EPTSource
Well, with this the whole thread becomes irrelevant. Very glad to see the change.
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Okay, so a few days ago I made a thread about Terran in HotS, which was closed pretty much immidiatly. A few days later a new thread was made that only covered one of the topics I used, which is very active right now. I'm not sure how this is fair. Sure, my thread wasn't as facy but it seemed like people were actually starting a discussion rather than premature balance whine.
Threads here:
+ Show Spoiler +
Because of this situation I'll give my other topic a second try, more fancy this time. Please note that this is NOT a balance thread. Balance has NOTHING to do with this. It's about poor design that needs to be discussed. I know that a huge portion of the community is under the impression that the changes to the other races are OP while their race is getting the short end of the stick. Please try to be a objectively as possible. I also know that the beta isn't even out, but I think that we all want a solid game, so the earlier the community has an opinion on something the sooner potential issues can get sorted out.
I think the Widow Mine is fundamentally flawed in its design and I am going to explain why.
Let's start by re-watching the introduction of it in the latest HotS video Blizzard put out.
Skip to 2:38
Awesome, huh? A little unit that does "terrible, terrible damage". Admitetly, it LOOKS really strong in the video, so strong indeed that there are a lot of people who're worried that it might be overpowered, even Blizzard seems to think so:
This is our biggest fear with this unit and why we aren't entirely sure about it in its current state. It's really hard to balance it in terms of a good cost to make it useful, but at the same time not overly powerful. We are still playing with costs, stats and build times to find the right fit. What you saw in the MLG build certainly isn't final.
http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/4940524507#9
But let's look closely at those situations.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8GEN8.png)
We have 15 Speed Roaches vs. 4 Marauders, 10 Marines and 4 Widow Mines. The Roaches "catch" the mines and the Terran units run away, BOOM Roaches dead. That's what it looks like but if you watch closely you'll notice a cut in the scene, which isn't only there to not stretch the video, no the problem is that you can't just run with Bio from Speed Roaches for 10 seconds without losing a big chunk of your squad, and that doesn't even take into accound that a situation like this would almost never happen in a game, there would always be Lings that would force a fight. My point: The way the scene is made makes the Widow Mine look a lot stronger than it actually is, because if the Terran has to run away from the fight you have 10 seconds to remove the units with mines from your army and that should be doable even with bronze level APM and micro.
I can see many of you thinking something like this now "Okay, so the mine isn't effective if your army is to small to engage the enemy but what if it is? Then the opponent has to fight you and deal with the mines that the same time. That IS strong."
No, it isn't strong, it is a gamble at best. Consider the same fight with a few Marines added, so that Terran could take the fight. We could get into a situation, where the outcome of the battle is dependant of the explosions of the Mines, as in if the Mines explode with within the army the Terran wins if not otherwise. So far so good, but this is where we get to the biggest flaw of the Widow Mine, if the unit the Mine is attached to dies, the Mine is gone. So, as a Terran, you would want the units with Mines live for 10 seconds so that they can explode, but that's hardly even possible. You'd have to anti-focus fire the units with Mines (not a-move but pick 2-3 units and let them attack units individually and assigning them a new target once it dies so they don't start to attack the units with mines). Really, think about how high the chances are that you unintentionally take out a unit with a Mine, that doesn't only lose you potential damage, you also basically kill one of your own units. That doesn't even take into consideration that the other player can influence this with his micro.
With that in mind, let's take a look at the second scene.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5ErFw.png)
We got 10 Zealots, 9 Stalkers, 1 Immortal and 2 Collossi versus 10 Battle Hellions, 7 Warhounds and 3 Widow Mines. In Blizzards video the Mines attach themselves to the Colossi and 1 Stalker and Terran wins the fight pretty easy.
I've recreated this scene in a HotS unit tester, trying to be very precise about the units placements and this is what happened:
Note, not a single Mines gets to detonate because the Zealots, who caught them, die far too quick.
You might think that it's okay that they sometimes attach to "good" and sometimes to "bad" units, which is a risk you have to take.
That's bad for three reasons, first of all, SC2 isn't a game about luck second what is even more important: even if it lands on a "good" unit you might not even want it to live that long and try to snipe is ASAP and now the third and biggest reason: If you get units instead of the Mines you win the fights straight up! (3 Marauders in the first scene and 1 Warhound and 1 Battle Hellion) So why would anybody want to take that risk?
Also take into consideration that the other player will know about the option of Widow Mines and play accordingly. Protoss, will have an Observer (like pretty much always) Zergs will have Overseeers and Terran will scan like for burrowed Banes or maybe even build Ravens. That reduces the chance of a successful detonation pretty much to zero.
The only usage that leaves for the Widow Mine is to put it in chokes or defensive position to spot for units and deal some damage. The problem with that is that this neither is how the unit is promoted nor is this needed in the Terran army. Terran already has Sensor Towers, Bunkers, Turrets, Tanks, Scans and Pfs, which offer great tools for map awareness as well as defensive options.
Okay, that much to the current situation, now my idea how to change this, feel free to criticize it and suggest changes, because that's want this thread is for.
I think a good option to make the Widow Mine viable as the unit it is promoted as would be to let the Mine deal damage even if the units its attached to dies. I think a good way to do this would be to to let it deal percentaged damage depending on how long the Mine has to detonate naturally. Example: The max damge is 200 after 10 seconds, if the Mine unit gets killed after 1 second it deals 20 damge if it dies after 5 seconds 100 and so on. I think this could lead to exiting moments and intense micro battles.
Okay, now what do you think about this matter? Remember this is not about balance or races, it's about getting viable units that enrich the game, not units that nobody ever uses because of certain issues.
EDIT:
To all the people that keep saying that it is not intended as a direct combat unit:
If it is not intended like that they shouldn't promote it like that. This is totally misleading.
Another Edit: The amount of people, who disregard my post entirely without reading it or try to prove me wrong with arguments that I have covered makes me kinda sad.
1) "The beta is not out yet, no point talking about this."
What if they said they would buff the Colossus to do 10 times as much damage and also shoot air units? Would you say the same thing? No, because it's obviously terrible and so is the Widow Mine.
2) "There might be other uses for the unit that we can't think about now."
What SC2 units can you think of that are used in a way that nobody thought about before the SC2s release. (Note: I'm not talking about compositions or strats!). The only 2 things that I can think of is the Archon toilet and a proxy Spine rush. SC2 units a very straight up, so is the Widow Mine. You have 3 options where to place it:
Aggressive places: Won't work for the reasons I explained above.
Chokes and near your bases: If you want to spot units build a Sensor Tower, more reliable, no supply and won't lose you minerals/gas if the opponent has detection.
In bases for defense: Imagine a DT and a Drop. The DT has 10 seconds before he dies, which is enough to do heavy damage to a mineral line and the Drop has more than enough time to unload all units. WIth units/turrets both would die almost instantly with no chance to do damage.
3) "They should make it so that you can aim the Mines."
What would that change? If you target the "small" ones they die quickly and if you target the "big" ones you most likely want them dead quicker anyways and in dire situations the opponent CAN JUST KILL HIS OWN UNITS TO AVOID THE DETONATION.
Now that this has been said, thanks to all the people, who took the time to read my OP and post interesting comments.
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