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.
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:
How cost-efficient can this be I wonder? 1 zealot to one widow mine is kind of cost efficient (100min = 75min-25gas)… and if 2 zealots die in the process hmmm…
In the battle report between terran and zerg i saw widow mines decimate the vipers and swarmhosts… Sooo cost efficient so why not just make widow mines and marines all game long…
Well that is my concern hope some at blizz sees this or maybe they allready have it covered.. Feel free to discuss if u like… like to hear some thoughts on this
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.
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.
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.
I think I'll wait until the beta is out before I start worrying about what is or isn't fundamentally flawed. For all we know, it might not still be in the game or has been changed dramatically.
The Widow Mine is something the Terran needs IMO. It'll stop the micro Terran has to do against huge deathballs from each race (Including Terran Mech). I don't see it being any different than Banelings/Storm
On July 31 2012 03:22 Kamwah wrote: The Widow Mine is something the Terran needs IMO. It'll stop the micro Terran has to do against huge deathballs from each race (Including Terran Mech). I don't see it being any different than Banelings/Storm
Please read my post. If you don't micro you are very likely to kill your own Mines without getting anything in return.
On July 31 2012 03:22 Kamwah wrote: The Widow Mine is something the Terran needs IMO. It'll stop the micro Terran has to do against huge deathballs from each race (Including Terran Mech). I don't see it being any different than Banelings/Storm
Please read my post. If you don't micro you are very likely to kill your own Mines without getting anything in return.
So? if you don't pay attention then you're going to lose them. Same with TvT and tank splash damage.
Why do people not realize they've got to pay attention? lol.
On July 31 2012 03:22 Kamwah wrote: The Widow Mine is something the Terran needs IMO. It'll stop the micro Terran has to do against huge deathballs from each race (Including Terran Mech). I don't see it being any different than Banelings/Storm
How is this good? Terran doing micro is part of what makes this game actually good. If anything, the other races (particularly Zerg) should have to do more micro rather than being the standard against which Terran is judged.
I don't even play terran and I agree with you. I like your fix suggestion, and I would also recommend reducing the timer from 10 seconds to maybe 7.5 or 7.0 seconds.
they're really good at ending medivac/banshee/etc harass, for one thing. These mines encourage micro (not focusing units that have mines on them, and opponent should move units with mines on them), thus increasing skill gap between bad and good players in the game, which is something I think isn't large enough right now. So I'm for them. They shouldn't be able to hit and one-shot observers and overlords, etc though
On July 31 2012 03:22 Kamwah wrote: The Widow Mine is something the Terran needs IMO. It'll stop the micro Terran has to do against huge deathballs from each race (Including Terran Mech). I don't see it being any different than Banelings/Storm
Please read my post. If you don't micro you are very likely to kill your own Mines without getting anything in return.
So? if you don't pay attention then you're going to lose them. Same with TvT and tank splash damage.
Why do people not realize they've got to pay attention? lol.
On July 31 2012 03:22 Kamwah wrote: The Widow Mine is something the Terran needs IMO. It'll stop the micro Terran has to do against huge deathballs from each race (Including Terran Mech). I don't see it being any different than Banelings/Storm
Please read my post. If you don't micro you are very likely to kill your own Mines without getting anything in return.
So? if you don't pay attention then you're going to lose them. Same with TvT and tank splash damage.
Why do people not realize they've got to pay attention? lol.
But your original point was "It'll stop the micro Terran has to do against huge deathballs". And when he calls you out on it, you admonish him for thinking he'll get to stop the micro Terran has to do against huge deathballs? Which is it?
This also ignores the fact that your opponent can just send cheap units out ahead to pick up any widow mines, even if they don't want to bother with detection. If I want to lay some mines to deter a Zerg counterattack, for example, all they have to do is send some lings in first and I'll end up trading a 25 mineral zergling for a unit that costs 75/25 (I believe that's the current cost)... hell, it's even a bad trade against a zealot or marine, and an even trade if it hits roaches.
They're seriously just a shitty version of spider mines.
The Widow Mine is something the Terran needs IMO. It'll stop the micro Terran has to do against huge deathballs from each race (Including Terran Mech). I don't see it being any different than Banelings/Storm
Banelings and storms do instantaneous damage, rather than having to wait ten seconds for the damage to be applied. It's fairly rare for a "deathball' fight to last longer than ten seconds anyway.
If they make it so they instantly blow up on contact, that would actually make sense. Just reduce the damage so it almost kills anything that walks over it. This way it actually functions like it should in a real battle scenario.
On July 31 2012 03:22 Kamwah wrote: The Widow Mine is something the Terran needs IMO. It'll stop the micro Terran has to do against huge deathballs from each race (Including Terran Mech). I don't see it being any different than Banelings/Storm
Please read my post. If you don't micro you are very likely to kill your own Mines without getting anything in return.
So? if you don't pay attention then you're going to lose them. Same with TvT and tank splash damage.
Why do people not realize they've got to pay attention? lol.
I think you misunderstand. He means that the mines are essentially useless in a fighting situation.
If you fight on even grounds, the units "holding" the mines will die before they explode, making them useless. If you fight at a disadvantage, you will still lose a good chunk of your force before the mines go off.
I agree that it's hard to get offensive uses out of the widow mine because first, the timer is too long (and has to be because the damage is so high). Making the timer shorter would mean reducing damage output probably. The other spectrum is to make the detonation instant but the damage lowered significantly, which honestly, would probably be best considering at least you get use out of the units.
I've been playing a lots of the HotS custom and it's really difficult to make the mines cost efficient when using it offensively. Let's say you plant the mines as your army is giong forward--the mines will auto attach to closest units which are going to be killed in 2 seconds anyways, basically losing you 75/25 on each mine. The ideal way I see using them would be to turn off auto attach (if you can do that?) so you can manually control the target that each mine goes to.
Using mines defensively seems pretty worthless as well because lings running around the map makes the mine worthless. Observer use will make defensive mines against protoss not very cost effective. Honestly I think it's too early to tell but all signs point to the defensive use of mines at being pretty mediocre. Except when you put them in your own base defensively against air <snickers>
TL;DR: the main culprit is the timer on the detonation, too long and the mine is easily cost inefficient if the opposing player has detection/mediocre speed.
Just a note about your setup for the fight. Your colossus are attacking hellions instead of warhounds. I suppose the fight shown in the presentation video would've been lost by the terran as well if the colossus was raping all those clumped battle-hellions .
Whether the widow-mine is fundamentally flawed I can't say, but it definately doesn't seem very strong and potentially hazardous to the terran if the mine attaches to charging zealots, stalkers with blink and other units that could bring the mine into the bioball :-).
I wish all these HotS discussions would just wait until, you know, we have actually played it. Concluding a unit is over/underpowered seems premature at this point.
Everything in HOTS is fundamentally flawed. With the new units everything from WOL will be flawed too. Thats why theres a beta. Wait for it, play games, give feedback, wait for blizzard to patch, repeat from play games. No point talking about anything till then
On July 31 2012 03:36 sGs.Kal_rA wrote: Everything in HOTS is fundamentally flawed. With the new units everything from HOTS will be flawed too. Thats why theres a beta. Wait for it, play games, give feedback, wait for blizzard to patch, repeat from play games. No point talking about anything till then
I think the issue is that most units from HotS seem sort of overpowered right now (intentionally, since Blizzard wants people to use them), whereas Widow Mine kind of seems bad.
edit: and yes it is valid to say "the beta isn't out yet, wait a while," but the problem here is readily apparent even without actual gameplay testing (which we technically sort of have with HotS customs), and if Blizzard sees that and realizes that they're screwing up, they'll know it's something to consider tweaking
On July 31 2012 03:40 Lineridarz wrote: You're looking at the widow mine in a scenario where it was never meant to fill, it's meant to be a area control unit. Not a fighting unit.
not sure how long this thread will last given the note you've got at the top :\ BUT...
did anyone who played HotS at MLG notice if you can do hold-position/target micro with widow mines, in the style of the hold-position lurker from broodwar? that seems like it could make a big difference in this analysis
Blizzard said they want mines to control space, and they previously said about the shredder that it should break up the deathballs and be away from the main force. Blizzard is simply putting these together I think.
While the OP put a lot of effort in the posting and while I like the passion about the game, I don't get the point. It is very different to hear about something and to actually experience it.
For example I recently bought a recorder to play the scale and experienced how difficult it is to get a single clear tone out of the flute. Looking someone playing the recorder and try it for oneself is very different. Thinking about playing an instrument without having it used oneself is almost entirely pointless.
I think it's safe to say the same about Starcraft units.
I give the OP that his conclusions seem to be sound. However I remember many theorycraft threads prior to the WoL launch. Almost any (very good explained) concern seems to be not true if one plays the real thing.
Why do the mines in the video seem to have like 1 range, where its 6 or 7 everywhere else? Your videos are probably mad outdated. Doesn't invalidate your point though.
Can any Teamliquid admin close this thread? Using words like "FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED" is totally unjustified especially when Heart of the Swarm is not even out yet. Thank you admin.
On July 31 2012 03:40 Lineridarz wrote: You're looking at the widow mine in a scenario where it was never meant to fill, it's meant to be a area control unit. Not a fighting unit.
It's bad as an area control unit, too. It costs more than the cheap units of literally every single race, and it's trivially easy to micro away to mitigate the splash.
Spider mines controlled space, but these are not spider mines. These are expensive versions of spider mines that are way worse.
On July 31 2012 03:43 VPFaith wrote: Can any Teamliquid admin close this thread? Using words like "FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED" is totally unjustified especially when Heart of the Swarm is not even out yet. Thank you admin.
His belief is that the unit is fundamentally flawed, and then he stated his reasoning behind that statement. The purpose of said statement and reasoning is to increase awareness of a situation that currently exists. If when the beta out they've changed/removed the mine such that this situation no longer exists, discussion of said situation will be moot and we'll move on to what's valid then. Until that happens though, the situation is worth considering. Why shouldn't we discuss widow mines before beta is out? Let's say in beta the mine is exactly as it is now, why should op have to wait until then to post this thread?
Yeah because spider mines from bw are no skill units amirite? Dummy.
I basically look at the stuff you've linked as box art for the digital download age. I doubt it will reflect actual game scenarios and I doubt even more that the widow mine will make it through beta as is. Sure makes the baneling silly though. Maybe LotV will have Reaver scarabs that are deployed from the robo facility so everyone can have a burrowed baneling!
On July 31 2012 03:40 Lineridarz wrote: You're looking at the widow mine in a scenario where it was never meant to fill, it's meant to be a area control unit. Not a fighting unit.
If it is not meant to fill that role why is it promoted like that?
it's still in beta..lmao. but if it was a release thing, I'd say the widow mine is stupidly underpowered. whatever it attaches itself to, that one unit can just be micro'd away and money wasted. Maybe if Blizzard made the thing like 3 second (or 5 blizz seconds) time, then it would have use. as of now, it is the most underpowered new unit
On July 31 2012 03:44 Mongoose wrote: I gotta agree with the OP. spider mines just seem like a bad idea in general. There should be less 'terrible damage' and more skill based units.
Because there isn't enough skill based on army control with Terran units already, right?
I like the mine for some things, and dislike it for others. But one thing I can potentially see it doing is causing Z/P to focus more on controlling their units. You have plenty of time to see the mine un-burrow/attach (though I'm not sure if the person with the mine attached to their units will see what unit has the mine), and then to split your units. The mine has a decently long detonation time (>5 in game seconds? I think, don't remember--- and that was at Anaheim so I'm unaware if anything has been changed).
On July 31 2012 03:40 Lineridarz wrote: You're looking at the widow mine in a scenario where it was never meant to fill, it's meant to be a area control unit. Not a fighting unit.
If it is not meant to fill that role why is it promoted like that?
Since when are units only supposed to be used as blizzard tells us to use them? Seriously, this entire thread is dumb before we hear anything about the beta, the widow mine might be completely cut at that point.
First off i dont think we should be talking about this since the beta hasnt even come out yet but whatever.
I think its going to be used more vs zerg when the zerg player is going heavy ling baneling style...You have 4 widow mines connect with a 200 supply ling infestor army its gonna be nearly impossible to click the 4 zerglings with the mines right away since they're so small...and even if just one of the widow mines go off the zerg will lose a good 25-30 lings from the explosion..
The problem you line out can be balanced by having lower time to detonate. It's not 'fundamentally flawed', it's not balanced but that's why it's not even in beta.
These units are concepts. Bliz wants to try out and see if they like the concept of these units. It's basically just to see if they would make for a fun gameplay.
They might not even be in the game any more. David Kim might've said a month ago "these widow mines.. they're pretty shit, let's give terran something else instead" We're talking about a closed alpha, and we don't have a single clue what state these mines are in right now, yet people still find it so necessary to open up 35 different threads about their opinions of these. It's as if new concept art was released by blizzard of Raynor with a big gun, and 85 threads open up about his gun looking too big, and the imminent need to nerf it. We don't know shit about hots, so balance discussion is utterly pointless.
when playing the custom map hots if the unit did die before the 10 seconds passed (killed by something else than the mine) then the mine detonated. my opponents zealots ran into my minefield and tanks killed 1 zealot very quickly, he had a mine on himself and exploded. then the zealots around him died from the explosion and they exploded too. basically it created a chain reactions of all mines exploding once the first zealot was killed by the tanks
so in the hots map the mine explodes, it doesnt in real hots? o.o it just disappear?
regardless if it does or not, i think it should explode and act like this, however because that might be too strong during battles it would have to be nerfed so much to make it unuseful to use outside the battle. so a good solution in my opinion is to reduce the splash dmg to 50% if the mine detonates before the 10 seconds pass
the chain reaction as it is right now seems to strong and if the mine disappears upon death makes it close to useless instead. your idea of % dmg after each second makes sense but its too blurry and makes it feel abit too random, thats why i like an idea of saying 50% always before 10 sec instead of it having 10 different states of damage
the unit isnt fundamentally flawed it just needs to be tweaked in the right way in terms of if the unit is killed, how much damage it does as well as the 10 sec timer in a way that works inside and outside a battle without making it too complicated and confusing. id hate to see if they skip this unit just because they wont find a good balance, because the unit is in my opinion very good
On July 31 2012 04:02 GHSTxGlitch wrote: First off i dont think we should be talking about this since the beta hasnt even come out yet but whatever.
I think its going to be used more vs zerg when the zerg player is going heavy ling baneling style...You have 4 widow mines connect with a 200 supply ling infestor army its gonna be nearly impossible to click the 4 zerglings with the mines right away since they're so small...and even if just one of the widow mines go off the zerg will lose a good 25-30 lings from the explosion..
Read the entire thread or play the HOTS mod before commenting, it sn't flawed because it doesn't do enough damage or because it can be nagated with little ammount of micro. It's flawed because in case of a 200/200 army clash, the units with a widow mine attached will almost never live long enough to detonate on anything.
On July 31 2012 04:05 Euronyme wrote: These units are concepts. Bliz wants to try out and see if they like the concept of these units. It's basically just to see if they would make for a fun gameplay.
They might not even be in the game any more. David Kim might've said a month ago "these widow mines.. they're pretty shit, let's give terran something else instead" We're talking about a closed alpha, and we don't have a single clue what state these mines are in right now, yet people still find it so necessary to open up 35 different threads about their opinions of these. It's as if new concept art was released by blizzard of Raynor with a big gun, and 85 threads open up about his gun looking too big, and the imminent need to nerf it. We don't know shit about hots, so balance discussion is utterly pointless.
I don't really agree. Talking about whether we think Blizzard is going in the right direction based on what they've seen fit to show us it completely relevant. For example, if Blizzard had come out at Blizzcon and said "hey, we think players are having too much trouble beating Hydralisk compositions" it would have made tonnes of sense to say they're going in the wrong direction by thinking that. Similarly, trying to give Terran a-move units to tone down their micro is going in the wrong direction. What needs to be done is increasing the margin for error that other, non-Terran units have, thereby raising the skill ceiling.
I think they should just turn it into more of a spider mine, and give it to the reaper as well as the combat drugs. You still get battle hellions and warhounds as new units from the factory, and the white elephant of the barracks becomes suddenly useful again.
Can't you manually target the widow mines? If so it would even more micro for the terran player in battle situations but on the other hand with a heavy widow mine composition you are most likely playing mech.
On July 31 2012 04:00 Nightsz wrote: I wonder if we'll start seeing intentional dt drops into widow mines. that make you blow up ur own units. Just like how spider mines did.
On July 31 2012 03:33 The Final Boss wrote: The fact that any of these threads have been made is sad. Why are we talking about balance regarding a game that is not even out....
What the hell, man? Why does everything on TL HAVE to come back to balance? OP explicitly states that this is not a balance thread, and you STILL insist on criticizing him for balance whining?
Making a perfectly balanced game is easy. You make only one race, and the only unit anyone can make is the footman from Warcraft. But if you want the game to be remotely interesting or fun, you need to add interesting design. Things like asymmetrical races, or new and interesting mechanics. Now we're discussing GAME DESIGN, which is an entirely different topic from balance. (Or rather, balance is a subset of game design; so bad balance is bad game design, but bad game design is not necessarily imbalanced).
Personally, I don't think the design is fundamentally flawed (although there's absolutely no reason we can't discuss it just yet). You're supposed to keep widow mines away from your army, not close. Or if they are close, you have to run with your army until they detonate. If you take losses in that time, you should have had your army further away. But I think the design would be significantly better with a shorter detonation time, and much smaller AoE.
On July 31 2012 04:02 GHSTxGlitch wrote: First off i dont think we should be talking about this since the beta hasnt even come out yet but whatever.
I think its going to be used more vs zerg when the zerg player is going heavy ling baneling style...You have 4 widow mines connect with a 200 supply ling infestor army its gonna be nearly impossible to click the 4 zerglings with the mines right away since they're so small...and even if just one of the widow mines go off the zerg will lose a good 25-30 lings from the explosion..
Read the entire thread or play the HOTS mod before commenting, it sn't flawed because it doesn't do enough damage or because it can be nagated with little ammount of micro. It's flawed because in case of a 200/200 army clash, the units with a widow mine attached will almost never live long enough to detonate on anything.
That doesn't mean it's fundamentally flawed. That means it should cost less because it's not as effective as intended, or have a lower detonation time to make the cost justified. Both of these are balance changes.
On July 31 2012 04:11 Enki wrote: Until the HotS beta is released and we can get our hands on it, any discussion pertaining to balance is kinda pointless....
I agree. There are quite a few units now that are very different from the way they were originally presented to us and that went through major changes in the beta. I expect the same thing to happen here. If mines are too weak and not used they'll likely be changed, if they're too strong they'll be toned down. If they don't work either way they'll likely be replaced. Or they could end up like the reaper, but I doubt it.
On July 31 2012 04:11 archonOOid wrote: Can't you manually target the widow mines? If so it would even more micro for the terran player in battle situations but on the other hand with a heavy widow mine composition you are most likely playing mech.
Which units would you want to target? The ones that die anyways or the ones that you want to snipe? Also he would need to directly stand over the mines, which is not likely to happen with detection.
On July 31 2012 03:32 Nagano wrote: I agree that it's hard to get offensive uses out of the widow mine because first, the timer is too long (and has to be because the damage is so high). Making the timer shorter would mean reducing damage output probably. The other spectrum is to make the detonation instant but the damage lowered significantly, which honestly, would probably be best considering at least you get use out of the units.
I've been playing a lots of the HotS custom and it's really difficult to make the mines cost efficient when using it offensively. Let's say you plant the mines as your army is giong forward--the mines will auto attach to closest units which are going to be killed in 2 seconds anyways, basically losing you 75/25 on each mine. The ideal way I see using them would be to turn off auto attach (if you can do that?) so you can manually control the target that each mine goes to.
Using mines defensively seems pretty worthless as well because lings running around the map makes the mine worthless. Observer use will make defensive mines against protoss not very cost effective. Honestly I think it's too early to tell but all signs point to the defensive use of mines at being pretty mediocre. Except when you put them in your own base defensively against air <snickers>
TL;DR: the main culprit is the timer on the detonation, too long and the mine is easily cost inefficient if the opposing player has detection/mediocre speed.
Do you think making the mines explode on unit death (and keeping the long delay) would be better? I was surprised when I found out the mines don't work this way (I would never want to build them if they're never going to help me in an actual head-on fight!), and it would be good because then you can try to target the unit that your mine targeted (it's like both players suddenly have the same thing to focus on with micro, which is pretty cool)
But even without it, mines would still have some sort of use, I suppose. Kinda reminds me about Snipe, we're trying to maximize the usefulness from a design perspective rather than balance, where as Snipe went the opposite direction (I much prefer the design choice of making Snipe useful in more situations, because it's more fun, but it was nerfed for balance)
On July 31 2012 04:00 Nightsz wrote: I wonder if we'll start seeing intentional dt drops into widow mines. that make you blow up ur own units. Just like how spider mines did.
On July 31 2012 03:57 s1ege wrote: it's still in beta..lmao. but if it was a release thing, I'd say the widow mine is stupidly underpowered. whatever it attaches itself to, that one unit can just be micro'd away and money wasted. Maybe if Blizzard made the thing like 3 second (or 5 blizz seconds) time, then it would have use. as of now, it is the most underpowered new unit
Its not even in beta yet! It's alpha still. The thread title and tone is way over the top for the complaints. Obviously there are going to be tweaks, but "fundamental flaw" is seriously overstating the problem, all the OP wants is a couple minor changes, cooldown before explosion being decreased would fix the problem but we've got to all pretend like we have PhDs in game design so even the tiniest things are blown way out of proportion.
What do you guys think of giving the mine...to the reaper? It shouldn't have a countdown timer, just instant detonation like a baneling. Good for defending bases from ling run by's n such. It would also give the reaper an actual job other then harassing a zerg mineral line. Say give the reaper a mine upgrade at factory tech... and the reaper will go out lay mines. Just a thought what do you guys think of that idea?
On July 31 2012 03:42 Roe wrote: Blizzard said they want mines to control space, and they previously said about the shredder that it should break up the deathballs and be away from the main force. Blizzard is simply putting these together I think.
I have a huge concern about this.
If it is to control space... HOW does that BREAK UP the deathball? Sure that gives terran good incentive to put supply elsewhere in the map, but... unless the unit is bad, why would the opponent then have the incentive to harass? And if he's still able to harass despite good widow mine placement, then isn't it kind of a shitty unit then? Does it not only encourage deathballs? Terran would have some supply away from the army, but the opponent would still have a deathball army (if he chooses to go deathball).
I like the idea of a mine as a concept, but I find it odd and unprecedented that it would be a unit unto itself, and not an ability put onto an existing or new unit. Wouldn't it be bad ass if they gave the widow mine to the reaper or something? to make up for the weaker building attack, and to pair with the new regen for harrassment, it could make reapers much more involved in the metagame. Having them as just a unit to build out of the factory make very little sense to me.
On July 31 2012 04:20 chip789 wrote: What do you guys think of giving the mine...to the reaper? It shouldn't have a countdown timer, just instant detonation like a baneling. Good for defending bases from ling run by's n such. It would also give the reaper an actual job other then harassing a zerg mineral line. Say give the reaper a mine upgrade at factory tech... and the reaper will go out lay mines. Just a thought what do you guys think of that idea?
I really think this is a great idea. If Blizzard did this, the reaper would be useful for so many things. First off, it regenerates health over time so one could send reapers in early game to do drone harass. Then once the enemy gets its defenses against the reapers, the reapers can then start taking map control by placing mines. Heck, I think it would even be better if the reaper has to stay in the same spot for 5 seconds to place the mine. That way you can't just place it in the middle of a fight. That would remove the "deathball" aspect of mine usage. This would not only make reapers USEFUL, but it would also mean they have some sort of usage past the "harassment" phase. I feel that even with reapers being able to regain health slowly over time, they will still be underused because they have no use in the mid-game. But with the widow mine spell given to the reaper, it would really make things interesting:
"Do I make more marines and marauders for a deathball? Or do I make reapers to split up my army and take map control with mines?"
On July 31 2012 04:20 larse wrote: The OP totally got it wrong.
It is what Blizzard wants it to be.
They don't want you to use it in an engagement.
They want you to use it elsewhere, outside the deathball.
It's their attempt to reduce the deathball problem.
It's a successor of shredder. You can't use it in an engagement.
Sadly, this is not spider mine. It's just as simple as that.
It's their attempt to reduce deathball play but it won't. Blizzard is fucking clueless when it comes to the deathball problem. Hell, their entire design philosophy with this game is one gigantic mess.
On July 31 2012 04:20 larse wrote: The OP totally got it wrong.
It is what Blizzard wants it to be.
They don't want you to use it in an engagement.
They want you to use it elsewhere, outside the deathball.
It's their attempt to reduce the deathball problem.
It's a successor of shredder. You can't use it in an engagement.
Sadly, this is not spider mine. It's just as simple as that.
It's their attempt to reduce deathball play but it won't. Blizzard is fucking clueless when it comes to the deathball problem. Hell, their entire design philosophy with this game is one gigantic mess.
Yep. All the wrongs about SC2 originated from the sin called deathball.
They cant change the movement system now, so the only thing they can do is unit.
On July 31 2012 04:20 larse wrote: The OP totally got it wrong.
It is what Blizzard wants it to be.
They don't want you to use it in an engagement.
They want you to use it elsewhere, outside the deathball.
It's their attempt to reduce the deathball problem.
It's a successor of shredder. You can't use it in an engagement.
Sadly, this is not spider mine. It's just as simple as that.
It's their attempt to reduce deathball play but it won't. Blizzard is fucking clueless when it comes to the deathball problem. Hell, their entire design philosophy with this game is one gigantic mess.
Yep. All the wrongs about SC2 originated from the sin called deathball.
They cant change the movement system now, so the only thing they can do is unit.
They could easily change it because the changes don't require a change in the engine; all they require are some values to be changed that can and have been changed in the map editor. Blizzard is just too arrogant to do it.
On topic, I fully agree with the OP. The Widow Mine (and the Swarm Host, Tempest, Battle Hellion, and Warhound) is terribly designed. It's like Blizzard is groping around in the dark, hoping to find some kind of solution to the current problems.
On July 31 2012 04:20 larse wrote: The OP totally got it wrong.
It is what Blizzard wants it to be.
They don't want you to use it in an engagement.
They want you to use it elsewhere, outside the deathball.
It's their attempt to reduce the deathball problem.
It's a successor of shredder. You can't use it in an engagement.
Sadly, this is not spider mine. It's just as simple as that.
It's their attempt to reduce deathball play but it won't. Blizzard is fucking clueless when it comes to the deathball problem. Hell, their entire design philosophy with this game is one gigantic mess.
Yep. All the wrongs about SC2 originated from the sin called deathball.
They cant change the movement system now, so the only thing they can do is unit.
They could easily change it because the changes don't require a change in the engine; all they require are some values to be changed that can and have been changed in the map editor. Blizzard is just too arrogant to do it.
On topic, I fully agree with the OP. The Widow Mine (and the Swarm Host, Tempest, Battle Hellion, and Warhound) is terribly designed. It's like Blizzard is groping around in the dark, hoping to find some kind of solution to the current problems.
You forgot Viper, the most terrible unit in HOTS. :D
I think Blizzard's game designers became pretty incompetent after the second expansion of WOW. And D3 is the best example of how their game designs reached the lowest point.
Dont rely on the HotS custom map for testing, even though its the closest thing we have to knowing what to expect, the numbers arent 100% correct, blizzard could have changed these numbers drastically for what we all know by now
On July 31 2012 04:20 larse wrote: The OP totally got it wrong.
It is what Blizzard wants it to be.
They don't want you to use it in an engagement.
They want you to use it elsewhere, outside the deathball.
It's their attempt to reduce the deathball problem.
It's a successor of shredder. You can't use it in an engagement.
Sadly, this is not spider mine. It's just as simple as that.
It's their attempt to reduce deathball play but it won't. Blizzard is fucking clueless when it comes to the deathball problem. Hell, their entire design philosophy with this game is one gigantic mess.
Yep. All the wrongs about SC2 originated from the sin called deathball.
They cant change the movement system now, so the only thing they can do is unit.
They could easily change it because the changes don't require a change in the engine; all they require are some values to be changed that can and have been changed in the map editor. Blizzard is just too arrogant to do it.
On topic, I fully agree with the OP. The Widow Mine (and the Swarm Host, Tempest, Battle Hellion, and Warhound) is terribly designed. It's like Blizzard is groping around in the dark, hoping to find some kind of solution to the current problems.
You forgot Viper, the most terrible unit in HOTS. :D
I think Blizzard's game designers became pretty incompetent after the second expansion of WOW. And D3 is the best example of how their game designs reached the lowest point.
Hell, I don't even think WoW is very badly designed. It is an MMO that is well-designed for its audience; a huge playerbase. However, Diablo 3 and SC2 are for niche crowds (different niches) and they've failed their respective crowds.
Oh, and I actually think that the Viper is the most interesting unit out of the entire bunch in HotS. At least Abduct and that cloud can make the game dynamic. The Tempest, Warhound, Battle Hellion, and Swarm Host don't really add much at all to the game. The Widow Mine is just going to be useless. The Oracle will be interesting as well, although I think an energy-draining cloak for the Protoss is all kinds of fucking stupid.
I'd really love to see a "bronze level apm" player pull 4 zealots that get a widow mine on them out of their death ball before they go off in the middle of a battle. It's a fuckload harder than you guys are trying to make it out to be. Or pulling 4 lings out of a pack of muta ling bane? You seriously think that's an easy task? Try clicking on 4 specific zerglings in a pack of 100 sometime, or better yet, just try microing ling bane vs ling bane for a little bit then come back to this thread with the knowledge that you gain. So much ignorance here.
This thread is a huge misconception. You think it is "flawed" design, when in fact it is intended design and the way Blizzard wants it to be played out. Maybe they will change the way it works once again, maybe they won't, but the way it functions right now is how they want it to function right now.
There is no "flawed" design, there is just bad design and good design. Bad design is usually one-dimensional and hard to balance, while good design can work in different directions depending on how it is used and can be balanced very naturally.
For example I personally think Reapers and Void Rays are pretty bad from a design perspective. As for the Widow Mine, I have no idea. Has to be tested. All I know is that it has little synergy with working together with different kinds of unit inside an army. But that doesn't automatically make it a boring or hard to balance unit. The more concerning thing in that regard is the amount of damage and the amount of time it takes until it explodes, also the build time and the building costs.
yeah i agree. whats the point of a mine if it just die if u kill the unit. i also think they shud just let the mine goes off even if the unit dies. and about the observer/overseer i was thinking the same when the idea came out. might as well just give us the spidermine
On July 31 2012 05:02 Bommes wrote: This thread is a huge misconception. You think it is "flawed" design, when in fact it is intended design and the way Blizzard wants it to be played out. Maybe they will change the way it works once again, maybe they won't, but the way it functions right now is how they want it to function right now.
There is no "flawed" design, there is just bad design and good design. Bad design is usually one-dimensional and hard to balance, while good design can work in different directions depending on how it is used and can be balanced very naturally.
For example I personally think Reapers and Void Rays are pretty bad from a design perspective. As for the Widow Mine, I have no idea. Has to be tested. All I know is that it has little synergy with working together with different kinds of unit inside an army. But that doesn't automatically make it a boring or hard to balance unit. The more concerning thing in that regard is the amount of damage and the amount of time it takes until it explodes, also the build time and the building costs.
If it is promoted to do something that it doesn't is is flawed.
Browder doesn't want HotS to have a high skillcap that's exciting to watch because silver players like myself are more important, so he basically turned the spider mine into a ground HSM that costs money and supply.
Yeah...and this is why these threads keep getting made. If you're going to rehash something, make it better and more exciting, don't neuter it until it's barely worth anything.
Why does terran have a buildable suicide unit now? This overlap is getting silly. Give mines to a unit, make them detonate almost immediately.
I don't believe the design of the widow mine is to add into your army composition. It works the way it works because It's meant to be a means to control space. If you are about to get counter attacked, the widow mine would make the counter attack much weaker. It's just like how terrans leave tanks at home when they are about to push out. That way they are safe versus small counter attacks while their army is not at home. Same applies with widow mine just you would put it in the path where the counterattack would happen. Also, zerg and protoss won't have an overseer or observer with their counter attack squad.
Another thing flawed in your argument is you say the races will just make units that can detect and it will render completely. With that logic, Dt's in SC1 and SC2 should suck, Infestor harass should never ever happen and Spider mines in SC1 were complete shit. All these are incorrect. Infestor harass is quite cost effecient. Dt's almost always do damage the first time they come on the field and spider mines were quite good in SC1.
On July 31 2012 05:10 Advocado wrote: If it blows up when it dies, you die to zealots that charges you lol. It's probably better this way for the terrans.
I dont think its designed to be a vulture mine but rather as harrasment out of battles.
This is an interesting discussion, I think. I wish they just gave us spider mines, but Blizzard is trying so hard to make their game different from BW that they're hurting their newer game in the process. I get the idea behind trying to differentiate between the games and making them separate entities, not making a BW2, etc. but what they're doing here is TRYING to create another spider mine while also not giving us it at the same time, thus creating some twisted step-child of the spider mine that doesn't fulfill its role.
I guess I'll wait until Beta and see if things change. Just my two cents.
Wanna know how to balance it? Make it have no autocast. Make the player have to manually manipulate the mines to latch on.... They should probably do the same with Swarm Host cooldowns and autocast missles from the goliath rip off. Add more APM and it won't be "imba" except in the hands of the truly adept, and they deserve to be imba.
But to be honest... It's going to be absolutely worthless in ZvT anyways. Since they're currently autocast you can just run zerglings around in front of your army and suck up all of the widow mines anyways...
On July 31 2012 05:08 nakedsurfer wrote: I don't believe the design of the widow mine is to add into your army composition. It works the way it works because It's meant to be a means to control space. If you are about to get counter attacked, the widow mine would make the counter attack much weaker. It's just like how terrans leave tanks at home when they are about to push out. That way they are safe versus small counter attacks while their army is not at home. Same applies with widow mine just you would put it in the path where the counterattack would happen. Also, zerg and protoss won't have an overseer or observer with their counter attack squad.
Another thing flawed in your argument is you say the races will just make units that can detect and it will render completely. With that logic, Dt's in SC1 and SC2 should suck, Infestor harass should never ever happen and Spider mines in SC1 were complete shit. All these are incorrect. Infestor harass is quite cost effecient. Dt's almost always do damage the first time they come on the field and spider mines were quite good in SC1.
As the OP explains, this thing is uselss away from your army because if your units get hit by a Mine and there's nothing to distract you, you have plenty of time to make your unit just waltz away from your army and be the only one that dies.
On July 31 2012 03:33 The Final Boss wrote: The fact that any of these threads have been made is sad. Why are we talking about balance regarding a game that is not even out....
u missed the point. the tread isnt about balance. its about design concept of the mine. with doesnt even looks like how blizzard presented atm.
Has anyone bothered considering this as a map control unit? Put it in areas away from your army to slow down the opponent from attacking through another path and give you notification of their army units. All I got from this is that you've only bothered considering using the widow mine in fights. Which I think is pretty short sighted.
EDIT: Just went through some posts and it appears it has been suggested. People are saying that you can just pull the unit out of the ball to avoid splash damage... which is true, Dustin Browder has already said they've accounted for that and expect players to do that. That doesn't make the widow mine any worse, it just means they have to play around with it to make it cost effective assuming it only hits one unit, and punish players who choose not to split (thereby causing the widow mine to be even more effective)
It will definitely need to blow up and do damage if the unit it is on dies, if that isn't already in the current build (I know it wasn't like that when people got to play with it). I chalk that up more to lack of time than intentional game design.
Being able to just kill the unit the mine is on (your own) makes it ridiculously easy to deal with. This would also create cool chances for terran to get the mine stuck on something weak, then kill that unit to get a faster explosion.
On July 31 2012 05:16 humanimal wrote: Has anyone bothered considering this as a map control unit? Put it in areas away from your army to slow down the opponent from attacking through another path and give you notification of their army units. All I got from this is that you've only bothered considering using the widow mine in fights. Which I think is pretty short sighted.
EDIT: Just went through some posts and it appears it has been suggested. People are saying that you can just pull the unit out of the ball to avoid splash damage... which is true, Dustin Browder has already said they've accounted for that and expect players to do that. That doesn't make the widow mine any worse, it just means they have to play around with it to make it cost effective assuming it only hits one unit, and punish players who choose not to split (thereby causing the widow mine to be even more effective)
That doesn't make the Mine effective in any way. There are three scenarios.
1) The Mine is holding down a location away from the Terran's army; the players just draws the one unit away and leaves him to die and continues his harassment/counterattack. Mine is useless.
2) The Mine is backed up by the Terran army. Either the Terran army kills the unit is is attached to or the Terran army runs away and the opponent has time to split the unit that it is attached to. Either way, Mine is useless.
3) The Mine is able to catch a Medivac/Banshee on the way to harass. This is marginally useful, but you have to stick it in a location that it will catch a flying unit, which is incredibly unlikely, especially since most map edges are open space.
so what you suggest is basically a burrowed baneling for terran that attaches itself to a unit and then moves with the army a couple of seconds before it completely destroys it even if the unit that it originally attacked dies? the only thing you could do then would be splitting the army which is not particularly easy for example imagina a lategame TvP fight Terran has vikings,ghosts MMM and widow mines Protoss has HT's Colossi Sentrys BlinkStalkers Zealots now the widow mines (like 10) attach themselves to some stalkers some Colossi some Zealots and the terran army attacks at the same time how is the protoss ever going to micro 10 different units away from his army while still controlling his colossi stalkers sentrys and HT's?
i don't see how this would be more balanced but ok it's an option
On July 31 2012 05:25 sVnteen wrote: so what you suggest is basically a burrowed baneling for terran that attaches itself to a unit and then moves with the army a couple of seconds before it completely destroys it even if the unit that it originally attacked dies? the only thing you could do then would be splitting the army which is not particularly easy for example imagina a lategame TvP fight Terran has vikings,ghosts MMM and widow mines Protoss has HT's Colossi Sentrys BlinkStalkers Zealots now the widow mines (like 10) attach themselves to some stalkers some Colossi some Zealots and the terran army attacks at the same time how is the protoss ever going to micro 10 different units away from his army while still controlling his colossi stalkers sentrys and HT's?
i don't see how this would be more balanced but ok it's an option
You're talking about a late-game situation.
What was the last time your late-game Protoss army moved out without an Observer? Once you have 1 out Spider Mines are no threat to you. For the same reason you don't see burrowed Banes versus Toss.
Also if the widow mine explodes if the unit dies prematurely, wouldnt that mean the terran could target fire down the target with the widow mine and explode it in the middle of his opponents army before he gets time to react?
On July 31 2012 05:25 sVnteen wrote: so what you suggest is basically a burrowed baneling for terran that attaches itself to a unit and then moves with the army a couple of seconds before it completely destroys it even if the unit that it originally attacked dies? the only thing you could do then would be splitting the army which is not particularly easy for example imagina a lategame TvP fight Terran has vikings,ghosts MMM and widow mines Protoss has HT's Colossi Sentrys BlinkStalkers Zealots now the widow mines (like 10) attach themselves to some stalkers some Colossi some Zealots and the terran army attacks at the same time how is the protoss ever going to micro 10 different units away from his army while still controlling his colossi stalkers sentrys and HT's?
i don't see how this would be more balanced but ok it's an option
You're talking about a late-game situation.
What was the last time your late-game Protoss army moved out without an Observer? Once you have 1 out Spider Mines are no treat to you. For the same reason you don't see burrowed Banes versus Toss.
Hm I'm not sure but even in progames I see cloaked ghosts emp'ing the whole protoss army quite often because there is no observer around. I don't play P or T but still I think it's not that unlikely. Also Observers can be sniped by vikings with scans.
From my experience, they are very strong if positioned smartly and used in the correct timings (good traits to have in a unit, eh?). When my friend attacked me with lings and roaches, they didn't really come in handy. Later on in the game, when he attacked me with broodlord/ultra/infestor, they were really helpful because one mine can kill a broodlord or several infestors, and make the immobile zerg late game have to move even slower to clear mines. With a good number of vikings (already had to deal with BLs) to snipe the overseers, seeing my friend forced to use fungals to clear mines makes me firmly think that spider mine is a good unit as it stands.
On July 31 2012 05:29 Incomplet wrote: Also if the widow mine explodes if the unit dies prematurely, wouldnt that mean the terran could target fire down the target with the widow mine and explode it in the middle of his opponents army before he gets time to react?
I'm pretty sure he was suggesting that the countdown continues even when the unit died
On July 31 2012 05:26 Incomplet wrote: Can widow mine go into dropship?
It can.
I seriously hope these threads cease to pop up like every day. People need to stop theory crafting on things that are not even in beta state... And people need to understand that Blizzard's designers are much more competent at introducing new units than most random ladder heros and bonjwa TL theory crafters (like the OP for example). Trust them, they actually know what they're doing. Much more so than you anyway...
On July 31 2012 05:11 Schmoooopy wrote: This is an interesting discussion, I think. I wish they just gave us spider mines, but Blizzard is trying so hard to make their game different from BW that they're hurting their newer game in the process. I get the idea behind trying to differentiate between the games and making them separate entities, not making a BW2, etc. but what they're doing here is TRYING to create another spider mine while also not giving us it at the same time, thus creating some twisted step-child of the spider mine that doesn't fulfill its role.
I guess I'll wait until Beta and see if things change. Just my two cents.
I think the reason they aren't adding spider mines is simply because they would be overpowered with how units ball up in SC2. Just like how lurkers didn't end up working out in the new engine, some things just can't be copy-pasted from BW into this different game.
The widow mine can be a great strategic unit if they manage to find a balance for it.
On July 31 2012 03:16 Grapefruit wrote: 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.
How should they promote it then? Have a 20 minute lecture on how it can help defend 2 base all-ins and protect meching player base when he moves out? This is a promotional teaser video. Gameplay footage is limited to 10 seconds snippets by law.
On July 31 2012 05:11 Schmoooopy wrote: This is an interesting discussion, I think. I wish they just gave us spider mines, but Blizzard is trying so hard to make their game different from BW that they're hurting their newer game in the process. I get the idea behind trying to differentiate between the games and making them separate entities, not making a BW2, etc. but what they're doing here is TRYING to create another spider mine while also not giving us it at the same time, thus creating some twisted step-child of the spider mine that doesn't fulfill its role.
I guess I'll wait until Beta and see if things change. Just my two cents.
I think the reason they aren't adding spider mines is simply because they would be overpowered with how units ball up in SC2. Just like how lurkers didn't end up working out in the new engine, some things just can't be copy-pasted from BW into this different game.
The widow mine can be a great strategic unit if they manage to find a balance for it.
This argument is total bunk.
Spider mines and lurkers were imba in BW. If they're too imba in SC2 the stats can be tweaked. That's kind of assumed, so noone ever has to bring up this non-point again. But Browder's afraid of AoE imba units (of course he's fine with non-AoE imba).
On July 31 2012 03:16 Grapefruit wrote: 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.
How should they promote it then? Have a 20 minute lecture on how it can help defend 2 base all-ins and protect meching player base when he moves out? This is a promotional teaser video. Gameplay footage is limited to 10 seconds snippets by law.
3 seconds of it attaching to a Warp Prism, which explodes, another 3 seconds of a Ling/Bling run-by that gets shut down and 4 seconds showing how it delays an army from attacking.
Made that up while writing, alone, by myself. Blizzard has hundreds with employees with months of time.
I guess it's fun to argue but any thread that gets this specific about HOTS units is utterly pointless since we haven't tested the units in their beta form yet. I honestly have no idea why these threads aren't closed.
Nice write up, but you convinced me of the opposite. It looks like one of the most interesting addtions to HoTS now. It's not spider mines, they're much more complex and they look like they will continually be used in new and interesting ways.
Really excited to see the widow mine in action now.
On July 31 2012 05:56 Kergy wrote: The same could be said about BW mines, and you'd be surprised at how many times armies just melt because of them even in the pro level.
BW mines didn't had a 10 second delay as far as I know.
On July 31 2012 03:43 VPFaith wrote: Can any Teamliquid admin close this thread? Using words like "FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED" is totally unjustified especially when Heart of the Swarm is not even out yet. Thank you admin.
His belief is that the unit is fundamentally flawed, and then he stated his reasoning behind that statement. The purpose of said statement and reasoning is to increase awareness of a situation that currently exists. If when the beta out they've changed/removed the mine such that this situation no longer exists, discussion of said situation will be moot and we'll move on to what's valid then. Until that happens though, the situation is worth considering. Why shouldn't we discuss widow mines before beta is out? Let's say in beta the mine is exactly as it is now, why should op have to wait until then to post this thread?
Then make a blog out of it. It's still his personal opinions and observations about something about a game that is not even released yet. It's hard to have a discussion about something in a game that is released, having one about a game that has yet to be formally released in any form to the public should not have threads regarding it's balance.
Really good thread. I was planning on making a similar one myself. At anaheim this happened quite often, as well as in the custom map (which mirrors the beta closely).
A lot of times when mines jump onto units mid-fight they don't see use because your units kill the opponent's and the mines end up a waste.
The thing is I think blizzard is intending the widow mine to be like this so that you simply don't make lots of mines with your deathball. To me right now it seems the widow mine is solely for map control and a factory based anti-void ray/muta option so that to "go mech" a Terran does not necessarily have to invest into an ebay+turrets+starport+armory+thors to be safe against air options.
A lot of times in the current wings of liberty metagame lots of openings simply make mech unviable in TvP. Void ray openings in particular that skew Terran so you're forced to make a thor/armory/starport...the widow mine allows you to not have to invest into those meaning you can make more factories while still not dying to the air so then you can "go mech."
I personally think the spider mine is always going to be stronger than a widow mine because blizzard wants to keep the game good for "casuals" too (which is always a mistake).
On July 31 2012 03:16 Grapefruit wrote: 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.
How should they promote it then? Have a 20 minute lecture on how it can help defend 2 base all-ins and protect meching player base when he moves out? This is a promotional teaser video. Gameplay footage is limited to 10 seconds snippets by law.
3 seconds of it attaching to a Warp Prism, which explodes, another 3 seconds of a Ling/Bling run-by that gets shut down and 4 seconds showing how it delays an army from attacking.
Made that up while writing, alone, by myself. Blizzard has hundreds with employees with months of time.
None of which would look exciting to casual observer. A mine goes boom and lots of stuff dies - you aim at lowest common denominator. And yes - Blizzard promotional department knows their audience best.
How does friendly fire work with these? could I just target down my own units with mines on them to not only make the mines completely useless but also make it easier on myself(would be much easier to just kill a unit than to move it out of the group)?
It always struck me that the mines would end up being used more like quasi-static defence rather than as part of an army (to me, the videos implied the latter). You'd deploy them ahead of your lines so that the opponent has taken their damage by the time the army gets to you. Or maybe behind your mineral line to help deal with drops as you push out with your army.
But until we see it in action in the hands of the pros it's difficult to say anything about the effectiveness of its design.
On July 31 2012 04:11 Enki wrote: Until the HotS beta is released and we can get our hands on it, any discussion pertaining to balance is kinda pointless....
It isn't a balance discussion, it's a design discussion. If you aren't capable of reading/understanding the discussion why post at all? The obligatory "wait til beta" gets pretty ridiculous, as it's slapped onto every hots thread multilaterally regardless of context, perspective or content. No attempt is made to actually analyze the content of the post. To their credit a lot of balance/design posts aren't worth analyzing, but then why post at all?
On July 31 2012 06:04 Melvin0000 wrote: How does friendly fire work with these? could I just target down my own units with mines on them to not only make the mines completely useless but also make it easier on myself(would be much easier to just kill a unit than to move it out of the group)?
You realize how much dps you lose doing that, right? Not only is your entire army shooting itself, which is one less attack on the enemy (which means HE gets one more attack vs YOU PER UNIT YOU KILL), you also lose wasted dps by prematurely killing a unit that will detonate when you'd save that much more DPS spending the time moving it out.
If you want to get facerolled though, proceed.
I wonder if phoenixes picking up mined units will be like banelings where they'll still explode and deal splash damage to the units below.
Having played around on the HOTS Mod that is up right now, Widow Mines are extremely Powerful I would say op they are very cheap you can make 2 at a time and they move very quickly. Now if your using them in your main fight well then your just not that bright. You position them around the map you can pop out 10 widow mines and put them at every choke, So now every race after widow timing will have to send obs/overseer/scans before they move out of their base.
Here is the kicker for protoss and Zerg The widow mine can attach itself to the Overseer or Observer if you scan right when it passes over, It's only flaw is that it's really damn strong and can give the Terran time to build up that Expensive Mech army and give them the opportunity to get to production to match that of the other races through Mech.
On July 31 2012 06:04 Melvin0000 wrote: could I just target down my own units with mines on them to not only make the mines completely useless
WHOA DUDE. If I could attach mines to my own units, would that be useless? OMG 2 OP - I don't think widow mines are flawed. 10 seconds seems like 2 much for a good player to deal with it, but they can always play with it. I think it is really needed TBH and a really interesting unit. If they take it out I'll be a sad sad panda peace
On July 31 2012 06:04 Melvin0000 wrote: could I just target down my own units with mines on them to not only make the mines completely useless
WHOA DUDE. If I could attach mines to my own units, would that be useless? OMG 2 OP - I don't think widow mines are flawed. 10 seconds seems like 2 much for a good player to deal with, but they can always play with it. I think it is really needed TBH and a really interesting unit. If they take it out I'll be a sad sad panda peace
They should just weaken it and get rid of the timer altogether. The timer mechanic is the source of the problem, which is forcing Terran to not shoot at certain units.
I was playing TvZ on the HotS custom map. My opponent made broodlord/corruptor, amoved across the map without an overseer. Widow mines annihilated the whole army.
Thats what you get for amoving. I love the widow mines!!!
If im totally honest, I would like for splash damage in this game to be unbelivably punishing. So a few storms could take a protoss army down to 50% health. And make every race have its own "spider mine". At least this would force much more general micro.
I do agree that the mine is flawed in this way, something I didnt really think about. But I thought it was flawed in the way that pro palyers will always be able to kill the units that have mines. If mines did damage even if the unit was killed, that would force players to split the unit away but you can also kill the unit that has your own mine. And that would pretty much force a retreat. And would you rather have a bigger mech army or a bunch more mines that only kill 1 unit each?
Now as much as I belive not much or anything will change for hots when the beta hits, I think blizzard is far to lazy, I think people still need to stfu about hots.
The beta doesnt matter, the final release matters and we will have plenty of time during the beta to give blizzard feedback, instead of wasting our time now.
You need to think more carefully about the nature of the problem you see. You have next to no arguments that the Mine design is fundamentally flawed. All the arguments that you presented point to the fact that you can't find the use for the Mine. However, in a well designed strategy game, the strong and optimal uses of a unit, ability or feature are not and should not be immediately obvious, therefore the fact that you cannot find a good use for them may still point to a good design rather than a bad one.
Never forget that in these matters, a player (any player) always argues from a position of ignorance. And you're not even a player yet - because the game that includes this feature isn't out - so you've really had no chance to put hundreds of hours into it to test your theories.
Consider that for the longest time, community at large found Motherships to be borderline useless. Even Blizzard (Browder I believe) admitted it was mostly a token vanity unit that was never intended or expected to matter much in competitive play. It's been nearly two years until it's actually been used in a way that made many Zerg shed Swarm tears.
No matter how obvious some things may appear to be, it's nigh impossible to read into game design like that. It takes a ton of iterations to identify what really works and has a use, and what doesn't. In fact, for a player to think that way is mostly a sign of tunnel vision and is very detrimental in general. It's of course never bad to think about the game in the way that you do, but any conclusions you make at this point are going to be unreliable and premature, no matter how reasonable and well rounded they might seem.
On July 31 2012 06:04 Melvin0000 wrote: could I just target down my own units with mines on them to not only make the mines completely useless
WHOA DUDE. If I could attach mines to my own units, would that be useless? OMG 2 OP - I don't think widow mines are flawed. 10 seconds seems like 2 much for a good player to deal with it, but they can always play with it. I think it is really needed TBH and a really interesting unit. If they take it out I'll be a sad sad panda peace
You misunderstand
If he is a zerg player, and a widow mine attaches to a roach, he can kill the roach it attaches to and it won't explode. Could be fun in 2v2 though, attach a mine to a DT and run it into mineral line haha.
Widow mines remind me a lot of Terror Drones from Red Alert 2, in looks and functionality, haha.
On July 31 2012 06:16 Funguuuuu wrote: DRG said the mines will be very strong, and I trust his opinion more then yours.
This is pretty much what I have heard across the board from all the Korean and foreign pros. The mine itself seems powerful even if it just did 200 damage without the AOE. It trades efficently with most units in the game, requires detection when deployed, is cheap and fast to produce. The AOE iseems like a bonus and it does insane damage. 200 damage is 4 seige tanks shots with a wider AOE.
Although the OP has some minor points, most of what I have heard from people who used the mine is that they are amazing. And I will trust those with hands on experience.
I don't quite understand all the posts about people saying to wait for the Beta. That kind of mentality didn't stop everyone complaining about the Repliciant and the Shredder - and now they're both gone. How is this any different? We're discussing the issues and the viability of some units in their proposed state.
On July 31 2012 06:30 Eps wrote: I don't quite understand all the posts about people saying to wait for the Beta. That kind of mentality didn't stop everyone complaining about the Repliciant and the Shredder - and now they're both gone. How is this any different? We're discussing the issues and the viability of some units in their proposed state.
On July 31 2012 06:30 Eps wrote: I don't quite understand all the posts about people saying to wait for the Beta. That kind of mentality didn't stop everyone complaining about the Repliciant and the Shredder - and now they're both gone. How is this any different? We're discussing the issues and the viability of some units in their proposed state.
Complaining about the Replicaint and shredder did not get them removed. Blizzard gave reasons for those units being removed and they were not the reasons the community complained about them. The shedder was to easy to all in with, harass mineral lines and was to difficult to balance. The Repliciant made game play less diverse because the other side decided to not build powerful units. The community just happend to predict that those units would suck. But if you look back, we also predicted that every unit would suck.
The discussion is silly because it focuses on a minor part of an untested unit. It is not a flaw with the unit as a whole, but a specific UI decision made by blizzard. If we could use the unit, the thread would make sense. But since we can't, it is mostly just theory crafting with little evidence to back it up.
This is a retarded post, on the lines of whining why the storm of a HT hurts his own units. Just because a player is too low skill to realize how to storm correctly does not mean the unit is flawed. Now you should stop complaining that you can't 1A this unit with the rest of your death ball and wait until the pro's show you how to use it in a couple of months.
I think mine is largely fine right now in mechanics, maybe specific numbers need to be tweaked.
As it is right now, it has the possibility of trading EXTREMELY efficiently given the right position. This is largely true in general of the Terran army - with the right position/engagement, it is so efficient and good. Of course, when it's out of position, it's horribly bad.
On July 31 2012 06:46 aka_star wrote: This is a retarded post, on the lines of whining why the storm of a HT hurts his own units. Just because a player is too low skill to realize how to storm correctly does not mean the unit is flawed. Now you should stop complaining that you can't 1A this unit with the rest of your death ball and wait until the pro's show you how to use it in a couple of months.
On July 31 2012 06:30 Eps wrote: I don't quite understand all the posts about people saying to wait for the Beta. That kind of mentality didn't stop everyone complaining about the Repliciant and the Shredder - and now they're both gone. How is this any different? We're discussing the issues and the viability of some units in their proposed state.
Complaining about the Replicaint and shredder did not get them removed. Blizzard gave reasons for those units being removed and they were not the reasons the community complained about them. The shedder was to easy to all in with, harass mineral lines and was to difficult to balance. The Repliciant made game play less diverse because the other side decided to not build powerful units. The community just happend to predict that those units would suck. But if you look back, we also predicted that every unit would suck.
The discussion is silly because it focuses on a minor part of an untested unit. It is not a flaw with the unit as a whole, but a specific UI decision made by blizzard. If we could use the unit, the thread would make sense. But since we can't, it is mostly just theory crafting with little evidence to back it up.
Exactly this. There is a lot of complaints about the viper, but last time I checked it was still in the beta.
I think everyone just needs to wait for the beta to comment on viability and balance of units. No use coming out with "evidence" of a unit/spell sucking when the game isn't even in beta.
It's obvious that the OP and many others posting on this thread has not seen high level BW play. If you watch players such as Flash or Fantasy using spider mines, although there are offensive and defensive/distractive implementation of spider mines. For defensive/distractive, they will spread spider mines all over the map, which catches enemy units that are moving around the map. When the game becomes an APM war, the enemy will take the blunt of those mines eventually.
For offensive, they have vultures lay mines in the back of the enemy units while the main force moves up. The same tactic could be used with the SC2 mine, and while it would be much more powerful with 5 or 7 second delay, even with 10 second delay it will surely distract the enemy to a large degree, and you could potentially get 1-2 good explosions if you overwhelm them enough with APM.
i dont know if someone proposed something like this but dont you think it would work well if this mine was spawned from ravens, u would buy 5 mines for 50 minerals each in the raven and u could put them wherever u want? i think it would be pretty cool and would make the raven played more... but well they want to make "new" units all the time.
Nothing in the OP can't be fixed in the beta. Also, looking at flashy videos of stuff blowing up doesn't mean that games will ever look like that. It's not a "this is how everything will be used", it's more of "hey guys look at these cool abilities/units making stuff blow up". It's like a sales pitch for HotS, no a simulation of a pro game...
All that time spent making the OP and it's practically worthless.
I feel that when the numbers are finalized it should be used as space control.
I feels like it should be counter play to: drops, muta harass, dark templar rushes, mid game counter attacks. After 1 year of HOTS i feel they will be invaluable in securing thirds.
Counter play to widow mines should be: seige range units + detect for 100% efficiency and low cost units for trading efficiency (1 ling, 1 zealot, 1 marine), otherwise trades should be even or in terrans favor.
Cost should be comparable so there is another option to planetary, turrets and bunkers. The only number I'm afraid will be difficult to balance is factory build time cost. Yes mines have uses, yes mines have counterplay, sounds like a well designed unit to me. I think terrans pointing out that counterplay does exist
While you do make great points, and even though Blizzard advertised it as a direct combat unit, I really DO NOT see it being used as such, or at least not in abundance.
Much like borrowed banelings, you set them up in probable movement locations, and let them work alone, doing what damage they can.
On July 31 2012 06:30 Eps wrote: I don't quite understand all the posts about people saying to wait for the Beta. That kind of mentality didn't stop everyone complaining about the Repliciant and the Shredder - and now they're both gone. How is this any different? We're discussing the issues and the viability of some units in their proposed state.
You realize that Blizzard does their own internal testing (as shocking as that might seem) and that's why they removed those units.
I definitely agree that I think it's a bit silly to be discussing balance of new units when we haven't seen how they play out yet. Only Blizzard can really see that and they'll address whatever issues they find in their internal testing and address further issues once beta is out.
Let's wait until beta before we start QQ'ing about these units.
I'm not going to discuss balance yet but I'm really bothered to see a mine that hits ground and air. It seems really strange to me. There's nothing wrong in copying BW's spider mines.
On July 31 2012 08:07 Warpish wrote: I'm not going to discuss balance yet but I'm really bothered to see a mine that hits ground and air. It seems really strange to me. There's nothing wrong in copying BW's spider mines.
And the warhound is ugly...
Well I would say it's just as strange that fungal growth hits air. That said, I don't like either of them.
On July 31 2012 08:07 Warpish wrote: I'm not going to discuss balance yet but I'm really bothered to see a mine that hits ground and air. It seems really strange to me. There's nothing wrong in copying BW's spider mines.
The mines are not meant for fighting....right? They're just a way of gaining map control and taking supply away from the deathball like the oracle etc, or so I recall from interviews.
Your argument was very sound that the mine was pretty terrible. Contrary to your argument and the video however, Browder has talked many times about the design idea and how they are trying to pull units away from the deathball and not add to them. In this context, they may function a bit better. On the other side of the debate, I completely agree with the idea of Terran having a useless unit. The hydra hasn't been viable since beta and the HOTS speed upgrade at the hive is pointless. How about we also add an upgrade for the mine to the Fusion Reactor for 250/250 that reduces the timer of the mine to 9 instead of 10? It'll totally be awesome then.
On July 31 2012 09:41 Radament wrote: I thnk its fundamentally flawed. What stops a terran from going gas first reactor then constantly ralleying mines over to early game zerg's base...
Just one idea I had feel free to bash.
The Zerg could just put down a Spine Crawler or attack the mines before they burrow. And if the mine attaches itself to a Drone or Zergling, then it's automatically a cost-ineffective trade considering that the mine is 75 minerals, 25 gas wasting itself on a 50 mineral unit, assuming that the Zerg micros so that there is no splash damage done.
On July 31 2012 03:36 sGs.Kal_rA wrote: Everything in HOTS is fundamentally flawed. With the new units everything from HOTS will be flawed too. Thats why theres a beta. Wait for it, play games, give feedback, wait for blizzard to patch, repeat from play games. No point talking about anything till then
I think the issue is that most units from HotS seem sort of overpowered right now (intentionally, since Blizzard wants people to use them), whereas Widow Mine kind of seems bad.
edit: and yes it is valid to say "the beta isn't out yet, wait a while," but the problem here is readily apparent even without actual gameplay testing (which we technically sort of have with HotS customs), and if Blizzard sees that and realizes that they're screwing up, they'll know it's something to consider tweaking
my thoughts exactly. At first glance i thought this mine would be good, but playing it in the HOTS custom i find this unit is actually really terrible . I mean sure they are really good at defending your base against air raids. But thats all.. Maybe that blizzard intention? to not build turrets anymore but widow mines?
i dunno .. I find its better we let blizzard know that we think the unit is garbage, than to wait for the beta to come out to then say it is crap. If we wait for the actual beta to come out, they are more likely to just cut it from the game if it cant work because when blizzard announces the beta, they have a time period they expect the beta to last for and a shipping period right after which leaves them no time to actually figure out something new for terran. And I say this to blizzard now. If all i am getting for the expansion is a battle hellion and an a-move warhound to play around with .. Screw terran. Im switching to protoss or zerg. I expect the race playing percentages to be heavily messed up if terran gets the short end of the stick this expansion. They are already the least played race outside of Bronze league.
My fix to the mine would be a "dash ability" in addition to the "always will do damage if it attaches to a unit". The timer could still be shown to indicate what level of damage was dealt. Friendly fire could probably be removed as well. Imagine a bunch of zealots or zerglings charging into your army and picking up these mines. Seems way to luck based and potentially dangerous to your own army to really want to use these guys outside base defense against air units.
On July 31 2012 08:07 Warpish wrote: I'm not going to discuss balance yet but I'm really bothered to see a mine that hits ground and air. It seems really strange to me. There's nothing wrong in copying BW's spider mines.
Yes, I realize that. That's why I said that IMO "there's nothing wrong in copying BW's spider mines", instead of adopting these widow mines that attack both air and ground. (and all the other differences of course)
On July 31 2012 05:08 nakedsurfer wrote: I don't believe the design of the widow mine is to add into your army composition. It works the way it works because It's meant to be a means to control space. If you are about to get counter attacked, the widow mine would make the counter attack much weaker. It's just like how terrans leave tanks at home when they are about to push out. That way they are safe versus small counter attacks while their army is not at home. Same applies with widow mine just you would put it in the path where the counterattack would happen. Also, zerg and protoss won't have an overseer or observer with their counter attack squad.
Another thing flawed in your argument is you say the races will just make units that can detect and it will render completely. With that logic, Dt's in SC1 and SC2 should suck, Infestor harass should never ever happen and Spider mines in SC1 were complete shit. All these are incorrect. Infestor harass is quite cost effecient. Dt's almost always do damage the first time they come on the field and spider mines were quite good in SC1.
As the OP explains, this thing is uselss away from your army because if your units get hit by a Mine and there's nothing to distract you, you have plenty of time to make your unit just waltz away from your army and be the only one that dies.
There shouldnt be a warning when a mine goes onto your unit. So if someone counter attacks because they're getting attack, they won't be focusing on the counter attacking group, they'll be focusing on their main army so they don't lose it with bad positioning. The terran should be focusing on their main army as well since they know they had mines there.
You can't say the widow mine will be completely useless because you can just micro 1 unit away. It's like saying the spider mine in SC1 was useless because you could kill it before it detonated.
Your argument doesn't make sense. People keep jumping to conclusions without even seeing the fucking game. It's quite pathetic and to think these thread keep fucking popping up in our community is sickening. They give no credibility to Blizzard and think everything will be shit. If you think they did such a bad job on SC2 then fuck off and stop playing the game. Holy shit people are retarded. People aren't making these threads for "the better for the game and Esports" they're just bitching about nothing they actually know about since nothing is set in stone yet. Hoy Fuck!
Safe to say that the point of the trailer, like any trailer for any game unveiling new units, weapons, maps etc. isn't to try to tell you, "This is the only way to use this thing that we made" or anything like that. Their just trying to show exactly what the unit does in as simple way possible ie. an enemy steps on your mine, a timer begins, and then the mine blows up when the timer goes off. Sure if they wanted to they could try to slap together a 5 minute trailer for every new unit explaining in detail how the spider mine can be used to defend bases, harras, control and scout parts of the map etc. but that wasn't the point of the trailer your analyzing. The point was just give give short and simple explanations of what the units do, nothing more nothing less.
it felt weak when I tried using it on custom map, and extremely awkward to use as well, including during battles and in between productions hellions and spider mines. Maybe I'm just not used to it
The beta hasn't been released. I seem to remember D. Browder even said that they are looking at the widow mine closely and thinking that it will have to change.
Wait for the beta it should be here in 2-3 months.
On July 31 2012 11:38 stew_ wrote: would it hurt that much to bring back vultures + spider mines and take out battle hellion?
edit: what i meant was, replace battle hellion + widow mine for vulture + spider mine upgrade
It would be good for the game in the long term but Blizzard is too proud of their shitty new units.
I'm not buying sc2 hots for the same fucking units I used for 10 years in sc1. Do I agree that these units are super duper awesome and amazing? No. But I'm tired of people asking for the same fucking thing that they've been using for 10 years because they don't want to let go.
Unless it's cloaked/air unit harass, I don't see a reason why I would ever risk money on these mines when I could just have more units that have a 100% chance to do damage.
OP makes a really good point I never even thought about that.
If you use widow mines like spider mines and you use it as a buffer for defense its essentially useless because the units all die before the mines explode and the mines may as well have not been there at all because the outcome is the same. This means a-move syndrome will continue to exist, and the mine won't actually change the game for the better.
On July 31 2012 05:08 nakedsurfer wrote: I don't believe the design of the widow mine is to add into your army composition. It works the way it works because It's meant to be a means to control space. If you are about to get counter attacked, the widow mine would make the counter attack much weaker. It's just like how terrans leave tanks at home when they are about to push out. That way they are safe versus small counter attacks while their army is not at home. Same applies with widow mine just you would put it in the path where the counterattack would happen. Also, zerg and protoss won't have an overseer or observer with their counter attack squad.
Another thing flawed in your argument is you say the races will just make units that can detect and it will render completely. With that logic, Dt's in SC1 and SC2 should suck, Infestor harass should never ever happen and Spider mines in SC1 were complete shit. All these are incorrect. Infestor harass is quite cost effecient. Dt's almost always do damage the first time they come on the field and spider mines were quite good in SC1.
As the OP explains, this thing is uselss away from your army because if your units get hit by a Mine and there's nothing to distract you, you have plenty of time to make your unit just waltz away from your army and be the only one that dies.
There shouldnt be a warning when a mine goes onto your unit. So if someone counter attacks because they're getting attack, they won't be focusing on the counter attacking group, they'll be focusing on their main army so they don't lose it with bad positioning. The terran should be focusing on their main army as well since they know they had mines there.
You can't say the widow mine will be completely useless because you can just micro 1 unit away. It's like saying the spider mine in SC1 was useless because you could kill it before it detonated.
Your argument doesn't make sense. People keep jumping to conclusions without even seeing the fucking game. It's quite pathetic and to think these thread keep fucking popping up in our community is sickening. They give no credibility to Blizzard and think everything will be shit. If you think they did such a bad job on SC2 then fuck off and stop playing the game. Holy shit people are retarded. People aren't making these threads for "the better for the game and Esports" they're just bitching about nothing they actually know about since nothing is set in stone yet. Hoy Fuck!
/rant complete
Well
1. The OPs argument does not need to be tested, it is perfectly theoretically sound.
2. It got tested in the unit tester anyway
3. Spidermine defusal is really really hard. You have about 1 second to defuse and your goons take almost just as long to shoot, you have select 2 goons and click on a tiny white dot as soon as it appears or blue goo goes everywhere. Mass spider mine defusal is physically impossible (in the sense of mass mines lifting up and attacking your army at the same time). This is not the case with the widowmine, you have 10 seconds and you know exactly which units to split up, even if a huge chunk of your army got caught, its still a pretty trivial matter to split them up because you have 10 fucking seconds.
4. OP's real argument is that the widow mine is needed to be used for defense. In that regard the widowmine is useless, because the zealots that are charging in front will pick up the mines and then immediately die before the mine gets detonated, thus making the mines a useless waste of money.
On July 31 2012 09:22 Jojo131 wrote: The mines are not meant for fighting....right? They're just a way of gaining map control and taking supply away from the deathball like the oracle etc, or so I recall from interviews.
That's what Blizzard is looking to achieve. Only problem is the widow mine doesn't actually achieve it. If the widowmine takes up supply and costs a lot of money for no damage, you may aswell have just built a bunker or PF and a bunch of marines that you can actually attack with.
If you put widow mines around your bases, your units will kill the enemy units before the mines detonate, making them a waste of money. If you put mines around the map, that is essentially wasted supply and money that you could be using for actually attacking the enemy.
Spidermines were a lot more functional, did a lot more damage, and were essentially free. Even then people consider PvT slightly P favored in both games. Given that if you gave 3 free [0 supply] widow mines to the hellion that blew up in 1 second, could still be balanced, I think the widow mine falls far short of its actual potential.
On July 31 2012 12:17 Sinensis wrote: This boils down to the widow mine being fundamentally flawed because it might trade inefficiently if not microed at all?
Not many units in SC2 do more damage when microed. So maybe it will be a good addition.
No, it boils down to the widow mine being absolutely useless for defense.
On July 31 2012 12:17 Sinensis wrote: This boils down to the widow mine being fundamentally flawed because it might trade inefficiently if not microed at all?
Not many units in SC2 do more damage when microed. So maybe it will be a good addition.
No, it boils down to the widow mine being absolutely useless for defense.
Huh, interesting idea. I suppose they could be useful when fighting losing battles; throw a few mines on and then bail, so your opponent has to focus on removing these units from their army instead of pursuing.
I can just imagine it though; TvP, using widow mines on stalkers, the protoss actually blinking targeted stalkers forward to ensure they are the first to die!
On July 31 2012 12:17 Sinensis wrote: This boils down to the widow mine being fundamentally flawed because it might trade inefficiently if not microed at all?
Not many units in SC2 do more damage when microed. So maybe it will be a good addition.
Trying to micro all your units to not accidentally shoot certain units is basically impossible, unless you inefficiently target fire one unit at a time with your whole army and then lose every fight you engage in. Plus there's already enough things that need tons of micro.
On July 31 2012 12:17 Sinensis wrote: This boils down to the widow mine being fundamentally flawed because it might trade inefficiently if not microed at all?
Not many units in SC2 do more damage when microed. So maybe it will be a good addition.
No, it boils down to the widow mine being absolutely useless for defense.
I'm not sure if I trust you. You did say earlier that hellions could have 3 free widow mine uses and that it might be balanced.
On July 31 2012 12:17 Sinensis wrote: This boils down to the widow mine being fundamentally flawed because it might trade inefficiently if not microed at all?
Not many units in SC2 do more damage when microed. So maybe it will be a good addition.
Trying to micro all your units to not accidentally shoot certain units is basically impossible, unless you inefficiently target fire one unit at a time with your whole army and then lose every fight you engage in. Plus there's already enough things that need tons of micro.
Mines are a static defense they sit in one place. One does not use static units to offensively engage a mobile army. The OP thinks that mines are useless because they will all get wasted on the opponent's buffer units E.G. zealots? Maybe just don't unburrow them on the zealots. Wait till the zealots run over top them. If they have an OBS? Move your mine somewhere else or protect them with hellions.
On July 31 2012 12:17 Sinensis wrote: This boils down to the widow mine being fundamentally flawed because it might trade inefficiently if not microed at all?
Not many units in SC2 do more damage when microed. So maybe it will be a good addition.
No, it boils down to the widow mine being absolutely useless for defense.
You forgot the word offense too.
Well I guess there's a case for that too. I'd at least expect a mine to be able to defend a base, but now that I look at it, a widow mine can never ever assist in defending your base.
For example, I expected to be able to put a bunch of mines in a choke so I could expand behind it. Essentially Protoss could run a huge army in and I would have to defend with marines, my marines would kill all the chargelots carrying the mines meaning the mines do nothing and Protoss continues to run in and kill my base.
With that wasted money I could have simply built more units, or just put a PF in the choke instead which would have actually helped to defend my base, instead of doing nothing.
On July 31 2012 12:17 Sinensis wrote: This boils down to the widow mine being fundamentally flawed because it might trade inefficiently if not microed at all?
Not many units in SC2 do more damage when microed. So maybe it will be a good addition.
No, it boils down to the widow mine being absolutely useless for defense.
I'm not sure if I trust you. You did say earlier that hellions could have 3 free widow mine uses and that it might be balanced.
seems like the widow mine will be used for really specific timing "attacks" to counter early pushes or all in's being placed in the middle of the map when the opponent doesn't have detection yet then. It might as well not exist against zerg armies unless you get really lucky and get them to hit infestors because every good zerg in ZvT has zerglings running around the map and creep spread past the mid game, in TvT it's even less of an contender unless something changes radically where the game is decided in the middle of the map in early-mid game rather than at the bases with harassment / sieging. In TvP it may come in handy against one specific play style - blink stalker with out obs - which almost never happens.
On July 31 2012 12:17 Sinensis wrote: This boils down to the widow mine being fundamentally flawed because it might trade inefficiently if not microed at all?
Not many units in SC2 do more damage when microed. So maybe it will be a good addition.
No, it boils down to the widow mine being absolutely useless for defense.
I'm not sure if I trust you. You did say earlier that hellions could have 3 free widow mine uses and that it might be balanced.
On July 31 2012 12:17 Sinensis wrote: This boils down to the widow mine being fundamentally flawed because it might trade inefficiently if not microed at all?
Not many units in SC2 do more damage when microed. So maybe it will be a good addition.
Trying to micro all your units to not accidentally shoot certain units is basically impossible, unless you inefficiently target fire one unit at a time with your whole army and then lose every fight you engage in. Plus there's already enough things that need tons of micro.
Mines are a static defense they sit in one place. One does not use static units to offensively engage a mobile army. The OP thinks that mines are useless because they will all get wasted on the opponent's buffer units E.G. zealots? Maybe just don't unburrow them on the zealots. Wait till the zealots run over top them. If they have an OBS? Move your mine somewhere else or protect them with hellions.
I was not aware that you could pick and choose when the mines unburrowed, also having units to "protect" the mines when you could just have even more units protecting that location rather than mines is an arbituary point.
On July 31 2012 12:17 Sinensis wrote: This boils down to the widow mine being fundamentally flawed because it might trade inefficiently if not microed at all?
Not many units in SC2 do more damage when microed. So maybe it will be a good addition.
No, it boils down to the widow mine being absolutely useless for defense.
I'm not sure if I trust you. You did say earlier that hellions could have 3 free widow mine uses and that it might be balanced.
On July 31 2012 12:28 SolidMoose wrote:
On July 31 2012 12:17 Sinensis wrote: This boils down to the widow mine being fundamentally flawed because it might trade inefficiently if not microed at all?
Not many units in SC2 do more damage when microed. So maybe it will be a good addition.
Trying to micro all your units to not accidentally shoot certain units is basically impossible, unless you inefficiently target fire one unit at a time with your whole army and then lose every fight you engage in. Plus there's already enough things that need tons of micro.
Mines are a static defense they sit in one place. One does not use static units to offensively engage a mobile army. The OP thinks that mines are useless because they will all get wasted on the opponent's buffer units E.G. zealots? Maybe just don't unburrow them on the zealots. Wait till the zealots run over top them. If they have an OBS? Move your mine somewhere else or protect them with hellions.
I was not aware that you could pick and choose when the mines unburrowed, also having units to "protect" the mines when you could just have even more units protecting that location rather than mines is an arbituary point.
In the HOTS unit teaser in the OP, zealots run over top the widow mine without triggering it. The terran waits to attach the mine onto the collosus and stalker mass.
Can we wait for Alpha or beta so that we at least know what units are in the game and which aren't?
Gonna be a waste of time debating if Blizz decide to change the unit xD
Possible solutions: 1. Ability to stop micro mines from latching on to units 2. Allow manually targeting mines not already locked onto a target (coupled with stop micro) 3. Shorter widow mine count down to explosion 4. When unit with mine dies, mine explodes for 33%/50%/66%/whatever damage (or % of time left inverse with % of damage, like OP says) 5. Ability to manually detonate mines for x% damage like #4
I can't believe people are actually arguing over this. It's not even out yet. Yes in its current stages its not very useful but that's why it's still A. not released B. yet to be beta tested and tried
I don't know when this community and Blizzard will finally admit that when they made Brood War, they bottled lightning. It was pure dumb luck and maybe a little brilliance that BW ended up being so perfectly balanced in terms of racial strength AND gameplay variety. After a lot of work they've managed to (maybe) balance racial strength in SC2 at the cost of horrendous gameplay variety. Now they're about to re-roll and I hope they don't mess it up.
They really should have just made Brood War: Source or something like that instead of trying to keep 'fixing' SC2 to live up to its predecessor.
For one, we haven't actually seen the release version of this unit in action. Any number of things could change... and that should speak for itself. Imagine the mechanics will remain the same, but the numbers will be tweaked to achieve balance. This shouldn't be impossible to believe.
For two, it's a unit that GUARANTEES that the thing it hits will be dead in 10 seconds 100% of the time (barring what, ultralisks?) and FORCES your opponent to move across the map more cautiously. It's easy to say it is useless defensively, but realistically it can't be impossible to believe that one or a pair of mines will heavily impede a counterattack or flock of mutas or an unfortunate blink of blink stalkers... Obviously you wouldn't just blindly spider mine up your own base without scouting, but Widow mines should serve as a functional response to certain mobility plays among less other less situational uses, so someone declaring that they're "useless defensively" just sounds silly.
This thread comes across as complaining that they aren't useful in every situation, and therefore are useless. I find it hard to agree.
also, wouldn't zerg be relying on zergling suicides or detection + queens/hydras to actually clear mines? I don't imagine roaches could shoot the mines without getting latched on to... in fact, I'm not even sure queens or unupgraded hydras could. At least in the HOTS maps, they seem to latch on from quite some range.
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.
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.
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:
How cost-efficient can this be I wonder? 1 zealot to one widow mine is kind of cost efficient (100min = 75min-25gas)… and if 2 zealots die in the process hmmm…
In the battle report between terran and zerg i saw widow mines decimate the vipers and swarmhosts… Sooo cost efficient so why not just make widow mines and marines all game long…
Well that is my concern hope some at blizz sees this or maybe they allready have it covered.. Feel free to discuss if u like… like to hear some thoughts on this
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.
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.
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.
If your first thread was anything like this, then guess what? It was closed because it's a balance whine. The benefit of the widow mine is supposed to be AWAY from your main army, as stated by Blizzard in roughly 100 interviews about HotS.
The widow mine might detonate after 10 seconds (making it fairly weak) or it might detonate after 2 seconds (making it much stronger). It might be OP as shit and detonate instantly, dealing 800 damage in a 10 AoE or it might be completely useless, waiting 20 seconds to detonate and deal 16 damage in a 1.5 AoE. These are just simply stat changes, no change to the actual design of the unit.
Also, even in it's current form, every single problem you state the Widow Mine has, can be fixed by using them better. Put them further ahead of your army, put them (as Blizzard have told us to do) in a counter-attack path, guarding your back-door when you move out.
You haven't given ANY examples of how it's badly designed, only how it's weak. If it's too weak, it'll likely be buffed (I'd like to see maybe less damage, but more AoE and much faster detonation time).
EDIT: It's also worth mentioning that the way to make a deathball less-strong is not to pull supply out of it, as Dustin Browder often suggests (like an idiot), it's to give ways of controlling areas without using up a lot of supply when defending (eg: spider mines, 2 supply tanks, canons + 1-2 HT with the old psi-storm radius, small group of lurkers with a couple of defilers).
On July 31 2012 14:00 Staboteur wrote: I do not understand.
For one, we haven't actually seen the release version of this unit in action. Any number of things could change... and that should speak for itself. Imagine the mechanics will remain the same, but the numbers will be tweaked to achieve balance. This shouldn't be impossible to believe.
For two, it's a unit that GUARANTEES that the thing it hits will be dead in 10 seconds 100% of the time (barring what, ultralisks?) and FORCES your opponent to move across the map more cautiously. It's easy to say it is useless defensively, but realistically it can't be impossible to believe that one or a pair of mines will heavily impede a counterattack or flock of mutas or an unfortunate blink of blink stalkers... Obviously you wouldn't just blindly spider mine up your own base without scouting, but Widow mines should serve as a functional response to certain mobility plays among less other less situational uses, so someone declaring that they're "useless defensively" just sounds silly.
This thread comes across as complaining that they aren't useful in every situation, and therefore are useless. I find it hard to agree.
also, wouldn't zerg be relying on zergling suicides or detection + queens/hydras to actually clear mines? I don't imagine roaches could shoot the mines without getting latched on to... in fact, I'm not even sure queens or unupgraded hydras could. At least in the HOTS maps, they seem to latch on from quite some range.
This.
How did BW players ever survive spider mines? They cost no supply and you got 3 of them for 75 minerals. The game's not out yet, give our player base some credit before you bash new ideas.
On July 31 2012 03:34 dani` wrote: I wish all these HotS discussions would just wait until, you know, we have actually played it. Concluding a unit is over/underpowered seems premature at this point.
Wait till at least a beta is out before starting balance disussions. They will change a lot till the beta so this whole topic is pointless.
The fact that any of these threads have been made is sad. Why are we talking about balance regarding a game that is not even out....
This thread is not about balance....the guy isnt asking for XX dmg boost or detonation speed increase. He is saying that he thinks the mechanics of mines are bad.
It's not about balance. It's about design. This is important guys if you want to have a fun game. TvP is balanced right now in WoL but it's designed like an hourglass. Not fun.
I agree with the OP, in that mines not detonating when killed is absolutely stupid. Browder says Mines are there to force deathballs to split apart but with mines not detonating upon death, this just allows the opponent to diffuse them by straight up force firing their own unit while still in a death ball. Not a significant change.
Think about it if Widow mines could detonate upon death. Now the opponent has to remove them ASAP not only cause it's a ticking time bomb but you could focus fire the units attached to mines down for some quick TERRIBLE TERRIBLE damage.
Also, with this type of detonation method, it gives the opponent a chance to use the mines back against you, with zealots or zerglings to take the mines and run into your army and if you attack carelessly, BOOM, you lose your whole army. Mine attached to Stalker? Blink into his army and BOOM. Double-edge sword style makes the unit super exciting.
However, with this method, I think the detonation time needs to shorten to 5 secs to make it work otherwise it's too easy for your own mines to run back int your army.
On July 31 2012 14:20 Nerski wrote: This is pointless because none of the balance of any new things will be finalized until beta ends.
It's not pointless. There are sometimes very obvious flaws in the game and it takes blizzard a few weeks to catch on. For example everyone who saw the shredder knew instantly how op it was and that you could just destroy entire mineral lines with it. How did this unit make it past the design stage and actually in the playable alpha? I don't know but either blizzard doesn't test their units correctly or they test it on low skill players who don't use them to their full potential.
Anyways, it seems their tactic is to use their "nerf" ability as much as possible to fix these blatant flaws instead of redesigning the units from scratch (too much work for little dustin).
This thread should be closed because we can never have a real answer to this question until the Beta comes out. Until then, all we are doing is arguing about might or might not be.
Actually I found an interesting use: putting them on cliffs like the one above the fourth on Cloud Kingdom. They plant in a safe spot then go down to the probes below. Four mines wreck an entire mineral line
widow mine has the potential to be incredibly powerful and also useless, also afaik, the opponent cant see which unit the mine is being attached to, which makes splitting the units near impossible
spider mines were only 'op' in certain parts of a game - early game where detection is limited, and when terran is ahead in production where vultures can be mass produced and you can simply "out mine" your opponent. otherwise the spider mine just became another layer of defense at terran's disposal, but not the primary layer, because they are so easily destroyed.
yet now blizzard wants to attach a resource and supply cost to the unit? they really expect players to sacrifice [significant] resources, production time, and most importantly, supply, to mine up a map?
OP has a good point. terrible game design as it stands now. and it relates to many other threads where blizzard is trying to make SC2 the "BW that is not BW" and only end up hurting their game design.
i dont see why they cant just give the spider mine back to the hellion so it could deal with these unit balls rather than giving it a dumb OP transformation mode; it allows players to be far more creative and strategic with the use of hellions.
it doesnt matter whether its "balance" or "design", pretty sure in beta they can change the "design" in about 10 seconds and release a patch. dude you made 3 threads about game that's not even in the beta.
i would bet money they've changed "design" on widow mine 10+ times. just trust blizzard
there is no thought and or micro put into that youtube video. this is what blizzard is trying to avoid in HOTS. remember that post about "getting away from the death ball". what you have created here is 2 death balls. and the protosses death ball is better because your unit composition is not well thought out. if you have bio with that, you can kite back and let the widow mines do the damage. then pick off the left over army. if you have your hellions in normal mode, they could avoid/dodge the zealots as well. AND if you just put your army a little farther back you wouldnt even have to micro. the toss would be forced to walk over widow mines BEFORE he runs into your units. you have to remember that you cant just get a high adamage/splash damage unit and be able to use it with your death ball. you have to place it properly and decide where you want to engage and think about what the enemies unit composition is.
im requesting that you remake the youtube video and just place your terran army several steps back so that you dont blow up all your own units or kill all his zealots with widow mines attatched like a bronzie
On July 31 2012 15:54 X3GoldDot wrote: widow mine has the potential to be incredibly powerful and also useless, also afaik, the opponent cant see which unit the mine is being attached to, which makes splitting the units near impossible
He can see it I think. Would be stupid if he didn't.
How about having both a automatic "activate on movement" and a manual one? Then it would require timing and micro just like baneling, more as you can decide on what to eliminate while banelings only really kill marines.
There's alot that can be done by quite small changes to the game. Give it some time in beta, suggesting spider mines from hellions is a pipe dream and not worth discussing. Just like every other "i want BW stuff" argument about HotS.
Considering TL is a heart of SC2 hating community, i`m hardly surprised to see more HOTS hate.
Now, obviously the mine design is not set in stone, and would probably be changed based on the actual, massive playtests.
But claiming that the mine is fundamentally flawed, is like claiming that SC1 spider mine was fundamentally flawed.
Or Reaver or Carrier were fundametally flawed. Think about reaver. It is a unit for which you need to buy 10 scarabs or suffer reload problems, and it can die without using up all the scarabs. What a flawed shit that unit is.
On July 31 2012 23:05 naastyOne wrote: Considering TL is a heart of SC2 hating community, i`m hardly surprised to see more HOTS hate.
Now, obviously the mine design is not set in stone, and would probably be changed based on the actual, massive playtests.
But claiming that the mine is fundamentally flawed, is like claiming that SC1 spider mine was fundamentally flawed.
Or Reaver or Carrier were fundametally flawed. Think about reaver. It is a unit for which you need to buy 10 scarabs or suffer reload problems, and it can die without using up all the scarabs. What a flawed shit that unit is.
Couldn't agree more.
People have to realize that Blizzard is making the game. Their ideas might not be perfect, there are a lot better ideas, but you get what you get, and it is up to you to use that unit to its full potential and to find different strategies, to think outside of the box etc.
Isn't one of the core functions of the widow mine, the ability to manualy "aim"? Much like banelings, but with a lot better vision. If so, then i do not see the problem: you let the zerglings/ marines run by, and target the more expensive units. That's what i think they did in the battle reports and why it apeared to have a small range (it took time for the player to select the mine and attack the queens).
Now if the mine should detonate even after the unit is killed, i don't know...one thing is sure though: with the "delay" of x seconds for detonation, there can not be any friendly fire. Kamikaze flying units in the mineral line or zealots in the hellion/ tank line would probably make the mine useless.
EDIT: in regards to the " you will want to focuss fire the important units anyway so the mines are wasted". They are not meant to be part of the death ball, in general. They control space, ex: you see some zealots and stalkers going past your army to an expansion, you target the stalkers with the mines and use the fast hellions to kill the zealots.
You can also use the mine as anti iar, even in the main army: you get surprized by mutas without having thors, you target the mutas with mines
On July 31 2012 16:17 a176 wrote: spider mines were only 'op' in certain parts of a game - early game where detection is limited, and when terran is ahead in production where vultures can be mass produced and you can simply "out mine" your opponent. otherwise the spider mine just became another layer of defense at terran's disposal, but not the primary layer, because they are so easily destroyed.
yet now blizzard wants to attach a resource and supply cost to the unit? they really expect players to sacrifice [significant] resources, production time, and most importantly, supply, to mine up a map?
OP has a good point. terrible game design as it stands now. and it relates to many other threads where blizzard is trying to make SC2 the "BW that is not BW" and only end up hurting their game design.
i dont see why they cant just give the spider mine back to the hellion so it could deal with these unit balls rather than giving it a dumb OP transformation mode; it allows players to be far more creative and strategic with the use of hellions.
Because as Browder said: They don´t want spidermines back because it would make tank lines to powerfull
EDIT: Oh sry it was David Kim actually, my bad. link
have you seen how the game keeps changing between demos? people need to stop analyzing it in such depth because its going to be completely different next time.
On July 31 2012 16:17 a176 wrote: yet now blizzard wants to attach a resource and supply cost to the unit? they really expect players to sacrifice [significant] resources, production time, and most importantly, supply, to mine up a map?
If you would use Widow Mines to "mine up a map" and never touch them again you'd deserve to waste supply and ressources.
Widow Mines are entirely different from Spider Mines and they are much stronger because you can manually walk them in or unburrow them in case of danger. Also they don't have a delay until they attach, you can't dodge them once you get in range of them. Spider mines could even be countered if you had no detection at all, and rightfully so because they were really cheap and easy to get.
So Widow Mines should be a lot more costly. Whether or not they are bad design, I don't know and I don't want to judge that until I played with them.
I think putting them in a medivac or two and dropping them near high-value targets seems most optimal; the AoE seems to be just a bonus to punish players for having very poor unit control/micro/attention to their armies, it very much forces the player to look at their armies more when engaging, even if they have a massive army advantage, if 1-2 of those mines actually deals full damage in AoE, that advantage disappears.
My real question is; what the hell is going on with the mothership?
It seems like they've hung, drawn and quartered it and given various spells to other units just to create the illusion of creativity...
Oracle gets mothership mass-cloak. Mothership core (original...) gets recall and can become a planetary fortress. Mothership itself is now for what exactly? Vortex? Because vortex is OP right?
On August 01 2012 00:10 InoyouS2 wrote: I think putting them in a medivac or two and dropping them near high-value targets seems most optimal; the AoE seems to be just a bonus to punish players for having very poor unit control/micro/attention to their armies, it very much forces the player to look at their armies more when engaging, even if they have a massive army advantage, if 1-2 of those mines actually deals full damage in AoE, that advantage disappears.
My real question is; what the hell is going on with the mothership?
It seems like they've hung, drawn and quartered it and given various spells to other units just to create the illusion of creativity...
Oracle gets mothership mass-cloak. Mothership core (original...) gets recall and can become a planetary fortress. Mothership itself is now for what exactly? Vortex? Because vortex is OP right?
At the current state that's exactly what the mothership is for either way. If it didn't have vortex it wouldn't be used ever. Vortex is what gives protoss a slight chance to beat a maxed out zerg on BL infestor
On August 01 2012 00:10 InoyouS2 wrote: I think putting them in a medivac or two and dropping them near high-value targets seems most optimal; the AoE seems to be just a bonus to punish players for having very poor unit control/micro/attention to their armies, it very much forces the player to look at their armies more when engaging, even if they have a massive army advantage, if 1-2 of those mines actually deals full damage in AoE, that advantage disappears.
My real question is; what the hell is going on with the mothership?
It seems like they've hung, drawn and quartered it and given various spells to other units just to create the illusion of creativity...
Oracle gets mothership mass-cloak. Mothership core (original...) gets recall and can become a planetary fortress. Mothership itself is now for what exactly? Vortex? Because vortex is OP right?
At the current state that's exactly what the mothership is for either way. If it didn't have vortex it wouldn't be used ever. Vortex is what gives protoss a slight chance to beat a maxed out zerg on BL infestor
And since they plan to remove vortexs affect on air units, or atleast they did, I think motherships will become for the rare PvP, with tempests aiming to neuter the broodlord infestorball which I have not yet gotten tired of seeing.
On July 31 2012 16:17 a176 wrote: yet now blizzard wants to attach a resource and supply cost to the unit? they really expect players to sacrifice [significant] resources, production time, and most importantly, supply, to mine up a map?
If you would use Widow Mines to "mine up a map" and never touch them again you'd deserve to waste supply and ressources.
Widow Mines are entirely different from Spider Mines and they are much stronger because you can manually walk them in or unburrow them in case of danger. Also they don't have a delay until they attach, you can't dodge them once you get in range of them. Spider mines could even be countered if you had no detection at all, and rightfully so because they were really cheap and easy to get.
So Widow Mines should be a lot more costly. Whether or not they are bad design, I don't know and I don't want to judge that until I played with them.
You're already judging it's better than spider mines...
Widow mines aren't supposed to be super cost effective in battles, there they just should force some micro, like force fields do and if handled correctly they do force micro and reduce the damage output of armies. Also they can change the design, that mines exploded when the unit dies, that they don't do friendly aoe etc, make them not unable to be carried by transporters. I think the mine will go the same path as the baneling, horrible for players but awesome to watch.
Oh and that the widow mine can't be used to buffer for your army, was the first critic point given just when we first saw the widow mine. But they explained that the mine wasn't supposed to be part of the deathball.
oh god another terran whine thread about a game that isnt out yet. when will this stop?
srsly this is a completely different game with a completely different meta ... how can you predict that every protoss will still play zealots for example? you cant. most likely they will but you cant say it 100% certain. And also there is a randomness in the game deal with it ... every race has some things that seem kinda random and this is how starcraft works deal with it or go play mmos or fps.
I agree that the Widow mine is very flawed. It dissapears when the unit it's attached to dies, so you can't really setup a trap with them.
They take 10 seconds to explode, for any1 with decent micro it takes max 2 seconds to ctrl + click 4-5 widow mined units out of their army and move them away.
Most people dont like AOE Abilities, Infestors and Colossi are the 2 most hated (and loved at the same time) Starcraft units and until recently the Ghost belonged to that list aswell. High templars were also really strong and still are but they did take a big hit back when Amulet got removed. Point being, do we really want more AOE in the game?
On August 01 2012 01:08 Jakkerr wrote: I agree that the Widow is very flawed. It dissapears when the unit it's attached to dies, so you can't really setup a trap with them.
They take 10 seconds to explode, for any1 with decent micro it takes max 2 seconds to ctrl + click 4-5 widow mined units out of their army and move them away.
Most people dont like AOE Abilities, Infestors and Colossi are the 2 most hated (and loved at the same time) Starcraft units and until recently the Ghost belonged to that list aswell. High templars were also really strong and still are but they did take a big hit back when Amulet got removed. Point being, do we really want more AOE in the game?
On August 01 2012 00:59 Thune wrote: oh god another terran whine thread about a game that isnt out yet. when will this stop?
srsly this is a completely different game with a completely different meta ... how can you predict that every protoss will still play zealots for example? you cant. most likely they will but you cant say it 100% certain. And also there is a randomness in the game deal with it ... every race has some things that seem kinda random and this is how starcraft works deal with it or go play mmos or fps.
Oh look, another person whining about someone who isn't whining, but actually posting something for the community.
Anyways, i'm not too sure what I feel about the mine. 1) Can it do AOE damage to your own units? EG. It attatches to a ling, and the ling runs into your army.. But even then you could just kill the ling, and its a horrible investement. 2)Its SO easy to just grab the unit and run it off to die, so scout with a zergling, make the mine attatch, and run away.
On July 31 2012 03:16 Grapefruit wrote: 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.
This is the best intro I have ever seen to get a person to NOT read anything that you have posted below it. This is still a balance whine topic and whats even worse is that it's about a unit that hasnt even been released.
Oh, and why is it that a burrowed baneling is perfectly OK while a widow mine is somehow fundamentally flawed and should be banned at all costs?
On July 31 2012 16:17 a176 wrote: yet now blizzard wants to attach a resource and supply cost to the unit? they really expect players to sacrifice [significant] resources, production time, and most importantly, supply, to mine up a map?
If you would use Widow Mines to "mine up a map" and never touch them again you'd deserve to waste supply and ressources.
Widow Mines are entirely different from Spider Mines and they are much stronger because you can manually walk them in or unburrow them in case of danger. Also they don't have a delay until they attach, you can't dodge them once you get in range of them. Spider mines could even be countered if you had no detection at all, and rightfully so because they were really cheap and easy to get.
So Widow Mines should be a lot more costly. Whether or not they are bad design, I don't know and I don't want to judge that until I played with them.
You're already judging it's better than spider mines...
What? I never said the design of Widow Mines is better than the design of Spider Mines.
I said 1 Widow Mine is stronger than 1 Spider Mine, and thats not a judgement about balance or design thats just pure observation and logical based on how you got 3 Spider Mines for 75 Minerals while Widow Mines cost that amount of minerals each and even some gas. I already explained the reasons why Widow Mines are stronger and not supposed to "mine up a map".
I could probably blow your mind even more and say a Warhound will be stronger than a Marine. But lets not judge that until HotS comes out.
On August 01 2012 01:08 Jakkerr wrote: I agree that the Widow mine is very flawed. It dissapears when the unit it's attached to dies, so you can't really setup a trap with them.
They take 10 seconds to explode, for any1 with decent micro it takes max 2 seconds to ctrl + click 4-5 widow mined units out of their army and move them away.
Most people dont like AOE Abilities, Infestors and Colossi are the 2 most hated (and loved at the same time) Starcraft units and until recently the Ghost belonged to that list aswell. High templars were also really strong and still are but they did take a big hit back when Amulet got removed. Point being, do we really want more AOE in the game?
Ehh, I'm pretty sure people love AOE that forces micro. The reason people don't like infestors would be because fungal holds the units in place and makes it impossible to do anything or micro at all once you are caught and chain fungaled.
The reason why people hate colossi is because they are boring and you can't really do anything with them, there is no micro to reward you if you use them correctly and there's nothing to punish you if you use them incorrectly. You can really only A move and pull back with them.
Sorry to hear your old threads got closed. As an old member of this community I can tell you the mods are biased towards their "friends". Im pretty sure Idra can make a thread with a one liner and it'll still be fine.
On July 31 2012 03:33 The Final Boss wrote: The fact that any of these threads have been made is sad. Why are we talking about balance regarding a game that is not even out....
Isn't it better to discuss something not out ? Because then we give Blizzard a chance to FIX IT before it come out and having to do a bunch of patch just to fix it up. This thread is not sad. If you want to discuss then you stay. If not then go look for other threads to read.
Edit: Anyways I should probably discuss about the topic of the thread so I dont derail from it and get a warning from the mods.
I think SC2 is not a game for gamers. It is a game for profit, purely profit. They throw out 100 different units to make it look "cool" and "awesome" and "Wow its a new unit!". But the more units you add the harder or I should say IMPOSSIBLE to balance. Take chess. There's like under 10 different units in Chess but still a classic game with infinite possibilities. Blizzard is not helping esports. They just want money.
On July 31 2012 03:16 Grapefruit wrote: 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.
This is the best intro I have ever seen to get a person to NOT read anything that you have posted below it. This is still a balance whine topic and whats even worse is that it's about a unit that hasnt even been released.
Oh, and why is it that a burrowed baneling is perfectly OK while a widow mine is somehow fundamentally flawed and should be banned at all costs?
If you had actually read the OP instead of wasting your time making a fool of yourself with this post then you'd know.
On August 01 2012 01:22 toopham wrote: Sorry to hear your old threads got closed. As an old member of this community I can tell you the mods are biased towards their "friends". Im pretty sure Idra can make a thread with a one liner and it'll still be fine.
It says in the rules that you were supposed to read upon registering for this site that people who have been here longer, and people who are more well known (aka, pro players) will get preferential treatment.
Interesting thread, I don't think it's bad to talk about these things before they come out. Might not be that positive but if we are upbeat about everything we end up in situations we cannot reverse, like Blizzard says; once a game ships they don't change mechanics.
Gold Find in Diablo III was discussed on Battle.net forums as a big issue, if it got more attention perhaps it wouldn't have made it into the final version like this widow mine.
The unit needs to be tweaked and it will be.. The unit as it exists right now is not what is going to exist at release of the Beta.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if they lowered the detonation time a little and made it so the mine only attached to units that were larger than a certain size (like, they wouldn't attach to zelots because they are too small, but they attach to stalkers and units as large or larger than them). If those two relatively minor changes occurred, would you then be happy? If so, the unit isn't fundamentally flawed. It just needs tweaking.
Also, the thing you said about compositions and builds not mattering is garbage. Placement of units in a build affects which units they are likely to interact with which matters quite a bit to the usefulness of the unit.
Finally, units have been used in incredibly creative ways since the release of sc2. The creativity of the use of the unit is evident when you look at how the units are placed in builds to counter certain compositions at specific moments in the game. Countless different 2 base allins from protoss have utilized combinations of "straightforward" units in intelligent ways to kill zerg players by attacking in ways that take advantage of less good compositions. The defense of these allins is anything but simple. The widow mine will be used in ways that are beyond our scope of understanding at this current moment in time. You think that this is not an issue with your post but I strongly disagree.
On August 01 2012 01:22 toopham wrote: Sorry to hear your old threads got closed. As an old member of this community I can tell you the mods are biased towards their "friends". Im pretty sure Idra can make a thread with a one liner and it'll still be fine.
It says in the rules that you were supposed to read upon registering for this site that people who have been here longer, and people who are more well known (aka, pro players) will get preferential treatment.
If you don't like it you're free to leave ^.^
I did leave for a year., came back because of my love for starcraft. I'm here for the content, not for the mods. so I don't really give a shit about them.
On August 01 2012 01:48 VictorJones wrote: This is dumb.
The unit needs to be tweaked and it will be.. The unit as it exists right now is not what is going to exist at release of the Beta.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if they lowered the detonation time a little and made it so the mine only attached to units that were larger than a certain size (like, they wouldn't attach to zelots because they are too small, but they attach to stalkers and units as large or larger than them). If those two relatively minor changes occurred, would you then be happy? If so, the unit isn't fundamentally flawed. It just needs tweaking.
Also, the thing you said about compositions and builds not mattering is garbage. Placement of units in a build affects which units they are likely to interact with which matters quite a bit to the usefulness of the unit.
Finally, units have been used in incredibly creative ways since the release of sc2. The creativity of the use of the unit is evident when you look at how the units are placed in builds to counter certain compositions at specific moments in the game. Countless different 2 base allins from protoss have utilized combinations of "straightforward" units in intelligent ways to kill zerg players by attacking in ways that take advantage of less good compositions. The defense of these allins is anything but simple. The widow mine will be used in ways that are beyond our scope of understanding at this current moment in time. You think that this is not an issue with your post but I strongly disagree.
The unit definitely need tweaking. As a starcraft community we discuss about these things. So what you're saying is you fully trust Blizzard to tweak the units to how the community like it. In that case, I say you're dumb. We're here to discuss about it so Blizzard know and then they can decide on a solution of their own. This is not dumb.
The major problem about the widow mine is that it is a unit in itself, whereas the role it is trying to fill(Spider mine) game from a unit that could do additional things beside the spider mine. The spider/widow mine has the possibility to do 0 damage or terrible damage, that is what makes it fun to watch, but 0 damage sucks for spending money and using a factory for it... IMHO, bring back vultures, or put it on the reaper/hellion. That way the idea of the unit is helpful and the threat is there.
IMHO The way blizzard is heading with the game it just seems more and more like BW. I just wonder why people stubbornly say that new units are the way to go while the new units try to be what the old units were but in a "new" way that is flawed deep in the design... Sometimes it isn't that bad...
widow mine looks like a great defensive tool - you plant them in your mineral line just before you go attack and when the drop come to harass while you away the mines all save the workers. also you you plant it in the mineral line in your enemy 3rd /4th /5th early and just let it attach to one workers and kill them instantly. also it could be used like borrow zergling is used now but more deadly .
its not stright up fight unit but a unit that can deal alot of dmg when other big things happen.
I see two major objections you have against the widow mine, and they are:
1. 10 seconds is too long of an arming time. My answer: The bio force in the first video can easily disengage with Stimpack, making the 10 second wait more bearable. Also: 10 seconds is a placeholder value for how long it takes them to detonate. If that's too slow, balance changes will speed it up. This is a numerical issue easily fixed via balance changes.
2. If you kill the unit that the mine is attached to, the mine doesn't explode; this randomness is a bad thing. Well, what about the randomness of baneling land mines? Of whether the enemy army happens to walk over them or just misses them? That's hardly a huge problem. Also: the situations in which the Widow Mine were showed off don't need to be the way players actually use them. They can be used as base defense vs. dropships and banshees and mutalisks as well, in which case the problem of your army "accidentally" killing the unit with the mine ceases to be relevant.
I think you make a pretty weak case about the Widow Mine being fundamentally flawed. This is not to say that it ISN'T fundamentally flawed, it might be; it's just that your reasons for why it's flawed aren't very good.
On August 01 2012 00:59 Gajarell wrote: OP said this is not about balance and still goes into length about the explosion timer and damage, after that costs get discussed.
That's NOT a design discussion and i personally dont even know why this thread is still open.
Really? If you're serious about that I doubt that you know what the word balance means.
The world balance implies equality of TWO things but I am only talking about ONE. I am not talking about how another race gets something better or worse, just that the Widow Mine itself is not a useful unit.
On August 01 2012 02:38 Serp87 wrote: widow mine looks like a great defensive tool - you plant them in your mineral line just before you go attack and when the drop come to harass while you away the mines all save the workers. also you you plant it in the mineral line in your enemy 3rd /4th /5th early and just let it attach to one workers and kill them instantly. also it could be used like borrow zergling is used now but more deadly .
its not stright up fight unit but a unit that can deal alot of dmg when other big things happen.
A drop will clear your mineral line before the mine explodes.
On August 01 2012 02:49 Zato-1 wrote: I see two major objections you have against the widow mine, and they are:
1. 10 seconds is too long of an arming time. My answer: The bio force in the first video can easily disengage with Stimpack, making the 10 second wait more bearable. Also: 10 seconds is a placeholder value for how long it takes them to detonate. If that's too slow, balance changes will speed it up. This is a numerical issue easily fixed via balance changes.
2. If you kill the unit that the mine is attached to, the mine doesn't explode; this randomness is a bad thing. Well, what about the randomness of baneling land mines? Of whether the enemy army happens to walk over them or just misses them? That's hardly a huge problem. Also: the situations in which the Widow Mine were showed off don't need to be the way players actually use them. They can be used as base defense vs. dropships and banshees and mutalisks as well, in which case the problem of your army "accidentally" killing the unit with the mine ceases to be relevant.
I think you make a pretty weak case about the Widow Mine being fundamentally flawed. This is not to say that it ISN'T fundamentally flawed, it might be; it's just that your reasons for why it's flawed aren't very good.
I really have NO idea why you think that I complain that 10 seconds is too long of a time for it to explode. No idea, at all. I wasn't even talking about that. I stopped reading after that, but I think that's just fair since you obviously didn't pay much attention to my post either.
Jesus fucking Christ, guys. So much baseless critique. So many people, who disagree but so far not a single reasonable argument that invalidates any of my points. And the tone of many post really give me the feel that I'm some kind of asshole or idiot for trying to do something for the community.
On August 01 2012 01:08 Jakkerr wrote: I agree that the Widow mine is very flawed. It dissapears when the unit it's attached to dies, so you can't really setup a trap with them.
They take 10 seconds to explode, for any1 with decent micro it takes max 2 seconds to ctrl + click 4-5 widow mined units out of their army and move them away.
Most people dont like AOE Abilities, Infestors and Colossi are the 2 most hated (and loved at the same time) Starcraft units and until recently the Ghost belonged to that list aswell. High templars were also really strong and still are but they did take a big hit back when Amulet got removed. Point being, do we really want more AOE in the game?
Ehh, I'm pretty sure people love AOE that forces micro. The reason people don't like infestors would be because fungal holds the units in place and makes it impossible to do anything or micro at all once you are caught and chain fungaled.
The reason why people hate colossi is because they are boring and you can't really do anything with them, there is no micro to reward you if you use them correctly and there's nothing to punish you if you use them incorrectly. You can really only A move and pull back with them.
After watching that video the widow mine is one of my favorite aspects of hots. As you stated, the forced micro is very appealing to me especially with the BW pros moving over to SC2. I want to watch games where widow mines are rendered nearly useless due to sick micro. I also love the fact that the mine is clearly represented with an ingame visual.
I also agree with your points about most of the other AOEs in the game. I wish fungal growth would immediately hold the first unit and spread to other nearby units on one second intervals... something that forces quick micro but doesn't make the ability completely worthless.
During the beta and shortly after release there were many units which were thought to be "useless", some of which are often used today.
We should just wait till the beta comes out in order to use them because the whole idea of innovation is to use something in a way that had not been thought of before.
On August 01 2012 04:28 Traceback wrote: During the beta and shortly after release there were many units which were thought to be "useless", some of which are often used today.
We should just wait till the beta comes out in order to use them because the whole idea of innovation is to use something in a way that had not been thought of before.
For example? If there were "many" you should at least be able to name like 3-5.
On August 01 2012 04:28 Traceback wrote: During the beta and shortly after release there were many units which were thought to be "useless", some of which are often used today.
We should just wait till the beta comes out in order to use them because the whole idea of innovation is to use something in a way that had not been thought of before.
For example? If there were "many" you should at least be able to name like 3-5.
No one really used Hellions till SlayerS Terrans came along and made Blizz nerf them.
Mothership was completely useless.
For a long time Protosses didn't know how incredibly good Zealots with upgrades are.
Mutas versus Protoss ~never happened.
Ghosts were useless, till suddenly they weren't and then they were nerfed for vP (EMP) and vZ (Snipe).
Recently Terrans started using Ravens / BCs in late-lategame scenarios against all races. People have started using Seeker Missiles. Used to be completely useless, way too expensive, way too much micro etc.
Design flaw: Its a 3 hour timer that you can simply select your unit and pull it away from your deathball. Not hard. Design flaw: Not to mention the Mine takes up supply. Broodlings don't use supply and they deal damage. Stupid. Design flaw: Any race can throw out a 50 mineral worker (or 25 min Ling) and just run around the map and trade minerals. Terrible mineral trade. Desgin flaw: Just like Spider mines in BW. They, if used, will be only to take dmg away from the units at hand. Too expensive.
Solution: Just give Terran a decent 1a unit like Protoss and Zerg have. Fixed.
On August 01 2012 04:28 Traceback wrote: During the beta and shortly after release there were many units which were thought to be "useless", some of which are often used today.
We should just wait till the beta comes out in order to use them because the whole idea of innovation is to use something in a way that had not been thought of before.
For example? If there were "many" you should at least be able to name like 3-5.
No one really used Hellions till SlayerS Terrans came along and made Blizz nerf them.
Mothership was completely useless.
For a long time Protosses didn't know how incredibly good Zealots with upgrades are.
Mutas versus Protoss ~never happened.
Ghosts were useless, till suddenly they weren't and then they were nerfed for vP (EMP) and vZ (Snipe).
Recently Terrans started using Ravens / BCs in late-lategame scenarios against all races. People have started using Seeker Missiles. Used to be completely useless, way too expensive, way too much micro etc.
I understood your point! Blizzard should just nerf the other units in toss unit in HOTS until we play the units they want us to play.
On August 01 2012 04:28 Traceback wrote: During the beta and shortly after release there were many units which were thought to be "useless", some of which are often used today.
We should just wait till the beta comes out in order to use them because the whole idea of innovation is to use something in a way that had not been thought of before.
For example? If there were "many" you should at least be able to name like 3-5.
No one really used Hellions till SlayerS Terrans came along and made Blizz nerf them.
Mothership was completely useless.
For a long time Protosses didn't know how incredibly good Zealots with upgrades are.
Mutas versus Protoss ~never happened.
Ghosts were useless, till suddenly they weren't and then they were nerfed for vP (EMP) and vZ (Snipe).
Recently Terrans started using Ravens / BCs in late-lategame scenarios against all races. People have started using Seeker Missiles. Used to be completely useless, way too expensive, way too much micro etc.
?
You say people thought many units where useless around the release of SC2. I ask you which and you reply with the usage of units far after the release of SC2. Those are two entirely different subjects.
What annoys me most about the mines is the 10s waiting time before it explodes. Not for any gameplay reason really, it just seems odd. Vulture mines tried to KILL you asap, these mines latch onto something, sit around doing nothing for no apparent reason and then explode. Why not blow up immediately? Kinda ruins the immersion/excitement a bit.
On August 01 2012 04:48 PauseBreak wrote: Design flaw: Its a 3 hour timer that you can simply select your unit and pull it away from your deathball. Not hard. Design flaw: Not to mention the Mine takes up supply. Broodlings don't use supply and they deal damage. Stupid. Design flaw: Any race can throw out a 50 mineral worker (or 25 min Ling) and just run around the map and trade minerals. Terrible mineral trade. Desgin flaw: Just like Spider mines in BW. They, if used, will be only to take dmg away from the units at hand. Too expensive.
Solution: Just give Terran a decent 1a unit like Protoss and Zerg have. Fixed.
Logic flaw: It's a "3 hour timer (lol)" that your opponent can do absolutely nothing about once your scouting observer, harassing warp prism/oracle gets latched onto while sneaking up on the terran's base. This kind of a unit will ultimately change the metagame of TvP such that all protosses won't even bother harassing with expensive units, because it gets nullified completely by an inexpensive unit that all terrans will surely have because it is easy to deploy and can be separated from the main army to great effect.
Logic flaw: The mine takes up a supply that, with 200 target damage, can easily trade for a unit that's four with no micro -- and that supply would not have better been spent on a single marine. If broodlings took up supply, yes, this game would be stupid. Are you really arguing that broodlings should take up supply because they can attack? ...Newsflash: Broodlings are the attack...
Logic flaw: Any race can throw out a 50 mineral worker or hallucinations or zerglings or warp in units under a warp prism within range of widow mines and transform the warp prism back into transport mode to exploit a shitty Terran player that keeps his mines in autoattack. A smart terran would turn off autoattack and manually select beefy units (or better: spread out attack commands so that it is much harder to separate targetted units from untargetted units), and turn on autoattack to counter invisible units (dark templars, observers, swarm hosts).
Logic flaw: Just like spider mines in BW, the widow mines thrive in situations where your army is kept separate from them, so you don't deal damage to units that are already doomed.
Reality: Terrans can now 1a harder than Zerg and Protoss with their newfound warhounds and never have to worry about a counter attack, because of widow mines, yet players like you with the lack of forsight will whine about being underpowered regardless. Dustin Browder himself fears what the widow mine can and will do to the metagame of HotS with the current state of the unit.
On August 01 2012 07:14 Natengall wrote: Reality: Terrans can now 1a harder than Zerg and Protoss with their newfound warhounds and never have to worry about a counter attack, because of widow mines, yet players like you with the lack of forsight will whine about being underpowered regardless. Dustin Browder himself fears what the widow mine can and will do to the metagame of HotS with the current state of the unit.
Reality Check: Terran will not be able to 1a harder than Zerg nor Protoss. Good job destroying any credibility that you had. Which you didn't. Seeing as you play Protoss, 1a'ing is pretty much all you know how to do. So it figures that you would have to "micro" a mined unit out of your deathball would be too taxing for you.
I want to know more about the widow mine. Searched liquepedia widow mine didnt find anything. How is it planted? Is its existense tied to supply? Anything that can be massed and doesnt take supply is always a good thing in sc2 seing as one can max out so fast and still have huge resource bank.
The example with the TvP scenario would have a different outcome IMO if you kite them back. You place the mines under your Terran army, kill the zealots, then kit back and the stalkers/collossi will pick up the mines.
I say this as a Terran player who just got demoted and is on tilt, so no bias. Just need to think outside the box instead of expecting to A Move and win.
Forces enemies to micro differently in battles, and makes it so enemies have to be more careful when pushing/can't charge in blindly. It also forces the Terran to micro should they choose to use widow mines in direct engagements.
How is this bad?
It's situational, like any other unit in the game. They all have their own uses.
On July 31 2012 03:16 Grapefruit wrote: 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.
Rofl.... ok. 1) Forcing observers/overseers/enemy scans will benefit the widow mine user. 2) Overseers move slower than a lot of zerg units, the widow mine will also help with zerg run-bys. If widow mines are on the map, the enemy player will need to have a detection unit follow their main army should they move out. They'll need more if they want to split up their army and/or do counter attacks. 3) You really haven't made a point, I guess banshee cloak, burrow, and dark templars are all fundamentally flawed units too then, since observers/overseers/scans make them obsolete!
On August 01 2012 11:46 terriBean wrote: Forces enemies to micro differently in battles, and makes it so enemies have to be more careful when pushing/can't charge in blindly. It also forces the Terran to micro should they choose to use widow mines in direct engagements.
How is this bad?
It's situational, like any other unit in the game. They all have their own uses.
On July 31 2012 03:16 Grapefruit wrote: 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.
Rofl.... ok. 1) Forcing observers/overseers/enemy scans will benefit the widow mine user. 2) Overseers move slower than a lot of zerg units, the widow mine will also help with zerg run-bys. If widow mines are on the map, the enemy player will need to have a detection unit follow their main army should they move out. They'll need more if they want to split up their army and/or do counter attacks. 3) You really haven't made a point, I guess banshee cloak, burrow, and dark templars are all fundamentally flawed units too then, since observers/overseers/scans make them obsolete!
Who doesnt already have an observer with their protoss army...? Seriously that means nothing to have one they cost basically nothing and any toss who doesn't have one already deserves to lose because cloaked ghosts are incredibly common. There are no overseers any more vipers make things detectors now.
So no you made no points at all. Good try though.
In the vid he had all his swarm hosts balled and had no buffer for the mines that was just horrific play.
Not sure what the problem is. It's more effective against capital units and in non-1a situations. If it's too weak they can easily adjust the #s to match the weakness. (This included countdown time as well!)
On August 01 2012 11:46 terriBean wrote: Forces enemies to micro differently in battles, and makes it so enemies have to be more careful when pushing/can't charge in blindly. It also forces the Terran to micro should they choose to use widow mines in direct engagements.
How is this bad?
It's situational, like any other unit in the game. They all have their own uses.
On July 31 2012 03:16 Grapefruit wrote: 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.
Rofl.... ok. 1) Forcing observers/overseers/enemy scans will benefit the widow mine user. 2) Overseers move slower than a lot of zerg units, the widow mine will also help with zerg run-bys. If widow mines are on the map, the enemy player will need to have a detection unit follow their main army should they move out. They'll need more if they want to split up their army and/or do counter attacks. 3) You really haven't made a point, I guess banshee cloak, burrow, and dark templars are all fundamentally flawed units too then, since observers/overseers/scans make them obsolete!
Who doesnt already have an observer with their protoss army...? Seriously that means nothing to have one they cost basically nothing and any toss who doesn't have one already deserves to lose because cloaked ghosts are incredibly common. There are no overseers any more vipers make things detectors now.
So no you made no points at all. Good try though.
They take time to build, if the Terran is active in sniping them then you can still make widow mines work. Don't forget about stuff like warp prism harass/proxy pylon counter attacks etc. Protoss won't be able to consistently get observers into those situations 100% of the time. Also, you forgot about Zerg and Terran.
On August 01 2012 11:49 Griffith` wrote: Vultures:
75 mineral unit that gives you 3 mines. No timer. No supply.
Widow Mine:
75/25 unit. 10 second timer. 1 supply.
lol wat
How is this even a thing?
OH GOD THEY'RE BOTH MINES AND THEY'RE BOTH IN STARCRAFT GAMES. BETTER COMPARE EM TO EACH OTHER!
Widow mine - No 100/100 upgrade or upgrade time OR tech lab / machine shop required. Cannot be sniped en route to target. Benefit from upgrades (?) Are in a game where overseers aren't detection by default. (!!!!) Can latch on to invisible units without detection (?) Are in a game where Hydras are fucking terrible, and where most zerg units couldn't even hit a detected mine without it nuking them. Do more damage than spider mines.
It's like complaining that nukes are bad (*). Are they ever going to clear out the entirety of your opponent's army reliably? Hell no. Are they useless? Hell no. They're a distraction/positional play that you -can- use not to HERPDERP explode your opponent's entire army, but to limit his options or increase the risks he's gotta take to allow yourself other advantages or opportunities in the game. This is SC2, not some other RTS... and elements that provide players opportunities to push for specific advantages in a game is exactly what this is about. Widow mines are exactly that; something that should allow you more opportunity to safely get to mech play (or stronger econ play or other tech play or whatever, really) while forcing certain responses out of your opponent.
(*worse, this specific complaint is kinda like comparing SC:BW nukes to SC2 nukes. Comically different and obviously intentionally so.)
On August 01 2012 03:44 Grapefruit wrote: So much baseless critique. So many people, who disagree but so far not a single reasonable argument that invalidates any of my points..
Well, you claimed to describe a fundamental design flaw while in fact you offered some opinions about certain widow mine stats which could be balanced differently. Not only that you act like you know more about game and balance design as David Kim and his team, you act as if Blizzard is going to make a big mistake and without your awareness raising thread it would be likely that this flawed unit would stay in the game.
You analyse a battle report which was made to show off some new stuff, not to provide a sneak into progaming use of the new units. It is clear that one cannot show high-level usage of the units when the game isn't even out yet. Then you show that one better builds units that widow mines for a straight-up fight. Bit it is not intended to be used in the death ball. It is there to remove supply and resources from the army for the benefit of locking down some parts of the map. Blizzard employees did say so.
It is hard to invalidate your point when one needs to tell you about all information available first. You shift the burden to us instead of making a sound argument which reflects the actual usage of the unit.
On August 01 2012 13:21 Jombozeus wrote: If Blizzard actually listens to feedback during their beta, threads like these wouldn't be needed. But alas, they don't.
They do. What DB said in a recent interview was -- at least this is what I understood it -- that Blizzard don't listens too much to lower league ladder players anymore. Of course Blizzard is in contact with professional gamers for feedback. To be honest, I am glad that they got their priorities right. They made some changes in the past -- even one for HotS -- which should help lower league players, for example the battle hellion will spawn in battle mode, not in hellion mode.
If I understood it right, the Shredder was removed from HotS primarily because of concerns about lower league players who don't have the map awareness to react in time to a Shredder drop into the mineal line (also the usage was quirky as the Shredder got deactivated too often by a unit which run unintentionally into the Shredder's proximity.)
The widow mine was shown at the event even though the artwork wasn't final because Blizzard did want the community feed-back; but probably rather pro feedback than random silver guy feedback.
On August 01 2012 11:49 Griffith` wrote: Vultures:
75 mineral unit that gives you 3 mines. No timer. No supply.
Widow Mine:
75/25 unit. 10 second timer. 1 supply.
lol wat
How is this even a thing?
OH GOD THEY'RE BOTH MINES AND THEY'RE BOTH IN STARCRAFT GAMES. BETTER COMPARE EM TO EACH OTHER!
Widow mine - No 100/100 upgrade or upgrade time OR tech lab / machine shop required. Cannot be sniped en route to target. Benefit from upgrades (?) Are in a game where overseers aren't detection by default. (!!!!) Can latch on to invisible units without detection (?) Are in a game where Hydras are fucking terrible, and where most zerg units couldn't even hit a detected mine without it nuking them. Do more damage than spider mines.
It's like complaining that nukes are bad (*). Are they ever going to clear out the entirety of your opponent's army reliably? Hell no. Are they useless? Hell no. They're a distraction/positional play that you -can- use not to HERPDERP explode your opponent's entire army, but to limit his options or increase the risks he's gotta take to allow yourself other advantages or opportunities in the game. This is SC2, not some other RTS... and elements that provide players opportunities to push for specific advantages in a game is exactly what this is about. Widow mines are exactly that; something that should allow you more opportunity to safely get to mech play (or stronger econ play or other tech play or whatever, really) while forcing certain responses out of your opponent.
(*worse, this specific complaint is kinda like comparing SC:BW nukes to SC2 nukes. Comically different and obviously intentionally so.)
And they also attack air, which is sick good.
It isn't easy at all as people say to just go with Observer and wipe out the mines, since Mines have 5 range, and you can't just move the Observer over the top of the Mines and attack them with the Stalker. It can be done, but it will be slowly and micro intensive since you don't want to lose the Observer.
I think that this unit with damage tweaks will be great. They also can put upgrade for it so they reduce the timer to 7 seconds for example.
On August 01 2012 13:21 Jombozeus wrote: If Blizzard actually listens to feedback during their beta, threads like these wouldn't be needed. But alas, they don't.
Isn't it fantastic that Browder is so kind to low level players by preventing any unit from being potent enough to make mineral lines disappear? What a nice guy!!!! Except of course for MMM, they don't count for some reason.
On July 31 2012 03:16 Grapefruit wrote: 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.
That seems to be the main point of the OP. First of all, do we have a source for that? I don't remember anyone from Blizzard talking about this. But, assuming this is true: Yes, that would be bad. There's an even simpler problem that's not discussed in the OP with this: The defending player can simply kill his own units once the mine is attached to it, negating any effect.
But this is a simple design flaw that (if it exists at all) can easily be fixed: If the unit that the mine is attached to dies, it could just reset itself, or cling to the next unit without having the counter reset. That would solve all the problems the OP describes, as far as I can tell.
It's going to be the most annoying thing in the world when I rally an observer out of the robotics facility to the terran's base and it gets killed by a widow mine on the way there. Mines that jump out of the ground to stick to invisible flying units and terrans complain about having them?
On August 03 2012 23:41 Whitewing wrote: It's going to be the most annoying thing in the world when I rally an observer out of the robotics facility to the terran's base and it gets killed by a widow mine on the way there. Mines that jump out of the ground to stick to invisible flying units and terrans complain about having them?
Cost inefficient trade, plus the Mine reveals that factory tech is out.
On August 01 2012 13:21 Jombozeus wrote: If Blizzard actually listens to feedback during their beta, threads like these wouldn't be needed. But alas, they don't.
Never give up hope.
Why bother? I mean you succinctly put it already. In combat situations, especially deathballs, the design of the mine is contradictory.
Take a TvP scenario, if low value targets like zealots are highlighted, they will most likely be taken out before the 10 seconds are up. If both players want to engage anyway, the widow mine doesn't do anything to zone off the field as the Protoss player anticipates the mines won't have time to going off anyway.
If the mines do manage to highlight on say all the colossus instead, a well prepared Terran will be targeting them down anyway with his Vikings. Imagine a deathball class where the colossus were allowed to rain down fire for 10 seconds simply to let the mines do their thing, well there won't be a Terran bioball anyway.
Anyway just hang in tight until the beta releases, in general discussing topics with this community is a skullf*.
I think they should just bring Spider Mines back and make them an upgrade for Hellions in Vehicle Mode. The issue with the current Widow Mine is that any player with half-competent micro can just negate the damage almost wholly. Oh and you cannot control whether it latches on to an expensive unit or an inexpensive easily massable one.
On August 03 2012 23:41 Whitewing wrote: It's going to be the most annoying thing in the world when I rally an observer out of the robotics facility to the terran's base and it gets killed by a widow mine on the way there. Mines that jump out of the ground to stick to invisible flying units and terrans complain about having them?
Cost inefficient trade, plus the Mine reveals that factory tech is out.
75/25 vs 25/75, gas is worth more than minerals, do the math.
and the death of an observer reveals robo tech... what's your point?
On August 03 2012 23:41 Whitewing wrote: It's going to be the most annoying thing in the world when I rally an observer out of the robotics facility to the terran's base and it gets killed by a widow mine on the way there. Mines that jump out of the ground to stick to invisible flying units and terrans complain about having them?
Lets actually think that through. You build a factory and use up build time to make a mine and then place them where on the map? Do observers have sweet spots like overlords on the map? Can you anticipate where the observer will travel?
All right, so you put them around the perimeter of your bases to discourage incursions. Why not build turrets and not tie up the factory?
Lets assume you know exactly where the observes will go, etc. You're banking on a the player not being mindful of how he moves his obs. Careless protoss do already lose obs when they send them into bases without paying attention to turrets, spores, etc. Mines don't suddenly become more dangerous against players who do pay attention.
The opening post is a bit shortsighted. You talk about strategy based on two demonstration video´s by Blizzard, They are there to illustrate as clearly as possible what the mines do, not to show you how you should use them in combat.
For example, yes, it would probably be bad to let the mines link to the zealots, although taking out the meatshield before the engagement is pretty nice. But...what if you would have the mines behind you combat line, That might be a better place to put them, since it gives you time to take out any observers. now what if you would kite back and destroy the zealots? The protoss will doubt if he should follow you, because you could have a spider line there that will directly take out the stalkers.
Anyway, I don't think the mine is great, but not for the same reasons. To me it looks like a poorly executed, delayed burrowed baneling. It should have an option to not attach if you dont want it to. But we will not know until the game hits the shelves.
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.
[/b]
This quote implies that the widow mine will be an amazing addition that will make pro games more interesting to watch! The harder the better the game will be for us spectators. I just wish Protoss would get something this hard to utilize since they are really lacking in hard to micro-units.
On August 04 2012 00:09 Domus wrote: The opening post is a bit shortsighted. You talk about strategy based on two demonstration video´s by Blizzard, They are there to illustrate as clearly as possible what the mines do, not to show you how you should use them in combat.
For example, yes, it would probably be bad to let the mines link to the zealots, although taking out the meatshield before the engagement is pretty nice. But...what if you would have the mines behind you combat line, That might be a better place to put them, since it gives you time to take out any observers. now what if you would kite back and destroy the zealots? The protoss will doubt if he should follow you, because you could have a spider line there that will directly take out the stalkers.
Anyway, I don't think the mine is great, but not for the same reasons. To me it looks like a poorly executed, delayed burrowed baneling. It should have an option to not attach if you dont want it to. But we will not know until the game hits the shelves.
On August 03 2012 23:41 Whitewing wrote: It's going to be the most annoying thing in the world when I rally an observer out of the robotics facility to the terran's base and it gets killed by a widow mine on the way there. Mines that jump out of the ground to stick to invisible flying units and terrans complain about having them?
Cost inefficient trade, plus the Mine reveals that factory tech is out.
It's not a cost inefficient trade really, 75 min/25 gas for 25 min/75 gas? Deny scouting? Sure, he'll know the factory is out, but he might not know whether it's a normal 3 rax 1 fact/1 starport w/ mines or some kind of mech play or a marine/tank push or whatever, and he certainly won't get reads on engineering bays or armories.
On August 03 2012 23:41 Whitewing wrote: It's going to be the most annoying thing in the world when I rally an observer out of the robotics facility to the terran's base and it gets killed by a widow mine on the way there. Mines that jump out of the ground to stick to invisible flying units and terrans complain about having them?
Lets actually think that through. You build a factory and use up build time to make a mine and then place them where on the map? Do observers have sweet spots like overlords on the map? Can you anticipate where the observer will travel?
All right, so you put them around the perimeter of your bases to discourage incursions. Why not build turrets and not tie up the factory?
Lets assume you know exactly where the observes will go, etc. You're banking on a the player not being mindful of how he moves his obs. Careless protoss do already lose obs when they send them into bases without paying attention to turrets, spores, etc. Mines don't suddenly become more dangerous against players who do pay attention.
I wasn't even saying it was intentional, it's quite possible for it to be an obnoxious accident. My point was that it hits cloaked and flying units, and will be really frustrating for zerg and toss to deal with it.
It definitely slows the enemy down and forces them to play way more cautiously.
On August 04 2012 00:09 Domus wrote: The opening post is a bit shortsighted. You talk about strategy based on two demonstration video´s by Blizzard, They are there to illustrate as clearly as possible what the mines do, not to show you how you should use them in combat.
For example, yes, it would probably be bad to let the mines link to the zealots, although taking out the meatshield before the engagement is pretty nice. But...what if you would have the mines behind you combat line, That might be a better place to put them, since it gives you time to take out any observers. now what if you would kite back and destroy the zealots? The protoss will doubt if he should follow you, because you could have a spider line there that will directly take out the stalkers.
Anyway, I don't think the mine is great, but not for the same reasons. To me it looks like a poorly executed, delayed burrowed baneling. It should have an option to not attach if you dont want it to. But we will not know until the game hits the shelves.
I doubt you read my whole post.
Hey, would you mind responding to my post made in the last page? I would be curious to see what you'd say to it.
On July 31 2012 03:16 Grapefruit wrote: 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.
That seems to be the main point of the OP. First of all, do we have a source for that? I don't remember anyone from Blizzard talking about this. But, assuming this is true: Yes, that would be bad. There's an even simpler problem that's not discussed in the OP with this: The defending player can simply kill his own units once the mine is attached to it, negating any effect.
But this is a simple design flaw that (if it exists at all) can easily be fixed: If the unit that the mine is attached to dies, it could just reset itself, or cling to the next unit without having the counter reset. That would solve all the problems the OP describes, as far as I can tell.
Okay, first things first. If it wouldn't disappear if the units dies it would be completely broken in the other way right now. Because it would lead to massive chain reactions.
And yeah, you're right about the factor that you could just kill your own units. Didn't even think about that while I was writing the OP, added it later though. Maybe I should make an extra paragraph for this as it's actually a pretty big deal.
I don't like the idea of the mine resetting itself not that much, because that would only work if the battles were pretty stationary, which is not so often the case.
On August 03 2012 23:41 Whitewing wrote: It's going to be the most annoying thing in the world when I rally an observer out of the robotics facility to the terran's base and it gets killed by a widow mine on the way there. Mines that jump out of the ground to stick to invisible flying units and terrans complain about having them?
Cost inefficient trade, plus the Mine reveals that factory tech is out.
It's not a cost inefficient trade really, 75 min/25 gas for 25 min/75 gas? Deny scouting? Sure, he'll know the factory is out, but he might not know whether it's a normal 3 rax 1 fact/1 starport w/ mines or some kind of mech play or a marine/tank push or whatever, and he certainly won't get reads on engineering bays or armories.
Sorry, for some reason I though the Observer was 25/50. You're right on that one.
Still I think that's not something that is really needed, because the Mine would have to be in the right spot to catch the Observer and Turrets or good attention and a Scan do the same thing, no need to have an extra unit for that.
On July 31 2012 03:16 Grapefruit wrote: 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.
That seems to be the main point of the OP. First of all, do we have a source for that? I don't remember anyone from Blizzard talking about this. But, assuming this is true: Yes, that would be bad. There's an even simpler problem that's not discussed in the OP with this: The defending player can simply kill his own units once the mine is attached to it, negating any effect.
But this is a simple design flaw that (if it exists at all) can easily be fixed: If the unit that the mine is attached to dies, it could just reset itself, or cling to the next unit without having the counter reset. That would solve all the problems the OP describes, as far as I can tell.
Okay, first things first. If it wouldn't disappear if the units dies it would be completely broken in the other way right now. Because it would lead to massive chain reactions.
And yeah, you're right about the factor that you could just kill your own units. Didn't even think about that while I was writing the OP, added it later though. Maybe I should make an extra paragraph for this as it's actually a pretty big deal.
I don't like the idea of the mine resetting itself not that much, because that would only work if the battles were pretty stationary, which is not so often the case.
It's not an ideal solution, yeah, though I'm not sure that it would break the game, either. Making the mine jump from unit to unit if said unit is killed prematurely would force the defending player to split the one unit and let it die, requiring more micro. That sounds like a good thing to me. And if the mine has no unit to jump on to immediately, it might just die doing no damage, which would kill the chain reaction problem.
Alternatively, the mine could simply explode when the unit dies prematurely, this should also solve most problems.
Anyhow, my point is that this unit is not inherently broken. There are many ways to fix the potential problems.
That way we could get pretty intense micro battles, when one player tries to move the unit out before it can be focus fired while the other one tries the opposite.
This is not wc3 were fights included a dozen units with huge hp/damage ratio. Those units hit by mines will be in front of your force and if the combat starts it is just not realistically possible to get the unit away unless its colossus, flier or stalker with blink. With sc2 combat mechanis you will have to nerf the widow mine. Still it may be a better solution than the current state but without nerfing damage it will be totally broken as the micro you are talking about is just not possible.
If you can get a single good hit you'll take out their army very cost efficient. The problem is getting those hits. When you're pushing I can't imagine someone not looking at their army for 10 seconds. Putting mines all over the map isn't an option because they're too expensive. They feel very high risk/high reward and gimmicky.
I haven't played any of the HoTS custom maps, at work or I would try it atm, but since the widow mine is a unit can't you control it better so it does not target units randomly? For example if they are microable then maybe you can do something similar to stop/hold micro for lurkers from bw and have the widow mines not react to units like lings/zealots and wait for the infestors/stalkers/etc.. to get in range? Of course then you have to deal with detection but thats a wholly different issue.
All I'm saying is that it maybe too early to label the widow mine as fundamentally flawed...
While I agree with you in a vacuum, it is still not the right way to look at the Widow Mine (or any new unit / mechanic). The mine might be worthless at 10 sec delay, 75 Min, 25 Gas, BUT these are values which can change till release or adjusted later. In other words these are variables and the only relevant thing to look at is the mechanic / intention of the unit, which is absolutly fine!
I really like the charge-up idea. I hate how the mines just disappear when you kill the unit it's on. It felt really weird in the HotS custom, not wanting to kill units in the front because they had the mines on them. It actually felt pretty inefficient, like I could have killed them already but I'm forcing myself to wait, and if I want the mine to go off, I have to get into a lousy position to shoot units in the back or sides of the pack.
Having it charge up would also discourage the stupid situation where you just kill all the units with mines on them instead of splitting. With a small initial damage, that would mean killing your units would cause a good 20, 50, 100 damage on surrounding units.
This would really make the widow mine a scary burden on your army, like banelings or seeker missiles closing in.
I think guaranteed explosions plus higher gas cost would be fucking awesome. Widow mines would be a great AoE gas dump for Terran in the midgame, which they obviously need. Zerg has Infestors and Protoss has Colossi, Archons, and High Templars. These units reward taking expansions.
This unit behavior would also make engagements last longer, because you would want to de-mine your army before you engage. So there would be a lot of back and forth.
You bolded half the op... What the fuck, and this is like the third discussion related to Terran units named "fundamentally flawed" or some shit... Get real, I play Terran also and I'm extremely tired of all the bitching regarding a game that hasn't been released by people not playing it on a professional level where it isn't balance that makes them lose, but lack of skill...
EDIT: Also, you recreated a video by showing us that shooting warhounds at zealots is not very effective... You want to show how an actual engagement will playout? You target the mechanical units with your warhounds, not the fucking zealots -.-
Furthermore this thread reminds me more of that stupid thread where it was like "300 marines vs 36 immortals, IMMORTALS WIN! IMBALANCE" because of the immortal range increase, he used a similar ridiculous video.
On July 31 2012 03:16 Grapefruit wrote: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.
Counter-question: what SC2 units can you think of that were as totally useless as you believe the Widow Mine to be and made it to the release version of the game? You have some points, but why do you think this discussion is needed when Blizzard themselves say they are struggling with this thing and don't even know whether they will keep it? They showed it ("promoted" it as you say) to show something off, just like they showed the replicant a while ago or a gateway-built immortal and marine drop pods even longer ago. See what happened to those? If the Mine is as useless as you say, if nobody ever finds a way to make good use of it, do you really think it will make it past the beta?
Guaranteed explosions (mine exploding when the unit it's attached to dies) I don't think are a good idea; you would never see widow mines in anything but TvT. In a general PvT situation there is a good chance the unit triggering the mine will be a zealot or a stalker, and if they have charge or blink the guaranteed explosion could be catastrophic for the lower hp terran units since zeal and especially stalker can get near a chunk of units fast. In a general PvZ situation Zerg doesn't even need banelings; it would turn speedlings into better banelings using the mines at no cost to them. Speedling with a mine that is guaranteed to explode is like a faster, cheaper baneling.
I'm sure the mines will have a lot of early game potential where dps overkill isn't an issue. A banshee-based 111 with a reactored factory sounds cool, but maybe the mothership core will be very good at dealing with that kind of stuff
Dont forget that anything attached to the mine is pretty much guarenteed to die. Even if it doesnt splash, it can still be effective. So in a way, it does give good map control.
It can also be good for forcing engagement. If the protoss army all run into mines, then he is forced to pretty much fight in the engagement since he has 10 sec before all his unit that got attached by the mine dies. This unit can work, but the cost will have to twink a bit though. I think it might be too expensive atm but it will have to be worked.
On August 04 2012 03:12 tehemperorer wrote: Guaranteed explosions (mine exploding when the unit it's attached to dies) I don't think are a good idea; you would never see widow mines in anything but TvT. In a general PvT situation there is a good chance the unit triggering the mine will be a zealot or a stalker, and if they have charge or blink the guaranteed explosion could be catastrophic for the lower hp terran units since zeal and especially stalker can get near a chunk of units fast. In a general PvZ situation Zerg doesn't even need banelings; it would turn speedlings into better banelings using the mines at no cost to them. Speedling with a mine that is guaranteed to explode is like a faster, cheaper baneling.
Nothing said in the OP makes the widow mine fundamentally flawed, only difficult to balance.
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.
That's your own fault. Don't assume there is 1 way of using something because that's what was shown to you. There are likely a multitude of uses that clever people will use them for.
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.
Yes, let's make an impossible hyperbolic example, and compare it to something reasonable, and pretend we just said something intelligent and rebuttled the argument!
My thoughts are this: Blizzard has stated on a number of cases that the widow mine has been extremely tricky to balance, because of how it functions as a sacrificial unit, and the delayed detonation mechanic. Note, that they did not say it is perpetually underpowered or flawed. It teeter-totters. So despite all this BRILLIANT (that's sarcastic) theorycrafting, people, in application are able to use the widow mine effectively (even super-effectively) depending on the cost. Having said this, a unit that can shift so dramatically to being UP or OP with slight changes in cost may not be the best thing for SC2, especially if that applies when the metagame shifts. Blizzard has already stated that they weren't sure if it would make the final cut. In fact, I think DB said he was even doubtful, but don't quote me on that.
Point is, you know nothing. I know nothing. This all may be moot, because they may have removed it already due to their own internal testings. No, i'm not saying it's pointless discussing obvious problems (like a 10x colossus, right OP? -_-) but this is not obvious, as shown by the OP's inept ability to convey any real arguments or data as to why it could be flawed. By all means, discuss...just don't make stuff up or pretend to be all knowing unless you're sitting next to David Kim at work tinkering around and analyzing to find perfection, and please don't think 1 instance of it not working brilliantly is evidence for it's "fundamentaly flawed nature".
Difficult to predict already if widow mine is flawed. The game hasn't even been released; who knows, maybe progamers (and consequently the rest of the masses) will find a usage for them that we aren't able to yet see because we haven't played the game yet.
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.
That's your own fault. Don't assume there is 1 way of using something because that's what was shown to you. There are likely a multitude of uses that clever people will use them for.
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.
Yes, let's make an impossible hyperbolic example, and compare it to something reasonable, and pretend we just said something intelligent and rebuttled the argument!
My thoughts are this: Blizzard has stated on a number of cases that the widow mine has been extremely tricky to balance, because of how it functions as a sacrificial unit, and the delayed detonation mechanic. Note, that they did not say it is perpetually underpowered or flawed. It teeter-totters. So despite all this BRILLIANT (that's sarcastic) theorycrafting, people, in application are able to use the widow mine effectively (even super-effectively) depending on the cost. Having said this, a unit that can shift so dramatically to being UP or OP with slight changes in cost may not be the best thing for SC2, especially if that applies when the metagame shifts. Blizzard has already stated that they weren't sure if it would make the final cut. In fact, I think DB said he was even doubtful, but don't quote me on that.
Point is, you know nothing. I know nothing. This all may be moot, because they may have removed it already due to their own internal testings. No, i'm not saying it's pointless discussing obvious problems (like a 10x colossus, right OP? -_-) but this is not obvious, as shown by the OP's inept ability to convey any real arguments or data as to why it could be flawed. By all means, discuss...just don't make stuff up or pretend to be all knowing unless you're sitting next to David Kim at work tinkering around and analyzing to find perfection, and please don't think 1 instance of it not working brilliantly is evidence for it's "fundamentaly flawed nature".
Thank you kind sir. I could have said "this", or "+1", but no. This is so well written, I will give it some time.
I like it to discuss possible flaws and most of us do in various scenarios (Exam subjects, facation place/wheater etc.), but especially when you say yourself "They are not quite sure about it" it is even more unnecessary to state things. I have no problem about "objective" talk, but please don't start with "How awful the community is to you by ignoring you and being active in another topic" (exaggerated), or defending your own points at the end in "bold".
Reduce explosion timer to 0,5 and call it a spider mine :D , i think its so funny that they called it a widow mine.. jeez just call it what it is , or should be ;D
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:
There are many more examples of SC2 units being used in a way that nobody thought about before the SC2 release.
Warp prisms with sentrys to kill mineral lines/entire bases rather than standard warp prism play.
voidray phoenix play. Not until about a year into SC2's release did people pair the two together for a deadly ZvP stargate style. Phoenix's to pick up the queens while voidrays did dmg. This truly wasn't done the first year of Starcraft 2's existence.
you say no comps or strats but comps and strats consisting of a widow mine is 100% relevant. what if in TvT, rather than defend mineral lines with turrets/scans for cloak banshees, there was some sort of widow mine build where you didn't have to blow all your mules. Throw down a couple mines on the outskirts of your mineral line and hten the banshee flys over and then all of a sudden...boom dead banshee lol.
There are many unexplored ways this unit can be used and it is too early to debate this.
I can think of tons scenarios in which the widow mine can be useful. 1. sending a mine into a mineral line as you launch an attack at a different base to distract in attempt to blow up a whole line of workers 2. placing behind your army to defend a retreat. 3. placing behind your opponents army if they retreat (and all those expensive units in the back of a deathball run into them first). 4. placing way behind your opponents army to take out reinforcements (where a strike on a lone colossus can be likely). 5. placing next to an opponents unit producing structure, robo bay/factory/starport/stargate being good targets. maybe not a likely tactic at GM, but definitely the lower leagues can take advantage of this. 6. placing on the sides of the map where you think a drop might come from. 7. choke points were already mentioned. 8. burrowing at a opponents 3rd or 4th before they build, the terran equivalent of a burrowed zergling block, not only delays but also informs you when the oponent is trying to expand, and if on hold position maybe it can be prevented from trying to detonate itself on a worker and keep on blocking.. etc. etc. and so on, and so on blahblahblah
anyways, notice how none of my examples included "take them with your main army and try to throw them at lines of zealots and lings". because that's stupid. blizzards videos are designed to show off, not demonstrate tactics or strategy. thats for players to figure out, and OP failed hard.
in conclusion, if you use the mine in a stupid way or the enemy puts in effort to counter it, then the widow mine IS useless, not because of a fundamental flaw in the mine, but because of a flaw in your play. I keep thinking back to pro games played now where many commentators always make a point when a player goes DT or banshee or void ray that they NEED to do damage with them or else they'll be at a disadvantage. I think the widow mine will be another unit that will fit into that category of either putting you far ahead, or far behind.
What a dumb thread. The OP doesn't understand what a fundamental design flaw is. I'll give you a hint. A colossus with 15 range and 50 damage IS NOT FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN BY DESIGN. It is broken by its stats, which can be changed by tweaks to numbers. The design of the unit is how it is intended to be used. The colossus' design is an A-move aoe damaging unit that moves up and down cliffs and specializes in killing large numbers of low HP units. The Siege tank is a long range aoe splash unit, designed to be defensive in nature, or to be used to set up siege lines. It specializes in killing clumped up units.
I'll give you a fundamentally flawed unit: The carrier. Hence its removal. I will argue this now. This is a unit flawed from its design up: Carrier is a swarm unit with many weak attacks, from interceptors. It is designed to kill units with high HP quickly from range. The carrier cannot be fixed with stat tweaks because even a change of one damage can send its damage straight over the top to units or buildings with low armour. However units with high armour, such as the corruptor, take very little damage from it. Carrier upgrades come too late and are too expensive, carrier counters are intensely easy to churn out quickly en mass. The carrier is also not designed to kill anything that can fight back, or that cannot already be killed by something else better and cheaper. Interceptors are expensive and are easily killed by clumped ground units, and their range can be countered by a stim or a blink.
This is a design flaw. This was also not noticed for a long long time... many people even still claim the design flaw does not exist. We cannot possibly KNOW if it does not work until the game comes out, and extensive playtesting has occured. My outline with the carrier shows that simply tweaking the HP or the damage, or the range won't make a difference... the unit will stay broken. Your outline of the widow mine shows that the detonation time, or the ability to hold position should be changed. These can easily be changed.
The widow mines design, **SEEMS TO BE**: a cheap unit, designed to control space and force micro/caution from the opponent. Gives the factory something to do in bio builds, and helps assist with mech builds' weaknesses with mobility on the defence. Does terran mech need space control? well away from their siege lines, yeah probably... they need help defending harass from warp prisms, mutalisks and medivacs... the factory is famously lonely and is often used as an expensive observer in bio heavy games... so maybe the design isn't flawed...
You complain that YOU DON'T THINK this unit will do what YOU THINK it is designed to do. You base that off a random fun video that blizz put out to show us big explosions. It is not designed to be used in this situation... It just looks cool in a video. People wont throw them at deathballs. They will be used to stop harassment. They will be used to cut off a retreat/reinforcement path. They will be nice for stopping scouting, and for scouting troop movements. They are NOT used to kill zealots in a deathball, nor should they be. They will NOT be used to blow up zerglings harassing your third. You have other units and structures and weapons for that. Bottom line: If the widow mine doesn't do something well... don't use it for that. Use it for something else. If it does nothing well, then it will be fixed, or removed. As far as I see it, it will do some things very well.
So, long post short: TLDR: No, this is not a DesignWhine. This is a balance complaint. You think it is too weak in a deathball situation, or a weak unit harass situation. You complain its damage is too small, its detonation time is too long, and its cost is too expensive. All of these are balance complaints... not design issues.
So I read OP's post and thought to myself "yeah, im not really sure how effective Widow Mines are gonna be" so I went to the HOTS custom map to try and fool around a bit and see what seemed effective. I got matched against a diamond Zerg player, which Terran is my worst race so it probably put us at relatively equal skill, and I went for a mech style and here is what I found out.
1: Decent at economy harassment. If you can sneak some widow mines into a mineral line it's absolutely devastating, I only got 2 inside a mineral line once in the game but it killed almost every worker there. It felt very similar to when trying to use a few Banelings to wipe out a mineral line, if they react in time it does basically nothing but if they don't it pays off huge.
2. Pretty good map control in the mid-late game. Now some people say Terran doesnt need map control, they have Siege Tanks, Sensor Towers, PFs and Bunkers, but for the most part none of these things really give you map control, Siege Tanks can be used to zone out units and take space but you have to protect them and keep your army nearby, if your army is nearby then it's basically your entire army controlling the space, not just a couple units. I basically kept producing at least a few Widow Mines almost the entire game, just spreading them out across the map giving me vision basically everywhere I wanted it for an affordable price. Widow Mines also did a very very nice job of picking off Overlords that tried to roam the map, effectively denying my opponent his own map vision. I also did occasionally pick off valuable units like Broods, Vipers and Overseers. Think of how much attention Zerg players will have to spend on sending random Zerglings all over the map constantly to clear mines or slowly crawl around with an Overseer, stopping at every mine and waiting to clear it out before proceeding to sweep more mines, it will definitely slow down Zerg players or take out valuable chunks of their army if they proceed without caution.
3. In-battle use. OP made a lot of arguments about how ineffective Widow Mines will be in any real battle but I think he forgot that the introduction of so many new units to HOTS is going to change the dynamics of how battles play out. Think of it like this, if I have Siege Tanks set up with my army I can set a few Widow Mines around to pick off Vipers who may come too close trying to pull my Tanks, so yeah if you want to pull my Siege Tanks go for it, you lose an expensive Viper and it's a fine trade for Terran. Think of Ultralisks as well, with the new Burrow-Attack skill they can easily be caught with defensive Widow Mines, BAM now a huge chunk of their health drops. I could see Swarm Hosts being quite effective against Widow Mines and being used to clear out paths, but then again with good micro a Terran can just lift his Mines away from the Locusts and relocate.
I dunno, I thought Widow Mines were gonna suck but actually playing around with them a little bit made me see a ton of usefulness to them, I think they will make an incredibly nice addition to Terran play, especially Mech since the Zerg will most likely want Roaches over Zerglings against Mech and if you have to trade Widow Mines for basic units it's better spent on a Roach so at least it's cost effective no matter what.
Course none of this really matters since the beta isnt even out but whatever, it's still fun to think about.
With both this and the mothership core available at very early stages of the game, coupled with the most maps having chokes at the entrace of the natural, I'm scared HOTS will turn in a 10mn no-rush borefest.
I don't think that the recent change to the mine actually addresses all the issues with it. Because the mine seems to be invulnerable once it has activated there is no possibility for a good player to quickly react and neutralize the threat. As the mine currently exists you can not mine clear without sacrificing units, unless you have observers. Think back to the days of Brood War in which you could, if you were good enough, use a single DT to destroy mines. As a bad player this was very difficult for me, even in micro-practice maps in which I was able to focus solely on the DT vs Mine micro. Another change to make would be to remove the population cost on the unit, so that it does not tie up food if you leave it in your base to defend against drops/recalls. The final change would be to remove the cost, and make the mine a limited ability on a unit, such as the Vulture Helion.
Blizzard should change the mine so that the highly skilled players are rewarded more for their fast reaction times and superior micro. Giving it "unburrowed" health and changing the "attachment" mechanic would make this a more flexible unit.
To sum it up:
Add unburrowed HP to the unit
Change the attachment mechanic
Remove the population cost
Change the unit to an ability of a light, cheap, raider unit
Edit: My four bullet point is just a joke, but I actually think it should be tested.
Widow Mines will stay Widow Mines because if they just brought back Spider Mines they would look lazy in the eyes of the press. Doesn't matter that it would be better for the game.
Hopefully they change it alot, Widow mines are the perfect all around unit, They are cheap, great for defense, offense, and containment, widows mine shut down all forms of drops/harassment.
Can't move out without obs/ravens/overseers for fear of losing huge chunks of life, since sc2 units clump up so much, or just run single zealot/marine/zergling out to clear a field (very costly for Protoss),
Of course most of the HOTS stuff is op right now cause they have to get a feel for how stuff will be used. Widow mine just as much as any other unit.
Personally I think the real issue is that they can move up to an opposing force and burrow, and also that they cost supply. I'm really with the idea that they should be put on the hellion. They can attack ground or air, don't care about that. Just that they should be forced to be immobile once burrowed.
On August 18 2012 04:45 NeonFox wrote: With both this and the mothership core available at very early stages of the game, coupled with the most maps having chokes at the entrace of the natural, I'm scared HOTS will turn in a 10mn no-rush borefest.
WoL is a 15min NR borefest, so I guess that's an improvement.
On August 18 2012 06:17 AsherSC wrote: I don't think that the recent change to the mine actually addresses all the issues with it. Because the mine seems to be invulnerable once it has activated there is no possibility for a good player to quickly react and neutralize the threat. As the mine currently exists you can not mine clear without sacrificing units, unless you have observers. Think back to the days of Brood War in which you could, if you were good enough, use a single DT to destroy mines. As a bad player this was very difficult for me, even in micro-practice maps in which I was able to focus solely on the DT vs Mine micro. Another change to make would be to remove the population cost on the unit, so that it does not tie up food if you leave it in your base to defend against drops/recalls. The final change would be to remove the cost, and make the mine a limited ability on a unit, such as the Vulture Helion.
Blizzard should change the mine so that the highly skilled players are rewarded more for their fast reaction times and superior micro. Giving it "unburrowed" health and changing the "attachment" mechanic would make this a more flexible unit.
That doesn't need to be changed. You can have both.
Attaching the Widow Mine to a Reaper and jumping to the enemy's mineral line was pretty cool. Without the 10sec timer it won't be possible =( I guess I'll just drop them with Medivacs.
Currently do WMs damage buildings? Can you manually activate them? i.e. like manual baneling bursts so they don't go off on a lone ling. Do they do friendly fire? If so with instant damage 1 mine could wipe out all surrounding mines
On August 18 2012 07:50 Zombo Joe wrote: Widow Mines will stay Widow Mines because if they just brought back Spider Mines they would look lazy in the eyes of the press. Doesn't matter that it would be better for the game.
And I suppose copying almost half of WoL units from popular movies/TV shows is not considered lazy.
widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
On August 18 2012 06:17 AsherSC wrote: I don't think that the recent change to the mine actually addresses all the issues with it. Because the mine seems to be invulnerable once it has activated there is no possibility for a good player to quickly react and neutralize the threat. As the mine currently exists you can not mine clear without sacrificing units, unless you have observers. Think back to the days of Brood War in which you could, if you were good enough, use a single DT to destroy mines. As a bad player this was very difficult for me, even in micro-practice maps in which I was able to focus solely on the DT vs Mine micro. Another change to make would be to remove the population cost on the unit, so that it does not tie up food if you leave it in your base to defend against drops/recalls. The final change would be to remove the cost, and make the mine a limited ability on a unit, such as the Vulture Helion.
Blizzard should change the mine so that the highly skilled players are rewarded more for their fast reaction times and superior micro. Giving it "unburrowed" health and changing the "attachment" mechanic would make this a more flexible unit.
On August 18 2012 08:14 mutantmagnet wrote:
That doesn't need to be changed. You can have both.
What do you mean they can have both? I was trying to say that they should add HP and a slower attack time, because right now it is basically instant.
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
can u fucking imagine how strong it becomes if it were able to target air units and workers without a timer? 2 mines would take out an entire mineral line, they were insanely cost efficient even before this buff.. removing the timer is fucking ridiculous
for fuck sakes they even strap onto obs, how the fuck are we supposed to move around the map?
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
can u fucking imagine how strong it becomes if it were able to target air units and workers without a timer? 2 mines would take out an entire mineral line, they were insanely cost efficient even before this buff.. removing the timer is fucking ridiculous
for fuck sakes they even strap onto obs, how the fuck are we supposed to move around the map?
That is a bit silly, how do they expect us to clear mines?!
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
can u fucking imagine how strong it becomes if it were able to target air units and workers without a timer? 2 mines would take out an entire mineral line, they were insanely cost efficient even before this buff.. removing the timer is fucking ridiculous
for fuck sakes they even strap onto obs, how the fuck are we supposed to move around the map?
That is a bit silly, how do they expect us to clear mines?!
uh by using detector units and tanking units like zealots?
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
can u fucking imagine how strong it becomes if it were able to target air units and workers without a timer? 2 mines would take out an entire mineral line, they were insanely cost efficient even before this buff.. removing the timer is fucking ridiculous
for fuck sakes they even strap onto obs, how the fuck are we supposed to move around the map?
That is a bit silly, how do they expect us to clear mines?!
uh by using detector units and tanking units like zealots?
You should be able to mine clear without losing units.
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
Spider mines couldn't hit air and couldnt be set off by workers as far as I am aware. Correct me if wrong I'm not a bw vet
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
can u fucking imagine how strong it becomes if it were able to target air units and workers without a timer? 2 mines would take out an entire mineral line, they were insanely cost efficient even before this buff.. removing the timer is fucking ridiculous
for fuck sakes they even strap onto obs, how the fuck are we supposed to move around the map?
That is a bit silly, how do they expect us to clear mines?!
Lmao. Detect radius is obviously larger than the 'mine see, mine attack' radius. And if stalkers don't outrange it, colossus sure will.
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
spider mines had those limitations. i don't see a problem or your point. they couldn't hit air and the AI would never attack workers (but the splash would). watching a vulture lure a goon with a mine chasing it into a probe line was always entertaining.
Instant explosion? Now all they need to do is give them to a unit instead of terran having buildable suicide units like zerg. And change/replace/eliminate the warhound, tempest, entomb, etc.
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
can u fucking imagine how strong it becomes if it were able to target air units and workers without a timer? 2 mines would take out an entire mineral line, they were insanely cost efficient even before this buff.. removing the timer is fucking ridiculous
for fuck sakes they even strap onto obs, how the fuck are we supposed to move around the map?
That is a bit silly, how do they expect us to clear mines?!
uh by using detector units and tanking units like zealots?
You should be able to mine clear without losing units.
can you not target it before its impact like mines in BW?
This is an excellent change guys. A lot of people may not know this from lack of testing/playing or whatever, but the widow mine with the timer was fundamentally flawed because you could not use it properly with your main army if you were going mech or even bio.
In max 200/200 situations, if you have mines in your army, you're at a disadvantage because they will always attach to the frontal most units and your units will target and kill those first, making it as if the mine was not even in the battle, and the battle would play out exactly like in wol.
With this change it's more like a spider mine and does affect positioning a lot more, as well as allows widow mines to be used in conjunction with siege tanks. The problem as described above is with the timer, widow mines and tanks aka mech could not be utilized together to zone out enemies because they contradicted each other.
The widow mined units were killed by siege tank hellions before ever detonating. And the only scenario in which widow mines would be cost effective with your main army is if you had the mines planted and ran away from the battle which of course is impossible with immobile siege tanks.
Widow mine detonating like a spider mine is a great change. They were already quite underwhelming from a lot of the beta/custom game's I've seen so far, detonation like a spider mine is a great change in the right direction. Now they can focus more on balancing the damage/spash during beta instead of dealing with a fundamental design problem of the unit
Now if only they got rid of the gundam marauders or did something with it to make it contribute to positional strong mech play lol
To people who say Widow Mines shouldn't target air, I disagree because builds like 3 Gate Void Ray/4 Gate Warp Prism would shut down all Mech openings. Also, consider that this is really the only new unit Terran gets, while Z/P get a lot more to play with. Obviously if it's OP it'll be changed... Idk why people are up in arms over it.
Why not just make the mine part of a unit ability? Then it wouldn't matter as much if it's easily countered or might do little damage. If it is an ability of a unit, then even if mine is not as useful, the unit can still be. Thus the mine would provide an opportunity for damage, but not exclusive. One unit that comes to mind is reaper mid-game upgrades to provide a useful role at that point.
Very glad with this change, but the mine costing 1 food supply is still a concern especially in late game scenarios in a massive map. Perhaps lessen the damage or make it 0.5 food supply.
my only gripe with the widow is that it costs supply which is huge... In brood war it takes tons of spider mines throughout the map to seize map control with them. having that many widow mines in hots limits the army value a ton
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
can u fucking imagine how strong it becomes if it were able to target air units and workers without a timer? 2 mines would take out an entire mineral line, they were insanely cost efficient even before this buff.. removing the timer is fucking ridiculous
for fuck sakes they even strap onto obs, how the fuck are we supposed to move around the map?
I think the key is not a-moving your entire army w obs on one hotkey into where you believe T has mines set up.
Come on you're being ridiculous, the mine doesn't even have a longer range than detect on obs.
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
can u fucking imagine how strong it becomes if it were able to target air units and workers without a timer? 2 mines would take out an entire mineral line, they were insanely cost efficient even before this buff.. removing the timer is fucking ridiculous
for fuck sakes they even strap onto obs, how the fuck are we supposed to move around the map?
I think the key is not a-moving your entire army w obs on one hotkey into where you believe T has mines set up.
Come on you're being ridiculous, the mine doesn't even have a longer range than detect on obs.
Um, if it can burrow really fast, just run a few into a mineral line or something.
Widow mines are now officially cheap, reactor-able, burrowed banelings that hit air, do more damage, and require no micro to control and make sure it detonates. I mean... really?
At least with vulture mines you could micro away from it and kill them after they pop up with decent control.
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
can u fucking imagine how strong it becomes if it were able to target air units and workers without a timer? 2 mines would take out an entire mineral line, they were insanely cost efficient even before this buff.. removing the timer is fucking ridiculous
for fuck sakes they even strap onto obs, how the fuck are we supposed to move around the map?
I think the key is not a-moving your entire army w obs on one hotkey into where you believe T has mines set up.
Come on you're being ridiculous, the mine doesn't even have a longer range than detect on obs.
Um, if it can burrow really fast, just run a few into a mineral line or something.
Widow mines are now officially cheap, reactor-able, burrowed banelings that hit air, do more damage, and require no micro to control and make sure it detonates. I mean... really?
At least with vulture mines you could micro away from it and kill them after they pop up with decent control.
two mines are not going to clear an entire mineral line unless you bunch up all your scvs...just like banelings would.
i don't see how you can saw that no micro is a good thing, you don't have control over what the mine explodes on, only where it's placed. you don't see players being good enough to see red (enemy units) moving into their mineral line and pull workers?
My gosh, since widow mines are cost efficient vs anything but banelings and zerglings (widow mines 1hit roaches, not including splash), this will be so op
I always thought with how long they take to detonate, you could just focus down your own unit before it does, effectively making it cost inefficient with minimal effort. Glad to see it's going to work more like BW spider mine. Also, vs melee units and charge ultras, these things would be a suicidal method of trying to fight the enemy - kind of a "if my army blows up to my own mines, I don't have to worry about microing it" scenario. Makes you wonder if Blizzard puts any thought into shit these days, or just waits for community feedback on everything they do.
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
can u fucking imagine how strong it becomes if it were able to target air units and workers without a timer? 2 mines would take out an entire mineral line, they were insanely cost efficient even before this buff.. removing the timer is fucking ridiculous
for fuck sakes they even strap onto obs, how the fuck are we supposed to move around the map?
I think the key is not a-moving your entire army w obs on one hotkey into where you believe T has mines set up.
Come on you're being ridiculous, the mine doesn't even have a longer range than detect on obs.
Um, if it can burrow really fast, just run a few into a mineral line or something.
Widow mines are now officially cheap, reactor-able, burrowed banelings that hit air, do more damage, and require no micro to control and make sure it detonates. I mean... really?
At least with vulture mines you could micro away from it and kill them after they pop up with decent control.
two mines are not going to clear an entire mineral line unless you bunch up all your scvs...just like banelings would.
i don't see how you can saw that no micro is a good thing, you don't have control over what the mine explodes on, only where it's placed. you don't see players being good enough to see red (enemy units) moving into their mineral line and pull workers?
To be honest, the mineral line thing isn't such a concern, but the part where it's a better burrowed baneling is, especially given how hard it is to actually use burrowed banelings well. You can't just set and forget, you've got to actively watch the damn things constantly and then use it right when a decent marine clump is walking over them.
On August 18 2012 13:00 X3GoldDot wrote: My gosh, since widow mines are cost efficient vs anything but banelings and zerglings (widow mines 1hit roaches, not including splash), this will be so op
A LOOOOOOT of things are getting hit with the nerf bat in beta. This is going to be one of them.
For reference, Spider mines in BW could not be triggered by Workers(or actually, floating units, such as Archons and workers), however if a unit triggered the spider mine and walked near workers, the workers would explode in a fiery of epicness.
like this
I think its a step in the right direction for Glorious Terran Steel, however I don't think it would be balanced against workers and should work similair to as in BW, then again we do want a different game
That's interesting, as hover also didn't set off (and maybe still doesn't) goblin techies land mines in DotA, which was probably carried over from goblin land mines in WC3 proper.
I'm not sure why they didn't just shorten the timer on Widow Mines to say 4 or 5 seconds. That'll require a fairly quick response like Seeker Missiles, however, one positive is that you won't kill the mined unit with your own units, like tanks. That's probably the fundamental flaw this thread was originally about, now that I recall. Still, a solution for a mined unit to deal half damage, if killed prematurely, or growing damage potential over time might work.
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
can u fucking imagine how strong it becomes if it were able to target air units and workers without a timer? 2 mines would take out an entire mineral line, they were insanely cost efficient even before this buff.. removing the timer is fucking ridiculous
for fuck sakes they even strap onto obs, how the fuck are we supposed to move around the map?
I think the key is not a-moving your entire army w obs on one hotkey into where you believe T has mines set up.
Come on you're being ridiculous, the mine doesn't even have a longer range than detect on obs.
Um, if it can burrow really fast, just run a few into a mineral line or something.
Widow mines are now officially cheap, reactor-able, burrowed banelings that hit air, do more damage, and require no micro to control and make sure it detonates. I mean... really?
At least with vulture mines you could micro away from it and kill them after they pop up with decent control.
Banelings are more cost efficient at clearing mineral lines. They explode instantly, have AoE (mines don't anymore), and are cheaper. You only need 4 to wipe an entire mineral line.
On August 18 2012 13:29 Kipsate wrote: For reference, Spider mines in BW could not be triggered by Workers(or actually, floating units, such as Archons and workers), however if a unit triggered the spider mine and walked near workers, the workers would explode in a fiery of epicness.
like this
I think its a step in the right direction for Glorious Terran Steel, however I don't think it would be balanced against workers and should work similair to as in BW, then again we do want a different game
plus that whole Warhound thing just feels meh.
I agree. They should make it similar to BW so it does not trigger on workers. There's already enough harrassment units that kill workers, the mine should be solely for map control/army engagements/leapfrogging etc.
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
can u fucking imagine how strong it becomes if it were able to target air units and workers without a timer? 2 mines would take out an entire mineral line, they were insanely cost efficient even before this buff.. removing the timer is fucking ridiculous
for fuck sakes they even strap onto obs, how the fuck are we supposed to move around the map?
I think the key is not a-moving your entire army w obs on one hotkey into where you believe T has mines set up.
Come on you're being ridiculous, the mine doesn't even have a longer range than detect on obs.
Um, if it can burrow really fast, just run a few into a mineral line or something.
Widow mines are now officially cheap, reactor-able, burrowed banelings that hit air, do more damage, and require no micro to control and make sure it detonates. I mean... really?
At least with vulture mines you could micro away from it and kill them after they pop up with decent control.
Banelings are more cost efficient at clearing mineral lines. They explode instantly, have AoE (mines don't anymore), and are cheaper. You only need 4 to wipe an entire mineral line.
I'm not so concerned about the mineral line thing tbh, but they do instead still have AoE (at least from what I can tell), it's just smaller.
But they're going to be set and forget, with the same reward of a baneling land mine (less AoE I suppose, but can hit much bigger targets for a lot more, banelings suck vs. armored for example), without the micro requirement. I liked the widow mine better before, because at least that was interesting, albeit not so good. Hell, the freaking mine even hits air units.
There's got to be a happy medium here somewhere. You could at least micro against spider mines in BW.
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
can u fucking imagine how strong it becomes if it were able to target air units and workers without a timer? 2 mines would take out an entire mineral line, they were insanely cost efficient even before this buff.. removing the timer is fucking ridiculous
for fuck sakes they even strap onto obs, how the fuck are we supposed to move around the map?
I think the key is not a-moving your entire army w obs on one hotkey into where you believe T has mines set up.
Come on you're being ridiculous, the mine doesn't even have a longer range than detect on obs.
Um, if it can burrow really fast, just run a few into a mineral line or something.
Widow mines are now officially cheap, reactor-able, burrowed banelings that hit air, do more damage, and require no micro to control and make sure it detonates. I mean... really?
At least with vulture mines you could micro away from it and kill them after they pop up with decent control.
Banelings are more cost efficient at clearing mineral lines. They explode instantly, have AoE (mines don't anymore), and are cheaper. You only need 4 to wipe an entire mineral line.
I'm not so concerned about the mineral line thing tbh, but they do instead still have AoE (at least from what I can tell), it's just smaller.
But they're going to be set and forget, with the same reward of a baneling land mine (less AoE I suppose, but can hit much bigger targets for a lot more, banelings suck vs. armored for example), without the micro requirement. I liked the widow mine better before, because at least that was interesting, albeit not so good. Hell, the freaking mine even hits air units.
There's got to be a happy medium here somewhere. You could at least micro against spider mines in BW.
Oddly enough, as they were with a 10 second detonation, they required micro in order to minimize they effectiveness of their damage. The trade off for making your opponent micro was that Mines cost supply, so if your opponent did micro properly, they would still win a direct engagement because the Terran used supply that could have been any other unit on mines. Seems fair to me in its original forum. Per usual though, forums are making a bloody mess of things. I've seriously lost some faith in TeamLiquid forums recently.
First it was nerf Tanks! Now its nerf Mines, but buff Tanks! Fucking stupid is what it is.
The mine was perfectly fine as it was, it was a great detriment against 1A across the map if used properly, but I guess TL loves their deathball playstyle? The only way to seperate a deathball is to make AOE better, and what do you guys do? Cry about AOE being too powerful. Hypocrits.
Moments like this need to happen with the widow mine.
That was SO HUGE when it happened, so exciting! we knew the mines were there but Flash? hid some mines under the ebay and the zerg player (Jaedong?) didn't know they were there. So sick.
On August 18 2012 18:30 Qikz wrote: Moments like this need to happen with the widow mine.
That was SO HUGE when it happened, so exciting! we knew the mines were there but Flash? hid some mines under the ebay and the zerg player (Jaedong?) didn't know they were there. So sick.
On August 18 2012 18:30 Qikz wrote: Moments like this need to happen with the widow mine.
That was SO HUGE when it happened, so exciting! we knew the mines were there but Flash? hid some mines under the ebay and the zerg player (Jaedong?) didn't know they were there. So sick.
ggaemo...I mean its in the name of the gif man.
My bad, I thought I remembered that happening in a Flash vs Jaedong game -.-
On August 18 2012 18:28 Tppz! wrote: I just had an panel with BLizzard including David Kim and he said that the widow mine change is true.
Does it still splash? Because the korean translation kinda sounds like it doesn't but does more damage instead.
Yes, in the Korean translation they don't have splash anymore, but I think that they will put splash back, and reduce the AoE of it. It really doesn't make any sense for Mines to not have splash, even if they explode instantly and deal a lot of single target damage.
On August 18 2012 18:28 Tppz! wrote: I just had an panel with BLizzard including David Kim and he said that the widow mine change is true.
Does it still splash? Because the korean translation kinda sounds like it doesn't but does more damage instead.
Yes, in the Korean translation they don't have splash anymore, but I think that they will put splash back, and reduce the AoE of it. It really doesn't make any sense for Mines to not have splash, even if they explode instantly and deal a lot of single target damage.
Well, I'd be fine with no splash, if you're able to micro them and pick the unit they attach too. High micro involved to attach single mines during a battle but high reward too.
On August 18 2012 09:00 ROOTT1 wrote: widow mine is the most cost effective "unit" in hots =/, at least as far as ive seen in the sc2 hots ums imo it shouldnt be able to target air + workers
When you place restrictions like that on a unit, it becomes fucking retarded.
Don't even start with that bullshit. The shredder already got removed for similar issues.
can u fucking imagine how strong it becomes if it were able to target air units and workers without a timer? 2 mines would take out an entire mineral line, they were insanely cost efficient even before this buff.. removing the timer is fucking ridiculous
for fuck sakes they even strap onto obs, how the fuck are we supposed to move around the map?
I think the key is not a-moving your entire army w obs on one hotkey into where you believe T has mines set up.
Come on you're being ridiculous, the mine doesn't even have a longer range than detect on obs.
Um, if it can burrow really fast, just run a few into a mineral line or something.
Widow mines are now officially cheap, reactor-able, burrowed banelings that hit air, do more damage, and require no micro to control and make sure it detonates. I mean... really?
At least with vulture mines you could micro away from it and kill them after they pop up with decent control.
Banelings are more cost efficient at clearing mineral lines. They explode instantly, have AoE (mines don't anymore), and are cheaper. You only need 4 to wipe an entire mineral line.
I'm not so concerned about the mineral line thing tbh, but they do instead still have AoE (at least from what I can tell), it's just smaller.
But they're going to be set and forget, with the same reward of a baneling land mine (less AoE I suppose, but can hit much bigger targets for a lot more, banelings suck vs. armored for example), without the micro requirement. I liked the widow mine better before, because at least that was interesting, albeit not so good. Hell, the freaking mine even hits air units.
There's got to be a happy medium here somewhere. You could at least micro against spider mines in BW.
Oddly enough, as they were with a 10 second detonation, they required micro in order to minimize they effectiveness of their damage. The trade off for making your opponent micro was that Mines cost supply, so if your opponent did micro properly, they would still win a direct engagement because the Terran used supply that could have been any other unit on mines. Seems fair to me in its original forum. Per usual though, forums are making a bloody mess of things. I've seriously lost some faith in TeamLiquid forums recently.
First it was nerf Tanks! Now its nerf Mines, but buff Tanks! Fucking stupid is what it is.
The mine was perfectly fine as it was, it was a great detriment against 1A across the map if used properly, but I guess TL loves their deathball playstyle? The only way to seperate a deathball is to make AOE better, and what do you guys do? Cry about AOE being too powerful. Hypocrits.
Pretty sure its a completely different faction in the TL community.
Response to the OP: Disregarding that the mine got changed:
1) It's not meant to be a combat unit, no matter how much you interprete "blizzard promotes it as one". No. It is simply not.
2) If you attach it to anything bigger than a ling or a marine or a worker, it is costefficient, even if the unit is getting pulled A mine in the current "HotS Custom" version costs 75/25 can be reactored and is getting produced faster than hellions. In fact, when playing the map I'm right now playing a lot of TvZ as Terran and I haven't really found an opponent that could really deal with mines, for as long as you are active with hellions and prevent single lings to pull out your mines one by one. (this is just my experience with them. They are both awesome and very strong)
3) Many of your points how the mine can or cannot be used are simply wrong, from the experience I have with them. -) they kill detectors if they get too close. any detector that is not controlled all the time, runs the risk to move into a mine -) the mines are not only "place and wait". You can also wait for the opponent to deploy his slower units (like swarm hosts and Broodlords) and then run under them and burrow. You lose some, but the trade is still terribly costefficient not to even start talking about supply efficiency
Now about the mine change: Imo the mine was too good. It was basically costefficient against any unit apart from lings, marines, workers and even with Overlords, zealots and roaches - all of that, if the opponent reacted correctly and pulled the unit! As in many situations people would not be able to pull the units the mine would have been even costefficient against those units. The thing basically was, that the mine did not need to fulfill that "splash" role, nor did it need to. From my first experiences, this is a good move to make the mine easier to balance, as it's role is not "catch all" anymore, so it can stay good against single units. The only bad thing is, that it cuts a tiny little bit of micro from the game. (pulling that one unit out)
I don't like to bump threads but I don't think it's worthy starting a new one for this but...
from the footage I've seen, the mines have a range of 3-4, correct? so, if you imagine lets say Cloud Kingdom, TvZ, the zerg takes the 4th base on the low ground that has the ledge around it. If terran runs 3-4 mines to the high ground and burrows, they can jump onto drones - probably wiping out 80% of the drones at least? Since they are so small and the zerg doesnt get any warning sound etc this seems insanely imbalanced right?
Maybe I am over thinking / theory crafting yes, but there are many more things that I can see causing massive balance issues. It's almost as if they gave terran a baneling unit/
On August 22 2012 03:27 malaan wrote: I don't like to bump threads but I don't think it's worthy starting a new one for this but...
from the footage I've seen, the mines have a range of 3-4, correct? so, if you imagine lets say Cloud Kingdom, TvZ, the zerg takes the 4th base on the low ground that has the ledge around it. If terran runs 3-4 mines to the high ground and burrows, they can jump onto drones - probably wiping out 80% of the drones at least? Since they are so small and the zerg doesnt get any warning sound etc this seems insanely imbalanced right?
Maybe I am over thinking / theory crafting yes, but there are many more things that I can see causing massive balance issues. It's almost as if they gave terran a baneling unit/
Don't know if the mines can jump over cliffs. If so, then yeah, it gets harder for zerg to safely mine there. Keep in mind we do not know anything in terms of splash damage yet.
On August 22 2012 03:27 malaan wrote: I don't like to bump threads but I don't think it's worthy starting a new one for this but...
from the footage I've seen, the mines have a range of 3-4, correct? so, if you imagine lets say Cloud Kingdom, TvZ, the zerg takes the 4th base on the low ground that has the ledge around it. If terran runs 3-4 mines to the high ground and burrows, they can jump onto drones - probably wiping out 80% of the drones at least? Since they are so small and the zerg doesnt get any warning sound etc this seems insanely imbalanced right?
Protoss storms / zerg fungals from there are pretty imba too... (with or without a warning, your workers are still screwed). Just make sure you spread creep so you can see it coming and pull workers in time.
I'm pretty excited about the change to 'insta-explode' rather than 10 second delay as well but I feel like Bliz just gave up and said okay, here's spider mines, except now they're called Widow Mines and hit air and cost supply. I'd really like to see some originality and different concepts that still provide Terran a means to zone. One idea I provided in the In defence of Mech blog post was the following: Give "bike-mode" hellions an upgrade called Hot Wire. The ability would allow you basically to set a "trip wire". You click to drop the charge and then either select the charge (sort of like a creep tumor) and it allows you to select where to put the other end of the wire within the radius of 5-7 or you just drive the hellion and it automatically lays the other end of the line after 5-7 range. Any enemy unit that crosses the straight line between the 2 charges will cause a splash damage effect in a straight line between the two charges. Maybe add in a check to make sure that no 2 'trip wires' can cross.
It's similiar in its function but different enough that I don't feel like it's just a rehashed spider mine. Also, I feel that the mines shouldn't tie up supply.
I guess I should just be happy that Terran finally has that it's sorely missing but it just feels unininspired. Then again, my expectations may be too high.
Give it a reasonable amount of splash, if it instantly detonates on a single unit like a zergling it's going to be massively cost and supply inefficient and it won't be used.
On August 22 2012 03:27 malaan wrote: I don't like to bump threads but I don't think it's worthy starting a new one for this but...
from the footage I've seen, the mines have a range of 3-4, correct? so, if you imagine lets say Cloud Kingdom, TvZ, the zerg takes the 4th base on the low ground that has the ledge around it. If terran runs 3-4 mines to the high ground and burrows, they can jump onto drones - probably wiping out 80% of the drones at least? Since they are so small and the zerg doesnt get any warning sound etc this seems insanely imbalanced right?
Maybe I am over thinking / theory crafting yes, but there are many more things that I can see causing massive balance issues. It's almost as if they gave terran a baneling unit/
Something like that could be solved by simply spreading creep there and paying attention to the minimap and pull away the drones while it's burrowing then use a couple of zerglings to bait it out.
Enough of this theory crafting though, lets actually wait until beta is released and then everybody can make their own informed decisions.
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