"May a Noob Ask" - Thor's Armor and... Range?

General Discussion
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Hello, hope you are having a nice day.

I like SC2 a lot, pretty much since it came out aswell as SCBW, but i don’t play it myself a lot for various reasons. I watch the pro matches like probably some old man watching your classic ESPN football (gets slapped) ouh excuse me (cleans throat) soccer match and then yells at the tv. So take my word with a grain of salt.

Now, i like Thor gameplay a lot, i like to see them come out. It is that feeling like “yeah! the big boys came out to play!”. I don’t mind the balance changes that much, but there were a few that made me ask Why?, not to question the decision, just for the sake to know why.

First the armor, i know the Thor is hard to use mainly because he is too thick to walk around, too slow, and suffers from overkill. The way i see the unit, and sense the developer intention, is to the Thor to be like an ankor unit, the guy that makes sure that the ground is not lost and to punish overextention with 1 powerful attack rather than full on assault. Your typical “heavy weapons guy” type of unit. He can’t get around without support, and is just as strong as his team will be.

Like all defenses in videogames, to avoid stalemates, defense has to be desing to be… you know, beatable at some point, hopefuly sooner than later to keep tempo. And a super thick thor seems to go againts that idea. But seeing it fall so quickly by a bunch of interceptors or zerglins is so funny for me, and dissapointing at the same time. Weren´s you suposed to be the tank or something? - A marine
So aside from nerfing the armor to avoid making an unbreakable wall of thors, was there any other reason that you know of? idk.

Seconded, the range, and i’m probable touching into zerg territory here. But i gotta say, range is a haaaard thing to balance in any game dude. And sometimes, specially in rts where you relly a bit more on unit stats rather than your own skill (compared to, for example, fps games) an unit with too much range can be annoying and hard to deal with(AKA being slowly chipped away). So when the devs decide to give more range to a unit just counter the other big range unit, we stop seeing that dance that pros make when trying to engage an army, and start seeing those slow pushes again, but in the opossite direction. I’m not criticizing here, keep calm.
When the thor got more range just to counter broodlords, and some prottos units, i kinda felt that something was missing. Like “oh ok cool, more range for thors. What is the cost of this, and upgrade? will the ground weapon get more range too with said upgrade?”
So other to counter Broods and possibly help againts tempest(?) was there other reason? i would love to know.

Why do i bring these two things together? Well… i was just wondering actually how well Thors could deal with Carries compared to BCs really hehe… and then realized the armor nerf. But with the range buff and proper micro i believe they can hold their own againts carriers, at least for a while before BCs show up (from what i´ve heard)

I´m not asking for a buff or a nerf, just a logical explanation that backsup the decition made back then, because i can’t think of any other, desing or balance wise. Although i believe that an specific upgrade just for the Thor to give him the range that was given to him on air weapons but also more on ground range could be a cool thing to experiment on (like timing attacks, and being like “oh snap these Thors are upgraded already!” or “haha! not Thor upgrade yet? i still have time to siege for free!” you know what im saying?) it does not seem necesary right now, and off course, that’s just me dreaming.

Realization S@*t this got longer that expected

Have a nice day people

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This was super hard to read, but I’ll say a few things.

  1. Thors counter carriers. Thors counter tempests. Thors to an extent counter BCs as well. You don’t have to transition to battlecruisers. Thors counter everything.
  2. The broodlord strategy was effectively deleted when they did the most recent adjustment on thor’s attacking ability and nerf on broodlord leash capabilities. Not nerfed. Deleted.
  3. The armor makes it so things like carriers and zerglings and other DPS reliant units don’t do that much damage to it.
  4. Is the thor balanced? Not really, but honestly, considering how difficult it is to move them around the map, it kind of makes sense to make it strong, though not to the extent it currently is.
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The thor is designed to be a tough 1 vs 1 opponent, but a terrible choice against multiple weak opponents. He does a lot of overkill against small units (lings, marines) nearly halving his DPS, and has a deliberate abnormally long targeting time, which implies he will spend a long time selecting another target once the initial one is dead or got out of range. His unremarkable armor is the translation of that choice, since lings were supposed to be a cost efficient counter, and having it buffed to 2 instead of one reduced their DPS by 40 instead of 20%. So all of this are intended design choices.

Regarding the range, as you’ve rightly highlighted it, the thor is a very slow unit. But it’s not only slow but bulky, and limited by available ground space. That bulkiness and slow speed combined make him quite inefficient at going around obstacles, while it is intended as a late game unit, complementing whole armies. In other words, with a lesser AA range the mere volume of the armies were enough to prevent him reaching the targets he was supposed to slay, as the BL were behind hydras and safely preventing foward moves with bodyblocking locusts, Carriers were behind the gateball, and Tempest could just stack themselves for all of them to get in range of only a single thor, ensuring that all the tempest could strike while only one thor could retaliate.

So that range buff was an answer to that in order for the Thor to achieve its intended role despite its sub-par mobility. :mag_right:

But lings, interceptors, infestors, vipers, massed tanks, MM + ravens, voidrays, immortals, disruptors, etc. etc.

As for BCs, that might work until the opponent finds the Yamato button. Once he does, you’ll need either ravens or medivacs, and a micro significantly more taxing than your opponent to make it work. And reaching an amount of thors + ravens/medivacs sufficient to deal with the BCs (which can get to be more costly than just BCs…) will then leave you tremendously exposed to out of positions, which BCs can create by the press of a button… So nah, it’s not a reliable counter past a certain level I’d say. Vikings + ravens might require more micro, but are a superior answer in TvT of you’ve got the level to use them efficiently.

That’s the contrary. Thor has 1 armor, which is extremely common for an armored unit, but a bit low compared to T3 late game capital-ship like big units (tempest & carrier have 2, BC has 3, Ultras 4). At some point it was considered to make the thor as durable as those, and so the armor was buffed to 2.

Problem : the thor was supposed to be countered by large amounts of small units, and that armor point did hurt against interceptors and lings. So they reverted it from 2 to 1 to preserve the efficiency of those units against the thor ; but then accentuated the design of the thor as a « Giants slayer » by buffing the single shot air attack.

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Thank you!, you made sense of the mess i spelled.

Also i just realized all the grammar mistakes i made… Sorry? not a native english speaker here, im trying my best.

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I don’t particularly count lings. Maybe if you have an overwhelming number vs. 1 thor or get surrounds on every single thor you see, it will trade out well, but if those thors are clumped up, I don’t think lings trade well.

Infestors/vipers are spellcasters and while they are meant to beat units, I wouldn’t call them a counter in a simple sense. For example, infestors literally have to steal thors to beat thors - not infestors beating thors. Ah I’ve already been through this argument before… I will say immortals are good though.

I’m surprised. I thought they had 2. I guess the small units will counter thors better then.

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Regarding lings, there is indeed a catch : at equal supply (= most lings can’t attack) the thors do win if they are clumpedup. However, if the thors are individually surrounded, or if the armies are equal value, the lings prevail by far. And that considering the value of vespene equals the minerals’ one (which is a big overlook).

In good hands, spellcasters are the real power of Zerg’s T3. BLs can be countered by other units, same of ultralisks. Now, if you can land a fungle, a blinding cloud, a neural, a parasitic bomb where the opponent’s key units are, or dwindle the numbers with abducts, that will win you the game regardless of the adversary’s composition.

And so it happens that the best Zerg counter to Thors (and BCs !) is the neural. It might possibly be the best counter in the game btw (they even felt forced to make the MS immune to it for similar reasons).

Yep, that was precisely the goal.

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That’s pretty much what I said

Like I said, the reason why I don’t count spellcasters like infestors is because… It’s silly.

Read this part again… Apply similar reasoning to vipers. Vipers need other units to actually kill the thor.

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Yep. Which means we agree. ^^

Though true, that doesn’t lessen their use as a counter. Otherwise, that would mean that

  • Infestors would not counter BCs… despite one neural allowing you to yamato = insta kill another target, and then to tactical jump to suicide the BC on your spores or hydras, making it the best counter in the whole game.
  • That Ghosts wouldn’t counter templars, because EMP being non lethal… Whereas in a real game, being deprived of your storms with two well placed EMP can be game ending.
  • That Vipers wouldn’t counter tanks and thors… despite blinding cloud making them go from unapproachable to complete sitting ducks to a ground army, and that on an AoE scale.
  • That Ravens’ matrixes aren’t a counter to colossi nor tanks. Whereas matrixing those units nullifies your siege line and thus can cost you the game.

So yeah, it’s not because a spell causes no direct damage that it doesn’t constitutes a counter. Those you consider not being direct counters can lead to decisive/game ending situations when used as part of a composition. And AFAIK, most real games situations involve army compositions anyway. :mag_right:

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Thors counter only high tier units, but against mow tier, like marauder or zerglings, zealots, they are completely destroyed, it depend on situations rather a full counter, also, a thor hardly counter a carrier, even an 1v1 or larger group.