Community Feedback Update - February 4 - Page 10

That doesn't matter. Tanks are strongest when there are enough of them to one-shot a unit. They operate on burst and killing power, not DPS.
The rule of thumb for Tanks is that you want enough Tanks to one-shot any armored or large unit the enemy throws at you, or a multiple of that number. Anything less is very inefficient in practice, regardless of the attack rate, and other support units (Hellbats, Vultures, Goliaths, etc) should be used to hold or kill the other units (mostly light or squishy units) the enemy will use.

Brood War Tanks killed units in fewer shots, so players needed less of them for critical mass. Brood War Terran only needed 2 Tanks to one-shot most units in TvZ and TvT, and 3 shots for Dragoons and Reavers in TvP. Terran never needed more than 6 Tanks (Archon or Ultralisk) for critical mass in any match-up. Thismade mech very versatile.

The StarCraft II Tank is much weaker:
Terran needs up to 11 Tanks for critical mass in TvP (this used to be 14 with hardened shields), and up to 10 for critical mass in TvZ. These same numbers would be 6(5 with upgrades) and 8 (7 with upgrades) for the old Tank. The critical mass for SC2 against squishier units is also 3 or 4 in every match-up instead of 2/3.
- SC2 Tanks also cost more supply, meaning that mech has less army (less Tanks and less support).
Taken together, Terran needs almost twice the supply of Tanks for the same effect in most match-ups.
- StarCraft II Tanks also hit in a smaller area. Brood War units hit in squares rather than circles, so the StarCraft II Tank would need an outer splash radius of 1.41 to cover the same area as its Brood War predecessor. The attack range follows the same principles, and SC2 Tanks would need about 13.54 range for the same coverage.
- The attack rate change is not that much. The old Tank fired with an attack cooldown of about 4.166 seconds (normal time) when translated into SC2. That is 2.9757 seconds in LOTV's faster setting. SC2 Tanks fire (fixed) around 32% faster, which is smaller than the supply difference and the burst damage loss.
SC2 Tanks perform somewhat better against light units, but that is pointless considering that Hellions, Hellbats, Vultures, both Mines, and Goliaths all perform better against light ground units by design. The Tank has an anti-armor/anti-large role in mech, and this is where the Tank is most lacking.

On top of all of this, the Tank's design only works when its damage, supply cost, and rate of fire are balanced against the mobility and durability of the opposing army. StarCraft II units are almost always more durable and more mobile, and they often even have relocating abilities (like Blink, Warpgates, Charge, Adept's shade) or abilities that punish units that cannot move (Blinding Cloud, the Ravager's bile shot, etc) that increase the Tank's strength requirements even more. A balanced SC2 Tank would be much stronger than the Brood War variant by necessity.

The current SC2 Tank is just bad.

Response: I do think that if the tank fired more quickly the lower damage would be justifiable because it would mean more frequent damage, killing power doesn't deminish with increased dps and lowered burst damage.

No, you are completely wrong on that point, and an attack speed buff would be a very bad change for multiple reasons:
-The accidental friendly-fire on support would become much more common because the player must manually target many more shots (one top of his/her other micro) to prevent it. This is counter productive to mech's viability.
-Attack speed buffs are indiscriminate. Mech doesn't have a problem with Marines and Zerglings, it needs more damage to kill armored and massive targets. Buffing the Tank's attack speed makes it a problem in TvT long before it fixes any of the Tank's problems in the other match-ups. The Tank's problem is best fixed by adding specialized burst damage, or even increasing the attack cooldown to give the Tank far greater burst damage.

-A faster-shooting Tank cannot be balanced with enough damage to be any better at its job. Faster shooting units tend to be extremely efficient against squishy targets (which they kill in short succession) and very inefficient against the tougher units (which take much longer). For splash damage units in particular, a fast attack rate will let them kill squishy targets in droves while anything tougher will last many waves. Shredders were scrapped because they had this very problem. They slaughtered Zerglings and workers within seconds, but they took many times longer to kill Zealots and other tough units that could just shrug them off.
Zone control units need to inflict their damage in large bursts to be successful. The burst is extremely important because it allows the unit to be balanced with a high damage output against tough targets (such as Ultralisks, Archons, Thors, Stalkers, etc) without really increasing their strength against squishy targets (most of the extra damage is lost on overkill). The Brood War Tank was only successful because it inflicted such high burst damage. A faster attacking, lower-damage variant would have sucked against everything.

-Attack speed buffs do very little in the small engagements that LOTV is supposed to promote. The exact number of Tanks is always far more important than their attack rate in small engagements because they don't have as much time (not as much of a barrier, and not as many Tanks) for repeated volleys. Tanks that can ensure each kill are far more valuable in small engagements than Tanks that will probably die waiting for the third or fourth or fifth volley. Attack speed buffs have the greatest affect in large engagements, where Tanks have a larger barrier giving them far more time to fire, and the excess number of Tanks can kill wave after wave with each volley.
In short, buffing the Tank's attack speed makes the death-ball problem much worse because faster-attacking units are generally far more efficient in large engagements. Faster attacking units also cannot be balanced with enough splash damage to break up death-balls from the opponent (Reavers and Disruptors can, Colossus cannot; Spider Mines and Widow Mines can, Shredders could not unless the opposing army was squishy as mud; etc).

-Buffing the attack rate would also makes Tank death-balls much worse, since the Tanks would inflict their damage

because it will kill squishy units far too quickly to be balanced with the DPS it needs for tougher targets (Stalkers, Marauders, Immortals, Colossus, Ultralisks, etc). The Tank needs to inflict damage in large bursts (wasting most of their DPS on squishier targets as overkill damage) in order to be balanced with the damage.

It is better to have a long cooldown tank with a very high burst than to have a short cooldown Tank with a very small burst. Short cooldown, low-burst Tanks just don't work outside of a very large army. This is one of the problems with StarCraft II mech.