I'm thoroughly impressed by the versatility of this unit and somewhat surprised that I don't see more of them in regular play. I firmly think that these are a superior form of Science Vessel.
Firstly, they're detectors. There arn't many units which can stealth, mothership is an obvious example - every race has a few instances though. It's always handy to have a few with your army just in case.
Auto-Turrets - ploping down a few of these in an exposed base can quickly reduce a mineral line to nothing. Best point, you don't even have to stick around to see it happen! It's harrasment with no cost!
Seeker Missile - this thing is nuts. Neo-irradiate. Only better. It does 100[!] damage, third of a nuke, targetted on a specific unit. It has 10seconds to hit, but within the chaos of battle, it's -extremely- difficult to pick out which unit it's targetting and getting it the hell outta there. I'm talking, this is harder to spot that the tiny red dot from a nuke. What's more, it doesn't cost resources! Spam these and watch your opponents 200/200 army get reduced to nothing in mere moments. The AI's improved pathing [read: improved clumping] maximizes the effectiveness of this ability].
I've yet to see point defenses used at all, so I cant comment on them. However, the three previous abilities remove any doubt that -all- terran should be using these liberally. This is a unit which can turn the tide of battle.
On March 09 2010 00:37 Tippereth wrote: How is 100 damage better than Irradiate's Power Word: Kill?
because in sc2 ppl dont play with so many significant units such as defiler,ultra,guardian,lurker that just cost abit more than most stuff
in sc2 they mass roach/ling/baneling/hydra which is why killing masses is alot better
if u irra a ultra u could just split it from the herd and that was good, still cost effective and awesome with irrodate
but if they kept irro in sc2 there would be no units that were that significant to cast it at, except for like broodlords and ultralisks
so the missile fits in better with the new game cause its better at killing many low tier units
one thing i dont like about it tho is that it costs 125, ye sure it can do alot of damage but seriously if u compare it to like storm which instant hits does less dmg but it only cost 75.. same with infestors growwth spell or wtf its called and it also hits, same with emp - cant avoid it
i hope they improve the raven so it can be used in the other mus rather than just tvz. i think its great in that mu cause i have something thats gas heavy to compensate for my bio heavy army.
one thing i dont like about it tho is that it costs 125, ye sure it can do alot of damage but seriously if u compare it to like storm which instant hits does less dmg but it only cost 75..
The seeker missile damage is done all at once, storm is done over 4 seconds and any part of it can be avoided with micro. (True you can avoid SM with micro, but as many people have said this is harder)
The raven is also a flying caster, whereas the high templar is a vulnerable and slow ground caster.
The seeker missile damage is done all at once, storm is done over 4 seconds and any part of it can be avoided with micro. (True you can avoid SM with micro, but as many people have said this is harder)
Come on, you could say the exact same thing about storm.
Imagine SM was in SC1 (you'd be used to actually identify the target and move it away) and storm was a new spell. OMG storm just DEMOLISHES tons of unit (air, ground even burrowed ffs!!!), and its even worse because units clump like crazy in SC2, FOR 75 MANA WHAT WHERE THEY THINKING, etc, etc.
Casters do tons of dmg/dmg prevention for long build time and high gas costs. This is not exactly new to SC but people just are not used to fighting with anything but a death ball army and attack move yet. Not to say anyone is a terrible player or anything but it's just easier when your are first playing a macro based game to ignore the micro as much as possible.
The missile is great, I just find the fusuion core requirement and energy cost to be major setbacks. By removing that requirement or lowering the energy cost we would probably see the hunter seeker missile - and the Raven - used much more often.
EPT
