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Coming from a lowly diamond Zerg, I agree with what the op said. Terran seems a little neglected in HotS. Blizzard has been showing love to the units Terran already has, but for an expansion, more units usually make things more interesting. So I think the war hound should make a return.
Mech has difficulty dealing with armor currently in TvP, relying on the late, expensive Thor to deal its much needed anti armor DPS. This encourages turtling terrans, waiting to max out with thors and hellions. As mentioned previously in this thread, these changes are what I feel would improve TvP mech and also make TvZ mech a little more interesting:
Thor javelin missiles removed.
Warhound returns, with marauder-like anti armor DPS and javelin missiles.
Warhound cost roughly 150mins 75gas
Warhounds same speed as hellbats, and similar hp to rauders.
As for making the warhound more than just a better marauder that comes from the factory, maybe it could drop weak spider mines on a cooldown? They'd deal something like 40dmg in a small radius to ground only. Similar to a burrowed bane, but they'd have a limited lifespan. Could also experiment with the mines causing damage to its own teams units too, like a nuke, making placement and planning essential.
Dunno, these are just my noobie balance ramblings, I probably have no idea what I'm talking about!
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United States4883 Posts
If I may throw out a thought:
Although I wrote the OP, my biggest issue was that there was a hole in gameplay where terrans couldn't stay alive in the early-game and couldn't get an even footing with protoss in the midgame due to mech being inefficient in low numbers. The question was whether we need to bring back to warhound to fill that role?
I think with the latest patch, Blizzard is making headway in that direction as battle hellions now WRECK small numbers of gateway units, especially zealots. This allows mech players to play into the midgame more confidently, and perhaps will lead to a much easier style of mech. The only real issue now facing terrans is getting a comfortable early-game, as the stalker poke + MsC in the mineral still cause all kinds of problems for meching players and force terrans to have to make a minimum of 5 marines.
Thoughts?
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United Arab Emirates439 Posts
On January 11 2013 09:22 SC2John wrote:
If I may throw out a thought:
Although I wrote the OP, my biggest issue was that there was a hole in gameplay where terrans couldn't stay alive in the early-game and couldn't get an even footing with protoss in the midgame due to mech being inefficient in low numbers. The question was whether we need to bring back to warhound to fill that role?
I think with the latest patch, Blizzard is making headway in that direction as battle hellions now WRECK small numbers of gateway units, especially zealots. This allows mech players to play into the midgame more confidently, and perhaps will lead to a much easier style of mech. The only real issue now facing terrans is getting a comfortable early-game, as the stalker poke + MsC in the mineral still cause all kinds of problems for meching players and force terrans to have to make a minimum of 5 marines.
Thoughts?
You only need 4 marines, or 3 and a Widow Mine, or 1 Reaper and 3 Marines, as long as you are using a Bunker. I agree it's somewhat limiting, not as good as in WoL where you could have 1 marine and a Bunker, but I don't think it's really that much of a concern. I don't think it clearly needs a "fix".
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United States4883 Posts
On January 11 2013 10:32 ZjiublingZ wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2013 09:22 SC2John wrote:
If I may throw out a thought:
Although I wrote the OP, my biggest issue was that there was a hole in gameplay where terrans couldn't stay alive in the early-game and couldn't get an even footing with protoss in the midgame due to mech being inefficient in low numbers. The question was whether we need to bring back to warhound to fill that role?
I think with the latest patch, Blizzard is making headway in that direction as battle hellions now WRECK small numbers of gateway units, especially zealots. This allows mech players to play into the midgame more confidently, and perhaps will lead to a much easier style of mech. The only real issue now facing terrans is getting a comfortable early-game, as the stalker poke + MsC in the mineral still cause all kinds of problems for meching players and force terrans to have to make a minimum of 5 marines.
Thoughts? You only need 4 marines, or 3 and a Widow Mine, or 1 Reaper and 3 Marines, as long as you are using a Bunker. I agree it's somewhat limiting, not as good as in WoL where you could have 1 marine and a Bunker, but I don't think it's really that much of a concern. I don't think it clearly needs a "fix".
Well, it takes 3 marines to chase off a MsC, and at least 2 to deal with any pressure at the front (you can get away with only 1 in bunker in WoL because it's a metagame play, not because you can actually get away with it). The more marines you have to make, the later your tech is going to get up. As for all of the other options, they require gas, which means your expansion is delayed. With protoss being able to go for tech, a safe expansion, and units all at the same time versus a terran who can only do 2 of those, there's clearly a bit of a problem. And, as always, there's always the looming threat of an all-in coming your way.
Perhaps removing the techlab requirement for reapers will help a lot in scouting all-ins and punishing protosses who move across the map with everything, but, (as far as I can tell), reapers probably need some kind of change like a build time reduction or a slightly improved damage (maybe just bumping it to 5 damage, making worker kills take 4 hits instead of 5). Otherwise, I can't see the advantage of getting early gas, delaying my expansion and marines, JUST to scout for what could be something like a 17 nexus with 2-3 stalkers defending.
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Given the nature of starcraft, I think the determing element in this case should be units
which require micro. Granted, needing to micro at a 400 apm level would just be too maddening, but
this game has to encourage micro, that's almost the whole point and fun of this game!
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United States4883 Posts
On January 12 2013 08:19 WeddingEpisode wrote:
Given the nature of starcraft, I think the determing element in this case should be units
which require micro. Granted, needing to micro at a 400 apm level would just be too maddening, but
this game has to encourage micro, that's almost the whole point and fun of this game!
That, I actually disagree on fully. Starcraft is a game of macro and it always has been, just as Warcraft has always been a game of micro. The best design goal Blizzard can have is to make positional balance and space control an option so that players must keep up with several areas of the map simultaneously. This promotes macro to its fullest by forcing players to keep up with expansion management. Micro is a cool side-effect of units being different and interesting, as well as the pathing system and the AI.
Given the true nature of starcraft, the determining element is not whether or not the unit promotes micro, but whether it promotes positional play. That being said, the upgraded hellbat helps a lot with small numbers of mech units and fills the role that the warhound would have filled fairly well. HOWEVER, I still believe that unless the supply numbers for tanks and mines are decreased, we will not see a truly positional game.
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On January 11 2013 09:22 SC2John wrote:
If I may throw out a thought:
Although I wrote the OP, my biggest issue was that there was a hole in gameplay where terrans couldn't stay alive in the early-game and couldn't get an even footing with protoss in the midgame due to mech being inefficient in low numbers. The question was whether we need to bring back to warhound to fill that role?
I think with the latest patch, Blizzard is making headway in that direction as battle hellions now WRECK small numbers of gateway units, especially zealots. This allows mech players to play into the midgame more confidently, and perhaps will lead to a much easier style of mech. The only real issue now facing terrans is getting a comfortable early-game, as the stalker poke + MsC in the mineral still cause all kinds of problems for meching players and force terrans to have to make a minimum of 5 marines.
Thoughts?
This is why I think hellbats are way overpowered at every stage of the game. Today I was rushing to hellbats. Fac, armory, reactor, stargate. There is a 4 hellbat timing drop timing that is guaranteed damage. With the medivac speed boost you cannot see it coming or even catch up to it if you do. The fact that scvs and medivacs can heal them makes thor/hellbat/medivac composition unstoppable.
I have beaten players much better than me with this build, better upgrades and micro didn't help them. I think this unit was a mistake.
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On January 13 2013 10:34 scaban84 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2013 09:22 SC2John wrote:
If I may throw out a thought:
Although I wrote the OP, my biggest issue was that there was a hole in gameplay where terrans couldn't stay alive in the early-game and couldn't get an even footing with protoss in the midgame due to mech being inefficient in low numbers. The question was whether we need to bring back to warhound to fill that role?
I think with the latest patch, Blizzard is making headway in that direction as battle hellions now WRECK small numbers of gateway units, especially zealots. This allows mech players to play into the midgame more confidently, and perhaps will lead to a much easier style of mech. The only real issue now facing terrans is getting a comfortable early-game, as the stalker poke + MsC in the mineral still cause all kinds of problems for meching players and force terrans to have to make a minimum of 5 marines.
Thoughts? This is why I think hellbats are way overpowered at every stage of the game. Today I was rushing to hellbats. Fac, armory, reactor, stargate. There is a 4 hellbat timing drop timing that is guaranteed damage. With the medivac speed boost you cannot see it coming or even catch up to it if you do. The fact that scvs and medivacs can heal them makes thor/hellbat/medivac composition unstoppable. I have beaten players much better than me with this build, better upgrades and micro didn't help them. I think this unit was a mistake.
The problem is also that the battle hellion, a very mobile unit with its transforming mode, is also now the most efficient source of damage vs many other unit types, giving it too few weaknesses. Given its immobility the tank should be dealing the heaviest damage, with the hellions doing less damage or at least more specialized damage to balance out their mobility advantage.
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On January 11 2013 08:04 Grae wrote:
Mech has difficulty dealing with armor currently in TvP, relying on the late, expensive Thor to deal its much needed anti armor DPS. This encourages turtling terrans, waiting to max out with thors and hellions. As mentioned previously in this thread, these changes are what I feel would improve TvP mech and also make TvZ mech a little more interesting:
Why does mech have a problem with armored units when the core unit - the Siege Tank - has bonus damage against armored units and a long range? The answer is simple: It deals pitifully low damage which gets further reduced by the splash damage modification. Easy conclusion is to increase the damage of the Siege Tank.
The design of Starcraft is based on having FEW units and no units which do the same job as other units. Thor and Siege Tank both have +armored and that is BAD DESIGN.
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Blizzard just needs to ask themselves before making a unit, "Can spending time microing this unit increase its value?"
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On January 13 2013 17:17 Emuking wrote:
Blizzard just needs to ask themselves before making a unit, "Can spending time microing this unit increase its value?"
They also need to ask themselves "Is this unit equally well useable at all levels of play AND play against?" At least for Stalkers - which require Blink/Forcefield to be worth it - and Banelings - which are a pain to be playing against - they failed.
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On January 13 2013 17:19 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2013 17:17 Emuking wrote:
Blizzard just needs to ask themselves before making a unit, "Can spending time microing this unit increase its value?" They also need to ask themselves "Is this unit equally well useable at all levels of play AND play against?" At least for Stalkers - which require Blink/Forcefield to be worth it - and Banelings - which are a pain to be playing against - they failed.
I think banelings is "balanced" around the fact that the zerg has to use more time not watching the battle (but injecting and stuff like that), while the terran can look at the battle almost the whole time, those at mid skill levels muta/bling is actually balanced. At higher skill levels, the terran just becomes too good at marine/tank micro and the potential for muta/bling micro is just very limited (and so is the potential for harassing with them). This means that it (at least in wol) was slightly UP at highest level.
At low/mid level (not noob level but something like gold-diamnd I guess) the zerg has decent macro, but micro'ing tank/marine is too difficult for the terran so he can't be consistently cost effective --> Muta/bling is slightly zerg favored.
So in order to design units properly one needs to make each units as difficult to play against as to use optimally. Its possible that zerg should be less of a micro race than the other races, but then they should have a wide options of multitaskbased play (which doesn't really work efficiently today).
Every single unit should be easy to use and difficut to master. And for every single micro "trick" that player A can do with the unit, Player B needs to have way's to "remicro" against it.
if that's the case then you obtain two things:
1) Extremely entertaining games.
2) Balanceable across various skill levels.
Time after time though, we see Blizzard making terrible units that doesn't fulfill these criteria, which is bascially why the game becomes boring and difficult to balance, and the balance team (David Kim I guess) always have to weight whether to balance it at the top level or making it enjoyable for casuals as well.
Oh, and btw did I forget to note that muta/bling vs marine/tank is the best thing Starcraft 2 offers? And still, it has this fundemental design flaw, which just prooves how fucking awesome Starcraft could have been if every unit was designed properly.
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I've been a long time lurker on TL and a long time Terran player as well. I decided to make an account and start posting specifically because of this issue.
The Warhound was an extremely overpowered unit. It was so imbalanced that I don't think any reasonable person could expect the community's reaction to its introduction as anything but cataclysmic. That's exactly what it was. The GIGANTIC thread to remove the Warhound was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, I've ever seen in my time spent on Team Liquid.
I think that this fervent outrage comes from the fact that the things that many people dislike about Starcraft 2 were all mashed together in the iteration of the Warhound that we saw. Players, viewers, and casters alike want to see awesome micro. We want to see insane multitasking and ridiculous holds. We want to see things that are impressive. The Warhound was not this. A seven colossi death ball is not this. A wall of Spinecrawlers with infestors and Broodlords slowly pushing forward is not this.
The thing is though, that in my opinion Terran is the only race that has the potential to meet all of the criteria that the community has to find a match entertaining. Every race can do drops, but the medivac and the efficiency of marines and marauders in small squads means that Terran drops are the best. In a perfect world, the Terran army can set up a defensive position and split his army multiple times in order to harass his opponents expansions while simultaneously protecting his own. The frenetic and visceral play style available to Terran is what people want to see.
Things like the Warhound keep this awesome hyper-active and aggresive playstyle from being the dominant playstyle Starcraft 2. I think it's important to note, however, that the other 2 races already have units that are "1a gg" such as the Colossus and Broodlord. Deathballs are bad. I personally would prefer it if the Warhound was changed into a very fast moving raider unit, and the Hellion removed in favor of only the Hellbat. This is not the point I wish to make with this post though. I don't think that my opinion on the optimal unit design in Starcraft is very important because I am only in platinum league.
There is something that I think needs to be discussed, and it is directly related to the enjoyment of the game and to the success of the eSports scene in this game and others.
Everyone always talks about balance. In every single game where people can compete, people will whine about things being imbalanced. Then, reasonable persons will inform the whiners that they are blowing things out of proportion. The complainers often are blowing things out of proportion, and at the absolute highest level of play where things actually matter Starcraft is impressively balanced for the number of units and the clever player base it has.
When people respond with perfectly logical statements to complaints about imbalance they often overlook one thing that I think turns off a lot of players. To take the TvP match up for example, HT and Colossi are not overpowered because the Terran has counters to them. This may very well be, but (I must admit I feel this way as well) people feel cheated because of the amount of effort needed on the Terran side of the engagement is far greater than the amount of effort on the Protoss side.
I'm sure such a comment will piss a lot of people off, but one only needs to look at the APM numbers for ultra high level Protoss and Terran players to see that the Terran needs to do a lot more than the Protoss to win.
This isn't fun. It's balanced, but it certainly isn't fair. I shouldn't have to outplay my opponent by say a 60% margin to win. I should have to outplay my opponent by a 1% margin to win. When Terran players whine about how Protoss becomes nearly invincible late game (along with Zerg to a slightly lessened degree) we are greeted with a response that is absolutely insulting: "Don't let them get there."
That's what everyone says. It is accepted that the Terran players need to constantly harass and delay Zerg and Protoss. There is no such need for the Protoss. No Protoss player is hanging out on three bases and thinking to himself, "Man I better go do some double drops to do economic damage, otherwise I won't be able to engage his tier 3."
The warhound was not perfect by any means in the format that we saw. The fact remains though that many of my Terran friends and I think that it is absolutely absurd to remove the unit completely. Let Terran have a good late game unit. We want our late game to not be a joke. The Warhound was a midgame unit, true, but with a little reworking it could actually provide Terran some hope in the lategame of TvP. When I watch a cast of a TvP game and I see that the video is over 15-20 minutes long, I know that there is a 90% chance that the Protoss won.
This needs to change. Maybe the Warhound is the way to change it, maybe it isn't. But, change is certainly needed and this expansion is the time to do it.
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United States4883 Posts
On January 14 2013 05:23 Sigil2 wrote:
I've been a long time lurker on TL and a long time Terran player as well. I decided to make an account and start posting specifically because of this issue.
The Warhound was an extremely overpowered unit. It was so imbalanced that I don't think any reasonable person could expect the community's reaction to its introduction as anything but cataclysmic. That's exactly what it was. The GIGANTIC thread to remove the Warhound was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, I've ever seen in my time spent on Team Liquid.
I think that this fervent outrage comes from the fact that the things that many people dislike about Starcraft 2 were all mashed together in the iteration of the Warhound that we saw. Players, viewers, and casters alike want to see awesome micro. We want to see insane multitasking and ridiculous holds. We want to see things that are impressive. The Warhound was not this. A seven colossi death ball is not this. A wall of Spinecrawlers with infestors and Broodlords slowly pushing forward is not this.
The thing is though, that in my opinion Terran is the only race that has the potential to meet all of the criteria that the community has to find a match entertaining. Every race can do drops, but the medivac and the efficiency of marines and marauders in small squads means that Terran drops are the best. In a perfect world, the Terran army can set up a defensive position and split his army multiple times in order to harass his opponents expansions while simultaneously protecting his own. The frenetic and visceral play style available to Terran is what people want to see.
Things like the Warhound keep this awesome hyper-active and aggresive playstyle from being the dominant playstyle Starcraft 2. I think it's important to note, however, that the other 2 races already have units that are "1a gg" such as the Colossus and Broodlord. Deathballs are bad. I personally would prefer it if the Warhound was changed into a very fast moving raider unit, and the Hellion removed in favor of only the Hellbat. This is not the point I wish to make with this post though. I don't think that my opinion on the optimal unit design in Starcraft is very important because I am only in platinum league.
There is something that I think needs to be discussed, and it is directly related to the enjoyment of the game and to the success of the eSports scene in this game and others.
Everyone always talks about balance. In every single game where people can compete, people will whine about things being imbalanced. Then, reasonable persons will inform the whiners that they are blowing things out of proportion. The complainers often are blowing things out of proportion, and at the absolute highest level of play where things actually matter Starcraft is impressively balanced for the number of units and the clever player base it has.
When people respond with perfectly logical statements to complaints about imbalance they often overlook one thing that I think turns off a lot of players. To take the TvP match up for example, HT and Colossi are not overpowered because the Terran has counters to them. This may very well be, but (I must admit I feel this way as well) people feel cheated because of the amount of effort needed on the Terran side of the engagement is far greater than the amount of effort on the Protoss side.
I'm sure such a comment will piss a lot of people off, but one only needs to look at the APM numbers for ultra high level Protoss and Terran players to see that the Terran needs to do a lot more than the Protoss to win.
This isn't fun. It's balanced, but it certainly isn't fair. I shouldn't have to outplay my opponent by say a 60% margin to win. I should have to outplay my opponent by a 1% margin to win. When Terran players whine about how Protoss becomes nearly invincible late game (along with Zerg to a slightly lessened degree) we are greeted with a response that is absolutely insulting: "Don't let them get there."
That's what everyone says. It is accepted that the Terran players need to constantly harass and delay Zerg and Protoss. There is no such need for the Protoss. No Protoss player is hanging out on three bases and thinking to himself, "Man I better go do some double drops to do economic damage, otherwise I won't be able to engage his tier 3."
The warhound was not perfect by any means in the format that we saw. The fact remains though that many of my Terran friends and I think that it is absolutely absurd to remove the unit completely. Let Terran have a good late game unit. We want our late game to not be a joke. The Warhound was a midgame unit, true, but with a little reworking it could actually provide Terran some hope in the lategame of TvP. When I watch a cast of a TvP game and I see that the video is over 15-20 minutes long, I know that there is a 90% chance that the Protoss won.
This needs to change. Maybe the Warhound is the way to change it, maybe it isn't. But, change is certainly needed and this expansion is the time to do it.
Interesting. Although I will point out that protoss definitely has some extreme micro in max vs. max situations too. As a protoss player, you have to keep your colossus away from vikings, get blinks or storms under vikings if possible, spread templar (or micro a warp prism with templar in it), micro observers to the back of your army so they can't get sniped, wait to engage at the perfect angle, drop a guardian shield, make sure you don't A-move until your colossus get into range, blink stalkers out of the way of your zealots, spread your zealots as best you can, remember to ff marines instead of marauders with colossus, and make sure you are microing all of your templars to get the proper storms off, etc. There are a lot of whine threads about the protoss army being a 1-a army, but if the terran is controlling at a top level, the level of control needed from the protoss player is also quite high. All of that being said, you're probably quite right about TvP being extraordinarily unfair lategame for players below masters level, but on the highest levels, it's simply not true. What terran needs is not a strong unit lategame, but strong space control that can stand up to mass zealot warpins + big deathballs cost effectively; planetary fortresses help some, but are still quite weak against all of the options protoss has at its disposal. Tanks and widow mines probably need a buff or a supply decrease to ever give terran this lategame ability.
As far as removing hellions goes, that's a terrible idea since hellions are one of the few interesting and dynamic units in SC2, and hellbats are really not. As far as harassment options are concerned, I feel that between MMM drops, hellions, widow mines, and banshees, terran already has a fairly strong arsenal of harassment tools at their disposal; no need to give them another raider.
As far as the original role of the warhound, a support unit to mech in order to make mech more viable in TvP, the hellbat now fills that role rather well. There are still some issues with the early-game and lategame air army protoss can make, but we'll have to work on these things going forward. At this point, the best hope we could have for a reappearance of the warhound is a goliath-type unit that shoots up at like 10 range to counter the horrid carrier/tempest/HT endgame army for protoss.
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United Kingdom8380 Posts
On January 11 2013 10:51 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2013 10:32 ZjiublingZ wrote:On January 11 2013 09:22 SC2John wrote:
If I may throw out a thought:
Although I wrote the OP, my biggest issue was that there was a hole in gameplay where terrans couldn't stay alive in the early-game and couldn't get an even footing with protoss in the midgame due to mech being inefficient in low numbers. The question was whether we need to bring back to warhound to fill that role?
I think with the latest patch, Blizzard is making headway in that direction as battle hellions now WRECK small numbers of gateway units, especially zealots. This allows mech players to play into the midgame more confidently, and perhaps will lead to a much easier style of mech. The only real issue now facing terrans is getting a comfortable early-game, as the stalker poke + MsC in the mineral still cause all kinds of problems for meching players and force terrans to have to make a minimum of 5 marines.
Thoughts? You only need 4 marines, or 3 and a Widow Mine, or 1 Reaper and 3 Marines, as long as you are using a Bunker. I agree it's somewhat limiting, not as good as in WoL where you could have 1 marine and a Bunker, but I don't think it's really that much of a concern. I don't think it clearly needs a "fix". Well, it takes 3 marines to chase off a MsC, and at least 2 to deal with any pressure at the front (you can get away with only 1 in bunker in WoL because it's a metagame play, not because you can actually get away with it). The more marines you have to make, the later your tech is going to get up. As for all of the other options, they require gas, which means your expansion is delayed. With protoss being able to go for tech, a safe expansion, and units all at the same time versus a terran who can only do 2 of those, there's clearly a bit of a problem. And, as always, there's always the looming threat of an all-in coming your way. Perhaps removing the techlab requirement for reapers will help a lot in scouting all-ins and punishing protosses who move across the map with everything, but, (as far as I can tell), reapers probably need some kind of change like a build time reduction or a slightly improved damage (maybe just bumping it to 5 damage, making worker kills take 4 hits instead of 5). Otherwise, I can't see the advantage of getting early gas, delaying my expansion and marines, JUST to scout for what could be something like a 17 nexus with 2-3 stalkers defending.
It's by no means bad that you have to make a few marines to make sure you can be safe. If you had to make 10+, then I think there would be a problem, but 4 or 5 is fine because you shouldn't be able to tech straight to mech off a single marine.
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United States4883 Posts
On January 14 2013 05:51 kollin wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2013 10:51 SC2John wrote:On January 11 2013 10:32 ZjiublingZ wrote:On January 11 2013 09:22 SC2John wrote:
If I may throw out a thought:
Although I wrote the OP, my biggest issue was that there was a hole in gameplay where terrans couldn't stay alive in the early-game and couldn't get an even footing with protoss in the midgame due to mech being inefficient in low numbers. The question was whether we need to bring back to warhound to fill that role?
I think with the latest patch, Blizzard is making headway in that direction as battle hellions now WRECK small numbers of gateway units, especially zealots. This allows mech players to play into the midgame more confidently, and perhaps will lead to a much easier style of mech. The only real issue now facing terrans is getting a comfortable early-game, as the stalker poke + MsC in the mineral still cause all kinds of problems for meching players and force terrans to have to make a minimum of 5 marines.
Thoughts? You only need 4 marines, or 3 and a Widow Mine, or 1 Reaper and 3 Marines, as long as you are using a Bunker. I agree it's somewhat limiting, not as good as in WoL where you could have 1 marine and a Bunker, but I don't think it's really that much of a concern. I don't think it clearly needs a "fix". Well, it takes 3 marines to chase off a MsC, and at least 2 to deal with any pressure at the front (you can get away with only 1 in bunker in WoL because it's a metagame play, not because you can actually get away with it). The more marines you have to make, the later your tech is going to get up. As for all of the other options, they require gas, which means your expansion is delayed. With protoss being able to go for tech, a safe expansion, and units all at the same time versus a terran who can only do 2 of those, there's clearly a bit of a problem. And, as always, there's always the looming threat of an all-in coming your way. Perhaps removing the techlab requirement for reapers will help a lot in scouting all-ins and punishing protosses who move across the map with everything, but, (as far as I can tell), reapers probably need some kind of change like a build time reduction or a slightly improved damage (maybe just bumping it to 5 damage, making worker kills take 4 hits instead of 5). Otherwise, I can't see the advantage of getting early gas, delaying my expansion and marines, JUST to scout for what could be something like a 17 nexus with 2-3 stalkers defending. It's by no means bad that you have to make a few marines to make sure you can be safe. If you had to make 10+, then I think there would be a problem, but 4 or 5 is fine because you shouldn't be able to tech straight to mech off a single marine.
Perhaps I need to put this in perspective in terms of timings. If you have to make an extra 2-3 marines (specifically 2-3 more marines than 3), you miss a lot of timings where protoss is somewhat vulnerable in the early game. The difference between the fastest reactor hellion play you can get up and a reactor hellion play that's 2-3 marines late is that you have a very small chance of success in killing workers because there will be approximately 2-3 stalkers, a sentry, and the MsC, as opposed to just A stalker and the MsC out of position. A widow mine drop can end up coming like 30 seconds late, which is more than enough time for protoss to get some kind of detection out. If you're going hellion/banshee, your banshee gets out around 30 seconds late, AFTER a gateway all-in can hit.
In addition, it makes 3CC builds impossible now. If your opponent can scout straight into your base with the MsC, they can catch you making a 3rd CC (or non-indicators such as a lack of marines, a lack of factory tech or gas, etc), and respond with gateway pressure.
Tank timings are luckily a little reset due to not having to research siege mode, I will give you that. But the core problem with the stalker/MsC poke is that you miss all of the reliable timings possible after 1rax gasless expand. This means that if you want to put on ANY early pressure before 3 bases, you have to go for some kind of a gas opening. Otherwise you're stuck playing a fairly defensive game of mech.
This just kind of sucks for anyone who wants to open with harassment. Instead, terran is kind of forced into doing either 1) a gas build in order to harass, 2) a very defensive 1rax gasless expand into tanks or widow mines, or 3) doing some kind of marine/tank or marine/hellbat push. The options become a lot more limited with the MsC + stalker poke, and the widow mine, hellbat, and siege tank changes aren't quite enough to overcome those limitations.
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United Kingdom8380 Posts
On January 14 2013 06:19 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2013 05:51 kollin wrote:On January 11 2013 10:51 SC2John wrote:On January 11 2013 10:32 ZjiublingZ wrote:On January 11 2013 09:22 SC2John wrote:
If I may throw out a thought:
Although I wrote the OP, my biggest issue was that there was a hole in gameplay where terrans couldn't stay alive in the early-game and couldn't get an even footing with protoss in the midgame due to mech being inefficient in low numbers. The question was whether we need to bring back to warhound to fill that role?
I think with the latest patch, Blizzard is making headway in that direction as battle hellions now WRECK small numbers of gateway units, especially zealots. This allows mech players to play into the midgame more confidently, and perhaps will lead to a much easier style of mech. The only real issue now facing terrans is getting a comfortable early-game, as the stalker poke + MsC in the mineral still cause all kinds of problems for meching players and force terrans to have to make a minimum of 5 marines.
Thoughts? You only need 4 marines, or 3 and a Widow Mine, or 1 Reaper and 3 Marines, as long as you are using a Bunker. I agree it's somewhat limiting, not as good as in WoL where you could have 1 marine and a Bunker, but I don't think it's really that much of a concern. I don't think it clearly needs a "fix". Well, it takes 3 marines to chase off a MsC, and at least 2 to deal with any pressure at the front (you can get away with only 1 in bunker in WoL because it's a metagame play, not because you can actually get away with it). The more marines you have to make, the later your tech is going to get up. As for all of the other options, they require gas, which means your expansion is delayed. With protoss being able to go for tech, a safe expansion, and units all at the same time versus a terran who can only do 2 of those, there's clearly a bit of a problem. And, as always, there's always the looming threat of an all-in coming your way. Perhaps removing the techlab requirement for reapers will help a lot in scouting all-ins and punishing protosses who move across the map with everything, but, (as far as I can tell), reapers probably need some kind of change like a build time reduction or a slightly improved damage (maybe just bumping it to 5 damage, making worker kills take 4 hits instead of 5). Otherwise, I can't see the advantage of getting early gas, delaying my expansion and marines, JUST to scout for what could be something like a 17 nexus with 2-3 stalkers defending. It's by no means bad that you have to make a few marines to make sure you can be safe. If you had to make 10+, then I think there would be a problem, but 4 or 5 is fine because you shouldn't be able to tech straight to mech off a single marine. Perhaps I need to put this in perspective in terms of timings. If you have to make an extra 2-3 marines (specifically 2-3 more marines than 3), you miss a lot of timings where protoss is somewhat vulnerable in the early game. The difference between the fastest reactor hellion play you can get up and a reactor hellion play that's 2-3 marines late is that you have a very small chance of success in killing workers because there will be approximately 2-3 stalkers, a sentry, and the MsC, as opposed to just A stalker and the MsC out of position. A widow mine drop can end up coming like 30 seconds late, which is more than enough time for protoss to get some kind of detection out. If you're going hellion/banshee, your banshee gets out around 30 seconds late, AFTER a gateway all-in can hit. In addition, it makes 3CC builds impossible now. If your opponent can scout straight into your base with the MsC, they can catch you making a 3rd CC (or non-indicators such as a lack of marines, a lack of factory tech or gas, etc), and respond with gateway pressure. Tank timings are luckily a little reset due to not having to research siege mode, I will give you that. But the core problem with the stalker/MsC poke is that you miss all of the reliable timings possible after 1rax gasless expand. This means that if you want to put on ANY early pressure before 3 bases, you have to go for some kind of a gas opening. Otherwise you're stuck playing a fairly defensive game of mech. This just kind of sucks for anyone who wants to open with harassment. Instead, terran is kind of forced into doing either 1) a gas build in order to harass, 2) a very defensive 1rax gasless expand into tanks or widow mines, or 3) doing some kind of marine/tank or marine/hellbat push. The options become a lot more limited with the MsC + stalker poke, and the widow mine, hellbat, and siege tank changes aren't quite enough to overcome those limitations.
What if you don't 1 rax fe? For example, you go 12 barracks 15 gas, reactor on rax, produce marines while expanding, build factory and swap it with barracks? I don't know the timings, but obviously it allows the harassment to hit a little earlier.
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United States4883 Posts
On January 14 2013 06:25 kollin wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2013 06:19 SC2John wrote:On January 14 2013 05:51 kollin wrote:On January 11 2013 10:51 SC2John wrote:On January 11 2013 10:32 ZjiublingZ wrote:On January 11 2013 09:22 SC2John wrote:
If I may throw out a thought:
Although I wrote the OP, my biggest issue was that there was a hole in gameplay where terrans couldn't stay alive in the early-game and couldn't get an even footing with protoss in the midgame due to mech being inefficient in low numbers. The question was whether we need to bring back to warhound to fill that role?
I think with the latest patch, Blizzard is making headway in that direction as battle hellions now WRECK small numbers of gateway units, especially zealots. This allows mech players to play into the midgame more confidently, and perhaps will lead to a much easier style of mech. The only real issue now facing terrans is getting a comfortable early-game, as the stalker poke + MsC in the mineral still cause all kinds of problems for meching players and force terrans to have to make a minimum of 5 marines.
Thoughts? You only need 4 marines, or 3 and a Widow Mine, or 1 Reaper and 3 Marines, as long as you are using a Bunker. I agree it's somewhat limiting, not as good as in WoL where you could have 1 marine and a Bunker, but I don't think it's really that much of a concern. I don't think it clearly needs a "fix". Well, it takes 3 marines to chase off a MsC, and at least 2 to deal with any pressure at the front (you can get away with only 1 in bunker in WoL because it's a metagame play, not because you can actually get away with it). The more marines you have to make, the later your tech is going to get up. As for all of the other options, they require gas, which means your expansion is delayed. With protoss being able to go for tech, a safe expansion, and units all at the same time versus a terran who can only do 2 of those, there's clearly a bit of a problem. And, as always, there's always the looming threat of an all-in coming your way. Perhaps removing the techlab requirement for reapers will help a lot in scouting all-ins and punishing protosses who move across the map with everything, but, (as far as I can tell), reapers probably need some kind of change like a build time reduction or a slightly improved damage (maybe just bumping it to 5 damage, making worker kills take 4 hits instead of 5). Otherwise, I can't see the advantage of getting early gas, delaying my expansion and marines, JUST to scout for what could be something like a 17 nexus with 2-3 stalkers defending. It's by no means bad that you have to make a few marines to make sure you can be safe. If you had to make 10+, then I think there would be a problem, but 4 or 5 is fine because you shouldn't be able to tech straight to mech off a single marine. Perhaps I need to put this in perspective in terms of timings. If you have to make an extra 2-3 marines (specifically 2-3 more marines than 3), you miss a lot of timings where protoss is somewhat vulnerable in the early game. The difference between the fastest reactor hellion play you can get up and a reactor hellion play that's 2-3 marines late is that you have a very small chance of success in killing workers because there will be approximately 2-3 stalkers, a sentry, and the MsC, as opposed to just A stalker and the MsC out of position. A widow mine drop can end up coming like 30 seconds late, which is more than enough time for protoss to get some kind of detection out. If you're going hellion/banshee, your banshee gets out around 30 seconds late, AFTER a gateway all-in can hit. In addition, it makes 3CC builds impossible now. If your opponent can scout straight into your base with the MsC, they can catch you making a 3rd CC (or non-indicators such as a lack of marines, a lack of factory tech or gas, etc), and respond with gateway pressure. Tank timings are luckily a little reset due to not having to research siege mode, I will give you that. But the core problem with the stalker/MsC poke is that you miss all of the reliable timings possible after 1rax gasless expand. This means that if you want to put on ANY early pressure before 3 bases, you have to go for some kind of a gas opening. Otherwise you're stuck playing a fairly defensive game of mech. This just kind of sucks for anyone who wants to open with harassment. Instead, terran is kind of forced into doing either 1) a gas build in order to harass, 2) a very defensive 1rax gasless expand into tanks or widow mines, or 3) doing some kind of marine/tank or marine/hellbat push. The options become a lot more limited with the MsC + stalker poke, and the widow mine, hellbat, and siege tank changes aren't quite enough to overcome those limitations. What if you don't 1 rax fe? For example, you go 12 barracks 15 gas, reactor on rax, produce marines while expanding, build factory and swap it with barracks? I don't know the timings, but obviously it allows the harassment to hit a little earlier.
Tried it out, ends up hitting at about the same time. The only difference is that you have less economy. Anyway, the timings and defense are so thin that you can barely hope to survive in case of a perfect 4-gate, blink all-in, or some kind of stargate all-in. My biggest problem is not that you can't make it work, but that you can only barely make it work; if mech is going to be so fragile that I can just outright die to a bunch of all-ins, why would I play mech over bio ever? This is not even taking into account the horrid lategame problems mech has.
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On January 12 2013 09:18 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2013 08:19 WeddingEpisode wrote:
Given the nature of starcraft, I think the determing element in this case should be units
which require micro. Granted, needing to micro at a 400 apm level would just be too maddening, but
this game has to encourage micro, that's almost the whole point and fun of this game! That, I actually disagree on fully. Starcraft is a game of macro and it always has been, just as Warcraft has always been a game of micro. The best design goal Blizzard can have is to make positional balance and space control an option so that players must keep up with several areas of the map simultaneously. This promotes macro to its fullest by forcing players to keep up with expansion management. Micro is a cool side-effect of units being different and interesting, as well as the pathing system and the AI. Given the true nature of starcraft, the determining element is not whether or not the unit promotes micro, but whether it promotes positional play. That being said, the upgraded hellbat helps a lot with small numbers of mech units and fills the role that the warhound would have filled fairly well. HOWEVER, I still believe that unless the supply numbers for tanks and mines are decreased, we will not see a truly positional game.
Uh, no? EDIT: This is a little bit too jackass'ish. I'll just say I disagree  .
StarCraft at its best is a game of both macro AND micro.
The best design goal Blizzard can have is to promote more micro because it's severely lacking and leads to boring engagements where deathballs liquidize each other in 5 seconds.
More specifically I would love it if Blizzard would promote more MECHANICS (difficulty in all aspects of the game - we know they won't do that) but any option that promotes more micro (which is severely lacking) is a good thing.
Engagement micro is just as important as micro with little groups of units doing "cool things," as you say.
Positioning is also a form of micro. You're managing your units. Where they go and what they do.
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On January 14 2013 05:44 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2013 05:23 Sigil2 wrote:
I've been a long time lurker on TL and a long time Terran player as well. I decided to make an account and start posting specifically because of this issue.
The Warhound was an extremely overpowered unit. It was so imbalanced that I don't think any reasonable person could expect the community's reaction to its introduction as anything but cataclysmic. That's exactly what it was. The GIGANTIC thread to remove the Warhound was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, I've ever seen in my time spent on Team Liquid.
I think that this fervent outrage comes from the fact that the things that many people dislike about Starcraft 2 were all mashed together in the iteration of the Warhound that we saw. Players, viewers, and casters alike want to see awesome micro. We want to see insane multitasking and ridiculous holds. We want to see things that are impressive. The Warhound was not this. A seven colossi death ball is not this. A wall of Spinecrawlers with infestors and Broodlords slowly pushing forward is not this.
The thing is though, that in my opinion Terran is the only race that has the potential to meet all of the criteria that the community has to find a match entertaining. Every race can do drops, but the medivac and the efficiency of marines and marauders in small squads means that Terran drops are the best. In a perfect world, the Terran army can set up a defensive position and split his army multiple times in order to harass his opponents expansions while simultaneously protecting his own. The frenetic and visceral play style available to Terran is what people want to see.
Things like the Warhound keep this awesome hyper-active and aggresive playstyle from being the dominant playstyle Starcraft 2. I think it's important to note, however, that the other 2 races already have units that are "1a gg" such as the Colossus and Broodlord. Deathballs are bad. I personally would prefer it if the Warhound was changed into a very fast moving raider unit, and the Hellion removed in favor of only the Hellbat. This is not the point I wish to make with this post though. I don't think that my opinion on the optimal unit design in Starcraft is very important because I am only in platinum league.
There is something that I think needs to be discussed, and it is directly related to the enjoyment of the game and to the success of the eSports scene in this game and others.
Everyone always talks about balance. In every single game where people can compete, people will whine about things being imbalanced. Then, reasonable persons will inform the whiners that they are blowing things out of proportion. The complainers often are blowing things out of proportion, and at the absolute highest level of play where things actually matter Starcraft is impressively balanced for the number of units and the clever player base it has.
When people respond with perfectly logical statements to complaints about imbalance they often overlook one thing that I think turns off a lot of players. To take the TvP match up for example, HT and Colossi are not overpowered because the Terran has counters to them. This may very well be, but (I must admit I feel this way as well) people feel cheated because of the amount of effort needed on the Terran side of the engagement is far greater than the amount of effort on the Protoss side.
I'm sure such a comment will piss a lot of people off, but one only needs to look at the APM numbers for ultra high level Protoss and Terran players to see that the Terran needs to do a lot more than the Protoss to win.
This isn't fun. It's balanced, but it certainly isn't fair. I shouldn't have to outplay my opponent by say a 60% margin to win. I should have to outplay my opponent by a 1% margin to win. When Terran players whine about how Protoss becomes nearly invincible late game (along with Zerg to a slightly lessened degree) we are greeted with a response that is absolutely insulting: "Don't let them get there."
That's what everyone says. It is accepted that the Terran players need to constantly harass and delay Zerg and Protoss. There is no such need for the Protoss. No Protoss player is hanging out on three bases and thinking to himself, "Man I better go do some double drops to do economic damage, otherwise I won't be able to engage his tier 3."
The warhound was not perfect by any means in the format that we saw. The fact remains though that many of my Terran friends and I think that it is absolutely absurd to remove the unit completely. Let Terran have a good late game unit. We want our late game to not be a joke. The Warhound was a midgame unit, true, but with a little reworking it could actually provide Terran some hope in the lategame of TvP. When I watch a cast of a TvP game and I see that the video is over 15-20 minutes long, I know that there is a 90% chance that the Protoss won.
This needs to change. Maybe the Warhound is the way to change it, maybe it isn't. But, change is certainly needed and this expansion is the time to do it. Interesting. Although I will point out that protoss definitely has some extreme micro in max vs. max situations too. As a protoss player, you have to keep your colossus away from vikings, get blinks or storms under vikings if possible, spread templar (or micro a warp prism with templar in it), micro observers to the back of your army so they can't get sniped, wait to engage at the perfect angle, drop a guardian shield, make sure you don't A-move until your colossus get into range, blink stalkers out of the way of your zealots, spread your zealots as best you can, remember to ff marines instead of marauders with colossus, and make sure you are microing all of your templars to get the proper storms off, etc. There are a lot of whine threads about the protoss army being a 1-a army, but if the terran is controlling at a top level, the level of control needed from the protoss player is also quite high. All of that being said, you're probably quite right about TvP being extraordinarily unfair lategame for players below masters level, but on the highest levels, it's simply not true. What terran needs is not a strong unit lategame, but strong space control that can stand up to mass zealot warpins + big deathballs cost effectively; planetary fortresses help some, but are still quite weak against all of the options protoss has at its disposal. Tanks and widow mines probably need a buff or a supply decrease to ever give terran this lategame ability. As far as removing hellions goes, that's a terrible idea since hellions are one of the few interesting and dynamic units in SC2, and hellbats are really not. As far as harassment options are concerned, I feel that between MMM drops, hellions, widow mines, and banshees, terran already has a fairly strong arsenal of harassment tools at their disposal; no need to give them another raider. As far as the original role of the warhound, a support unit to mech in order to make mech more viable in TvP, the hellbat now fills that role rather well. There are still some issues with the early-game and lategame air army protoss can make, but we'll have to work on these things going forward. At this point, the best hope we could have for a reappearance of the warhound is a goliath-type unit that shoots up at like 10 range to counter the horrid carrier/tempest/HT endgame army for protoss.
Firstly, let me just thank you for your thoughtful and level-headed response. I've though over your post for a bit and I can't say that I disagree with any of it.
Upon further reflection, Hellions are indeed an engaging unit because of their unique attack style. Most of my rationalization for changing the Warhound into a raiding type unit is based upon the style of the model and the name, I suppose.
Reading my post again I see that I definitely did not give enough credit to the Protoss players. I didn't mean to say that Protoss were "1a gg" I was simply just using that phrase because I see it often and find it somewhat silly. The tasks that you listed that are required during Protoss engagements, however, I think are less important than the tasks that the Terran must do. For example, missing a feed back on a ghost means losing a few storms and incurring more unit loss than necessary. On the other hand, missing EMP's on all of the HT's means that the Terran army gets destroyed within seconds.
Furthermore, when Protoss loses an engagement the amount of the Terran army that he takes out with him is usually a larger proportion than the Terran army takes our of the Protoss when the Terran loses an engagement.
Which brings me to the part of your post which I thought to be the most constructive: late game space control.
I'd like to see high-tech Terran units being feared, but perhaps that would take away from the awesome quasi-squad based skirmishing that many (including myself) enjoy watching and playing. What Terran needs though is better space control and this has been said time and time again. Widow mines and tanks don't really do it.
There are two main weaknesses to Terran late game, aside from being hyper vulnerable to AoE. Firstly, our production mechanics are slow and make it difficult to reinforce late game. I can't tell you how many games I've lost because my marines couldn't all congregate from the -literally- 12-16 racks Terran needs in late game. Secondly, Terran has very poor tools to combat harassment. In fact, our only real tool against harassment is to harass the opponent and hope that he doesn't have the multitasking necessary to do the same back to us.
Both of these issues are failures in space control. Terran needs the ability to defend his bases more rapidly from ground based attacks. Protoss and Zerg both have anti-ground and anti-air defense while Terran only has anti-air. Additionally, Protoss can warp in units and Zerglings effectively move at the speed of light.
Space control is most direly needed though to allow a staging platform to actually survive while Terran is reinforcing. Bunkers, turrets, and tanks can effectively stop any non-GGlord Zerg attack. Protoss however does not need to be wary of the Terran "meatgrinder." This is made especially problematic considering that Protoss can bring units to the Terran staging area BEFORE the Terran can.
The best option for space control that I can see being implemented is reducing the supply cost of either the tank or the widow mine. I like widow mines. Mostly because I think that they are incredibly adorable. That aside, I think that if the supply cost of the tank was lowered to 2 it would necessitate the supply cost of the WM being lowered to 1. Those two changes combined might make Terran too good at space control, however. I think just changing the WM supply to 1 while perhaps lowering the primary and/or splash damage slightly would be very helpful.
As for the Warhound as a reincarnated Goliath... While I understand the logic behind this, I just don't want to do it. I will be seriously disappointed if the Skytoss deathball is allowed to stay as absurd as it is now. It's quite literally the dreaded "1a gg" army in every way. Additionally, in a game with Broodlords the efficacy of any (mostly) dedicated GtA unit is low. I hate building Vikings. They are only slightly more interesting than Corrupters. At this point in the game though, I can't really think of anything that would fulfill the role Vikings fill in the Terran army more efficiently or in a more engaging manner.
In the current Mech army there is a support role to fill, and the Warhound certainly could fill it. How exactly that role is to be filled though, is still very unclear to me.
TL;DR: Buff tanks. Reduce WM supply to 1.
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EPT
