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On September 24 2015 21:32 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2015 21:12 ETisME wrote:On September 24 2015 20:24 ChristianS wrote:On September 24 2015 19:10 HaRuHi wrote:On September 24 2015 17:33 ChristianS wrote:On September 24 2015 16:39 KatatoniK wrote:On September 24 2015 16:17 ChristianS wrote: I'm confused. You seem to think that the widow mine is more problematic than the oracle at the moment? The response to widow mine drops is just to play better – pull probes in time, and micro appropriately. That seems like kind of how you want interactions to work – one player does something, the other can negate it simply by playing well.
The oracle functions a little differently – if you didn't know an oracle was coming and didn't plan for it, there's no way to negate it with exceptional play. In fact, defending oracles isn't particularly difficult to execute – it's just strategically difficult. The oracle takes the full range of possible Terran openings and reduces them to the few that can hold off an oracle. That means that strategic complexity on the Terran's side is greatly reduced, without the Protoss ever needing to bother building an oracle, but otherwise execution on both sides is fairly straight-forward.
Isn't the former preferable to the latter? A Widow Mine can destroy a mineral a hell of a lot quicker than an Oracle. Widow Mines require detection, Oracles do not. Constantly pulling probes affects mining and thus the economy while T sits at home remaining unhindered + their mules. Plus unless you're playing really greedy, most T have enough marines out to deflect an oracle by the time it hits their base. Protoss looks away for a brief moment to do something elsewhere and a mine or two burrows in their mineral line? GG, whole mineral line dead in an instant. It's not really about the rate of damage – obviously the widow mine does damage all in one hit, while the oracle does it over the course of several attacks, but you don't really care how fast the economic damage happens, you care how much damage it does and how easily you can stop it. I'd say it's far more common for a Terran to have inadequate marines to deal with an oracle than for a Protoss to not have detection to deal with mines. More significantly, even if the Protoss doesn't have detection quite ready yet, he can still deal with the mines reasonably as long as he doesn't lose his head. Whereas it doesn't matter if it's Maru or Uniden playing Terran, if he doesn't have 6 marines, a widow mine, or a turret when that oracle comes in he's dead. Of course Protoss players can protest that unlike oracles, widow mines can still do good damage even if the Protoss does have the right tech to defend. This, then, is the dynamic I was referring to: defending widow mines is a matter of good situational awareness and crisis management, where defending oracles is just a matter of picking a build that has adequate defense by that time, or at least being able to scout oracle and deviate to have the proper defense in time. I'd argue the former is interesting, strategical, skill-based, and promotes multi-tasking. The latter removes a lot of strategic diversity from the game and results in a lot of dumb games. “Games where I see an oracle just fly into a Terran base and kill 13 SCVs, I don’t rank as high quality. I rank them as garbage games that I won’t rewatch.” -Artosis The Oracle is terrible designed aswell. Here is the thing though, once you burrow widowmines as a terran, you are done. You go home and macro, protoss has to pull probes in a certain rythem on multiple locations without terran even looking. Oracles you have to controll, you have to decide when to spend their energy on their attack, you have to doge and engage marines from the correct angle, you have to pay attention to it, both sides have to. And protoss builds are quite influenced by the single most dominant, best, easiest to execute, minimal risk strategy that every terran does in every game ever. This thread we dedicate to whining about the widow mine, not that we don't whine about the oracle aswell, but lets focus on screwing terran before lotv is out ;D I mean Terran can look away, but he's also rewarded for sticking around. Manually retargeting the mines makes good hits much more likely to land, and if you pay attention you can even try to pick mine up after it shoots. Also significant, and unlike oracles, is that mines pretty rarely do game-ending damage, and when they do it's usually pretty easy to point to an execution error on the Protoss's part. When a Terran loses to oracles, it's usually just a build order loss. If this is the thread for discussing whether widow mine drops are overpowered or badly designed, that's fine, but OP seemed to be suggesting that both oracle and widow mine drops are problematic, but widow mines are significantly more so. On September 24 2015 19:26 ETisME wrote: I think the biggest issue is that it gives a visual indicator to which unit is being targeted but then it doesn't really offer room for counter micro. Wouldn't the counter micro be isolating the targeted unit? That seems like pretty good counter micro to me. Yes, except the counter micro has so little room to actually isolate the target unit. Of it was slower, maybe we could see pro trying to isolate our the muta getting targeted I mean, people can and do isolate the probe. Mutas are a bit much to ask given how stacked they are, but it maybe makes sense to be able to punish stacked units with an AoE unit. They can isolate the probe of they spotted it early enough and if not, its even better just let it be.
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On September 24 2015 20:42 HaRuHi wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2015 20:24 ChristianS wrote:On September 24 2015 19:10 HaRuHi wrote:On September 24 2015 17:33 ChristianS wrote:On September 24 2015 16:39 KatatoniK wrote:On September 24 2015 16:17 ChristianS wrote: I'm confused. You seem to think that the widow mine is more problematic than the oracle at the moment? The response to widow mine drops is just to play better – pull probes in time, and micro appropriately. That seems like kind of how you want interactions to work – one player does something, the other can negate it simply by playing well.
The oracle functions a little differently – if you didn't know an oracle was coming and didn't plan for it, there's no way to negate it with exceptional play. In fact, defending oracles isn't particularly difficult to execute – it's just strategically difficult. The oracle takes the full range of possible Terran openings and reduces them to the few that can hold off an oracle. That means that strategic complexity on the Terran's side is greatly reduced, without the Protoss ever needing to bother building an oracle, but otherwise execution on both sides is fairly straight-forward.
Isn't the former preferable to the latter? A Widow Mine can destroy a mineral a hell of a lot quicker than an Oracle. Widow Mines require detection, Oracles do not. Constantly pulling probes affects mining and thus the economy while T sits at home remaining unhindered + their mules. Plus unless you're playing really greedy, most T have enough marines out to deflect an oracle by the time it hits their base. Protoss looks away for a brief moment to do something elsewhere and a mine or two burrows in their mineral line? GG, whole mineral line dead in an instant. It's not really about the rate of damage – obviously the widow mine does damage all in one hit, while the oracle does it over the course of several attacks, but you don't really care how fast the economic damage happens, you care how much damage it does and how easily you can stop it. I'd say it's far more common for a Terran to have inadequate marines to deal with an oracle than for a Protoss to not have detection to deal with mines. More significantly, even if the Protoss doesn't have detection quite ready yet, he can still deal with the mines reasonably as long as he doesn't lose his head. Whereas it doesn't matter if it's Maru or Uniden playing Terran, if he doesn't have 6 marines, a widow mine, or a turret when that oracle comes in he's dead. Of course Protoss players can protest that unlike oracles, widow mines can still do good damage even if the Protoss does have the right tech to defend. This, then, is the dynamic I was referring to: defending widow mines is a matter of good situational awareness and crisis management, where defending oracles is just a matter of picking a build that has adequate defense by that time, or at least being able to scout oracle and deviate to have the proper defense in time. I'd argue the former is interesting, strategical, skill-based, and promotes multi-tasking. The latter removes a lot of strategic diversity from the game and results in a lot of dumb games. “Games where I see an oracle just fly into a Terran base and kill 13 SCVs, I don’t rank as high quality. I rank them as garbage games that I won’t rewatch.” -Artosis The Oracle is terrible designed aswell. Here is the thing though, once you burrow widowmines as a terran, you are done. You go home and macro, protoss has to pull probes in a certain rythem on multiple locations without terran even looking. Oracles you have to controll, you have to decide when to spend their energy on their attack, you have to doge and engage marines from the correct angle, you have to pay attention to it, both sides have to. And protoss builds are quite influenced by the single most dominant, best, easiest to execute, minimal risk strategy that every terran does in every game ever. This thread we dedicate to whining about the widow mine, not that we don't whine about the oracle aswell, but lets focus on screwing terran before lotv is out ;D I mean Terran can look away, but he's also rewarded for sticking around. Manually retargeting the mines makes good hits much more likely to land, and if you pay attention you can even try to pick mine up after it shoots. Also significant, and unlike oracles, is that mines pretty rarely do game-ending damage, and when they do it's usually pretty easy to point to an execution error on the Protoss's part. When a Terran loses to oracles, it's usually just a build order loss. If this is the thread for discussing whether widow mine drops are overpowered or badly designed, that's fine, but OP seemed to be suggesting that both oracle and widow mine drops are problematic, but widow mines are significantly more so. On September 24 2015 19:26 ETisME wrote: I think the biggest issue is that it gives a visual indicator to which unit is being targeted but then it doesn't really offer room for counter micro. Wouldn't the counter micro be isolating the targeted unit? That seems like pretty good counter micro to me. Now that you point it out, the OP reads incredibly biased. Oracles are just as problematic, even if for other reasons, which you presented well.
Jesus guys, chill out. This community is so quick for people to start jumping at each other's throats, and there's so many people who just get personally offended at the notion of discussing certain changes. I shouldn't have even brought up Oracles, and the Oracle is not the point of this thread. I would have made a thread for oracles if I had an idea related to it, but I don't. I just wanted to provide some context to start a discussion.
Anyways, before anyone else loses their composure, you should know that I main Terran. Suffering from widow mine harass is not a regular part of my experience with this game. I have also had my moments of baby rage after losing to Protoss deathballs, but I didn't make a thread about that either. Believe it or not, there are actually people in this community who want to see this game move in a positive direction and can step back from the race whining.
The widow mine is an overly chance-based, not very fun unit. I was actually doing WM drop openers in TvP for a while. Whether or not the damage happens feels completely random. Sure, it's true that when Protoss plays bad they will more likely take damage, and when they play well they will more likely hold.
The design of the unit really doesn't offer room for anything in between. Mines either do nothing or waste probes like crazy, and whether they go unnoticed feels like a question of whether or not the timing of your drop lies between the natural rhythm of your opponents mini-map checks.
By the way, how is changing the design of old units not an important part of LOTV?
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On September 25 2015 01:22 alexanderzero wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2015 20:42 HaRuHi wrote:On September 24 2015 20:24 ChristianS wrote:On September 24 2015 19:10 HaRuHi wrote:On September 24 2015 17:33 ChristianS wrote:On September 24 2015 16:39 KatatoniK wrote:On September 24 2015 16:17 ChristianS wrote: I'm confused. You seem to think that the widow mine is more problematic than the oracle at the moment? The response to widow mine drops is just to play better – pull probes in time, and micro appropriately. That seems like kind of how you want interactions to work – one player does something, the other can negate it simply by playing well.
The oracle functions a little differently – if you didn't know an oracle was coming and didn't plan for it, there's no way to negate it with exceptional play. In fact, defending oracles isn't particularly difficult to execute – it's just strategically difficult. The oracle takes the full range of possible Terran openings and reduces them to the few that can hold off an oracle. That means that strategic complexity on the Terran's side is greatly reduced, without the Protoss ever needing to bother building an oracle, but otherwise execution on both sides is fairly straight-forward.
Isn't the former preferable to the latter? A Widow Mine can destroy a mineral a hell of a lot quicker than an Oracle. Widow Mines require detection, Oracles do not. Constantly pulling probes affects mining and thus the economy while T sits at home remaining unhindered + their mules. Plus unless you're playing really greedy, most T have enough marines out to deflect an oracle by the time it hits their base. Protoss looks away for a brief moment to do something elsewhere and a mine or two burrows in their mineral line? GG, whole mineral line dead in an instant. It's not really about the rate of damage – obviously the widow mine does damage all in one hit, while the oracle does it over the course of several attacks, but you don't really care how fast the economic damage happens, you care how much damage it does and how easily you can stop it. I'd say it's far more common for a Terran to have inadequate marines to deal with an oracle than for a Protoss to not have detection to deal with mines. More significantly, even if the Protoss doesn't have detection quite ready yet, he can still deal with the mines reasonably as long as he doesn't lose his head. Whereas it doesn't matter if it's Maru or Uniden playing Terran, if he doesn't have 6 marines, a widow mine, or a turret when that oracle comes in he's dead. Of course Protoss players can protest that unlike oracles, widow mines can still do good damage even if the Protoss does have the right tech to defend. This, then, is the dynamic I was referring to: defending widow mines is a matter of good situational awareness and crisis management, where defending oracles is just a matter of picking a build that has adequate defense by that time, or at least being able to scout oracle and deviate to have the proper defense in time. I'd argue the former is interesting, strategical, skill-based, and promotes multi-tasking. The latter removes a lot of strategic diversity from the game and results in a lot of dumb games. “Games where I see an oracle just fly into a Terran base and kill 13 SCVs, I don’t rank as high quality. I rank them as garbage games that I won’t rewatch.” -Artosis The Oracle is terrible designed aswell. Here is the thing though, once you burrow widowmines as a terran, you are done. You go home and macro, protoss has to pull probes in a certain rythem on multiple locations without terran even looking. Oracles you have to controll, you have to decide when to spend their energy on their attack, you have to doge and engage marines from the correct angle, you have to pay attention to it, both sides have to. And protoss builds are quite influenced by the single most dominant, best, easiest to execute, minimal risk strategy that every terran does in every game ever. This thread we dedicate to whining about the widow mine, not that we don't whine about the oracle aswell, but lets focus on screwing terran before lotv is out ;D I mean Terran can look away, but he's also rewarded for sticking around. Manually retargeting the mines makes good hits much more likely to land, and if you pay attention you can even try to pick mine up after it shoots. Also significant, and unlike oracles, is that mines pretty rarely do game-ending damage, and when they do it's usually pretty easy to point to an execution error on the Protoss's part. When a Terran loses to oracles, it's usually just a build order loss. If this is the thread for discussing whether widow mine drops are overpowered or badly designed, that's fine, but OP seemed to be suggesting that both oracle and widow mine drops are problematic, but widow mines are significantly more so. On September 24 2015 19:26 ETisME wrote: I think the biggest issue is that it gives a visual indicator to which unit is being targeted but then it doesn't really offer room for counter micro. Wouldn't the counter micro be isolating the targeted unit? That seems like pretty good counter micro to me. Now that you point it out, the OP reads incredibly biased. Oracles are just as problematic, even if for other reasons, which you presented well. Jesus guys, chill out. This community is so quick for people to start jumping at each other's throats, and there's so many people who just get personally offended at the notion of discussing certain changes. I shouldn't have even brought up Oracles, and the Oracle is not the point of this thread. I would have made a thread for oracles if I had an idea related to it, but I don't. I just wanted to provide some context to start a discussion. Anyways, before anyone else loses their composure, you should know that I main Terran. Suffering from widow mine harass is not a regular part of my experience with this game. I have also had my moments of baby rage after losing to Protoss deathballs, but I didn't make a thread about that either. Believe it or not, there are actually people in this community who want to see this game move in a positive direction and can step back from the race whining. The widow mine is an overly chance-based, not very fun unit. I was actually doing WM drop openers in TvP for a while. Whether or not the damage happens feels completely random. Sure, it's true that when Protoss plays bad they will more likely take damage, and when they play well they will more likely hold. The design of the unit really doesn't offer room for anything in between. Mines either do nothing or waste probes like crazy, and whether they go unnoticed feels like a question of whether or not the timing of your drop lies between the natural rhythm of your opponents mini-map checks. By the way, how is changing the design of old units not an important part of LOTV?
What, who jumped who's throat? Everything is fine here. The complain is kinda valid though, also on Bnet forums people often start threats with: "Hey, we need to break the three base economy cap, also, nerf ultralisk late-game armor already!". Even though you might agree with one thing, you might totally not agree with the other. And the wonky cherry pick style of David Kim to completely miss any point ever talked about and focus on some random rhetoric devise (like bringing oracles in the discusion for context) makes them quite dangerous terrain. Your thread title is very clear, your original post is not clear enough during times like these, cheers
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On September 24 2015 23:34 CheddarToss wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2015 16:17 ChristianS wrote: The oracle takes the full range of possible Terran openings and reduces them to the few that can hold off an oracle. That means that strategic complexity on the Terran's side is greatly reduced, without the Protoss ever needing to bother building an oracle, but otherwise execution on both sides is fairly straight-forward.
Well, the WM basically guts straight Twilight builds, because those don't have detection. That means that thanks to the WM, 1/3 of possible P builds can't be used. So how is that different to the Oracle? And WM necessitates planing on P's side, just as the Oracle does on T's side. If you don't have detection in time the WM drop hits, even if you pull probes perfectly, you will lose so much mining time (until detection is out), that you will basically lose the game. I mean, people do go twilight though, and just put on enough pressure with blink that if the Terran is fucking around with widow mine drops he's just gonna die. If you mean templar openings, then yeah, you still need to get a robo at some point for detection. If you really wanted to go templar without robo you could just get a cannon in each mineral line – or even just build the cannon when you see the medivac. You don't need to keep the probes pulled until the mines are cleared, you only need to pull them, eat the hit with one or two probes, and then go back to work.
I think a much bigger reason people don't open templar against widow mines is that even if you survive the harass and get to the straight-up engagements, templar tech still does pretty bad against bio+mine. But that's not really a matter of the widow mine shutting down the opening like oracle does – it's closer to Terrans (ZizLah excepted) never going mech because it's bad against Protoss.
None of this seems even roughly comparable to the situation with the oracle, where the dominant "safe" build from WoL (1-rax expand) is made straight-up greedy. Now there's no safe build – just reaper builds that try to scout what's coming so you can respond. This creates dumb strategies like the Protoss walling off on Bridgehead with pylon+gate so my SCV can't get in, then going for a proxy oracle that hits not long after my reaper would reach his base (that is, I would have to start the ebay blind). Without a blanket safe build, Protoss can always win with a proxy if he just hides it well enough and I don't respond to it blind.
Given that, I don't have all that much sympathy if someone complains that sometimes they pull their probes wrong and stack them into a widow mine hit, and that's so much worse than oracles. I'd absolutely love if I could beat oracles – or even just not take game-ending damage – by simply controlling better. Instead it's a whole song and dance just to survive all of the infinity Protoss cheeses, all while having zero opportunity to threaten a greedy Protoss.
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I actually strongly dislike the Widow Mine (WM). But not because it's too strong. It's fairly rare to see the WM doing significant damage these days anyway. It already shoots super slow, it's difficult to aim, has an outrageously long cooldown (longest in the game by far, right?), and provides a convenient on-screen warning for the opponents, as well as an obvious burrowed-graphic tell.
Sure, a WM can cause problems for a super greedy twilight build, but even if you don't see the widow mine until it's in your base, it is possible to take very little damage while building a robo and observer (or a Stargate an oracle). I think it will only shoot twice (two probes, if you're paying attention to your bases). Sure it forces a robo, stargate, or forge, but those are three useful buildings to be forced into ; )
Besides, the Terran had to tech up to medivac to do the drop, and if this rush is coming way before you have detection, the Terran had to sacrifice quite a bit to do this play, meaning they have to do some damage or the game might snowball out from under them.
The WM is far from an auto-loss if you're unprepared, imho. If you're unprepared for an Oracle the game ends. If you're unprepared for a DT, the game ends (permanent cloak, high enough DPS to prevent detection from building, fast enough to split scans).
I just don't see a nerf to the WM really being needed. I definitely don't see it as a priority over some of the other things in LotV that need attention.
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On September 25 2015 01:22 alexanderzero wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2015 20:42 HaRuHi wrote:On September 24 2015 20:24 ChristianS wrote:On September 24 2015 19:10 HaRuHi wrote:On September 24 2015 17:33 ChristianS wrote:On September 24 2015 16:39 KatatoniK wrote:On September 24 2015 16:17 ChristianS wrote: I'm confused. You seem to think that the widow mine is more problematic than the oracle at the moment? The response to widow mine drops is just to play better – pull probes in time, and micro appropriately. That seems like kind of how you want interactions to work – one player does something, the other can negate it simply by playing well.
The oracle functions a little differently – if you didn't know an oracle was coming and didn't plan for it, there's no way to negate it with exceptional play. In fact, defending oracles isn't particularly difficult to execute – it's just strategically difficult. The oracle takes the full range of possible Terran openings and reduces them to the few that can hold off an oracle. That means that strategic complexity on the Terran's side is greatly reduced, without the Protoss ever needing to bother building an oracle, but otherwise execution on both sides is fairly straight-forward.
Isn't the former preferable to the latter? A Widow Mine can destroy a mineral a hell of a lot quicker than an Oracle. Widow Mines require detection, Oracles do not. Constantly pulling probes affects mining and thus the economy while T sits at home remaining unhindered + their mules. Plus unless you're playing really greedy, most T have enough marines out to deflect an oracle by the time it hits their base. Protoss looks away for a brief moment to do something elsewhere and a mine or two burrows in their mineral line? GG, whole mineral line dead in an instant. It's not really about the rate of damage – obviously the widow mine does damage all in one hit, while the oracle does it over the course of several attacks, but you don't really care how fast the economic damage happens, you care how much damage it does and how easily you can stop it. I'd say it's far more common for a Terran to have inadequate marines to deal with an oracle than for a Protoss to not have detection to deal with mines. More significantly, even if the Protoss doesn't have detection quite ready yet, he can still deal with the mines reasonably as long as he doesn't lose his head. Whereas it doesn't matter if it's Maru or Uniden playing Terran, if he doesn't have 6 marines, a widow mine, or a turret when that oracle comes in he's dead. Of course Protoss players can protest that unlike oracles, widow mines can still do good damage even if the Protoss does have the right tech to defend. This, then, is the dynamic I was referring to: defending widow mines is a matter of good situational awareness and crisis management, where defending oracles is just a matter of picking a build that has adequate defense by that time, or at least being able to scout oracle and deviate to have the proper defense in time. I'd argue the former is interesting, strategical, skill-based, and promotes multi-tasking. The latter removes a lot of strategic diversity from the game and results in a lot of dumb games. “Games where I see an oracle just fly into a Terran base and kill 13 SCVs, I don’t rank as high quality. I rank them as garbage games that I won’t rewatch.” -Artosis The Oracle is terrible designed aswell. Here is the thing though, once you burrow widowmines as a terran, you are done. You go home and macro, protoss has to pull probes in a certain rythem on multiple locations without terran even looking. Oracles you have to controll, you have to decide when to spend their energy on their attack, you have to doge and engage marines from the correct angle, you have to pay attention to it, both sides have to. And protoss builds are quite influenced by the single most dominant, best, easiest to execute, minimal risk strategy that every terran does in every game ever. This thread we dedicate to whining about the widow mine, not that we don't whine about the oracle aswell, but lets focus on screwing terran before lotv is out ;D I mean Terran can look away, but he's also rewarded for sticking around. Manually retargeting the mines makes good hits much more likely to land, and if you pay attention you can even try to pick mine up after it shoots. Also significant, and unlike oracles, is that mines pretty rarely do game-ending damage, and when they do it's usually pretty easy to point to an execution error on the Protoss's part. When a Terran loses to oracles, it's usually just a build order loss. If this is the thread for discussing whether widow mine drops are overpowered or badly designed, that's fine, but OP seemed to be suggesting that both oracle and widow mine drops are problematic, but widow mines are significantly more so. On September 24 2015 19:26 ETisME wrote: I think the biggest issue is that it gives a visual indicator to which unit is being targeted but then it doesn't really offer room for counter micro. Wouldn't the counter micro be isolating the targeted unit? That seems like pretty good counter micro to me. Now that you point it out, the OP reads incredibly biased. Oracles are just as problematic, even if for other reasons, which you presented well. Jesus guys, chill out. This community is so quick for people to start jumping at each other's throats, and there's so many people who just get personally offended at the notion of discussing certain changes. I shouldn't have even brought up Oracles, and the Oracle is not the point of this thread. I would have made a thread for oracles if I had an idea related to it, but I don't. I just wanted to provide some context to start a discussion. Anyways, before anyone else loses their composure, you should know that I main Terran. Suffering from widow mine harass is not a regular part of my experience with this game. I have also had my moments of baby rage after losing to Protoss deathballs, but I didn't make a thread about that either. Believe it or not, there are actually people in this community who want to see this game move in a positive direction and can step back from the race whining. The widow mine is an overly chance-based, not very fun unit. I was actually doing WM drop openers in TvP for a while. Whether or not the damage happens feels completely random. Sure, it's true that when Protoss plays bad they will more likely take damage, and when they play well they will more likely hold. The design of the unit really doesn't offer room for anything in between. Mines either do nothing or waste probes like crazy, and whether they go unnoticed feels like a question of whether or not the timing of your drop lies between the natural rhythm of your opponents mini-map checks. By the way, how is changing the design of old units not an important part of LOTV?
You say this is random but I don't see how WM's are random. They sometimes do a lot of damage when players don't pull probes fast enough. They sometimes do 0 damage when they go into extractors. And then sometimes they do okay amounts of damage by killing 2-3 probes. This isn't random, it's how the player being dropped reacts, and how the WM player reacts to that reaction by retargeting, or unburrowing. There's no randomness there and the fact that the unit being targeted is going to be marked by red is going to make that fact all the more clear.
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On September 25 2015 05:17 Chaggi wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2015 01:22 alexanderzero wrote:On September 24 2015 20:42 HaRuHi wrote:On September 24 2015 20:24 ChristianS wrote:On September 24 2015 19:10 HaRuHi wrote:On September 24 2015 17:33 ChristianS wrote:On September 24 2015 16:39 KatatoniK wrote:On September 24 2015 16:17 ChristianS wrote: I'm confused. You seem to think that the widow mine is more problematic than the oracle at the moment? The response to widow mine drops is just to play better – pull probes in time, and micro appropriately. That seems like kind of how you want interactions to work – one player does something, the other can negate it simply by playing well.
The oracle functions a little differently – if you didn't know an oracle was coming and didn't plan for it, there's no way to negate it with exceptional play. In fact, defending oracles isn't particularly difficult to execute – it's just strategically difficult. The oracle takes the full range of possible Terran openings and reduces them to the few that can hold off an oracle. That means that strategic complexity on the Terran's side is greatly reduced, without the Protoss ever needing to bother building an oracle, but otherwise execution on both sides is fairly straight-forward.
Isn't the former preferable to the latter? A Widow Mine can destroy a mineral a hell of a lot quicker than an Oracle. Widow Mines require detection, Oracles do not. Constantly pulling probes affects mining and thus the economy while T sits at home remaining unhindered + their mules. Plus unless you're playing really greedy, most T have enough marines out to deflect an oracle by the time it hits their base. Protoss looks away for a brief moment to do something elsewhere and a mine or two burrows in their mineral line? GG, whole mineral line dead in an instant. It's not really about the rate of damage – obviously the widow mine does damage all in one hit, while the oracle does it over the course of several attacks, but you don't really care how fast the economic damage happens, you care how much damage it does and how easily you can stop it. I'd say it's far more common for a Terran to have inadequate marines to deal with an oracle than for a Protoss to not have detection to deal with mines. More significantly, even if the Protoss doesn't have detection quite ready yet, he can still deal with the mines reasonably as long as he doesn't lose his head. Whereas it doesn't matter if it's Maru or Uniden playing Terran, if he doesn't have 6 marines, a widow mine, or a turret when that oracle comes in he's dead. Of course Protoss players can protest that unlike oracles, widow mines can still do good damage even if the Protoss does have the right tech to defend. This, then, is the dynamic I was referring to: defending widow mines is a matter of good situational awareness and crisis management, where defending oracles is just a matter of picking a build that has adequate defense by that time, or at least being able to scout oracle and deviate to have the proper defense in time. I'd argue the former is interesting, strategical, skill-based, and promotes multi-tasking. The latter removes a lot of strategic diversity from the game and results in a lot of dumb games. “Games where I see an oracle just fly into a Terran base and kill 13 SCVs, I don’t rank as high quality. I rank them as garbage games that I won’t rewatch.” -Artosis The Oracle is terrible designed aswell. Here is the thing though, once you burrow widowmines as a terran, you are done. You go home and macro, protoss has to pull probes in a certain rythem on multiple locations without terran even looking. Oracles you have to controll, you have to decide when to spend their energy on their attack, you have to doge and engage marines from the correct angle, you have to pay attention to it, both sides have to. And protoss builds are quite influenced by the single most dominant, best, easiest to execute, minimal risk strategy that every terran does in every game ever. This thread we dedicate to whining about the widow mine, not that we don't whine about the oracle aswell, but lets focus on screwing terran before lotv is out ;D I mean Terran can look away, but he's also rewarded for sticking around. Manually retargeting the mines makes good hits much more likely to land, and if you pay attention you can even try to pick mine up after it shoots. Also significant, and unlike oracles, is that mines pretty rarely do game-ending damage, and when they do it's usually pretty easy to point to an execution error on the Protoss's part. When a Terran loses to oracles, it's usually just a build order loss. If this is the thread for discussing whether widow mine drops are overpowered or badly designed, that's fine, but OP seemed to be suggesting that both oracle and widow mine drops are problematic, but widow mines are significantly more so. On September 24 2015 19:26 ETisME wrote: I think the biggest issue is that it gives a visual indicator to which unit is being targeted but then it doesn't really offer room for counter micro. Wouldn't the counter micro be isolating the targeted unit? That seems like pretty good counter micro to me. Now that you point it out, the OP reads incredibly biased. Oracles are just as problematic, even if for other reasons, which you presented well. Jesus guys, chill out. This community is so quick for people to start jumping at each other's throats, and there's so many people who just get personally offended at the notion of discussing certain changes. I shouldn't have even brought up Oracles, and the Oracle is not the point of this thread. I would have made a thread for oracles if I had an idea related to it, but I don't. I just wanted to provide some context to start a discussion. Anyways, before anyone else loses their composure, you should know that I main Terran. Suffering from widow mine harass is not a regular part of my experience with this game. I have also had my moments of baby rage after losing to Protoss deathballs, but I didn't make a thread about that either. Believe it or not, there are actually people in this community who want to see this game move in a positive direction and can step back from the race whining. The widow mine is an overly chance-based, not very fun unit. I was actually doing WM drop openers in TvP for a while. Whether or not the damage happens feels completely random. Sure, it's true that when Protoss plays bad they will more likely take damage, and when they play well they will more likely hold. The design of the unit really doesn't offer room for anything in between. Mines either do nothing or waste probes like crazy, and whether they go unnoticed feels like a question of whether or not the timing of your drop lies between the natural rhythm of your opponents mini-map checks. By the way, how is changing the design of old units not an important part of LOTV? You say this is random but I don't see how WM's are random. They sometimes do a lot of damage when players don't pull probes fast enough. They sometimes do 0 damage when they go into extractors. And then sometimes they do okay amounts of damage by killing 2-3 probes. This isn't random, it's how the player being dropped reacts, and how the WM player reacts to that reaction by retargeting, or unburrowing. There's no randomness there and the fact that the unit being targeted is going to be marked by red is going to make that fact all the more clear.
In drop scenarios, you're right. It's more about reaction than randomness. I think where the huge "coin-flip" element of this units comes into play is in large encounters. It rarely does "okay". It's usually either amazing, or complete garbage, or worse (i.e., kills all your own shit).
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On September 24 2015 16:55 Valyrian wrote: Another approach: if you see a widow burrow, it remains visible and targetable.
This would make them an actual defensive tool and shut down both worker harass and burrowing them during engagements.
This would be cool and more "realistic". It's kinda funny how they burrow in plain sight and probes are like derp derp where the fuck did that go? Kinda applies to lurkers too
If burrow occurs in the enemy's fog of war, the mine is invisible unless detected or it fires. Once it fires or is detected it remains detected. Could be so for any "static" invisible unit.
Not 100% I like the change but I'd have a play with it...
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On September 25 2015 09:25 Designator wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2015 16:55 Valyrian wrote: Another approach: if you see a widow burrow, it remains visible and targetable.
This would make them an actual defensive tool and shut down both worker harass and burrowing them during engagements. This would be cool and more "realistic". It's kinda funny how they burrow in plain sight and probes are like derp derp where the fuck did that go? Kinda applies to lurkers too If burrow occurs in the enemy's fog of war, the mine is invisible unless detected or it fires. Once it fires or is detected it remains detected. Could be so for any "static" invisible unit. Not 100% I like the change but I'd have a play with it... I'd dig trying out one where WMs and Lurkers burrowed entirely within the opponent's vision remain visible for like 5 seconds. I keep tossing around the suggesting to make Lurkers take longer to burrow, but this would be an interesting mild nerf as well. Similarly, I've always felt that burrowing claws made the speed of burrowing WMs just feel "wrong". This would go some way towards alleviating that feeling. + Show Spoiler +
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Vision and detection mechanics are not meant to be realistic in SC2. They're just game mechanics. Same reason why I can't order my units to attack the ground. For some reason, my military can only shoot when they're guaranteed to hit a target
It's all game rules and mechanics. Not about realism.
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On September 25 2015 09:01 TimeSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2015 05:17 Chaggi wrote:On September 25 2015 01:22 alexanderzero wrote:On September 24 2015 20:42 HaRuHi wrote:On September 24 2015 20:24 ChristianS wrote:On September 24 2015 19:10 HaRuHi wrote:On September 24 2015 17:33 ChristianS wrote:On September 24 2015 16:39 KatatoniK wrote:On September 24 2015 16:17 ChristianS wrote: I'm confused. You seem to think that the widow mine is more problematic than the oracle at the moment? The response to widow mine drops is just to play better – pull probes in time, and micro appropriately. That seems like kind of how you want interactions to work – one player does something, the other can negate it simply by playing well.
The oracle functions a little differently – if you didn't know an oracle was coming and didn't plan for it, there's no way to negate it with exceptional play. In fact, defending oracles isn't particularly difficult to execute – it's just strategically difficult. The oracle takes the full range of possible Terran openings and reduces them to the few that can hold off an oracle. That means that strategic complexity on the Terran's side is greatly reduced, without the Protoss ever needing to bother building an oracle, but otherwise execution on both sides is fairly straight-forward.
Isn't the former preferable to the latter? A Widow Mine can destroy a mineral a hell of a lot quicker than an Oracle. Widow Mines require detection, Oracles do not. Constantly pulling probes affects mining and thus the economy while T sits at home remaining unhindered + their mules. Plus unless you're playing really greedy, most T have enough marines out to deflect an oracle by the time it hits their base. Protoss looks away for a brief moment to do something elsewhere and a mine or two burrows in their mineral line? GG, whole mineral line dead in an instant. It's not really about the rate of damage – obviously the widow mine does damage all in one hit, while the oracle does it over the course of several attacks, but you don't really care how fast the economic damage happens, you care how much damage it does and how easily you can stop it. I'd say it's far more common for a Terran to have inadequate marines to deal with an oracle than for a Protoss to not have detection to deal with mines. More significantly, even if the Protoss doesn't have detection quite ready yet, he can still deal with the mines reasonably as long as he doesn't lose his head. Whereas it doesn't matter if it's Maru or Uniden playing Terran, if he doesn't have 6 marines, a widow mine, or a turret when that oracle comes in he's dead. Of course Protoss players can protest that unlike oracles, widow mines can still do good damage even if the Protoss does have the right tech to defend. This, then, is the dynamic I was referring to: defending widow mines is a matter of good situational awareness and crisis management, where defending oracles is just a matter of picking a build that has adequate defense by that time, or at least being able to scout oracle and deviate to have the proper defense in time. I'd argue the former is interesting, strategical, skill-based, and promotes multi-tasking. The latter removes a lot of strategic diversity from the game and results in a lot of dumb games. “Games where I see an oracle just fly into a Terran base and kill 13 SCVs, I don’t rank as high quality. I rank them as garbage games that I won’t rewatch.” -Artosis The Oracle is terrible designed aswell. Here is the thing though, once you burrow widowmines as a terran, you are done. You go home and macro, protoss has to pull probes in a certain rythem on multiple locations without terran even looking. Oracles you have to controll, you have to decide when to spend their energy on their attack, you have to doge and engage marines from the correct angle, you have to pay attention to it, both sides have to. And protoss builds are quite influenced by the single most dominant, best, easiest to execute, minimal risk strategy that every terran does in every game ever. This thread we dedicate to whining about the widow mine, not that we don't whine about the oracle aswell, but lets focus on screwing terran before lotv is out ;D I mean Terran can look away, but he's also rewarded for sticking around. Manually retargeting the mines makes good hits much more likely to land, and if you pay attention you can even try to pick mine up after it shoots. Also significant, and unlike oracles, is that mines pretty rarely do game-ending damage, and when they do it's usually pretty easy to point to an execution error on the Protoss's part. When a Terran loses to oracles, it's usually just a build order loss. If this is the thread for discussing whether widow mine drops are overpowered or badly designed, that's fine, but OP seemed to be suggesting that both oracle and widow mine drops are problematic, but widow mines are significantly more so. On September 24 2015 19:26 ETisME wrote: I think the biggest issue is that it gives a visual indicator to which unit is being targeted but then it doesn't really offer room for counter micro. Wouldn't the counter micro be isolating the targeted unit? That seems like pretty good counter micro to me. Now that you point it out, the OP reads incredibly biased. Oracles are just as problematic, even if for other reasons, which you presented well. Jesus guys, chill out. This community is so quick for people to start jumping at each other's throats, and there's so many people who just get personally offended at the notion of discussing certain changes. I shouldn't have even brought up Oracles, and the Oracle is not the point of this thread. I would have made a thread for oracles if I had an idea related to it, but I don't. I just wanted to provide some context to start a discussion. Anyways, before anyone else loses their composure, you should know that I main Terran. Suffering from widow mine harass is not a regular part of my experience with this game. I have also had my moments of baby rage after losing to Protoss deathballs, but I didn't make a thread about that either. Believe it or not, there are actually people in this community who want to see this game move in a positive direction and can step back from the race whining. The widow mine is an overly chance-based, not very fun unit. I was actually doing WM drop openers in TvP for a while. Whether or not the damage happens feels completely random. Sure, it's true that when Protoss plays bad they will more likely take damage, and when they play well they will more likely hold. The design of the unit really doesn't offer room for anything in between. Mines either do nothing or waste probes like crazy, and whether they go unnoticed feels like a question of whether or not the timing of your drop lies between the natural rhythm of your opponents mini-map checks. By the way, how is changing the design of old units not an important part of LOTV? You say this is random but I don't see how WM's are random. They sometimes do a lot of damage when players don't pull probes fast enough. They sometimes do 0 damage when they go into extractors. And then sometimes they do okay amounts of damage by killing 2-3 probes. This isn't random, it's how the player being dropped reacts, and how the WM player reacts to that reaction by retargeting, or unburrowing. There's no randomness there and the fact that the unit being targeted is going to be marked by red is going to make that fact all the more clear. In drop scenarios, you're right. It's more about reaction than randomness. I think where the huge "coin-flip" element of this units comes into play is in large encounters. It rarely does "okay". It's usually either amazing, or complete garbage, or worse (i.e., kills all your own shit).
I agree -ish. I think it's the same idea as tanks being used in large scale fights where if you're just letting them fire vs ling/bling/roach/muta, they don't do that great unless you have an overwhelming amount. But it really shines when you're targeting specifically the banelings. I think mines are the same concept where you have to target to make it really shine, but since it has a longish cool down, and it's relatively short shot timer, re-targeting or not re-targeting can show up in massive damage or none at all. I just don't think players are good enough yet to constantly retarget while splitting and I'm okay with that. I think what other people might look at that and say it's broken and should be fixed though.
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Widow mine drops wouldnt be an issue if it weren't for the widow mine being invisible AND the medivac moving at 1000 miles per fucking hour.
You need the observer spotting for the medivac coming in so you have time to pull the probes. At the same time, you need the observer in your mineral for when they DO burrow.
Protoss players can't afford to just make 4 observers every game. This limits them a lot on builds and delays things like warp prisms, immortals, etc.
Plus if you've got 4 observers ready for widow mine defense and your opponent goes Hellions (because you sent no observers to his base) and just drives into your base and kills your workers...well you're fucked.
Pros lose substantial numbers of workers to widow mine drops on a regular basis. Can we please stop acting like "pull your workers faster noob" is the answer?
Reminds me of when Blink allins and Proxy Oracles were annihilating Terrans and people Protoss players (myself included) said "just scout better."
It's not that easy.
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On September 25 2015 23:46 DinoMight wrote: Widow mine drops wouldnt be an issue if it weren't for the widow mine being invisible AND the medivac moving at 1000 miles per fucking hour.
You need the observer spotting for the medivac coming in so you have time to pull the probes. At the same time, you need the observer in your mineral for when they DO burrow.
Protoss players can't afford to just make 4 observers every game. This limits them a lot on builds and delays things like warp prisms, immortals, etc.
Plus if you've got 4 observers ready for widow mine defense and your opponent goes Hellions (because you sent no observers to his base) and just drives into your base and kills your workers...well you're fucked.
Pros lose substantial numbers of workers to widow mine drops on a regular basis. Can we please stop acting like "pull your workers faster noob" is the answer?
Reminds me of when Blink allins and Proxy Oracles were annihilating Terrans and people Protoss players (myself included) said "just scout better."
It's not that easy.
Sure. Let's just keep in mind that in many scenarios, taking some damage to this rush play is okay.
In your examples you're talking about your observers. If you have observers already, you're fine. It's my perception that people are largely complaining when they open without detection and get attacked by units that require detection.
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On September 26 2015 01:03 TimeSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2015 23:46 DinoMight wrote: Widow mine drops wouldnt be an issue if it weren't for the widow mine being invisible AND the medivac moving at 1000 miles per fucking hour.
You need the observer spotting for the medivac coming in so you have time to pull the probes. At the same time, you need the observer in your mineral for when they DO burrow.
Protoss players can't afford to just make 4 observers every game. This limits them a lot on builds and delays things like warp prisms, immortals, etc.
Plus if you've got 4 observers ready for widow mine defense and your opponent goes Hellions (because you sent no observers to his base) and just drives into your base and kills your workers...well you're fucked.
Pros lose substantial numbers of workers to widow mine drops on a regular basis. Can we please stop acting like "pull your workers faster noob" is the answer?
Reminds me of when Blink allins and Proxy Oracles were annihilating Terrans and people Protoss players (myself included) said "just scout better."
It's not that easy. Sure. Let's just keep in mind that in many scenarios, taking some damage to this rush play is okay. In your examples you're talking about your observers. If you have observers already, you're fine. It's my perception that people are largely complaining when they open without detection and get attacked by units that require detection.
Well this type of play forces you to get reliable detection. So you have to open a certain way or you die to it.
To me that's the same complaint as "you have to blindly build a missle turret or you die to oracles" except even with detection widow mines can still kill you. (see SOS where he had cannons at both bases).
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On September 26 2015 01:05 DinoMight wrote:Show nested quote +On September 26 2015 01:03 TimeSpiral wrote:On September 25 2015 23:46 DinoMight wrote: Widow mine drops wouldnt be an issue if it weren't for the widow mine being invisible AND the medivac moving at 1000 miles per fucking hour.
You need the observer spotting for the medivac coming in so you have time to pull the probes. At the same time, you need the observer in your mineral for when they DO burrow.
Protoss players can't afford to just make 4 observers every game. This limits them a lot on builds and delays things like warp prisms, immortals, etc.
Plus if you've got 4 observers ready for widow mine defense and your opponent goes Hellions (because you sent no observers to his base) and just drives into your base and kills your workers...well you're fucked.
Pros lose substantial numbers of workers to widow mine drops on a regular basis. Can we please stop acting like "pull your workers faster noob" is the answer?
Reminds me of when Blink allins and Proxy Oracles were annihilating Terrans and people Protoss players (myself included) said "just scout better."
It's not that easy. Sure. Let's just keep in mind that in many scenarios, taking some damage to this rush play is okay. In your examples you're talking about your observers. If you have observers already, you're fine. It's my perception that people are largely complaining when they open without detection and get attacked by units that require detection. Well this type of play forces you to get reliable detection. So you have to open a certain way or you die to it. To me that's the same complaint as "you have to blindly build a missle turret or you die to oracles" except even with detection widow mines can still kill you. (see SOS where he had cannons at both bases).
It's not the same, though. Stay with me: if you're unprepared to deal with the WM, you have to chance to mitigate the damage. Several elements of the WM increase the forgiveness of being unprepared: (1) incredibly long cooldown, (2) targeting delay, (3) on-screen warning graphic.
I mean, I don't think you really mean to compare the WM Drop to the Oracle rush, because they really are different in meaningful ways. If an oracle shows up and you do not have enough anti-air prebuilt, you're going to lose so many workers ... game-ending damage. There is no mitigating. No splitting, no long cooldowns, no warning ... no building the correct buildings in response. The defense is either there before the oracle arrives, or it's not, and you lose the game. I think any argument against the WM is much stronger without comparing it to the Oracle rush. Because if you insist on the WM being broken, then the Oracle is super broken.
So, back to the "I'm unprepared for WM" argument. Build a Robo. Build an observer. This takes less than 80-90 seconds. The WM can only have shot two or three times. Observer pops -> kill the WMs. You will take damage (as you should). Mitigate the damage the best you can.
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On September 26 2015 01:05 DinoMight wrote:Show nested quote +On September 26 2015 01:03 TimeSpiral wrote:On September 25 2015 23:46 DinoMight wrote: Widow mine drops wouldnt be an issue if it weren't for the widow mine being invisible AND the medivac moving at 1000 miles per fucking hour.
You need the observer spotting for the medivac coming in so you have time to pull the probes. At the same time, you need the observer in your mineral for when they DO burrow.
Protoss players can't afford to just make 4 observers every game. This limits them a lot on builds and delays things like warp prisms, immortals, etc.
Plus if you've got 4 observers ready for widow mine defense and your opponent goes Hellions (because you sent no observers to his base) and just drives into your base and kills your workers...well you're fucked.
Pros lose substantial numbers of workers to widow mine drops on a regular basis. Can we please stop acting like "pull your workers faster noob" is the answer?
Reminds me of when Blink allins and Proxy Oracles were annihilating Terrans and people Protoss players (myself included) said "just scout better."
It's not that easy. Sure. Let's just keep in mind that in many scenarios, taking some damage to this rush play is okay. In your examples you're talking about your observers. If you have observers already, you're fine. It's my perception that people are largely complaining when they open without detection and get attacked by units that require detection. Well this type of play forces you to get reliable detection. So you have to open a certain way or you die to it. To me that's the same complaint as "you have to blindly build a missle turret or you die to oracles" except even with detection widow mines can still kill you. (see SOS where he had cannons at both bases).
are you seriously going to keep pulling the sOs game where he had such late reactions vs a build that's tailored to do mass WM drops (and keep in mind, if even one is held, a counter attack straight up kills the Terran). He played poorly.No one talks about... I think it was where Blizzcon? Taeja vs sOs? or some other protoss and Taeja literally didn't respect oracles and instead he walked across the map and then took game ending cause IT WAS POOR PLAY.
Reminds me of when Blink allins and Proxy Oracles were annihilating Terrans and people Protoss players (myself included) said "just scout better."
Yes, and that's why Terrans have won so many tournaments like Protoss did during that time right? That's why there's so many unknown Terrans suddenly become awesome.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments
There have been a ton of pro games where WM drops have been literally a non-factor but you keep on thinking that every TvP is the one where sOs had a stroke.
Stay the same DinoMight.
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What if a widow mine were visible while it was recharging for the next shot, but recharging happened a little sooner? It would remain invisible while armed, but once the payload went off, until it was ready to fire again, it would be attackable without needing detection. This would make WM drops easier to deal with, but it would also encourage players to mix in other units with the drop -- drop the WMs, along with some marines.
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Guys common, widow mines are totally fine right now - there is no issue at all regarding mines in all matchups. They might be kinda questionable in terms of game/unit design, but they are not even close to being overpowered. They would be totally useless if visible by the way.
And please stop trying to nerf terran more, the race is already in a bad spot (see tournaments 2015, GM league or LotV for example). It drives me crazy to see all these topics about "nerfing mules", "nerfing mines", "nerfing liberators" and "nerfing medivac tank". I really don't get it
And compared to oracles, adepts and stuff they are kinda bad in killing workers right now. Especially because they are not doing damage at all when seen & microed against correctly PLUS every usual standard build has detection ready in time.
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if anything, widow mines are too weak in LotV, there is no issue with the unit whatsoever unless ur terrible
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