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I've been trying to understand the Viking for some time, can someone help?
First, the lore.
The Brood War revealed critical weaknesses in terran anti-air capability. The new Wraith combat fighters and Valkyrie missile frigates proved to be an unwieldy combination against agile zerg airborne organisms.
Very true, we all know this. Wraith CAN be used but they get owned by spores and if the zerg brings mutas and enough Overlords they get killed as they're so frail. And lol valks, 2 Scourge hits. Depressing.
I fail to see how the Viking is better than goliath and/or valkyrie against Zerg. At least the Goliath is very good against Zerg, being able to take down mutas quite handily in sufficient numbers, especially with upgrades. And ovies die FAST to goliaths.
Second, in the actual gameplay, will the Viking be a good counter to air zerg? I haven't seen a vid w/ Corruptors vs Vikings so I'm not sure how a battle between the two would go down. But either way, the Viking is very similar to a Wraith in the air, 125 health is only 5 more than a wraith, and its damage is the same (20 against large targets), and of course no cloak is a major disadvantage. They're basically paper planes same as Wraith, except no way to get around that other than to transform, which renders them useless against the enemies they're fighting.
When I first heard about the Viking, I thought it was an exciting concept, but I think it would have been better if it had a GtA attack in ground form and a AtG attack in air form. Unfortunately, this would step on the Banshee's toes (though it has splash+cloak), but I still think it would be more useful then. It would be consistently able to hound dedicated air to air or ground to ground units like Corruptors and Siege Tanks, they'd be a useful counter to many of these things, bypassing their frail nature in the process. Then they would truly be a replacement to the goliath and the valkyrie. The Jotun Boosters would be Charon Boosters basically.
Vikings also lack any type of Splash damage (which the Valkyrie it replaced had), and again I think this is unfortunate. It's not a nimble stealth sniper like the Wraith, and yet it has the same mode of attack. If it had splash damage it would demonstrate clear value. They could be like Corsairs; once massed they'd pulverize mutas. But without Scourge this may be a bad idea, and they have a larger damage output. They attack slower, though, so their 5 damage per missile to Scourge might've evened out to the same virtual dps as the Corsairs had.
All I can think of as so far as things Vikings would excel at is base raiding, taking out infantry and being "the new zealot bomb". Still, seems like they'd be unused for the most part, kinda like Wraiths in SC.
I'm by no means an expert, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.
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1. Story is not valid source of game play knowledge.
2. I think viking is better as an addition to medivac-infantry groups as opposed to independent fighting unit against the zerg, though its most common use would likely be sniping colossi, prisms, medivacs, banshee and heavy air with 7 AtA range(?) and high damage against a single target. Remember the thor has splash GtA and is not really suitable against air-transport type targets and heavy armor targets that needs high instant damage to a single target, and marines just don't have range. You pretty much need this unit if you want to shut down drop harass without turreting every inch of territory.
Given that the Zerg has a dedicated AtA only air unit that comes out of fast pumping hatches, I don't think any other race can challenge it in the air short of BC level tech. It is also necessary, since Zerg is screwed by cliffs otherwise..... Other races will probably need ground or ground-air based force against zerg, like SK terran, as opposed to pure air except in very narrow timing windows. (say a warpray rush or something...)
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Vikings start with 1 armor tho don't they?
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Zurich15329 Posts
On November 26 2009 23:29 OppositeSavior wrote:
True
Your 9 posts have an average of 1.7 words. Please don't make more useless posts but actually contribute to this forum.
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On November 26 2009 23:51 DeCoup wrote:
Vikings start with 1 armor tho don't they?
Yes, I thought of that, it does make a bit of a difference.
14 muta hits = 126 damage, boom
16 muta hits vs 1 armor = 128 damage, boom
Fully upgraded Vikings take 25 unupgraded muta hits to go down, that's pretty damn durable! ;D
@ SWPIG: Hadn't thought of the Thor... Ugh, I'd conditioned myself to pretend it doesn't exist. 
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Well heres my thought on it. It is sort of meant to be a dropship dropping a goliath kinda thing. Its mainly gonna be used in TvT since broodwar TvT is set up the same way. A huge tank line and a large tank/goliath drop on top of them to take them out.
I believe the viking's role is gonna be somewhat like that since Marrauders can't attack air so they are gonna be much stronger. As for how it would fair against inter-race matches. I don't think it would be used much. Maybe to snipe warp prisms and overlords but thats pretty much it.
I don't think the viking was meant to replace a specific unit, rather its meant to replace a specific tactic and prevent the game from being the same as broodwar.
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Well yeah, I was just reflecting on how the lore says it's a Wraith/Valkyrie/Goliath replacement, which is false, mostly.
I think when I get the game I'll mod it so the Viking has GtA and AtG attacks just to see how it rolls. 
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Hmm to a certain extent I think this viking is 1/3 wraith + 1/3 goliath + 1/3 valkyrie and the banshee is 1/2 wraith + 1/2 valkyrie. So with 2 units you replaced 3 units.
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While I was unable to go to Blizzcon this year but a few of my friends went and the one guy who played the Blizzcon build told me that they where neither like wraiths or goliaths. He compared them to really beefy Mecha-Tenchu. His plan was to build a few of them to harass overlords and maybe some drones if the other person wasn't paying attention and after they formed a strong escort group for his medivac play. My buddy compared it to moving like 'sair reaver and attacking like MnM vrs zerg, so naturally he loves them. I only have feedback on how they work in TvZ but I for one can't wait to do some Protoss flavoured overlord harassment with my new AtA units.
I do understand your sense of loss with regards to the loss of a strong anti-air factory unit for pushing with metal. Last I heard the viking was produced from a starport so to get a decent source of AA out of factory one would have crank thors but their lack of mobility and speed could see Terran players scrambling against a mobile air force when they are going for metal play.
My apologies if this made little sense, I just finished my last paper and 30ish hours of writing makes the mind dull...
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Yeah, the Thor is like an amazingly overweight Goliath, without all the cool. ;_;
I totally agree with the Mecha-Tengu comparison though. Pretty spot on.
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This analysis is flawed for several reasons. No one should really expect a unit to be a replacement for another unit in going from BW to SC2.
In a sense, the marine isn't even a replacement for the marine. It lacks the low-tech medic in favor of a high-tech medivac. Since marines are not really a part of the early-mid game in BW without medics, the marines in SC2 are almost nothing like BW marines. Instead of being paired up with medics early game, they are paired up with marauders. Notice the change from an early game army that is defensive (medic marine is not gonna bust up into a Zerg natural unless the Zerg doesn't sunk) to an early game army that is offensive (an army that generates a large threat but could possibly die).
Similarly, all units in the game will gain their identity from their interaction with other units. Since there are many new units, we have to really throw out our normal thinking. Consider the 1-hatch queen in SC2 where lots of players were going for a large hydra army against Terran. Even though Terran's early army is made up of marines (which will eat hydra up in BW), they lack stim because they lack medics. So in BW terms, marines > hydras, but in SC2 terms, hydra > marines. That's just an example.
I think the real use of a Viking is that, if the Terran builds up a capability of massing them somehow, you force the other player to build air and ground defense in every location. That's extremely annoying and something that could difficult to keep up with in the middle of a game. But we'll have to see how the games actually play out in order to tell about the use of Vikings.
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Well, that's not exactly true, you can just build ground defense, since Vikings can't shoot your workers and buildings from the air. Of course, there are the Banshees.
Other than that you're quite right. My initial comparison was based on the lore which says the Viking is a replacement for gols/valks.
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Russian Federation150 Posts
I think Vikings would be very good addition to Medivac drops mid-late game.
They can escort Medivac loaded with 'rines/Maradeeurs and change to GtG form upon reaching dropzone.
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Banshees dont do splash anymore, do they?
However, didnt thor start to do some sort of AoE GtA dmg? Battlecruisers also have an AoE now which will clear out any blob of air units. So it's not like valks are needed anymore.
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I don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but I'll throw this out. Vikings deal substantially more damage than the Wraith did. You see 20 damage vs 20 damage and think it's the same, but it's not. Verse small targets like the mutalisk wraiths deal 10, Vikings still do 20. Verse Massive Vikings do 40 (10 +10 x2 attacks) wraiths do 20 damage. Vikings have a substantially larger range with a range of 6, I've also heard they can get a +2 range upgrade. Their ground attack is decent, 14 damage at what I hear is a "very low cooldown" at a range of 7. These numbers are taken from sc2 wiki and sc2 armory.
So basically, the Viking is a little tougher with 5 more hp and 1 more base armor compared to a wraith. It exchanges the stealth of a wraith for better damage output. Compared to a goliath gtg while in ground mode, it is quite a bit stronger. Hitting harder and faster. Compared to a goliath vs air it is better overall, exchanging explosive damage penalties to being double whammied by armor upgrades. But it is significantly better vs massive targets. It is hard to compare to a valkyrie though, with completely different attack mechanics, so I'm just going to leave that alone.
So I don't understand the hate on the Vikings in terms of usability. It is going to be a pretty strong unit. I understand people hating the transforming mechanic though, but I think it is kind of necessary. If the viking was able to deal this kind of damage verse both ground and air in either mode, it would probably be too strong.
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My personal opinion is that the viking is meant to be the counter to something. You scan, see that he's going 2 hat muta, mass dropships, or mass carrier, then u mass vikings. If he happens to tech switch out of that, which for zerg is sure to happen, your mass vikings still are useful for base rading/ground attack and stuff, rather than getting valks in BW which were useless if there were no air. Goliaths were more powerful in some ways, but less maneuverable, so the viking trades more versatility for power. Also, it seems like there could be a lot more cliff abuse based on the maps we've been shown, which would limit the use of goliaths. Vikings could chase a battered airbourne fleet endlessly all the way to the enemy base rather than let them rebuild interceptors/repair/regen to be used again.
When you think about it, goliaths were also used in the same way, as a counter to something. Very rarely is a terran in BW going to go goliaths because "he wants to" but masses them in response to something the opponent is doing.
If there was something you were going to use wraiths for, you can use vikings or for base harassment go for the more specialized banshees.
The best thing about vikings and reaper is that boxer and fantasy play terran and they'll give us lots of exciting replays to watch them use these units.
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I just think the Vikings will replace Siege Tanks in TvT, because their mobility is insane, and they actually are cheaper and deal moderate damage to ground units - its like flying Goliath. I think that Banshees will probably not be used too often because Vikings counter them pretty well, and a fleet of Banshees would get raped pretty bad by a similar fleet of Vikings, and the Vikings can then be used to harass expansions.
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I am not sure about the exact numbers, but every time I've used Vikings, in 3 different builds, they were highly effective against air units.
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Story aside (dunno about that), I find its a nice concept for a unit. Why care what its supposed to replace, just look at how it plays in the SC2 context.
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EPT
