My feedback from replays, forum discussions from grandmaster on teamliquid, and of course testing&playing it myself:
Feedback: Balance Disruptor Range vs Tanks
The disruptor outranges the Tank - please try it yourself (hots unit tester to be fast):
Tank in position with full sight. Disruptor just slightly out of range (you even have the border line marked)
The projectile will hit the tank with its aoe without getting shot itself.
(of course you need to know the AoE a bit, bit you have the white border line, something a terran doesn’t have at all before sieging!)
Uh something outranging the tank is bad?
Not necessarily, but the Disruptor also has the following attributes:
- QUITE mobile with 3.15 movespeed (same as tank, faster then HT or Thor and similiar)
- The disruptor much easier sets up its attack and move around freely all the time but when “launching”.
- It can avoid enemy troups or at least pull back with a relative tanky health of 200.
- It can by the way be moved around with the warp prism to almost immediatelly strike with its huge range anywhere and can then be picked up again right after “launching”.
- It’s another one of those - “don’t build tanks/slow mech”-units of protoss.
- To be fair: the tank doesn’t need micro to shoot.
I like the Disruptor as me playing all 3 races, they give another option of AoE vs stronger units and add some Micro to the protoss army, woosh yes.
However this range has to be looked at, it’s too strong: Mech is already quite immobile and can’t avoid the disruptor shots when being offensive, so at least in the defense it shouldn’t outrange a tank.
Suggestion: They both should have the same max range vs single targets.
Reasoning: There is already enough counters against tanks as protoss. And by the way, they already trade well vs tanks when both can just fire at each other.
For references
-
You can look up
[PBOTW] Gemini’s Disruptor Drop into Stalkers
He is among many other things mentioning parting having used it (vs non-mech) - vs mech it would be more devastating. -
Here is a short screenshot I did for you:
Just before Hitting:
imgur . com / I73VoB5
Just after Hitting:
imgur . com / UgC7CcQ
P.S.: Against the nice idea of putting a depot infront of the tank
- well Guess what Disruptors damage buildings, too. (Which itself can be considered fair) Of course it’s one of the very dedicated strategies to slow it a bit, but do you want to build a depot for each new siege up position…?! And it’s only good for the front angle.