We Must Fight For The Carrier - Page 78

On August 22 2012 06:27 Archerofaiur wrote:


Actually I was aware of the MC Kas game. Can you provide links to PvP carrier games? I dont have any of those yet.

On August 22 2012 07:37 Saat wrote:


Do you really need replay ? What do you think is able to hard counter carriers in PvP ? Blinkers ? Idd not, they'll die 2 secs after their blink, with their slow animation, if they focus carriers one by one, they'll never have the time to win.
And if they don't focus...

On August 22 2012 07:37 Saat wrote:


Do you really need replay ? What do you think is able to hard counter carriers in PvP ? Blinkers ? Idd not, they'll die 2 secs after their blink, with their slow animation, if they focus carriers one by one, they'll never have the time to win.
And if they don't focus...

On August 22 2012 07:37 Saat wrote:


Do you really need replay ? What do you think is able to hard counter carriers in PvP ? Blinkers ? Idd not, they'll die 2 secs after their blink, with their slow animation, if they focus carriers one by one, they'll never have the time to win.
And if they don't focus...

On August 22 2012 11:00 Jollygoody wrote:
God yes, let the carrier stay, anything to stop the boring death ball colossus play.

On August 22 2012 11:08 ampson wrote:


Because the carrier is doing a great job with that now, right? ..........

On August 22 2012 11:30 stormchaser wrote:
Ugh still not much reason to keep carrier other than for nostalgia -_-

It needs buff or they gotta get rid of it.

On August 22 2012 11:08 ampson wrote:


Because the carrier is doing a great job with that now, right? ..........

On August 22 2012 18:57 Rabiator wrote:

Because Blizzard didnt even TRY to make it viable (zero patch changes); they cant "complain" about it not being good enough while not trying to fix it for YEARS.

On August 22 2012 19:23 Adonminus wrote:

They improved the carrier ai in patch 1.5 making it able to lanch interceptors and then move something like 14 range away while interceptors still stay. This change allows carrier to be more microable and similar to broodwar. Tell me if I need to provide source cause apparently people don't believe anything in those threads.

On August 22 2012 22:37 Archerofaiur wrote:


We know of the change but no one has posted any sort of source yet.

The second reason really demonstrate's why the "Carrier with the Tempest's role" design basis is so awesome. Now this is admittedly significantly less analysis and more theory, but I think it shows an interesting advantage (this Carrier idea has lots of theses) our "damage source separated from unit" Carrier model has over over the Tempest and its conventional unit attack mechanic model. If we look back to our David Kim quote we can notice an interesting little oddity I've waited to mention until now...

"...and because of how common colossi are in protoss games, counter units such as corruptors or vikings are already available, making carriers even less viable. We could just do a straight numbers buff on the carrier, but we don’t really think that’ll change too much for the reasons mentioned above.Therefore, we believe the best way to solve this issue is to either change the design of the carrier after locating a viable end game role for the unit or to just bring in a completely new unit that will actually be useful in the late game by removing the carrier."

It would appear that one of the Carrier issues that contributed to them deciding to remove the unit was that Colossi were popular to the point of Terran players often already having Vikings on the field, disincentivizing players from transitioning at any point into Carriers. Curiously, however, it seems that in the recently released TvP HOTS Battle Report the Terran player was primarily using Vikings to counteract the Tempest. And how couldn't he? Vikings deal excellent damage against massive, armored targets like the Tempest (such as the Broodlord, the Colossus, etc). Blizzard has seemingly ended up with one of the exact issues they had on the Carrier on their brand new unit.

Interestingly, this is where the design basis of the Tempest (a zone control and long range gradual siege unit) really shows its brilliance. Firstly, by replacing the Carrier with a unit meant to be usually behind or generally separated from your army, Blizzard has essentially pulled a unit out of the deathball. An unsurprising move, considering how many of the HOTS units are meant to be used outside of the deathball (Swarm Hosts, Oracles, etc). Secondly Blizzard knows that due to the viability and versatility of the Colossus, a Protoss capital ship will almost always have the issue of Vikings already being out on the field. The Vikings(or Corruptors, for that matter) are effective against Colossi because they are massive, armored, and to the Vikings, an air unit. This is exactly what any capital ship will be. So what did Blizzard do?

They brought in the Tempest. The Tempest's design as a long range gradual siege unit allows it to be less severely negated by preexisting Vikings on the field. As mentioned before, due to its extremely long range but vulnerable nature, Tempests are intended to often be away from or behind the army. Because of this design choice, while Vikings still counter the unit quite effectively, they are required to be used in an entirely different way than they have before in the matchup, creating some very exciting new gameplay possibilities. Terran players are intended to have their Vikings separated from their army (oncemore, anti-deathball design choices) as they roam the map to pick off vulnerable Tempests. However it doesn't stop there. Seeing how the Protoss player has invested in these powerful and expensive units, he isn't particularly inclined to let Terran players just snipe them with their Vikings. So the Protoss unit makes an active effort to deter those Vikings with units of his own. Again, units out of the deathball. Its unfortunate to see that the Tempest's flaw of only possessing only conventional unit attack mechanics is preventing it from doing all these things that I believe it was intended to do. This is ultimately is why any Protoss capital ship unit cannot be a direct combat unit in a fully functional manner so long as the Colossus exists.