Surgical Strikes vs Massing: Raids are Pointless

[GnaReffotsirk]

Again, raids are a thing of the past. It's just not worth it. The time you spend microing raids will cost you so much in terms of macro, and bases are so well equipped to handle mass production of units that can make your time invested on raids pointless.

A human being cannot possibly make 5 effective actions in 2 seconds at two different locations, and since Massing is so easily accessible, where econ and production times are high, fast raids to kill a few probes or a single structure isn't worth it anymore.

If you can run over someone's base in 6 mins, why spend 30 seconds losing much macro to deal a very slight if not senseless effect to your enemy?

Killed 4 probes? He can reproduce that in a few sec without much impact on his economy.

Want to really do some damage on your opponent's economy? Drop all your massed units at his econ line and set the battle there.

And to add, there are no real base raiders present in the game. If there was one, the real time they are useful are at mid-game, where battles can be joined and would yield so much you can run over an enemy's base instead of harassing it.

How economy and production works now has made raids something you can ignore and be better off not doing.

[Drkie]

Most of the time sc2 is just a rush then turtling till you mass fun stuff....not

[n00bonicPlague]

Though I've seen many a game lost due to ineffective raiding, I think that the game just needs a bit of time and exposure in order to have players develop highly effective raiding methods. Most raiding that I have seen sucked not because of the pointlessness of raiding but rather due to the player's poor form.

[Ghost_828]

Surgical strikes are different in SC2. It's much harder to make them worth the cost and the effort.
However, they are possible, like dropping Siege Tanks at your enemy's higher ground expansion on Kulas Ravine. Two or three tanks can wreak havoc if they have a spotter.

[GnaReffotsirk]

Maybe all these replays, tourneys, and shoutcasts had me believing otherwise.

I don't see those guys raid that much. It's pretty boring actually to see how they macro, dance, and clash to GG.

[Dalarsco]

Raiding is important, but not on someone's main. Raid the virtually undefended expansions instead.

[GnaReffotsirk]

Crota's gotta have some replays back there with active raiding to ownage.

[Wankey]

Surgical strikes are different in SC2. It's much harder to make them worth the cost and the effort.
However, they are possible, like dropping Siege Tanks at your enemies higher ground expansion on Kulas Ravine. Two or three tanks can wreak havoc if they have a spotter.

Holy shit, that is ingenius man. Why didn't I think of that?? Dropping siege tanks onto the high ground on Kulas Ravine.

[don]

A possible solution:

When they first nerfed SCV health, I always thought they should have nerfed Probes and Dones with the change.

-5 ~ -10 HP nerf on Probes and Drones?

[TunaFish]

A possible solution:

When they first nerfed SCV health, I always thought they should have nerfed Probes and Dones with the change.

-5 ~ -10 HP nerf on Probes and Drones?

The workers' health isn't the problem...the problem is that they can be replaced so quickly that raiding doesn't matter that much.

That's the original poster's argument, anyway. Not sure that I agree. Wiping out most of your opponent's workers early in the game or even mid way through the game can have a huge impact, and you can accomplish it with just a few air units if you backdoor them into your opponent's base during a battle.