EPTThe Warhound: Did We Make a Mistake? - Page 15
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Mongolbonjwa
Finland376 Posts
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Scrubwave
Poland1786 Posts
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Mongolbonjwa
Finland376 Posts
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Serpico
4285 Posts
On January 22 2013 06:41 Mongolbonjwa wrote: Why did they change warhounds role at the first place? it was meant to be a renamed goliath and it would have solved all the issues Giving a nod to BW is banned at neo blizzard. | ||
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Xor.
24 Posts
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TeslasPigeon
464 Posts
The only odd thing about the whole debacle is that Blizzard was willing to take out a unit during beta because of community outrage, yet when the same community is outraged about lack of a true high ground advantage or introducing a scaled economy they do nothing. Truly odd. | ||
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Scrubwave
Poland1786 Posts
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Xequecal
United States473 Posts
On January 22 2013 09:14 TeslasPigeon wrote: Oh course removing the warhound was a huge mistake, they never even considered changing the stats or role of the unit. Nope, let's just toss it because the community whined so much. The unit was intended to be a re skinned goliath, which is what Terran desperately need to make mech more viable against Toss. Instead of being given a chance to be reworked into that role, they completely remove the unit from the game. The only odd thing about the whole debacle is that Blizzard was willing to take out a unit during beta because of community outrage, yet when the same community is outraged about lack of a true high ground advantage or introducing a scaled economy they do nothing. Truly odd. I've posted this before, but it keeps coming up. 1. Having a goliath does not make mech viable against Protoss. There is still no vulture, which was the powerhouse mech unit in BW against Protoss. Once again, in BW vultures beat every Protoss ground unit except the dragoon. (which itself was only a very soft vulture counter) It was the vulture that made mech so good against Protoss in BW, not the tank or the goliath. The BW tank is significantly weaker than the SC2 tank, it just had the godlike vultures supporting it. 2. A reactorable ranged unit from the Factory that does decent damage to armored units breaks TvP entirely, period. Make a bunch of marines + that unit, pull all your workers, go kill yourself a Protoss. There isn't jack shit he can do about it since the worker swarm will trap his zealots and stalkers have no DPS. Worker-pull allins against P are balanced by two-things: Stalker kiting and Terran's inefficient early game production. The Warhound eliminates both those drawbacks which makes the allins unstoppable. | ||
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Doc Brawler
United States260 Posts
The new Hellbat, with its ridiculous damage is a great "addition" to the traditional SC2 mech army. It's basically a crazy strong pseudo-bio unit that supports tanks. T mech players can now multi-pronged harass with hellbat drops, just like a bio player would, and snipe tech structures or DECIMATE mineral lines. Plus their new damage, makes them great in straight up fights and helps deal with the dreaded immortal. Think about it: hellbats can be REACTORED and do almost their full damage to immortals, with a decently fast fire rate, and they are not considered armored. These things are definitely the missing link to mech TvP IMO. However, just like any T army vs protoss, a healthy balance in needed. Think of how good mass charge-lot archon does against marauder heavy compositions, or how colo armies will shread bio balls without vikings. Ravens can be slowly accrued over the corse of a game to deal with literally any protoss unit composition, especially sky toss. | ||
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pmp10
3216 Posts
On January 22 2013 11:28 Doc Brawler wrote: New hellbat replaces warhound. Sort of... The new Hellbat, with its ridiculous damage is a great "addition" to the traditional SC2 mech army. It's basically a crazy strong pseudo-bio unit that supports tanks. T mech players can now multi-pronged harass with hellbat drops, just like a bio player would, and snipe tech structures or DECIMATE mineral lines. Plus their new damage, makes them great in straight up fights and helps deal with the dreaded immortal. Think about it: hellbats can be REACTORED and do almost their full damage to immortals, with a decently fast fire rate, and they are not considered armored. These things are definitely the missing link to mech TvP IMO. However, just like any T army vs protoss, a healthy balance in needed. Think of how good mass charge-lot archon does against marauder heavy compositions, or how colo armies will shread bio balls without vikings. Ravens can be slowly accrued over the corse of a game to deal with literally any protoss unit composition, especially sky toss. Hellbat cannot replace warhound as it has no mechanical damage bonus or anti-immortal special ability. If anything hellbats will prove much more problematic to zergs that to protoss and the same holds true for nearly every other mech buff introduced so far. That's why if mech TvP is to work at pro-level a specific counter to protoss units is absolutely necessary. | ||
EsportsJohn
United States4883 Posts
On January 22 2013 12:19 pmp10 wrote: Hellbat cannot replace warhound as it has no mechanical damage bonus or anti-immortal special ability. If anything hellbats will prove much more problematic to zergs that to protoss and the same holds true for nearly every other mech buff introduced so far. That's why if mech TvP is to work at pro-level a specific counter to protoss units is absolutely necessary. Hellbats actually fill the exact role that warhounds were meant to fill in terms of game design: mech's biggest problem was mobility in the midgame and being able to trade cost efficiently with protoss unit. The new hellbat solves both these problems by not only allowing smaller mech armies to step out onto the map without fear of losing their tank count and losing the game but also allowing mech to apply moderate pressure instead of having to count on massive worker kills from hellions/banshees in order to just stay even economically. It's a huge upgrade and it fills the role of the warhound quite well. They should never create an "anti-mech" unit...there just doesn't seem to be a good niche in SC2 for such a unit. I do, however, agree that the new hellbats are hella strong against zerg. I've been playing zerg recently, and the marine/hellbat pressure that's really common right now is really hard to deal with. Hellion/marauder all-ins are even harder to hold. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On January 22 2013 14:36 SC2John wrote: Hellbats actually fill the exact role that warhounds were meant to fill in terms of game design: mech's biggest problem was mobility in the midgame and being able to trade cost efficiently with protoss unit. The new hellbat solves both these problems by not only allowing smaller mech armies to step out onto the map without fear of losing their tank count and losing the game but also allowing mech to apply moderate pressure instead of having to count on massive worker kills from hellions/banshees in order to just stay even economically. It's a huge upgrade and it fills the role of the warhound quite well. They should never create an "anti-mech" unit...there just doesn't seem to be a good niche in SC2 for such a unit. I do, however, agree that the new hellbats are hella strong against zerg. I've been playing zerg recently, and the marine/hellbat pressure that's really common right now is really hard to deal with. Hellion/marauder all-ins are even harder to hold. The transformation is so slow that it undos all the mobility you might think you gain. Its the same for Vikings. Without the transformation you simply have Hellions and nothing new OR some slow lumbering heaps of metal with short range fire. | ||
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drkcid
Spain196 Posts
On January 22 2013 16:10 Rabiator wrote: The transformation is so slow that it undos all the mobility you might think you gain. Its the same for Vikings. Without the transformation you simply have Hellions and nothing new OR some slow lumbering heaps of metal with short range fire. This. Thats why vikings almost never used to attack ground. By the time they have transformed, the workers have flee or the enemy units deals a lot of damage. T needs a mech, small (like a landed viking or battle helion), low-medium dps, can use reactor, ranged unit that soft-counter inmortals (ignores hardened shield) and shoots air. This way T can focus fire inmortals while battlehelions are used as a meat shield. Against air they can provide some defense, so T doesnt need to mass thors against air, with 3-4 thors suported with this ranged unit. This way you can choose to skip barracks against P and use factory and starport. BTW a stupid question: has anybody tried to combine helions, landed vikings and tanks against land P? Sometimes I feel that instead of create new units or buff siege damage we have to explore the possibilities of unsieged tanks and vikings. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On January 22 2013 18:07 drkcid wrote: This. Thats why vikings almost never used to attack ground. By the time they have transformed, the workers have flee or the enemy units deals a lot of damage. T needs a mech, small (like a landed viking or battle helion), low-medium dps, can use reactor, ranged unit that soft-counter inmortals (ignores hardened shield) and shoots air. This way T can focus fire inmortals while battlehelions are used as a meat shield. Against air they can provide some defense, so T doesnt need to mass thors against air, with 3-4 thors suported with this ranged unit. This way you can choose to skip barracks against P and use factory and starport. BTW a stupid question: has anybody tried to combine helions, landed vikings and tanks against land P? Sometimes I feel that instead of create new units or buff siege damage we have to explore the possibilities of unsieged tanks and vikings. Landed Vikings is a nice idea, but their mobility (repositioning in a battle) is terrible AND you need to research a separate offensive upgrade to keep them efficient enough later in the game. They are simply boring and inefficient and not at all like a Robotech fighter plane ... (they lack the hybrid mode anyways). Now if they gave the Viking a limited number of charges of rockets (smaller versions of the Seeker Missile in its current form) which they could unleash in every form and against any target they might become actually cool, but as long as they stick to this "mono-targeting-concept" (exclusively air or ground only) with the slow transformation they will be terrible. At least they should be moving already / still while transforming, so they could have a chance to escape when they are on the ground, but as immobile as they are now they are really bad. ![[image loading]](http://photos.imageevent.com/afap/wallpapers/animemanga/robotech/Robotech.jpg) | ||
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YyapSsap
New Zealand1511 Posts
On January 22 2013 10:26 Xequecal wrote: 1. Having a goliath does not make mech viable against Protoss. There is still no vulture, which was the powerhouse mech unit in BW against Protoss. Once again, in BW vultures beat every Protoss ground unit except the dragoon. (which itself was only a very soft vulture counter) It was the vulture that made mech so good against Protoss in BW, not the tank or the goliath. The BW tank is significantly weaker than the SC2 tank, it just had the godlike vultures supporting it. 2. A reactorable ranged unit from the Factory that does decent damage to armored units breaks TvP entirely, period. Make a bunch of marines + that unit, pull all your workers, go kill yourself a Protoss. There isn't jack shit he can do about it since the worker swarm will trap his zealots and stalkers have no DPS. Worker-pull allins against P are balanced by two-things: Stalker kiting and Terran's inefficient early game production. The Warhound eliminates both those drawbacks which makes the allins unstoppable. Um BW tanks being significantly weaker than the SC2 tank?? Thats simply false. I think its been explained a million times why they are significantly stronger than SC2 tanks. Not only in terms of cost/supply but the damage it dealt. The advantages of smart fire don't really come into play when the BW counterpart will simply brute force its way out of the overkill syndrome. Vultures were just a part of what made mech worked in BW, not the thing that made it possible. Its the synergy between the fast moving vulture + map control via spidermines backed up by the firepower of the tanks + zone controls supported by possibly the best GtA unit in the game against possible air threats. | ||
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Mongolbonjwa
Finland376 Posts
But there is problems too if blizzard did bring goliath back, because then terran would easily get that superior battlecruiser, viking, banshee, raven, tank mixture that would be broken in the game as it is. Goliath would be the answer for pure mech builds that lack good anti-air and this way it makes reaching that end game composition very viable option. | ||
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DeCoup
Australia1933 Posts
On January 22 2013 16:10 Rabiator wrote: The transformation is so slow that it undos all the mobility you might think you gain. Its the same for Vikings. Without the transformation you simply have Hellions and nothing new OR some slow lumbering heaps of metal with short range fire. I disagree. Firstly hellbats are still created in hellion form, so reinforcement is very fast for a unit of its speed. Reinforcement and mobility may not be exactly the same thing, but it allows you to be more agressive with your force knowing you have such a quick reinforcement which indirectly allows you to move more quickly across the map. This also means that when an engagement is not going well and you decide to retreat your tanks, additional hellions/hellbats can be there more quickly to help defend their retreat further decreasing the chance of tank losses. Secondly small packs of hellbats can be transformed back into hellions to perform counter attacks into additional bases mineral lines (or rallied to those locations from the factory while they are still in hellion form). And no they don't loose this mobility because of transformation times. The 4 (if you stay in hellion form for drone harass) to 8 (if you transform back into hellbat after travel) seconds of transformation time cuts 20-30 seconds off some paths. That is substantial. And thirdly medivacs both heal and transport hellbats, so small drop detachements have a lot of mobility even in hellbat form via medivacs. To me this new mech seems to have a lot more mobility. Not to the hellbat/tank core itself, but in other forms. | ||
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HowardRoark
1146 Posts
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Ctone23
United States1839 Posts
At least with the Warhound in play we Terrans could have a way to combat the archon/collosus more effective. | ||
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s3rp
Germany3192 Posts
On January 22 2013 11:28 Doc Brawler wrote: New hellbat replaces warhound. Sort of... The new Hellbat, with its ridiculous damage is a great "addition" to the traditional SC2 mech army. It's basically a crazy strong pseudo-bio unit that supports tanks. T mech players can now multi-pronged harass with hellbat drops, just like a bio player would, and snipe tech structures or DECIMATE mineral lines. Plus their new damage, makes them great in straight up fights and helps deal with the dreaded immortal. Think about it: hellbats can be REACTORED and do almost their full damage to immortals, with a decently fast fire rate, and they are not considered armored. These things are definitely the missing link to mech TvP IMO. However, just like any T army vs protoss, a healthy balance in needed. Think of how good mass charge-lot archon does against marauder heavy compositions, or how colo armies will shread bio balls without vikings. Ravens can be slowly accrued over the corse of a game to deal with literally any protoss unit composition, especially sky toss. The Hellbat with it's pathetic range and slow moving speed is only useful against melee units anything else should never get hit by a Hellbat. They're incredibly easy to just outmaneuver. | ||
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