[D] Widow Mines, Tanks, and Space Control - Page 5

On January 03 2013 10:07 Elldar wrote:


Tanks in bw and WoL is actually quite similar if you compare the damage system and how it worked in bw and sc2. So buffing damage is not the way to go imo. The big nerf siege tanks got in sc2 compared to bw is the food, 3 food makes a difference and imo is the core problem with mech in TvP.

As for widow mines the supply cost is also too high I do not know about there internal testing but reducing wm and tanks could really evovle TvP and TvT.

To op:

I think that just reducing the food cost solves the problems and it just overcomplicate things with the attack changes.

On January 04 2013 15:55 blade55555 wrote:


You reduce the food cost of tanks and it's possible you make them overpowered in tvz. Tvz would change a ton because that would mean terran can have even more marines or more tanks.

Lowering the food would imo break tvz completely because contrary to terrans belief, tanks are good tvz (until late game then they aren't as useful).

On January 04 2013 16:48 Zahir wrote:


Exactly. Tanks aren't as good in late game TvZ. One reason is lack of shared upgrades with bio, another is broodlords. Thing is, reducing the supply cost would mostly be a buff to late game tank heavy strats, when the Terran is maxed out. Before max, a 1 supply differential barely matters, it just means you need to build a few less supply depots. Once you near max though, being able to be supply effective is huge.

On January 04 2013 17:00 Rabiator wrote:

Why would you want to have tanks in late game when they have the achilles heel of Broodlords and no mech unit to defend them against that?

Tank damage needs to be increased significantly so they are SCARY in mid and late game, because they still have their weaknesses of immobility and no AA defense by themselves. This would give Terrans the ability to use the tank for what it was designed while keeping the methods to abuse their weaknesses equally strong so you have to build more than just tanks to win. There are quite a few new anti-tank-tricks coming with HotS, so increased damage should be ok.

On January 04 2013 18:33 immanentblue wrote:
The basic problem with the widow mine right now, is that you dont actually have to control the area you burrow your mines in... This makes it so that if the mines are any good at what they are supposed to, which is space control, they become way too strong as an offensive harrass unit... If their deployment time, on the other hand was considerably slower (Im talking something like 30 secs-1minute) they could be buffed to have good damage with splash, without being way too powerfull... That would make it so that you could only deploy the mines in areas you allready control, in order to advance further, or move back with your army and defend a counter attack...

On January 04 2013 17:48 Zahir wrote:


Well, I was responding to the argument that supply effective (rather than cost effective) tanks would "break" tvz which, given the content of your post, I think you are in agreement with me that that is not the case.

Your post seems to have an inherent contradiction though, do you think tanks should be viable in late game tvz or not? Your first sentence dismisses the notion but then you say a damage buff will help (which it won't vs brood heavy comps, or immortal heavy for that matter). I agree that more mid game tank pushes would be nice.

I would honestly be fine with buffing the damage if not for immortals. However the fact that immortals exist mean that direct damage buff to tanks will barely help them at all to be more viable vs toss, especially not in the mid game. Maybe both a supply and damage buff could be incorporated, however if its JUST a damage buff tank heavy mech will still not really be viable in tvp. Only a supply based buff has the potential to change that.

On January 04 2013 22:18 ledarsi wrote:
Number 1- PDD really, really should stop Broodlord projectiles. There is no good reason for PDD not to work against them at all.

Number 2- Terran needs a better way to fight Corruptor+Broodlord. Massing Vikings sort of works, but then Fungal makes large corruptor-viking battles extremely difficult for terran. The new Raven Seeker Missile is a solution that works by sniping it with a powerful single-target spell. However I think a better solution is to have an anti-air splash damage spell (i.e. Raven Seeker Missile, WoL style) to aid the Vikings in fighting the Corruptors. Giving it 9 range, like Fungal has, would be a better solution.

Additionally, I think it would be cool to have the delayed-target missile still be in the game, but not on the Seeker Missile dealing 300 like a poor man's Yamato. Instead, make a much smaller missile on the Viking. Vikings are more numerous and might have multiple missiles each. Making them able to be used against both ground or air targets at long range from either mode would be excellent. These can be used in a variety of ways- just need to be careful with the damage number so they aren't free worker kills. Although, actually, that might not be the end of the world considering how late a significant number of Vikings arrives, the missile research being done, and how many missiles would be needed to deal significant economic damage that might be better spent shooting military targets.

The Viking is already intended to counter Broodlords- it just has to fight the Corruptors first. Ravens should be able to prevent Broodlords from damaging your ground units for a short time using PDD while this fight happens. It might also be an improvement to make Corruptor attacks not be intercepted by PDD, and rework Corruption to be a more interesting and powerful ability as well.

On January 04 2013 21:11 Zahir wrote:
I think a buffed mine with this concept, combined with an elimination of ability to hit air, would do so much for Terran. HoTS needs more cool ideas like these, units need unique concepts and limitations dammit, not just stuff that looks cool.

On January 04 2013 22:57 pmp10 wrote:

The obvious problem is that mine needs to hit air.
With no splash on seeker missile widow mine is the only alternative to thor for air AoE damage.
Removing it would badly nerf mech against corruptor/broodlord.

On January 04 2013 15:55 blade55555 wrote:


You reduce the food cost of tanks and it's possible you make them overpowered in tvz. Tvz would change a ton because that would mean terran can have even more marines or more tanks.

Lowering the food would imo break tvz completely because contrary to terrans belief, tanks are good tvz (until late game then they aren't as useful).

On January 04 2013 21:18 Rabiator wrote:

I think tanks should be viable all game long and the design of the Broodlord makes them useless. If there was a reasonable way to fight Broodlords that would change, but as long as they spawn their free units which block movement at a super long range AND as long as Vikings can easily be fungaled and killed there is no chance for Tanks to be viable against any Broodlord composition.

A solution might be to reduce the range of Broodlords to something like 2-3 while increasing their mobility significantly (to almost Mutalisk mobility). With such a setup you could use the Vipers abduct spell to grab a few Siege Tanks and annihilate them with Broodlords and you could defend against straight up Broodlords with turrets or Thors (after they get a decent AA upgrade) while playing mech.

Against Immortals it is clear that you need Ghosts and EMP. Introducing a direct countermeasure against Immortals on the side of Tanks is pointless, because the Immortal was designed specifically against tanks. Increasing the damage of tanks will help against Immortals, because you can kill "everything else" faster and thus the "rest of your army" can deal with the Immortals.

On January 05 2013 01:37 Zahir wrote:


Seeing broodlords zip around and own things at roach range would be kind of hilarious after all these games where they are the embodiment of slow, inevitable doom. I honestly have no clue whether that would be balanced or better for the game, but it would certainly be refreshing. Sadly, I doubt blizzard will ever make any such change because it is just too radical a divergence from the unit as it presently exists. As far as WoL units go, they are into tweaking numbers and that is about it.

As for immortals, I do not like the idea of forcing ghostmech. That is a composition that requires tremendous infrastructure and upgrades to be effective. The only safe way to get it is camping heavily on 3-4 base... which means tvp mech will always be 200/200 and 15 minutes before you see any serious action. Mech needs some way of being viable in this matchup without requiring an entire different tech/research path + fairly expensive supporting force.

To be blunt, I don't care that immortals were designed specifically against tanks. It was a bad idea to create such a skilless hard counter in the first place. The proper counter to tanks should be flanking, harassment, dropping on top of them, picking off overextended tanks, and so on. Dynamic, micro intensive play should counter tanks. Not a single unit with a built in anti tank shield. I don't want to see more games with spread out immortals absorbing enormous amounts of tank fire and then the protoss 1aing into the mech army for victory. I want to see immortals getting vaporized, and then chargelots, warp prisms, dts, blink stalkers, phoenixes, and all the other actual good protoss units use their cool starcraft 2 spells and abilities to pick apart siege lines in a gory explosion, 300 apm explosion of manly combat.

With increased damage on tanks that scenario will never occur. Increased damage will force the toss to build their hard counter, immortals, so that the terran does not kill "everything else" as you stated. Which, if the Terran has to build his own hard counter to counter the immortals, he might as well give up attacking at all until his tech tree are 3/3/3/3 upgrades are mostly complete.

Apologies if this post came out rude or anything. Bit low on sleep and I'm having trouble polishing my words.

On January 04 2013 23:22 ledarsi wrote:
The Thor fundamentally is a bad idea. Expensive, few in number, hero unit. It's what happens when Browder "lets the art lead." His words. That unit should have been smaller, cheaper, and weaker. There no excuse for making it so large other than being mistaken about what SC2 players like or think is "cool."

Shrink the Thor, or add a smaller unit that actually is effective against air units, for less cost.

On January 05 2013 01:37 Zahir wrote:


Seeing broodlords zip around and own things at roach range would be kind of hilarious after all these games where they are the embodiment of slow, inevitable doom. I honestly have no clue whether that would be balanced or better for the game, but it would certainly be refreshing. Sadly, I doubt blizzard will ever make any such change because it is just too radical a divergence from the unit as it presently exists. As far as WoL units go, they are into tweaking numbers and that is about it.

As for immortals, I do not like the idea of forcing ghostmech. That is a composition that requires tremendous infrastructure and upgrades to be effective. The only safe way to get it is camping heavily on 3-4 base... which means tvp mech will always be 200/200 and 15 minutes before you see any serious action. Mech needs some way of being viable in this matchup without requiring an entire different tech/research path + fairly expensive supporting force.

To be blunt, I don't care that immortals were designed specifically against tanks. It was a bad idea to create such a skilless hard counter in the first place. The proper counter to tanks should be flanking, harassment, dropping on top of them, picking off overextended tanks, and so on. Dynamic, micro intensive play should counter tanks. Not a single unit with a built in anti tank shield. I don't want to see more games with spread out immortals absorbing enormous amounts of tank fire and then the protoss 1aing into the mech army for victory. I want to see immortals getting vaporized, and then chargelots, warp prisms, dts, blink stalkers, phoenixes, and all the other actual good protoss units use their cool starcraft 2 spells and abilities to pick apart siege lines in a gory explosion, 300 apm explosion of manly combat.

With increased damage on tanks that scenario will never occur. Increased damage will force the toss to build their hard counter, immortals, so that the terran does not kill "everything else" as you stated. Which, if the Terran has to build his own hard counter to counter the immortals, he might as well give up attacking at all until his tech tree are 3/3/3/3 upgrades are mostly complete.

Apologies if this post came out rude or anything. Bit low on sleep and I'm having trouble polishing my words.

On December 21 2012 16:37 YoungNV wrote:
Banelings are inefficient when used on single targets, therefore you must choose your targets wisely, requiring more skill.
Mines basically one-shot everything plus deal splash. The recent decrease in single target damage makes them more like banelings in that they are [slightly] less efficient when used on single targets now. Meaning that there is some added risk to using them, where before, there was little risk because you were almost guaranteed at least one kill.

Banelings have to be within melee range to detonate and you can only use them once.
Mines have a ranged attack and can be used as many times as you want.

Banelings only attack ground units.
Mines can attack ground and air units (thankfully not cloaked units anymore).

Basically, mines are way better than burrowed banelings in every single category. This explains why they cost so much more. My point here, is that if you reduce the cost or supply of the mines, you simply MUST nerf the hell out of it.

On January 05 2013 21:13 Bittersweet13 wrote:


I just wanted to add, the only thing Widow mine is really more expensive than the baneling at is in supply.( 2 to 0.5) The widowmine costs 75/25, while a baneling costs 50/25, Baneling needs 2 attack upgrades to match the splash of a widow mine, and that is only vs light.