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This is going to be avilo's amazing and awesome guide to the 250mm cannon that is in Starcraft 2. Here are a few things I hope to achieve with this lil guide:
a) prove to you through logic, common sense, and countless game experience that you should never, ever research this upgrade
b) bring it to blizzard's attention that if they claim they are working on game balance, then they should do their job instead of working on heart of the swarm. Otherwise...why is this ability still in the game?
c) bring the ability and it's non-use to the attention of anyone who currently uses thors and researches it.
d) suggest that blizzard changes the ability in one of a few various ways
the core idea of this guide:
Never research the 250 mm cannon - ever.
It's absolutely ludicrous that I or anyone else would have to make a legitimate strategy post about how you should 100% of the time never research an ability of a unit in SC2, but I guarantee you, with this ability that is absolutely the case.
The Thor's 250mm cannon was originally intended to be a stun lock onto a single heavy target, such as an immortal/collosus or any building. It does 300 damage over the abilitie's duration, and more importantly it stuns your thor for the start and ending of the animation.
Without using a 250mm cannon from the Thor, a thor will do roughly 270 damage to a single target, without being stunned. This means you are only ever gaining around 30 damage from using this ability on a single unit target.
Theoretically, the units that you would use the cannon on to stun lock would be collosus, immortals, and ultralisks. In actual games though, the only unit that would ever be in a situation to be stunned by a thor in a meaningful way is the ultralisk. And the ultralisk is currently immune to stun - making it immune to the 250 mm cannon.
It also needs to be mentioned that a thor with a +3 weapon upgrade actually does 315 or so damage in the same amount of time a 250mm cannon would do damage - obviously 315 being a bigger number than 300.
So what are we left with? We're left with a 250 mm cannon that, if you decide to upgrade and ever use this, you are leaving Thors vulnerable to ultralisk damage for a potential 4 seconds longer than you wanted to. You are actually stun locking your own thors from using this ability.
There is no advantage to ever researching the 250 mm cannon for the thor. You will never get in a game situation where it is advantageous for you to stun lock your own thor for an extra 4 seconds of game time, and the units that would ideally be stun locked are never practically within the thors 250 mm cannon range.
The only advantages to researching the 250 mm cannon upgrade are as follows:
-ignores armor
That is it. I did not list stunning as an advantage because as already described, the only units you would want to stun with the this ability are never within range of the thor, or those situations never appear within an actual starcraft 2 game.
And why would you use a 250 mm cannon on a unit like a stalker when the thor 2-3 shots that anyways.
The disadvantages of researching the 250 mm cannon upgrade are:
-your thor is stunned for 4 seconds
-your thor does less damage over the same duration of the 250 mm cannon
-you wasted 150/150 and tech lab research time on the upgrade
and one of the huge disadvantage:
-now whenever your thor is neural parasited in TvZ games, the zerg user can use the 250 mm cannon on your own thors since you have it researched.
Final analysis:
Never research the 250 mm cannon upgrade. It is an upgrade that will 100% of the time hurt your gameplay/strategy rather than help you.
In no scenario is it ever advantageous to use a 250 mm cannon. You only are allowing your thor to take more damage from enemy ultras, as well as your thors to be neural parasited and use the ability on themselves.
Once again, I hate that in an RTS with such respect like SC2, that it's necessary to write a guide on how it is beneficial to never research an upgrade in the game...but that currently is just the way it is.
Possible changes:
I have a few suggestions on how to change the ability:
Make it a long range heavy AA gun.
Make the thor's current 250 mm cannon a range 9 heavy AA gun, possibly with minor splash. This would allow the thor to actually counter carriers in TvP effectively, as well as other specific AA targets.
It also would leave the thor vs ultralisk interaction the same as is now. As described before, the weapon is never feasibly used against collosus or immortals anyways...so why not design it like this? It also feels very "thor-ish."
Give it a huge damage increase
I dislike this suggestion myself, because it's another one of those things that is too "simple" and makes SC2 lean towards being a shallow game. "Hey let's just give it huge damage!" But I mention it as it is a possible change.
Allow it to multi-target units.
Make it a unique ability that can acquire up to 3-5 targets. I do not know how that would work, but it sounds thor-ish and awesome. And fits with Terran being a cost-effective race.
Remove it from the game.
Self-explanatory
Otherwise, post your own, and comment on the guide 
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one possible use - siphon off energy to avoid the thor getting feedbacked
thats about it
remaking the ability into a multi-target sounds pretty awesome
edit: i forgot, what about thor vs thor battles? wouldn't the cannons be useful then?
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The ability does 500 damage, not 300.
It takes 10 seconds total, 2 for the initial animation, 6 while dealing damage, and 2 more for the final animation.
+3 thor does 61 DPS, or 610 damage over 10 seconds, and you can focus fire.
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remove it IMO, good post and sooo true for the upgrade, but you also neglected to say that feedback can do dmg to thors on a useless ability so another negative thing, but thors are awesome and buffing them would IMO hurt TvZ alot especially the AA weapon thing, however this is a great post and it should be removed, very negative ability
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On October 08 2010 11:28 lololol wrote:
The ability does 500 damage, not 300.
It takes 10 seconds total, 2 for the initial animation, 6 while dealing damage, and 2 more for the final animation.
+3 thor does 61 DPS, or 610 damage over 10 seconds, and you can focus fire.
if that's right, thanks I will fix I don't know why I was thinking 300/315 for some reason. The main idea still applies though - NEVER UPGRADE IT
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On October 08 2010 11:26 alphafuzard wrote:
one possible use - siphon off energy to avoid the thor getting feedbacked
thats about it
remaking the ability into a multi-target sounds pretty awesome
edit: i forgot, what about thor vs thor battles? wouldn't the cannons be useful then?
In a TvT there should never be any Thor on Thor battles, they're used mainly to tank the tanks till the marauders can get in range and pound em into the ground and do some damage on their own. If some really does go mass thor if you get even half the amount of money spent on marauders you'll absolutely destryo them. Also I don't see why you'd get thor's in a TvP unless they have lots of phoenix's and then probably won't be able to afford templars.
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On October 08 2010 11:30 Slago wrote:
remove it IMO, good post and sooo true for the upgrade, but you also neglected to say that feedback can do dmg to thors on a useless ability so another negative thing, but thors are awesome and buffing them would IMO hurt TvZ alot especially the AA weapon thing, however this is a great post and it should be removed, very negative ability
Well, I did not add that as a disadvantage, as your thor collects up mana regardless of having the ability researched. From a design stand point of the unit, that is a disadvantage though.
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Great guide, will recommend to others.
I look forward to more of your guides in the future.
They should just remove it so Thors no longer have energy or re work it all together.
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I have never used it. There was a time when I was worried about my not using it and thought "how could I use this ability effectively?" I had no answer. 
As said above, the Thor gains energy even when the upgrade is not researched, so it is an easy target for feedback. Disadvantages all around. The ability needs to be removed or fixed.
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well, i wouldnt say it can't be used in any situation. out of the the 300 games i have played so far i managed to use it once against a fleeing collosus .. bahahaha.
but yea.. your right. its so under used they should change it. i would prefer the thor to have no spells and no energy because feedback is so strong against thors. (HT feedback spell)
but that would be imba and make terran an 'easy' race right? lol maybe a supportive spell for the units around it. like a stackable moral boosting style of spell (small area of effect) that increases hit-points momentarily. ... on second thought that sounds really imba... but you get where im going with this.
i mean.. they can cloak a banshee why not a thor :p ??
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Removing the casting animation would probably solve the whole shitty thor spell. Having it benefit those micro-ers who let the thor finish its regular attack animation, and then cast the spell immediately afterwards providing like a very tiny bonus to overall dps. You know, the kind of stuff in dota
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On October 08 2010 11:31 avilo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2010 11:28 lololol wrote:
The ability does 500 damage, not 300.
It takes 10 seconds total, 2 for the initial animation, 6 while dealing damage, and 2 more for the final animation.
+3 thor does 61 DPS, or 610 damage over 10 seconds, and you can focus fire. if that's right, thanks I will fix I don't know why I was thinking 300/315 for some reason. The main idea still applies though - NEVER UPGRADE IT
Yah it's 500.
The only good change for this ability to to make it hit air. Suddenly thors are actually not terrible beyond imagination TvP and are much much more solid TvT. It also means TvZ you don't have to make vikings to combat broodlords (assuming you can get to them to cast though).
It'd just add more versatility to Tmech which is really only a good thing. Now if they'd just nerf marauders...
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United States11637 Posts
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EPT
