at pylons and only at warp prisms for harassing. The warp prism should get the Hardened Shield ability. WIth the following changes.

1. Hardened shield. When in "activated mode", the Warp Prism creates an aoe umbrella under it, reducing damage greater than 10 to 10 for 5 seconds or as long as the Warp Prism is Alive. The Warp Prism is also protected in the same way by its umbrella.

My feeling about these changes is that it increases the harassment potential from robo, reduces the need to rely on timing attacks, makes more sustanable gateway pressure that doesn't revolve around win it or lose it timings. Toss can move around the map lategame easier, because mothership is purely a recall device and faces no risk outside of that. Furthermore, warping in powerful gateway units all over the map is really good late game.

On December 30 2012 05:57 RavenLoud wrote:
why not put spider mines WITH window mines?

On December 30 2012 09:35 SC2John wrote:

As I've stated earlier, I'm not sure if giving widow mines the ability to lay mines is useful. It makes no sense to give mines the ability to lay mines AND be mines themselves, meaning that widow mines would still end up being dead supply after you used up the mines (unlike vultures in BW). In my opinion, the widow mines need a severe supply and power cut, and turned into a massable AoE damage dealer, which would solve a ton of problems that terran has with space control in general.

On December 30 2012 09:35 SC2John wrote:


I would like to read about your ideas sometime and see what sort of race overhauls protoss needs. However, I don't think this is really the right thread for this post. The discussion here is not exactly what problems mech has against protoss or how broken the matchup may be; it is about terran, and how space control in general is terrible.