Ravens depend heavily on the composition that you are using versus the composition that you are facing.
In TvT, Siege Tanks are a constant threat to everything on the ground that is always worth disabling, so Ravens are always useful. Ravens can also swing air battles, which are very important to ensure Tank dominance on the ground.
Furthermore, Ghosts are generally not as useful in TvT, so Ravens don’t really have a counter apart from better air control. Thors can easily be dealt with by Tanks, Cyclones, or Marauders while Marines and Cyclones cannot do anything to Ravens without entering Tank or IM range.
TvP varies a lot based on whether the Terran player is going Bio or mech or battle-mech and based on the tactics that Protoss uses to counter that. It is enough to say that Ravens are generally not useful enough in TvP Bio compositions to justify an extra Starport with a tech-lab. They are a bit more useful in mech, but AAM is actually useless for mech unless you make a transition into mass Battlecruisers.
You can see the who’s who of ultimate whiner by looking at who upvoted this absolute trash post. Good at harassing? When is the last time you saw a Raven Harass (hint: 2017)…
ROFL if Raven is good why pro’s are not building them?
We see 0-3 Ravens per TvT, 0-1 per TvP (usually 0) and 0 per TvZ.
That’s less popular than Reaper.
Actually we don’t.
We see them almost every TvT, but only in the beginning and that’s it. Turning off tanks and shredding armies is cool on paper, but after Viking count is large enough Ravens won’t come close enough to disable tanks, and after tank number is large enough shredding marines won’t decide the fate of the battle.
So in early-mid TvT we see Raven wars, then Ravens are phased out and game moves to Vikikng wars with tank-marine lines and couple of Libs picking enemy siege tanks.
In TvP they could’ve been used more if the were made without techlab, but this is debatable: yes you can stop Colossus-Immortal from attacking you for 8 seconds, but it matters only if you are doing some sort of 2 base timing attack on you opponent base. Otherwise he will simply step back with his army, wait 8 seconds and attack again.
In late game TvP Ravens are even more pathetic because they are sniped by Tempests for free.
I can think of couple of ideas:
Make IM work as lockdown: make it immobilize target unit as well as disabling attack (actually that’s kinda how it works in TvT because targets IM are used at - sieged tanks - are unable to unsiege and run away, and that is part of the reason why Ravens are so strong in early-mid game);
Remove friendly fire from anti-armor missile (that will make it work against chargelots);
add Defense Matrix (spell from co-op that effect can be described as adding extra 200 hp to target unit).
That’s a fair point to make, and one I happily concede. That doesn’t make it useless though, it just means you cant spam it or you risk doing potential harm to your own army too. In saying that, i do wonder about the thought process of the balance team there - why does the Dorito cannon have friendly fire while fungal growth and PB don’t? With fungal you can at least argue that zerg has a lot of melee units that could be affected, but PB doesn’t have any such defense.
True, but most key units are mechanical or psionic, so that point is rather moot. Realistically speaking you would want it to affect lurkers, but that’s more of a niche case anyway. Outside of that, AAM is better against the general zerg mass, and is particularly beneficial against ultralisks given their high armour, and broodlords/corruptors given the air unit stacking mechanic.
Can’t have strong spellcasters on the back of strong core units like marine marauder. The ghost is proving that quite clearly. The design already went down this road and came to the same conclusion on several occasions (ex: ravens). Unfortunately blizzard does not learn from their mistakes. If you want strong spell-casting, nerf the marine.
If you think ling bane is as as robust as MMM, you’re delusional. For example, can ling bane kill a medivac loaded full of marines? No? Oh, ok, so it’s not very robust, and you have to use fungal if you want to kill those marines? Oh, you mean to tell me that you need spellcasters to fill in the gaps where the robustness of your units falls short, and ling bane does need spellcasters while MMM doesn’t? Color me surprised. You misunderstood a very simple comparison in every possible way. Congrats.
what? Ravens can't fight thors - Masters TvT - Starcraft 2 - YouTube you can still mass ravens and win games at high ml rank, how much love do you want? that ravens could alone win gsl? raven can win games alone, turn off t3 units, increase dps of marines by 50%, harass workers, gives flying detection, how much do you want?
I am sorry, actually we do, Counter Example: Top 8 “world” player Special does in TvZ:
wcs . starcraft2 . com / en-us / news / 23113939 / Replay-Pack:-WCS-Fall-2019
Day 3
Special vs Stephano
map: Disco Bloodbath, he was using mostly bio here, too
As for TvP Id agree it’s the least used matchup (as with most of the cool terran stuff), because most players use bio or have to use it. Anyways just to name one example: Innovation vs a Protoss in a 2 base push, a high reknown korean pro player. And these are just examples. I’m not the replay library.
What? No, it’s a high tech unit, it deserves a tech-lab. Yes we know meta-bio players don’t build techlabbed starport. BTW: Usually it comes in handy when opening with a banshee harras, which you will then transition into bio play.
What you suggest is the so called “anti-meta”: Countering or guiding the current meta.
A proper change however is keeping the core units idea, without only looking at the (current!) meta. And instead there are many other “ways” that we already tried. Happy to see the discussion ongoing, looking forward for your ideas.
That’s way too much, you will get 1 raven without much investment or add on switches:
tvp keep you safe against dt, colossus and can buy a lot of time against prism. Nothing of this was usefull? no prob, just disable some immortals
tvz might be worth having one to clear creep and some random harass because you don’t have to commit to this tech
and tvt will turn into viking-raven war even more when in can be produced alongside vikings in reactor
well i might have an idea for a raven buff other than cost reduction and no tech-lab
increased vision range if you think about it they are pretty vunerable to like anything and you build just 1-3 in standard games it could getting worth as spotters and scouting and helps keeping them alive
only problem i might see would be tvt end up in only air war since tanks could always use full range when ravens would be near
AAM is probably least useful in TvZ outside of mass Battlecruiser compositions.
Zerg usually fights Marines with Zerglings and Banelings which do not have enough health for AAM to be relevant. The support units that Bio needs (against Banelings, Brood Lords, or Ultralisks) also do not benefit much if at all from AAM, and Zerg is unlikely to try to fight Bio with a Roach/Hydra/Lurker composition where AAM will actually be powerful.