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edit: Add this blog to HOTS contest thx :D! Was going to make a HOTS regardless, and I think title meets requirement for HOTS contest anyways, if not mod plz change it !
Hi guys, I am going to bring you as much HOTS analysis, thoughts, and predictions from the experience I have so far playing the beta. I hope blizzard can use some of this feedback as well in their design/balance process as they release/tweak the current beta they have.
I've played about 10-12 (15-20 more or so on sunday) games so far, 1-2 as P/Z, the rest all as Terran. I have focused on playing mech every single game in TvZ/TvP to test the new widow mine and warhound and see how they complement (or don't) mech.
My first impressions playing with/against all of the new units is...they're all imbalanced as fuck. This to me seems like a good sign, as Brood war had a similar design philosophy, whether on accident or not. I think blizzard needs to take this route more often - allow each race to have things that seem "ridiculous" at first, much like brood war, and then all of these powerful features of each race balance each other out. The route they have taken lately with WOL is nerf, nerf, nerf and imo it hasn't gone so well lately.
Obviously with the beta blizzard is going to the extreme with some things like a 22 range tempest. I highly doubt that will make it into the actual game. But here I will go over the new units, and some of their new interactions/uses:
Zerg:
Hydra speed/Ultra Charge/Viper - I'm listing all of these together because the strength of all these new things for Zerg just amplifies Zerg's power overall. There are so many styles Zerg's have at their disposal, and these new additions simply allow even more new unit compositions/styles that Zerg players can use and abuse.
It's going to be scary that Zerg can do anything from mass roach, to mass muta/ling/bane, to mass brood/infestor, to mass ultra/ling/infestor, to mass queen/infestor/brood, and now they will have viper/hydra/roach or mass ultra with pure ling, the list goes on.
Also, hydralisk speed is now a necessity, because to play against brood war mech 2.0 (i'm dubbing HOTS mech as brood war mech 2.0) you will need late game hydras in your unit composition for tech switches either to them or out of them.
Changeling - I didn't get to mess around with this, but you can apparently fling them now into your opponent's army. I actually think this will be really too good. Lategame mass changelings has it's uses now (though rarely seen) and having to individually click on one and find each one might just be too good for Z in combination with everything else Z is getting. On the other hand, like I said, if it sounds like it's strong, then I believe the developers are headed in the right direction (brood war balance philosophy).
Swarmlords - A few people used them against me, and I just scanned and killed them pretty easily. The things that they spawn are strong as hell. I am thinking you'll see these used in small numbers on different places on the map for harrassment much like lurker drop harrass.
As is right now, I would actually say that it takes too long for them to spawn out units. I think these would play much better in SC2 if the swarm things spawned at a quicker rate, but also died at an equally quicker rate as well. I did not play anyone good enough to abuse these to their potential obviously, so we'll have to see.
For the Zerg units overall, there is just way too much versatility now. Every person I talked to agreed (including some Zergs) that Zerg is getting the best new things in heart of the swarm.
It's going to be tough to figure out wtf unit comp zerg is going in HOTS.
Protoss:
Mothership Core - this thing is one of the few "broken" things I have seen so far. It has 3-4 abilities, it can become a badass cannon 10x better than a planetary with 13 range, it can recall units, it can move to any nexus you have on the map, and more importantly and the most broken is for 25 energy it can make your nexus regenerate 100 energy in like 2 seconds.
Also, the only current prerequisite for this unit is simply having 100 minerals and 50 vespene gas. This will have to change because it just simply is too good right now.
You guys know 4 gate? Well, imagine a 4 gate powered by x4 chronoboost every 25 energy that your mothership core gets. You basically have a super charged 4 gate. All you do is get the mothership core, open standard 4 gate, voila, now every 25 energy your mothership core hits you have 100 energy on your nexus, meaning insta-4 chronos on your gateways. I have dubbed this the "avilo super 4 gate build" because I can. I didn't bother refining the timing on it, but the ability to give energy may be too powerful period. Imagine being able to hold off certain rushes with only 1-2 sentries instead of 5-6...
You also can have an insta range 13 planetary to any nexus that you teleport your mothership core too. Protoss already is the best race on defense with warpgate imo, they don't need more recall/mass defense stuff.
I really did not like the mothership core at all. It felt too much like a queen, it felt very out of place, and it felt like it would add too much variance/dice rolling/unscoutable nature to protoss (even more than now) because your opponent won't always be able to tell where your mothership energy goes - well, except in the current build they know it's going to your nexus for chronoboosts lol.
To be honest, I hope they just remove this unit from the game. It's unnecessary, and feels weird.
Oracle - I don't know how much I like this. I didn't really think it's entomb ability was that OP because I already metagamed the shit out of everyone and had defensive widow mines in my base on oracle paths (hehe) but the reason I don't like it is because it's like an arbiter 2.0 with the cloak field, and there's no need when speed prisms in lategame already serve that purpose with mass warpgate.
Also the main reason I didn't like this unit is because it only adds to the protoss 1A deathball - now you can literally cloak your entire 200/200 army very early on in the game...or whatever standing army you have. I would recommend that the cloaking field be a later game tech requiring the prerequisite of the fleet beacon, much like the brood war arbiter required the arbiter tribunal.
This way, the oracle has access to entomb for harrass early/mid-game, and it can become a useful late game unit with the cloaking field.
Tempest - 22 range...the only reason I see them making it like this is for shock factor for beta testers. It will not make it into the game with a 22 range upgrade and it would be a travesty if it did. Yes, they are very weak alone, but in 200/200 situations or any situation with a very good player...they will end up being way too abusable. I overall don't like them adding another siege unit into SC2. Siege tanks/broodlords/collosus already are strong enough, and adding in the tempest seems like it would be way too good against mech.
I would say if they keep this in the game with the range upgrade, they will need to literally make it a glass cannon, and reduce it's health even further, otherwise this unit is going to end up 20x better than the broodlord, allowing Protoss to simply pull your army into theirs or always force an engagement.
It's also another 1A unit, which is bad.
Terran:
First off, it seems like everyone that has played Terran, including the almighty Flash himself, has been utterly disappointed with the attention Terran has received for HOTS. I would have to agree with them - I saw no changes to the raven in acceleration/speed/price tweaks which I have suggested over and over as well as other people, and in HOTS single ravens may become even more necessary in some instances in order to deal with mass cloak from oracles or burrowed zerg units like the swarmlord thing.
I feel that the developers are hinging way too much on the "new units" to magically balance stuff out and have stopped worrying about WOL balance. They need to shore up fixing the raven for lategame TvZ vs infestor/corruptor/mass queen brood lord before they move on to only HOTS balance. I say this and make an emphasis on this because with all the new goodies in HOTS, the old WOL lategame TvZ Zerg deathball composition will still remain the same, and even though I did not experience anyone playing the old style in the beta, the new units are not equipped to handle the old WOL comp.
So first off...
The Warhound - This unit is the biggest disappointment of trying the beta. It's a mech marauder 1A unit - the exact opposite thing every Terran player and every Starcraft wants in HOTS.
The warhound was absolutely pointless in TvZ because there are no mechanical units. I never built 1 warhound in this match-up. And since it cannot shoot up anymore, and widow mines are better for AA/muta defense...it's just bad.
Here I am going to recommend that the developers had the right idea on removing the thor from HOTS. As much as I hate to say it, the widow mine is much more cost effective at dealing with mutas than thors are in general, and if the developers stick with their guns on the warhound being the mini-thor with less AA, but lower costing as it is...it just seems more logical.
Every TvZ game I played, and I played a few masters, I went mech with widow mine/siegetank/hellion, and I usually only built 1-3 thors for AA.
Now to TvP though...once again, it's a mech marauder 1A unit. I feel like Blizzard has done nothing to address TvP mech at all (in terms of siege tanks), and has found a band-aid solution with just giving mech players the ability to build a marauder from the factory. You simply build a lot of them, and not as many tanks it appears.
With all of the new goodies from the other races, I feel like the siege tank should be looked at again in terms of damage, price, or supply (like everyone has said 5000 times). Ironically, the reverse was true for TvP - the thor is utterly garbage in TvP mech just like it currently is in WOL, so you build lots of warhounds instead.
TvZ = tank/hellion/widow mine/1-4 thors, ZERO warhounds
TvP = tank/warhound/hellion/widow mine, ZERO thors
It isn't all bad though, because mech is indeed more viable now, solely because of the one new hope for not only Terran, but for much, much better gameplay overall
THE WIDOW MINE. This unit will be the heart of Terran, it alone makes mech viable in TvP.
This unit is built from the factory, and can be built from reactored factories. It can 1 shot most units after attaching to them, but if the unit dies it does not explode and deal splash. These are cost effective against everything except zerglings. It takes 10 in-game seconds for it to blow up, which may need to be reduced to 5 because in a lot of the games I played I felt like my army was being crushed and the widow mines would explode as the battle was basically finishing one way or the other.
The advantage to the widow mine over the spider mine is that you can re-position them and they kill air units. This is the sole reason why mech TvP will be viable, and why reactor factory opening will become the standard. Because of this unit, you now have a valid anti-air option from the factory, that is dependent upon user skill/knowledge as well in terms of placing them.
I believe they will detonate and kill a void ray, which was one of the huge reasons why "opening mech/factories" was always a gamble and killed mech. The fact alone that you now have something to deal with void ray openings means that in TvP you can open factories, and money does not need to be drained into missile turrets/armory+thors, or any other ridiculous things you had to do in WOL to "make mech work" that put you at a disadvantage for even "going mech." Now you have all that extra vespene gas that would have gone into armories/starports/thors into extra factories with a viable AA unit.
The developers have hit the jackpot here. I can't emphasize enough how this one single unit is going to change the way Terran play. The great thing about it is, it's not just for mech - you can go bio as well and utilize these, meaning blizzard has hit two birds with one destructable rock. They have made mech TvP viable and they have further enhanced bio TvP for every Terran that loves to play bio/viking/ghost. Now you will have a 100% cost effective factory option late game to deal with chargelots, and something to utilize for positioning.
Every Terran player that plays the current game should be thanking the heavens that blizzard got something drastically right. It's the spider mine 2.0, and dare I say, it's what the spider mine would have wanted to be when he grew up. 
From the T perspective, you now can play like brood war, utilizing these mines all over the map, and from P/Z perspectives now you cannot simply 1A your army everywhere. Well, you can, but you'll die a horrible death.
It adds a very positional element to SC2 that WOL was missing, and it's powerful enough to be viable, but also allows P/Z players to micro away the unit that will detonate, adding much potential there in terms of apm required to lessen damage from them.
I definitely have to give the design team a 2 thumbs up on this unit, it completely changes the game in a very positive way. At first I was skeptical thinking, "OH, that dustin browder, he's putting the terror drone in SC2." But after using it, it is indeed it's own unique unit, and very, very Terran.
BC speedboost - it's good, but sort of "meh" because it's 100 energy and it's rare to see BCS useful themselves.
Feedback to Developers in terms of how they should scale the units in the current build:
I would say, error on the side of "imbalance" for all three races. Obviously some of the units were made uber powerful or exaggerated for beta testing (imo) like the 22 range tempest, but overall I actually loved the feel of the HOTS units.
When I was using the new widow mines with mech TvZ, and vipers were pulling units from my army, my mines would also latch onto the vipers a lot of times and i'd win the battles from good positioning. Or the Zerg would pull units away with hydras/vipers when I misplaced mines or what not. The reason why I really think HOTS is going to be a great game is because it did feel much more like brood war than WOL has. I never thought "oh the viper pulling my unit is broken as hell." I got the feeling of, "wow i should have just played better and I could have placed mines/pushed better."
I had the feeling that the skill cap may increase to play HOTS. Things like the viper, widow mines, cloaked units, the burrowed swarm lord...they all have a common theme and that's that they're all incredibly fucking powerful if used correctly.
Much like science vessels, defilers, arbiters...they all were powerful if used correctly. So my biggest piece of advice to the developers for HOTS is to error on the side of imbalance this time.
I also advise that you do not neglect unfinished balance issues from WOL. The raven needs to be tweaked looked at to help lategame TvZ because the new units do nothing to address mass corruptor/broodlord/infestor + queens.
I would also advise re-designing the warhound / thor, either removing one or tweaking one, because as it currently stands, the warhound is simply not a "mech" unit. It's a mech marauder, and it's also a simple 1A unit that does not enhance gameplay in the slightest. It's powerful enough that it also overrides the entire point of siege tanks in mech TvP/TvT. Overall, it's just too easy of a unit to use. Bio players already have the 1A marauder to play with against mech in TvT, adding this unit is overkill. It's simply going to be the death of the siege tank again in 2/3 of the match-ups (TvT, TvP).
The idea of a goliath like unit that is cheaper than the thor, and more available and maneuverable is great though, and that aspect should be kept.
I think you guys are going to have a ton of trouble with what you decide to do with the warhound/thor because the widow mine alone essentially makes mech more viable (especially TvP).
Oh, now that I mention mech, I have not mentioned the hellion much in this blog, but I would highly recommend that you change it so the hellion comes out of the factory in vehicle mode. It felt very unintuitive for the hellion to come out in battle mode, and most of the time you would want to immediately change it into vehicle mode to get it anywhere on the map.
Although, I am sure it was made like this a bit for the beta so that people could see it was added/playtest it. But definitely have it come out of the factory in vehicle mode. Then before a battle people can "siege it" much like a siege tank, which makes much more sense.
Overall, from my experience playing the beta I feel HOTS is going in a very good direction and we'll all fall in love with Starcraft all over again when the game is finally released : :
(I wrote this as thoughts have come to my head, I will post another similar blog when I get home tomorrow describing some scenarios/unit interactions more in-depth, along with how the metagame will change. Example: I tested that you can have widow mines behind a full wall off and if a unit gets in range but is on the other side of your wall, your widow mine will still jump through the wall and attach to the opponent's unit)
Thanks for reading :: More to come tomorrow.
 
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Awesome, tnx for the write up.
I laughed with you metagaming the oracles using mines,rofl.
How come you barely mention the viper though.
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I find the protoss additions very boring in that while they are strong, they do not exactly fix the aspect that protoss feels far too much like an elastic band where you see how much tension you can withstand and if it breaks you win, if it rebounds back you're in a great position or in many cases devastate the terran in the late game. Unless you're me playing against Avilo in the late game where I proceed to give away my army a few times and lose the game
Widow mines look like a fun new option for the terran race that allows access to mechanical unit bases that can dictate the map like in BW. The Z changes are awesome as well in that entirely new playstyles will come out with the swarm host and viper. And thats not including hydras that can base trade or harass in the late game.
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ALLEYCAT BLUES49484 Posts
so burrow charge is so good that you can effectively ultraling in hots?
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I like the 10 sec timer on the widow mine, i feel like it needs to be that high or like 8.5-10 because just by the face that if u get multiple ones stuck on ur army ur gonna need more time, sure 10seconds for 1 mine should be easy, but lets say 5 hit ur army (they have 6 range? so shouldnt be that hard if ur going hardcore mech, building them for 75 minerals and 25 gas means ur banking up more minerals and gas that go into extra fac, which are need cause ur cutting tank/warhound production time) So with 5mines on their army the timer seems perfect to me tho ( i havnt played  so jelly of u)
lol ur 4-gate sounds awesome did u try it vs anyone that would be funny to see HotS go back to 4 gates lol
also if the widow mine is a mech unit doesn it get mech upgrades? siege tank get +5 so the widow mine would get like +10? lol, does it?
hm i agree with ur opinion of the oracles clock field where ur gonna need detection all the time now, the pressure/allin builds that mc does are damn strong with the oracle's cloak 0_0 wow lol, maybe it should be upgradeable? or locked by a building or something (maybe the templar archives like in brood war or something)
Are u entering the TL HotS contest with this blog?
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On June 11 2012 14:27 BLinD-RawR wrote:
so burrow charge is so good that you can effectively ultraling in hots?
someone said that the burrow charge, when the ultras pop out they do their "damage" in an aoe around them, which hits friendly units, so u might not wanna move ur lings in while they are popping up
edit: holy shit i became a goliath i didnt even know! yay!
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On June 11 2012 14:34 Shock710 wrote:I like the 10 sec timer on the widow mine, i feel like it needs to be that high or like 8.5-10 because just by the face that if u get multiple ones stuck on ur army ur gonna need more time, sure 10seconds for 1 mine should be easy, but lets say 5 hit ur army (they have 6 range? so shouldnt be that hard if ur going hardcore mech, building them for 75 minerals and 25 gas means ur banking up more minerals and gas that go into extra fac, which are need cause ur cutting tank/warhound production time) So with 5mines on their army the timer seems perfect to me tho ( i havnt played so jelly of u) lol ur 4-gate sounds awesome did u try it vs anyone that would be funny to see HotS go back to 4 gates lol also if the widow mine is a mech unit doesn it get mech upgrades? siege tank get +5 so the widow mine would get like +10? lol, does it? hm i agree with ur opinion of the oracles clock field where ur gonna need detection all the time now, the pressure/allin builds that mc does are damn strong with the oracle's cloak 0_0 wow lol, maybe it should be upgradeable? or locked by a building or something (maybe the templar archives like in brood war or something) Are u entering the TL HotS contest with this blog?
I tried it on desrow in a pvz and won, and in one other game i tried it. Mothership core in the current build lets you give your nexus 100 energy for only 25 energy of the mothership core...lol.
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I also forgot to mention, the mines are very smart and do not overkill. So if 5 units walk in range of 5 mines, each mine will target one of the 5 units.
So mines are very cost effective against expensive units but not cost efficient if it's just 1 zergling triggering it. 1 guy I played started to send single zerglings in to try to set off mines.
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Am I surprised you think every change for Zerg/Protoss is 'too good', while Terran gets disappointing units except the mine?
When I saw your username, I instantly knew why.
Warhound, a "mech marauder"? Strong AA on a mech unit is a huge plus, seeing as Mutas force marines, and Thors are too high in tech/costly to get them early. Which means, Mutas force Marines, then Z can build infestors/banelings to try to counter that. Now, Terran aren't forced to go at least partially bio to defend vs. Mutas. Imagine if BW didn't have goliaths, T would have an extremely hard time going mech without going at least partially bio.
Since I'm horrible with marine control, I'm actually really excited about warhound.
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On June 11 2012 15:32 GhostOwl wrote:
Am I surprised you think every change for Zerg/Protoss is 'too good', while Terran gets disappointing units except the mine?
When I saw your username, I instantly knew why.
Warhound, a "mech marauder"? Strong AA on a mech unit is a huge plus, seeing as Mutas force marines, and Thors are too high in tech/costly to get them early. Which means, Mutas force Marines, then Z can build infestors/banelings to try to counter that. Now, Terran aren't forced to go at least partially bio to defend vs. Mutas. Imagine if BW didn't have goliaths, T would have an extremely hard time going mech without going at least partially bio.
Since I'm horrible with marine control, I'm actually really excited about warhound.
You realize the Warhound no longer has AA, right?
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On June 11 2012 15:32 GhostOwl wrote:
Am I surprised you think every change for Zerg/Protoss is 'too good', while Terran gets disappointing units except the mine?
When I saw your username, I instantly knew why.
Warhound, a "mech marauder"? Strong AA on a mech unit is a huge plus, seeing as Mutas force marines, and Thors are too high in tech/costly to get them early. Which means, Mutas force Marines, then Z can build infestors/banelings to try to counter that. Now, Terran aren't forced to go at least partially bio to defend vs. Mutas. Imagine if BW didn't have goliaths, T would have an extremely hard time going mech without going at least partially bio.
Since I'm horrible with marine control, I'm actually really excited about warhound.
Did you read the blog or are you bashing my personality or balance posts that I made during the WOL beta over 2 years ago? "When I saw your username..." oh you must have seen it and gone into hater mode and not even read the blog. The Terran new stuff was underwhelming in comparison to all of the new Protoss and Zerg toys, and basically everyone universally agreed.
As for being too good, apparently you didn't read the blog at all, because I literally said in the blog a bajillion times that it's really great that every unit/thing for each race is "imba" or appears to be very strong because it's similar to brood war design/balance of the races. Every race has "too good" stuff which is good.
To top it off on your inane comments, you say the warhound shoots air...it doesn't in the current build.
So basically, I'm saying, if you're going to comment about stuff i actually wrote, that's cool n great even if you disagree. But if you're going to comment in the context of posts I made 2 yrs ago about balance during the WOL beta, then kindly fuck off
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Nice blog, completely agree with the warhound. =/
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
I disagree with the role of warhounds in tvz. Warhound shits on everything that's on the ground. Add in marines and medivacs behind to deal DPS to air and melee units and that unit combo seems stupidly strong in tvz and tvp.
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On June 11 2012 15:59 T.O.P. wrote:
I disagree with the role of warhounds in tvz. Warhound shits on everything that's on the ground. Add in marines and medivacs behind to deal DPS to air and melee units and that unit combo seems stupidly strong in tvz and tvp.
I don't think the warhound gets bonus damage vs any Zerg units really...so it would mainly be a meatshield right? Otherwise, it seems pointless in TvZ to me.
You might be right about bio + warhound in TvP though. I didn't do any bio or bio/mech builds because I just wanted to test 100% mech and give feedback on how mech will change with HOTS in all the match-ups. But yeah, I see what you're saying. If you know the WOL mass marine + medivac + banshee + thor style, imagining that with the warhounds (instead of thors) sounds pretty damn good lmao.
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I don't think that the tempest will be a 1 A unit because if you just 1 A it will target zerglings, locusts, roaches, marines battle hellions while you should target infestors brood lords tanks ghosts which stay in the back.
Also thanks to it's decent speed (2.25) you can try to retreat while the attack is charging (which is easy because you can see when it's full thanks to the growing ball) to avoid being abducted(viper and tempest have same range) and somewhat abuse range against AA (hit many times before e.g. corruptors get in range).
Also the positioning of the unit it's gonna be very important.
Agree about the warhound, thor , raven and tank needing some change
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Not really sure if the BW mentality is that everything is imbalanced. It's more like the effect of a unit becomes more and more imbalanced in the hands of a skillful player.
Eg.
Siege tanks. Yeah they are great on their own, but in order to make the most out of them, you spread them out, have good positioning. Suddenly it's no longer a siege tank, it's a spellcaster that makes your army disappear  .
Vultures/Mines: You use them to buffer for siege tanks, but if your name is Fantasy, it becomes the deadliest harassment tool available.
Lurkers: Lurker/ling could be used for both defense and offense. Especially with good ling micro, you could cut off flanks and set up nice attacks.
Whereas:
Tempest: It has 22 range, so people will probably think that's it's OP if/when they let the opposing Protoss player mass alot of them. But even so, it's similar to the BC/Carrier in the fact that if you can get a critical mass, then you were probably winning anyways.
Swarm Host: I'll just burrow these here, and hope they do their job. It just doesn't seem like there's anything you can "do" to help them shift from a defensive to offensive role.
I'm interested about the widow mines though. 10 seconds is a long time for a potential zealot to minecharge (minedrag but with charge ) into your tanks, if friendly fire were to be implemented. Not to mention if friendly fire were to be implemented, the distancing between the mines and the tanks would have to be drastically different. In BW there was this nice balance where if the goon shot the mine, the tank could shoot the goon, and if you placed it correctly, you also did not have to worry about being mine dragged.
The mine's role in BW was actually not to cause damage though. It was to delay the Protoss army and/or to funnel the Protoss army down a narrower passage, where your mass of siege tanks could be more effective. Essentially, it allows you to get a better position. I'm really concerned that the devs don't see the bigger picture sometimes, that they just focus on things like damage and health (battle hellion, warhound rockets)
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Uhh, what's all these hots blogs about a contest? Did I miss something?
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I really want to write a long detailed thing. But there's two main points I need to focus on and I'm so tired.
1. I feel like the warhound is meant to be simply a mech maurader. The sole reason to use it over a standard maurader is to save on upgrade costs if you're going mech. Frankly though, it's debatable whether or not it's worth it in my opinion (from pure theory crafting), because if you're investing on mech you know you're going to be econ heavy, and what you save making mauraders instead might give you upgrade cost, AND give you the mobility of stim. It's primary feature is breaking seige lines...but every unit being added has the feature of breaking seige lines, and terran already has other ways to deal with them. The warhound to me reinforces the general theme I feel that blizzard has spent a lot of time focusing on the new, with not enough focus on how it interacts with the current things (which you can then go on to ramble about how important it is that they used showmatches where they asked the players specifically to primarily use the new units bla bla bla). I don't know how things will mix, but I'm not terribly excited about any of them. To be more frank, I think it was a terrible terrible mistake on blizzard's part to create a strategy game, plan on them having it be competitive, and PLAN on redesigning the fucking thing multiple times, and this is one of the primary problems that arises from it.
2. The reaper. I don't even think the reaper made your discussion. Genuinely I wish they would just remove it. I have no idea why they are trying to make something work with it. Giving it healing is nice for players with bad micro, but after it lives it eats up supply. After they appear opponents know they exist and can be ready for them, as they're already ready for them generally by the four minute mark anyway, and for the rest of the game. Without the building attack what exactly are you going to do with them? Have a fifteenth way to get scouting information IF you can even get into the base alive again? I know in my first point I'm sitting bitching about unit interactions and not paying enough attention to current units...but this isn't a unit that needs the kind of attention it's getting. It requires actual help and redesign, not bright shiney paper and bows so that it looks nice for expansion buyers while still being functionally shit.
I'll be back to discuss more later, I think. I am so tired.
EDIT: if there's any way to smart-fire widow mines or a way to guarantee you can hit them onto certain units safely (if only to make those units run away for ten seconds), they're actually retarded powerful.
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Havent played hots, but one thing that crossed my mind about what you said about the warhound. You say its a boring 1A mech marauder.
What if thats the point of it?
I mean, you always need some kind of "boring" massable unit in front of your more niched (spellcasting units, siege units, etc) "flavour" units.
-You need the boring ling and roaches in to assist infestors, blings and eventually brood lords. But neither lings nor roaches are interesting at all.
-You need stalkers and zealots to assist any colossi, immortals and sentries. Is zealot an interesting unit? Not really.
-And you need marines and marauders together with ghosts, vikings, etc.
Currently mech has really been lacking that massable unit which makes up for the major part of your army. Currently you have the siege unit (tank) and the AA unit (thor) which is also ok as ground vs ground unit. But both of those are highly expensive, especially in gas. You cant really make a unit comp where tanks and thors are the big part of your army. So you have the hellion, you might say? But thats the problem. Hellion isnt that good as massable make-up-the-large-part-of-your-army-unit. They do ok-ish vs light units but due to their slow attack rate they are hard/bad to use in large engagements. Zealot/colossi clean them up in no time. Land a fungal on them and ling/roach do the same. And if you try to micro them to maximize their damage while avoiding being hit, then you're suddenly exposing your thors/tanks to focus fire. Having a wall of hellion is front of your tanks/thors really is nowhere as effective as having roaches in front of infestors or zealots in front of colossi. And quite frankly I dont think it was ever the purpose of the hellion. The hellion was probably meant as the mech harass/scout unit.
So enter the warhound? The roach/stalker/marauder of Terran Mech? The unit which will be standing in front of tanks and thors, possibly supplemented by a few (battle?) hellions? By addind such a unit, you actually might increase the efectiveness of tank/thors a lot, since they arent dependant on having units of a different tech tree in front of them (bio). And these units generally really arent very interesting.
Couldnt that be the reason? I dont know, just a thought....
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
On June 11 2012 16:07 avilo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2012 15:59 T.O.P. wrote:
I disagree with the role of warhounds in tvz. Warhound shits on everything that's on the ground. Add in marines and medivacs behind to deal DPS to air and melee units and that unit combo seems stupidly strong in tvz and tvp. I don't think the warhound gets bonus damage vs any Zerg units really...so it would mainly be a meatshield right? Otherwise, it seems pointless in TvZ to me. You might be right about bio + warhound in TvP though. I didn't do any bio or bio/mech builds because I just wanted to test 100% mech and give feedback on how mech will change with HOTS in all the match-ups. But yeah, I see what you're saying. If you know the WOL mass marine + medivac + banshee + thor style, imagining that with the warhounds (instead of thors) sounds pretty damn good lmao.
I guess warhound mainly acts as a meatshield in tvz. But those things are hard to kill and do a lot of dps. Both roaches and hydras are terrible vs it and it takes quite a bit of time for lings to kill one so marines and battle hellions can clean up those lings before those warhounds die. In my experience, marines are better than battle hellions in killing zealots or lings.
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