Heart of the Swarm TvP Battle Report! - Page 45

On August 14 2012 17:05 PiPoGevy wrote:
That was a little dissapointing, Warhounds are just another Marauder, though I did like the interesting battle between the Vikings/Widow Mines against Tempests

On August 14 2012 15:46 YyapSsap wrote:


Its not about mass zealots or immortals. Simply put, tanks just suck vs anything protoss other than sentries or stalkers. Why? They dont kill shit fast enough and theres not enough of them either due to the 3 supply cap they have. That is the issue.

In BW, the only thing that buffered tanks were 75HP vultures and mini nukes that could literally backfire and take chunks out of your forces. The reason this wall was good enough was because the fire power was there to vaporise everything on the ground.

The thing about mech is that it would be very immobile, requires positioning and setup time but the firepower should be almost twice as much as bio. Everything should get blown from the ground to compensate for being so slow and cumbersome.

Bio on the other hand is very mobile, cheaply produced and have somewhat firepower that gets limited as P reaches the ultimate deathball composition.

However from the look of things, that is simply not there. I love it when they reason warhound to be anti-mech, when theres this unit called the marauder which pretty much counters all "mech" i mean armoured units. People have figured out so many different ways of breaking through siege lines, its not the issue at hand. For wood leaguers, well its something they will learn as they progress in getting better.

Lets once again look at the Bio composition just to point out what mech requires.

The standard MMM consists of marines, the marauder and medivacs.
-Marines role = General purpose unit of the composition.
-Marauder role = Damage to armoured unit specialists/provide tanking for the marines
-Medivacs role = Provide support via healing and mobility.

Anyone can see that these units are very well sync'd with one another. The synergy is really good, and they rely on one another as the game progresses. The ratio of marine to marauder can be adjusted to deal the type of damage you want so its very flexible. Although I hate the marauder as it doesn't jibe with the whole "bio" thing due to having so much hp and dealing a ton of damage, Blizz has done a good job of coming up with this composition.

Now with Mech in HOTS
-Battle Hellions role = Provide damage to light AOE, buffering for tanks and "mobility" (a unit that can reposition quickly, buying time for its damage dealers to get ready).
-Warhound = Provide damage to mechanical, buffering for tanks and very mobile.
-Tanks role = Provide somewhat damage to armoured (AOE), doesn't require to be sieged because in tank mode they can just pound away at the enemy without sacrificing mobility.
-Thors role = Provide damage to armoured (Single) while being a somewhat AA ground against light air units. Also provide additional buffering.
-Widow Mine role = Provide another option for AA, buffer for the tanks and also provides further pro

You can see unlike MMM, theres just so many things that overlap with this composition while also favouring a combo of units. Abilities like siege mode becomes useless due to the warhounds effectiveness. Whats the point of all that buffering and protecting the tanks when you dont really need them anymore? because you've effectively created a Terran version of the deathball. Widow mines also dont make sense because they require setup time and this deathball doesn't require a setup time.

As many have already noticed in the mech composition, there is NO general purpose unit in this composition like the marine. In BW, this role was filled by the tanks. Instead of dealing damage in rapid bursts like the marine, the tanks simply do a ton slowly counterbalanced by requiring it to setup in siege mode. This is what defined mech and made mech possible in BW because the composition revolved around tanks.

What Blizzard has to do is give tanks this role back. The maps have in a way, long past steppes and lost temple that tanks should be able to regain back there 50 or 60 damage per shot (while reducing the supply to 2 - dont take this balance suggestion to literally but something needs to be done to give tanks back their role). This also makes all those units that counter tanks, make sense in the first place while making them more valuable. HOTS provides more options anyway (viper hook to tempest's insane range).

If we go back to the composition with that in mind (minus thor and warhound):
-Battle Hellions role = Provide damage to light AOE, buffering for tanks and "mobility" (a unit that can reposition quickly, buying time for its damage dealers to get ready).
-Tanks role = General purpose unit of the composition.
-?? unit X role = Need a unit that provides a general purpose AA capability instead of relying on vikings and/or buffering for tanks and/or deal specific damage to a unit type (Something that does AA + and one of the two required roles).

If the thor is added back, then they should maybe think about reworking the thor to reduce some of its overlapping roles.

This would truly make T more exciting to play because Bio, Mech and Sky Terran will all provide different playstyles that has its pros and cons. (Dont forget that you can mix and match to a more general composition instead of relying on certain tech paths). They really need to go back to the drawing board on this one because they are ignoring the root cause of the issue with mech.

/rant

On August 14 2012 15:21 Reborn8u wrote:
Something just occurred to me, speed prisms are going to be completely ridiculous combined with recall. In late game, with 12 gates I could drop 2 immortals warp in 12 stalkers snipe a bunch of shit and leave, with no risk. Even if they are about to kill my prism on the way in, I can just recall it. Or imagine 12 DT's in your main murdering everything, then I just recall and bam 6 archons for defense or just to add to my army. Storm drops anyone?

It doesn't even have to be late game, you can probably do this kind of crap on 1 base with how fast you get recall. Think of those times when you get into a zerg or terrans main with a small army and FF them out. As soon as you run out of FF, your army is at home, safe. You wont be able to save your buildings OR counter attack against this.

With mechs main weakness being mobility, it's like protoss itself will be the counter to mech. Good luck denying a protoss 3rd base with the mothership core out as well. It will be super easy for toss to force a late game.

I play protoss and I know this will have Zergs and terrans rolling there eyes and shuttering. I doubt this stuff will make it into release. It's going to be impossible to balance.

On August 14 2012 17:10 xSTaRFiSHx wrote:
That Battlehellion/Warhound combination is beyond disgusting... >.<

On August 14 2012 16:22 architecture wrote:


Mothership core will destroy the general viability of bio, except for specific surprise builds on particular maps.

13 range cannon early game will deny earlier drops, and minimize the need P has to split his army before 3rd and get outpositioned. Late game, bio deathball will have no opportunity to outposition the P with mass recall.

100% you will need to be able to beat P in a straight up fight.