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A few weeks ago I would go widow mine/air and have a 70% win rate vs Zerg. Zerg players tried to go for BroodLords/Corruptor or Ultras and widow mines + viking/bansehee/raven would work great against both.
Then lately every player seems to have learned how to bait widow mines with a few units then go in with their whole army and wipe out the widow mines field after they have fired.
Is this the future of widow mines? They will be strong against weak players that try to a-move over them without thought, but close to useless in mid game or late game battles against better opponents?
If anyone is still successful with widow mines past early game against good opponents please describe in detail how you use them.
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I only use widow mines vZ, though that might change with the recent buff v shields, and they work incredibly well if you have your army a little bit ahead of them. Then you pull back to the widow mines when they actually commit to an attack.
I think the future is using widow mines to get quicker third bases TvZ and TvP, and then they'll probably be used mid-late game to protect against drops/mutas.
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If a widow mine shoots vs a stalker and that stalker blinks. It does 0 damage, 0 splash and it will have a cooldown.
If a widow mine shoots and a unit burrows it will only do splash damage in the area that unit burrowed.
With skill, you can completely nullify Widow Mine damage or make it do its splash at maximum.
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I was thinking the same thing... just send out a few units at a time to put the mines on cd, then send in your army to clean them up.
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They won't be weak at high level.
But if you are used to players losing their whole army when they move over big minefield withour detection. Then yes, they are less effective at higher level.
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I find overlords to be a pretty solid choice for tripping widow mines.
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High level players might not loose huge chunks of army like what happens in the lower leagues. However traversing a map covered with widow mines, will always take time, and away from the actions of the opposing player. I feel that's probably the main way widow mines will effect high level play.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On February 09 2013 03:52 Cyanocyst wrote:
High level players might not loose huge chunks of army like what happens in the lower leagues. However traversing a map covered with widow mines, will always take time, and away from the actions of the opposing player. I feel that's probably the main way widow mines will effect high level play.
This, the effect is less the damage done and more the map vision and slowing effect on your opponent.
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That's why blizzard should put hold-fire on the WM. It's stupid how how free units can activate them :[ I'd gladly give up on WM working on workers if blizzard gives terrans the possibility to hold fire.
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United States7166 Posts
Why is it that everyone just thinks of using widow mines as isolated units, away from your army? The strongest use of the widow mine is and will be when you have an army nearby to protect it, making it so you can't just set it off with 1 zergling, especially with the delay before it activates. Widow mines to support bio or mech armies is what makes it so powerful vs zerg. Watch the recent day9 dailies on it, xigua vs beastyQT
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Beside what Blizzard is trying to sell, Window mines ain't something you use away from your army.
Look at them like another version of a Siege tank and use them in synergy with Bio units or mech to get on the fly flanking covering / retreat paths
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That's funny Zelniq, I remember blizzard talking about how they wanted to move supply away from the deathball with units such as the widowmine.
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Seems like it would also be useful against multi-pronged stuff, since it forces detection. They don't cost that much compared to detectors, so even if it seems like they are useless (not doing any actual damage,) they still could have a significant effect.
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On February 09 2013 04:04 Jellikit wrote:
That's funny Zelniq, I remember blizzard talking about how they wanted to move supply away from the deathball with units such as the widowmine.
Oracles were originally a harasser that didn't kill workers too. Funny how these things work out. When widow mines are kept with the army it's really tough to engage for a Zerg player. I'm more concerned about the mines withe the MMM ball than some dude dropping them in my mineral line.
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I cautioned this at the very start of beta. I said and repeatedly tried to give feedback to blizzard, the widow mine is a flawed unit. It's strong early game-ish but the longer the game goes, the shittier and more non-existent the unit becomes when the higher tech units come into play.
In the first months of beta/release, the widow mine will seem OK, but as players figure out the game and games lengthen into longer macro games, there will 100% be a problem and the unit will be shown to have an extremely flawed design - the main thing being that it costs 2 supply making your army weaker the longer the game goes, and the more of them you have in your army.
The mine also seems extremely OP vs low skill level players, but vs masters level to pro level the mine will end up looking worthless.
Already wrote many posts about this, here and on the pro forums, as well as mentioning it in videos. I'm sure others have as well to an extent, but blizzard does not seem to recognize this as an issue.
The other issue is these don't really work well with a Terran deathball, while all of the other new additions and buffs to Protoss and Zerg actually enhance those lategame deathballs.
Terran is left out in the cold again.
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On February 09 2013 03:56 Targe wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 03:52 Cyanocyst wrote:
High level players might not loose huge chunks of army like what happens in the lower leagues. However traversing a map covered with widow mines, will always take time, and away from the actions of the opposing player. I feel that's probably the main way widow mines will effect high level play.
This, the effect is less the damage done and more the map vision and slowing effect on your opponent.
Totally agree. Terran finally has a decent way to slow army movements outside of medivac harass in situations where they need to buy the extra minute or so. This is valuable in high level play.
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I dont know about this. If anyone is watching QXC vs Leiya he just basically massed out like 30+ widow mine and destroyed her army. He made them look a bit OP
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Lategame pro-level widow mine should be slightly less powerful than burrowed banelings, and we see them occasionally doing massive damage.
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Widow Mines make bio pushes extremely strong. All this stuff people say, how you should trigger it by running a few units ahead is nonsense.
You have your standard bio-tank push from WoL. You siege a base, run forward with the Marines start firing at the Hatchery, run back into tank fire cover when the Zerg army tries to defend with Ling/Bane, right? The answer to this as Zerg, is to set up a flank, split your units to get a good surround, then run in all at the same time, while sniping the tanks with the Mutas. The engagement needs to happen very fast, with no hesitation, or you lose too much before your units can get into melee range, the Marines kite too much, you lose all your banes to tank fire, you lose too many Mutas before they can target fire the tanks, and you lose. Everyone knows how this works.
Now in HotS when Terran adds some Widow Mines, you can't trigger them by running ahead with a few units, because the units die to tank and marine fire before they trigger the mines. The tank/bio protects the mines, and the mines protect the tank/bio. If the Zerg rushes in for the surround, the Widow Mines do a ton of splash damage.
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As others have mentioned, Zerg can't trigger the mines with just one zergling without it dying to cover fire before reaching the mine. My guess is, the player will have to send a minimum of 5 lings to trigger one mine, adding on 2 or 3 for each additional mine. This means mines are, at minimum, trading cost-effectively in mid-game. If Zerg slips up even once, then they can easily lose 1500 minerals/gas worth of units. It's absolutely ridiculous. Terran shouldn't have a unit that counters every single pre-Hive unit Zerg has.
The recent day9 dailies are quite illustrative. In the first game, I have no idea how the Zerg player was supposed to keep from losing his third. He only stayed competitive because of the gold base in the center is imbalanced towards Zerg. In the second game, the Zerg player does a ton of damage with lings, killing off all the SCVs at the player's natural, then gets an even bigger advantage with mutas that catch Beastly completely off-guard. Day[9] never showed the worker counts, but I'm guessing Beastly was at least 15 workers behind of where he needed to be. At the pro level, that should be an almost insurmountable loss especially since Star Station has that wide open third that's very favorable to the Zerg. Despite this, Beastly is able to harass with four fully loaded medivacs while holding off ultra/ling attacks with just mines and a few marauders.
I don't know why avilo keeps complaining about late game supply issues. He can just destroy the mines and switch to something else if he has to. Does the uselessness of banshees, hellions, roaches, banelings, mutas, and phoenixes in the late game prevent players from using them in the mid game?
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EPT
