Battle.net

06/30/2012 04:12 PMPosted by Locutus

over lap with ravens

The biggest difference:
Widow mine: mostly defensive (is quickly prepped for battle but takes time to get in place, short ranged, slows down the enemy if they try to kill them, doesn't do too bad waiting to attack because it can simply block an attack pathway, being a trap for the enemy)
Raven (using seeker missile): mostly offensive (takes a long time to prep for battle (not good for a defensive emergency, as it might not be ready when the enemy comes) because it has to generate energy, launches its missile very quickly, so it can come in and hit and run, long ranged, does not slow the enemy down very much if it tries to destroy it, does very bad if it waits to attack because it can waste energy and increase vulnerability to feedback)
Oh, and since you brought up heavy use of detector units, that reminds me: I think that Overseers should be changed so that they cost supply by counting as (1/8) or (2/8) instead of (0/8) supply so that they're not spammed after a Zerg has been maxed out for a while. Either that, or make it so that all 3 races have 0-supply offensive detection (Overseers, Orbital Commands, and give something to Protoss that doesn't cost supply)

-Guaranteed to hit/kill at least 1 unit.

They may be more likely to kill something than banelings, but they are far from a guaranteed kill.
1. The mine may get killed before it burrows
2. The mine may get detected and destroyed by units that out-range it
3. The enemy may move around the mine (even if unintentionally) and kill you before they ever get used
4. The unit that the mine is attached to may get killed before the timer runs down
5. The unit that the mine is attached to may split from the main army and also have to much health for the mine to kill it (but this does count as a "hit" I guess)
Edit: Sorry, I guess you realized this, it just seemed at first that you didn't.

Yes, you are correct. Apologies for my poor choice of vocabulary. I simply meant that it is guaranteed to hit/kill 1 unit "when it launches its attack", which is not something that can be said about the seeker missile.

06/30/2012 04:12 PMPosted by Locutus

t and p both seem to play a very "dark templar" style. Which is they have soo many more timing attacks that just end the game, so they play towards that advantage, rather then try to play a long game.

Again, I must disagree. :) The standard build order for TvZ nowadays in patch 1.4.3 is a gasless FE into hellion/banshee into bio/tank, dubbed the "MMA style," which calls for a quick third base. We certainly play with the late game in mind.

Infact, I feel the audacity to say this: Anything besides a late-game centric build in TvZ is either a reactionary response to seeing Zerg go for its own timing attack, or some noob deciding to cheese/2 rax you after seeing 15 hatch.

In the case of cheese, the queen range buff was specifically designed to help you with this; you can put up spine crawlers, use 100% of your larva for army, and hold off cheese with relative ease. Unless it's a small map such as Ohana LE, in which case you should probably be going pool first anyways (depending on what you scout).

Terran is known for being the best race at defensive turtling, and anyone that decides not to take advantage of this 'should' be punished and wiped out by the Zerg.

06/30/2012 04:12 PMPosted by Locutus

so, having said all that, here is how I think terran's should use ravens. They should play towards having a good fleet of ravens, using then through out the game, getting them as early as possible. get two bases. make what timing attacks you want. but the moment you have two bases, make a tech starport, and keep making ravens, always have one in production. that way energy can build up longer, you'll have more with possible seeker missiles with the upgrade you can put down defensive pdd, put them over your mineral line, over defensive turrents, etc, to defend against mutas. with the upgrade, your pdd lasts 240s, they regen mana at 0.5625 , so when the pdd died you'ed have 135 mana exactly (hmm maybe they designed it that way...), one raven could always be planting pdd's. so get ravens early, and keep getting them. always plant one auto-turret down to never max out mana.

There are many problems with this. The first is that PDD duration doesn't mean much; it's the energy. Each PDD can only stop a maximum of 20 projectiles. Mass mutalisk cost-for-cost could 'easily' destroy PDDs given enough time, or even better yet, swing around with their fast movement speed and attack a different location.

Even if the PDDs stopped a mutalisk attack, here's the thing: The mutalisks are untouched by the raven. And a couple of auto-turrets won't scratch a large flock of mutalisks whatsoever.

This is of course assuming the Zerg goes mass mutalisk instead of infestor, but that is besides the point.

This is by design. PDDs/auto-turrets are certainly useful as a supplemental ability. But primarily getting mass raven, to then sit around defensively, is asking for a loss. Mass raven on 2 base requires you to either skip upgrades or skip vehicles, due to maximum gas income, and these are both unacceptable against a smart Zerg player.

06/30/2012 04:12 PMPosted by Locutus

come on, grow up terrans. you'll keep losing till you understand how strong ravens are, how they are just as vital if not more so then vessels, and how just a little micro makes them unstoppable.

TvZ is one of my best matchups, which is why this thread is offensive. :) Somewhere between 70%-75% (and just a meager 60% overall win rate).

Mass raven's viability is only as a late-game alternative, not a mid-game strategy. If it was as viable as you think it is, people would be using it.

I've tried it before. That is why I know it doesn't work.

I like how non-terrans regard the raven as the "Strongest" unit... Its almost like they have never played terran.

My humble opinion...The Widow Mine is different in more than enough ways to differentiate it from the Raven's seeker missile.

First of all, the Raven requires a TechPort and multiple upgrades to make the seeker missile a viable option. Even then, the seeker missile is slow enough to be outrun by most worth targeting and only one can be shot at a time (per raven) at such a large energy cost. If you try and get a Raven close enough to an enemy army to catch them before they can notice and run away, the Raven is almost certainly dead before it even gets off a shot.

The Widow Mine, on the other hand, is an abundant, reactor-able unit available at factory tech. Rather than coming from a Raven in battle, it hides, giving sight (and protection) to a great amount of area and battle routes. Also, once it attaches, that unit will definitively be hit by the blast unless it's dead beforehand.

Yes, both are considerable splash damagers, but the difference in approach and use with both is huge. Also, if they are borrowing from anything it is spider mines, not banelings.

what you people don't seem to understand is that it takes way too much time to kill them cost efficiently because they kill your detectors

people are saying "don't let them see cloaked units" so that they can't kill obersvers
well what about zerg? are they supposed to micro their detectors and their armys little by little and hope they don't lose the entire army? are they supposed to send in a unit at a time in order to try to cool them all down and then attack? what if theres more than 10? you understand how long it takes to do that; it's 20 clicks for killing 10 units. seriously? oh, are the zerg supposed to inch forward click by click in order to move out on the map? are they supposed to push with spines and spores instead of units? what about taking an expansion while pushing? up your apm x2 to stay in the game? what are zerg seriously supposed to do to be able to play with terran? whats to keep terran from expanding all over the place without a zerg able to pressure because they *DONT KNOW* where the widow mines are and therefore, can't move out all over the map without fear of losing their entire army *FOR FREE*?? it's just ridiculous, it really is broken, no way that this unit is fair in competitive play, it's a joke
/rant

Blizz please don't troll us like this, it's just ridicuous, make them stop attacking air, yeah it's nice they can kill drops and mutas and all, but it's just too good. get over it. at least give the other races a hard counter to this cheap unit that makes sense, you can't call microing a freaking detector a counter; it's not, it's a skill.

[edit]
i just realized that you might be able to kill them by having an overseer follow an a-clicked army of hydralisks...
this might work, but still forces you to go hydras or broods.
gonna test it.

It's easy to forget about half your units when they're all countered by infestors.

Well, I just got hit by a player who went Mass widow mines and several Thor. It absolutely destroyed my army in less than a second as I was toss. So basically build a bunch of widow mines, have Thor's tank hits while they burrow and BOOM - win the game. Nice Micro?