To encourage more micro and less passive play, I’m proposing to revert the Widow Mine buff and instead provide a +1 range buff to the Hellbat.
The current iteration of the Widow Mine has stifled counter-play, particularly against Widow Mine drops and Muta harass. Because the Widow Mine is so punishing, it forces highly defensive play. A +1 range buff allows Hellbats to be more viable against swarming tactics.
give hellbats an upgrade that makes them attack instantly (like marines) so they can be stutter stepped against zealots, and delete the widow mine from the game.
The Widow mine needed buffs, whether you like the unit or not - the unit simply didn’t serve its purpose before in any real efficacy after the myriad (and generally unwarranted) nerfs it had.
Realistically, what should happen is that the splash radius should be reverted, and the alert timing should tell you when the widow mine is targeting a unit, instead of as it burrows.
As it is, you currently have roughly 4 seconds to react. If your reactions are slow enough that you’re unable to deal with widow mines with a 4 second timer, then that’s on you.
No because Zerg is just too dam good right now and Muta harss is already OP on the biggest maps where Terran is the weakest.
Widowmine had become underpowered and Terran needs something consistent for the big maps.
Having to use Hellbats against noobs building a few Zealots is stupid.
Mines at least work now against idiots who run or stupidly blink into you before you even have a tank (why are you blinking into my infantry?)
Imagine dedicating an entire early factory to hellbats against Toss just for one unit
Impossible specialization demands to fight basic Toss
Mines get you killed vs zealots because the zealots drag the mine fire into your own units BTW.
The correct response to heavy zealot spam has always been Hellbats. Doesn’t matter if you don’t want to make Hellbats, that’s a you problem, not a SC2 problem.
you may want to consider putting some distance between you.
But it makes very little sense to me to build hellbats against an otherwise primarily ranged force.
I haven’t watched all SC videos. Does anyone actually have a video of anyone using hellbats effectively against Zealots?
Against Mass Zealot Spam, they will provide splash - sure. Will they win?
The point of the Hellbat is to hard counter units like the Zealot before you have enough bio to handle it.
Yeah it’s annoying to make Hellbats but there are times when you need them (you don’t need many of them either, 3-4 works wonders). Getting your depot wall smashed in by 10-20 zealots in the early-mid game is one of those times.
Repair and use a unit that can actually shoot over the walls.
If there’s a tank with that, the tank will kill the wall.
If not then you make a few Stalkers n come back, target fire the repairing workers.
Mines will just kill your bio for the Protoss player.
You really, really need Hellbats if the Protoss decided to mass expand/chargelot spam you (within a certain time frame, at some point you can stim2win gateway spam without proper counter units). Not a lot of them but enough to at least scrape the paint off of those zealots so you don’t get routed and lose the game 10 minutes later cuz Terran production is a massive bottleneck compared to Warp Gates.
Terran can repair through that.
During which time, Terran should still be making more units to hold.
Only if you micro improperly, and from behind a wall you should probably be using Bio, Tanks, Cyclones, etc instead of Mines; not that you can’t use Mines as well.
No, you do not, and there are plenty of reasons why Bio doesn’t make use of Hellbats that you have just glossed over in other threads.
Terran has a hard time repairing through it.
In this case I think you’re just wrong. Or the people doing this stuff to you aren’t doing the things they need to for it to be effective.
Even so, that doesn’t mean that building Hellbats, which require Infernal Preigniter and generally aren’t useful for Bio is the correct response.
Terran tried all sort of things with Hellbats when they were first introduced. The unit was dropped from Bio compositions because the combination is not particularly effective.
They don’t require it - but it’s generally preferred if you’re on the backfoot vs chargelot spam.
Terrans also tend to be extremely stubborn to their own detriment. There’s a reason why ‘bio or die trying’ among other phrases were a thing. For a while it got better but we’re getting back to that state of mind where there’s no attempt to do the correct thing because it doesn’t feel good to do, then complaining there’s no answer.
I wasn’t talking about Mass chargelot spam.
If toss is truly going mass Zealots then I suppose bats with Infernal…
if they’re making some Zealots, or even a decent amount of Zealots alongside ranged units, bats with infernal are an extremely deep investment despite the fact that they’d potentially cripple you.
I don’t personally know where you’re getting that kind of money from. I’d probably have ghosts to at least debuff them before i get all that, if not a stargate.
They are not preferred this is nonsense pros barley use them for a reason.
400-500 minerals to get a few hellbats when there’s a lot of chargelots is much better than just losing the game.
Ghosts won’t do it. Sure you get to EMP the 1st wave of chargelots…but what about the next wave? Or the wave after that…or the wave after that?
If you can’t scrounge up 400-500 minerals you’re playing ‘lets copy the pro build order’ without realizing that you also need game sense enough to deviate and do sub optimal stuff because it’s the right thing to be doing in that scenario.
No, it isn’t. Dipping massive resources into upgraded hellbats to deal with one of the game’s two basic melee units is a stupid game design and probably won’t work anyway. Bats were a nice throwback to firebats but ultimately a crappy unit that doesn’t belong in a dedicated factory.
As far as I know, they’re commonly considered an early unit at best. They don’t even work against Zerg later since they can just get wiped by Banes - assuming they weren’t just going roaches anyway, which is arguably the worse play.
I’m certainly not betting on them against masses of Protoss super-soldiers. Even liquidpedia says that mines are commonly used against Zealots. Wtf are bats supposed to do against stalkers? If stalkers want to press an attack, let them run into a mine.
Hellbats work great in mech, where they close some legitimate gaps in the composition. They just aren’t anywhere near as useful for Bio.
Specifically, in mech, Hellbats are a great buffer for Tanks, Cyclones, and Thors. There are multiple reasons for this: