Mothership Update

[Triceron]

The Thor's unique nature is due to Blizzard's inability to fit it in as what they originally intended it to be. What they've created is this hybrid unit with too many functions.

Usually a unit design is very simple. It fills one purpose and may have a secondary or support role. The Thor fills four roles. It's a light anti-air counter, a ground heavy support unit, a siege weapon (Barrage) and a big freakin meatshield for ground units. A Siege Tank in Tank mode, a Battlecruiser, a Valkyrie... The Thor is none of these? No. It's all of these. The only balancing factor is that it can't do all of this at once, and can be countered. Design-wise, this unit is a mess.

[Jconant]

I was just guessing it may work similar to the pheonix in warcraft 3 in which it has a direct method of of attack, while at the same time (out of the players control) shooting additional projectiles at any enemies nearby.

the point would be for defense purposes. An enemy could attempt to surround the mother-ship, but at the risk of being held back by reserved laser batteries.

[Perfecttear]

Speaking of the thor, could anyone explain to me why has their GtA splash damage been nerfed? It used to have a large area splash damage, which gave it a realy great role . But now it has only an minute splash, that is only efective, if the enemy has it's units stacked. I've heard people talking, that they used mutalisk to kill an counter thors , and i thought it was suposed to be a counter to them. It seems that the splash damage has been nerfed when the thor received its cannons back, so i'm wondering is the thors new ability the reason for the nerf?

[Jconant]

Well... I think it would be a bit unfair for a thor to be a meat shield, strong anti ground weaponry like a "nuke single target" ability and still keep anti air attack that is aoe splash. Thor would be victim to the habit of "tank spam" that exists in other...less worthy rts

[ParticleBeam]

Twelve days later. It was a mechanics fart: unpleasant but over quickly.

That I couldn't know, as it's not written in the wikia.
Nonetheless, it would have made the Viking a lot better in ground-mode.

... What? How is 10x4 + 4 vs. Light AoE "similar" to 10x2 + 10 vs. Massive? The only things similar are that they are multi-attacks with a base value of 10, which is coincidence at best.

In the end, the Thor does equal or even more damage depending on the target.

The Thor is clearly better against light armored units, particularly those that cluster together (hence the AoE). Vikings are better, cost for cost, against massive units and single-targets.

That I didn't even know that the Thor did splash damage, until you mentioned it. Now I see that it's been written in the stats of the Thor on the wikia-page.

And no, they don't fire at about the same rate. Vikings are notably faster on the attack.

As I said, my assumption is based on the wikia.

Against what? Even if we assume they fire at the same speed, 2 Vikings cost slightly less than a Thor. Two Vikings deliver equal firepower to a single target as a Thor. And they fly, thus they can chase targets down. Against massive targets (Viking specialty), one Viking can keep pace with a Thor's damage.

But how many massive air-targets are there? Aside from the Colossus (who can be targeted due to its height), Carrier, the Mothership and the Battlecruiser, no other flying unit is listed as massive.
It's not like these units wouldn't have an escort of stalkers, phoenixes or even void ray (if the Protoss even bother with the massive air-units), and marines in the case of the battlecruiser (or just more battlecruiser, but then I guess you already lost if the enemy can mass-produce battlecruisers).
The wikia doesn't mention of any massive zerg-units.

And while a Thor isn't susceptible to AtA, Vikings aren't susceptible to AtG. So Banshees and Brood Lords are mere prey for the Viking, whereas either unit is a major pain for Thors.

They are if they need to go into walker-mode, which they need to do if they want to contribute more.
If they remain in only one mode all the time so as not to expose them to their current weakness, then they'd be a waste of ressource and time.

Yes, if you get clusters of the Thor's preferred targets together, the Thor is better. But it should be better. Vikings and Thors handle different situations.

Well, just like the Wraith and the Goliath did, but did people really still use Wraiths? And are we really going to use Vikings if the Protoss-players, who have most of the units susceptible to it, possess good counters against them? The Stalkers will form the core of any protoss army early in the game, and then stay so for the rest of the match.

I do wonder if they shouldn't change the bonus-damage of the Viking to against armored instead of against massive units.

People keep trying to call the Thor a "something else." It's a modified Siege Tank or a big Goliath or a walking Battlecruiser or some other nonsense. The fact is that it's none of these. It's a Thor. It has its own designation, and its own unique nature. It is not a slightly modified version of any other Terran unit.

Why shouldn't it be a modified siege tank, big goliath or a walking battlecruiser? It does perform in the way people have attributed to it.

Nonetheless, this is going out-of-topic, so perhaps we should continue it elsewhere. Or perhaps a moderator could split it up.

[Kimera757]

By the way, the thor page is still up at http://www.starcraft2.com/features/terran/thor.xml

And the haters cry!

You can't remove something that never existed.

It actually had a ground-to-air attack for a while, long time ago. (And then I noticed your 12 day comment. Good catch.)

The Thor is like a grounded battlecruiser with an attack like a siege tank in tank mode. BC's are already units with huge HP pools. If you want a meat shield, Defense Matrix. Want a long-range siege ability? Yamato Cannon. Need anti-air support? Plasma Torpedoes. Terrans never needed a ground meat shield, removing this role from the game changes little.

If you remove the Thor, all you're really missing is the Thor's role as a ground AA unit, something previously filled by the Goliath.

The thor is lower-tier than a battlecruiser. Furthermore, the goliath was designed to destroy heavily-armored air units, not the (masses of?*) lightly-armored air units the thor takes out. In fact, the cheap goliath was heavily responsible for denying AtG attacks in StarCraft. (It does similar or higher damage than any AtG attacker, even the guardian, and is cheaper than the AtG units. Guardians could win due to stacking, though, and carriers could win with proper micro, but by and large, goliaths were "imba" vs air units.)

It doesn't matter if terrans don't "need" a ground-based meatshield. It's nice to have a ground option beyond siege tanks when assaulting an enemy base. It's easier to criticize anyway. Do you have some solution for the siege tank? Because if so, I'd like to hear it.

*Allegedly lost splash, according to some videos. Or maybe the splash is just smaller now.

Of course, I want to stress the fact that my knowledge comes from http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/StarCraft_Wiki, so what I say is possibly inaccurate, and based on false data.

You know, you could check the references. That's what they're there for.

[warrior6]

how the hell could anybody tell what was going on in that video? ya it looks cool but when playing the game, its very hard to read. statis field was much more cleaner ability. and the blackhole is like a modified statis field from what i see (in terms of what it does)

[DemolitionSquid]

how the hell could anybody tell what was going on in that video? ya it looks cool but when playing the game, its very hard to read. statis field was much more cleaner ability. and the blackhole is like a modified statis field from what i see (in terms of what it does)

Vortex is definitely a modified Stasis Field.

But that's definitely not a bad thing.

Stasis Field insta-froze a small area for like 30 seconds. It made all the captured units invulnerable.

Vortex not only does that, but it continues to freeze anything entering the area, effectively closing it down. Between Vortex and the Disruptor's Force Field the Protoss may have the best area denial in the game.

It also draws everything into its center. Image the power of Vortex with Psi Storm or the Colossus AoE attack.

[Jconant]

a player with some good micro skills is gonna have fun with protoss...

the mothership impeding view of things may be worrysome, but bear in mind the camera was mainly focused on the mothership

[ParticleBeam]

You know, you could check the references. That's what they're there for.

I did, and some of these references point towards blizzcons, korean gameplay videos not translated into english, links to this very site, and statements of Karune on the blizzard-boards.
I trust them to be as accurate as a typical wikia can be.