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On September 07 2012 10:11 SarcasmMonster wrote:In regards to Falling's "In Defence of Mech" and this thread. O_O
Wow, thats pretty great. Hopefully they can find a roll for the warhound that is mech like. I wouldn't mind a mech sniper, with some longer range, pin point damage. A range 10 missile and a crappy basic attack wouldn't be a bad unit with low HP wouldn't be a horrible unit.
Edit: MY GOD HIS BATTLE NET PORTRAIT IS DESTRUCTIBLE ROCKS! WE HAVE REACHED THE EVENT HORIZON!
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On September 07 2012 10:11 SarcasmMonster wrote:In regards to Falling's "In Defence of Mech" and this thread. O_O
How do we know that's in regard of Fallen's thread?
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Btw... I was wondering why you thought Rock was Dustin Browder instead of Dustin BRowder being Dustin Browder, but then I looked at the name again, and then the profile picture...
lolololololol
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On September 07 2012 11:33 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Btw... I was wondering why you thought Rock was Dustin Browder instead of Dustin BRowder being Dustin Browder, but then I looked at the name again, and then the profile picture...
lolololololol
It is so good. It should renew our faith in HotS in every way.
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Yeah. Going from Goliath to Warhound is like going from Reaver to Colossus.
Here's what I'd like to see with mech in HOTS:
1. Remove Widow Mines and Hunter Seeker Missile. Instead, give Ravens a new spell "Deploy Widow Mine", which requires a 150/150/110 reseach at a Starport tech lab, and costs 75 energy. But make it immobile, and only target ground units. This would allow Ravens to fill the role of late-game Vultures in SC1 (mines not costing supply was a big factor in their strength). This would really improve lategame TvZ and TvP without making Terran's already stupidly strong 1-2 base timing pushes even stronger. Currently we only have one viable caster unit, Ghost, and its use is entirely limited to TvP. Such a spell would be useful in all three matchups.
2. Remove the Warhound's anti-mechanical missiles, and give it a single target anti-air attack that matches its ground attack. Nerf it from 2 supply to 3 supply.
3. Remove Strike Cannons from the game. Give Thors a new tech, "Hammer Mode", 150/150/110, researched at Factory tech lab. When Hammered(lawl), Thors become immobile, but their armor increases from 1 to 3, their air attack range increases from 10 to 13, and their air attack damage changes from 6(+6 vs Light)x4 to 50 vs all. Ground attack remains the same. 3.5 sec to enter/exit Hammer Mode, just like Siege Mode. Basically this would give mech an anti-air equivalent of what siege mode does for ground.
4. Change it so Hellions always rally out of Factories in mobile mode. Add 1 sec to the time it takes to Transform to Battle Mode. Subtract 1 sec from the time it takes to Transform to Mobile Mode. Improve the range of the Battle Hellion cone attack from 2 to 3 to make it a little better vs everything-not-speedlings-or-zealots.
I think all of these changes would make SC2's factory units feel more like SC1 mech without adding SC1 units back into the game. I think the essence of mech is that it is incredibly strong when in position, but incredibly weak when out of position.
The most important issue imo is that the Factory needs better anti-air. There is no such thing as pure mech in SC2, you must get either Marines or Vikings for antiair in all three matchups.
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How about simply let warhound counter Immortals. Immortals is the biggest weakness of mech. We can change the warhound into light armor, and reduce it's HP to about 125. so the warhound can protect the tanks and thors from immotals, but the other units can beat warhound easier.
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Wish I had seen this post before I wrote my own post with the same kind of opinion. It fits in this thread though, so even if it get's burrowed I guess it belongs here instead of making a new thread. Here it is:
Intro
I'd like to share my thoughts on the concept of the Heart of the Swarm terran unit the Warhound. Let me just stress that this is not a post about balance, as the power of the unit will be tweaked as time passes regardless, making it fit into the games balance sooner or later. This is also not a post about the visual design of the unit.
Blizzards intent with the Warhound
1) The unit is meant to be an option to break siege lines in TvT. Blizzard felt at the time of the reveal that TvTs took too long to finish or that you had too few options in situations where both players set up siege line fronts.
2) Giving mech play more options or general solid choices so that we would see mech more often in every matchup. The Warhound is considered to be an option as a core mech unit, while in WoL mech-armies usually depend on the Siege Tank as the core of the army (granted, there are some expections).
My respons to These Reasons
1) The TvTs of today have moved quite a bit away from the "old days" (when the HotS units were revealed) of massive siege lines with the occational drop or tricky play as aggression. First off we do still see mech a healthy amount of times in pro games in TvT, with bio-mech as an option that is also used quite frequently. However due to the metagame changes, general improvement in skills and especially the map pool changes, the cold war style of TvTs are not that common anymore. Today we see players focus more on slow lategame switches to air (ravens with seeker missile and pdd, mass vikings and some BCs/banshees) or just simply army movement, multipronged attacks and positional chess as the newer maps offer more diversity in terms of attack paths and harder-to-cover-expansion positions. Maps like Shakuras Plateau are almost completely extinct.
2) Mech has the recent few months become a more common strategy in the other matchups. This has been done both with pure mech styles as well as hybrid styles (bio-tank vs Protoss for example). The need to give mech more options to become a valid choice has been significantly reduced. Three new options for factory-play seems like an overkill to fullfill whatever need of options is left.
The Overall Concept of the Warhound in Gameplay
Let me put it bluntly: the Warhound is an extremely boring concept. What we have here might be the least interesting unit in the game regardless of race. Blizzards intent with Sc2, at least according to them before WoL was released, was to make the units in Sc2 more interesting than in Sc1 by making them more complex and open for players to experiment with in terms of ways to use them. Granted, some units had good intentions but didn't work out to be that interesting in actual gameplay, but at least most units had some sort of flavor. Let me give a couple of examples:
What worked
The Baneling. If the unit only was a rolling suicide-bomb it wouldn't be as interesting, but through burrow, overlord drops and being able to detonate without direct contact with something the unit got a lot more depth and possibilities to explore. Through the history of Sc2 we have certainly seen a lot of interesting gameplay with this unit, making it one of the most loved units in the game.
What didn't work that well, but had a decent concept
The Viking. It has an option to land and become a ground unit making it a much more interesting concept than just an air-to-air long range attacker. Speculations both from Blizzard and players early went towards play where the unit would be used both as a normal fighting unit and a harass unit, however in the end the landing part never really became a significant part of the unit in gameplay. Still, even if the concept wasn't that successful, it wasn't a bad effort. Some concepts will give you expected results, some will fail and some will give you totally unexpected results.
And what about the Warhound?
With all the exciting new units in HotS like the Viper, the Oracle, the Swarm Host, the Widow Mine etc we can only dream of all the possible ways they can be used in actual gameplay as players get to fully explore their potential.
Then there's the Warhound. It's a unit that does more damage against mech-units with a different animation when attacking these units. That's it. There is nothing else that makes this unit stand out, that makes you think of different possiblities in using it other than simply as a damage dealer in your army. If you sit down and think of what an amazing player can do with this unit, it's basically that he can focus fire mech units to provide maximum damage output.
If you think of what units you consider boring in WoL, what units come to mind? Many will say the roach. Sure it's used a lot, but mostly it's just used as a unit to absorb and deal damage (without going into specifics on strategies like trading units to free up supply etc). Even the "boring" roach had a ton more potential in it's concept though. Burrow movement, increased regeneration when burrowed and even the speed upgrade gave it a lot more potential in terms of uses. Even if it never actually became a big part of the unit except for a short time to deal with a specific strategy (burrow vs non-observer ZvP timing attacks), it still had the design there and the possibility. The Warhound make the Roach look like an amazingly complex and exciting unit in my opinion, and yes I don't think the Roach is very exciting at all.
Some would also point at the Marauder as a boring unit. Much like the roach it has been a big part of the Sc2 history, but not for giving interesting ways to play the game. But again it has way more depth than the Warhound, as the Marauder at least has stim and concusive shells to give it some more flavor than just a robust damage dealer. Again the Warhound makes the Marauder look like a complex machinery in comparison.
My plead to Blizzard
Please make the Warhound a more interesting unit in terms of concept, or remove it from the game. HotS should give us new and exciting units that tickles the mind in what crazy possibilities there will be, and in large part the new units bring that....except for the Warhound. Broodwar gave Sc1 a whole new range of interesting units that in large part gave the game a lot more depth, and the same should be the most important goal with HotS for multiplayer, for every single new addition.
tl;dr: The concept of the Warhound as a unit is as boring and uninspiring as can be. Either change it or remove it completely.
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imo, remove the thor, give the warhound an anti air weap, done.
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Completly agree with the thread creator.
Quoting Blizz on the WH:
For the Warhound, we wanted to create a really core and solid unit from the factory vs. Protoss and Terran.
This core unit is supposed to be the Tank, which requires a buff in either or better in reduced supply / gas cost (like in BW).
So which roles / holes have to be filled for mech?
- Some kind of cheap map / space control tool like Spider Mines. Widow Mines dont fullfill this role imo (I believe they are at 2 supply in the current HOTS build), imo they are just weired, hitting air and being produced directly instead of from some unit.
- Solid anti-armored air unit like the Goliath from BW. The Thor is an anti-light air specialist and to counter air one needs Vikings, which require different upgrades. I dont this concept, but I guess it would be decent to have another anti-air support unit, which suggested to be the WH.
Personal idea, feel free to disregard:
A mine laying missile launcher truck / robot / walker whatever, which fullfills the the points above:
- Can produce (like the Reaver can produce Scarabs) and lay mines. Mines cost 25-50 minerals and are similiar (or equal) to Spider Mines, they dont hit air and do moderate damage (less than Widow Mines currently) and hurt your own units caught in the splash radius.
- Has an long range anti armor air attack (with splash?), which requires them to go into some kind of stationary siege mode (great idea by Avilo for the WH). This still leaves room for the Viking, as it is much more mobile and better suited to be combined with bio or additional support for mech.
The application would be to be able to mine up important areas of the map and protect your push from flanks, therefore give it a speed similiar as the Siege Tank or slightly faster. If required they go into anti air mode in the lategame if the opponent starts to produce capital flying units.
With this unit the Warhound and Widow Mine can be removed obviously.
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Haven't seen much of the warhound, but to me it seems ugly, too fast, too strong, not enough micro intensive.
My idea for a better warhound:
High dps ground attack
Low HP
+ Ability:
Range is decreasing the more the unit moves.
If it stays still, the range of it's attacks increases slowly until it can hit sieged tanks.
This would make it a strong siege line/collossus breaker, but because of it's speed it could be repositioned quicker to give it some defensive purposes aswell.
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Fact: SC2 is the direct successor of BW!
-> Means that I expect certain aspects of the metagame (pointing to the role of a "classic" mech army in BW) to be carried over to SC2. Simple as that! What happens right now is they try to make SC easier and easier for casuals which pushs it not only away from eSports, but also away from being the unique experience SC always offered to me!
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Perfect post, avilo!
Now I finally fully agree with you!
The warhound however can be fixed just by changing some numbers. I.e. make it suck against most things that aren't immortals simply by changing its type to light (so that it doesn't receive bonus damage from immortals) and reducing the warhound's attack damage to 10 (so that both with its main attack and with its ability it doesn't trigger immortal's shields). Then adjust the attack speed to ensure that warhound is just a reactionary unit to mass immortals/stalkers, and is not build in large quantities otherwise. This way the core mech unit will be tank, and warhounds/helions will be built mostly as meat shields for tanks with ratio between warhounds/helions depending on whether a protoss player is stalker/immortal or zealot/archon heavy. Probably also make warhound take less gas and more minerals, so that it doesn't take gas from tank production.
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i like your idea of siege warhound anti-air, but for this the thor should be removed(and for me its great, always hated the thor)
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Only problem I see with the warhound so far is that it has just a tad too much HP. Other than that, I think this is mostly just whining from zergs who have gotten used to being able to drone to 80 FOR FREE and are worried that they may not be able to do so in HotS.
It has a hard counter for crying out loud people, it cant shoot air....
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On September 07 2012 20:28 CaptainCrush wrote:
Only problem I see with the warhound so far is that it has just a tad too much HP. Other than that, I think this is mostly just whining from zergs who have gotten used to being able to drone to 80 FOR FREE and are worried that they may not be able to do so in HotS.
It has a hard counter for crying out loud people, it cant shoot air....
If you really think that you fail to understand the discussion thats going on. Most of the discussion is NOT about the balance, but general unit design that seems very flawed to most people. Try to read the OP bro.
Also it's really Protoss thats QQing because the Warhound counters every composition they can build basically.
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really good post Avilio, hope Blizzard will hear you.
I think mech also is a strategy where you have to be cautious and methodical, to have a good understanding of what's happening and position your unit in a way that matters.
I think the warhound is bad because, combined with the battle-hellion and thor composition, it gives you a all-around mobile army...don't you think it is a remake of a protoss death ball (stalkers, zealots, Colli) ?
This is the main reason why I don't like to play protoss... when you play terran mech, I find it more interesting because it is not just building a big army and a-click in the face of your opponent, it is methodicaly climb the map to the throat of him.
that's why I think Warhound mobility should be nerfed, I think it should be a siege/unsiege unit (like tanks) able to deal huge damage to mech unit like you said
and by the way I also find the design is ugly and I would change it like a ion-cannon or something like that :
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dq4Iv.jpg)
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On September 07 2012 20:39 Brahoono wrote:Show nested quote +On September 07 2012 20:28 CaptainCrush wrote:
Only problem I see with the warhound so far is that it has just a tad too much HP. Other than that, I think this is mostly just whining from zergs who have gotten used to being able to drone to 80 FOR FREE and are worried that they may not be able to do so in HotS.
It has a hard counter for crying out loud people, it cant shoot air.... If you really think that you fail to understand the discussion thats going on. Most of the discussion is NOT about the balance, but general unit design that seems very flawed to most people. Try to read the OP bro. Also it's really Protoss thats QQing because the Warhound counters every composition they can build basically.
I dont fail to see what is being discussed here, I just dont agree with you. There's a pretty big difference. I was merely stating what I see wrong with the unit and NOT agreeing with most of the other complaints in this thread. The warhound will be fine against toss as well, especially once Blizz takes the HP down a bit. Immortals do somewhat well against them now, they will destroy them by the time the beta ends.
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that image remind me of the diamondback, they could just add this...
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Totally agree with the notion that the Warhound is a really badly designed unit. Not too sure about another siege mode, I would prefer something different, but still something that encourages strategic thinking instead of 1Aing. How about something like a flip-over mode that would greatly limit the speed (maybe like queen off creep) and possibly lowering its hit points. This way, it would be an effective counter to air units AND also encouraging opponent to counter these fearsome anti-air units with something on the ground. And what counters ground? Siege tanks!
Voila you now have a dynamic unit composition.
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United Kingdom12021 Posts
On September 07 2012 11:10 Cedstick wrote:Show nested quote +On September 07 2012 10:11 SarcasmMonster wrote:In regards to Falling's "In Defence of Mech" and this thread. O_O How do we know that's in regard of Fallen's thread?
He quoted a post with the link and said that.
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EPT
