StarCraft® II

Especially against protoss and zerg, come on, they got a great aoe missile thing (less qq about HT's, more ravens!) point defense drones render a number of units useless when in position, and auto turrets, ho ho auto turrets... anyways, seeker missile and PDD are pretty good, right? c'mon, make some more ravens, you know you want to

Ravens are OK against zerg in the lategame if he is going broodlords. Totally useless against ultralisks switches though.

Against protoss they have some uses in midgame pushes where PDD is usefull for protecting banshees. The seeker missile is garbage against protoss (if you hit chargelots, you kill more of your own units thanks to toss high HP, if you try to hit anything behind the chargelots you will insta lose ravens due to feedback) and PDD isn't that usefull in the lategame. Auto turrets are just plain bad all-round after the midgame because placing them is a b*tch and you will lose all your army because you are not microing your MM. On top of that they do pathetic damage once the opponant gets armor upgrades.

10/05/2012 19:34Posted by Siberia

less qq about HT's, more ravens!

Epic fail.

The only thing i've considered using Ravens for in non-allin builds is their detection vs zerg creep and invisible units. I'm sure there are unexplored ways for a Raven in a standard composition, but it is very hard to explore because of the simple fact that a Raven is too fragile in the mid and late game for its cost, and the Starport is used for medivacs and/or vikings.

Oh yeah, and lol about the HT qq thing. Just lol.

buff raven speed so that we can harass with it.
auto turets on mineral lines,
SM on workers and stuff...

Yeah, make em move like sspeedlings

Well vessels actually were one of the fastest units terrans got. It was taken down with scourge or delifers to plague it to 1 hp and then shoot down with hydras. SM is kinda same idea than irradiate but just can be dodged (same as irradiate but it atleast got allways one unit) SM aswell deals instantly that damage. Aswell selftargeting nonbio unit is not so strong option.

Not like we should have vessel back but raven really could move faster to add that so needed tactical mobility to terrans. However that unit still faces so many other problems I'm not sure high level players want to risk using it over standard tactics.

One key feature would update that turret. Instead having it marine style gunner have it do completly different job. If we are speaking that antiair mine turrets could be upgraded for that role. Like as raven was shown in dev phase it was mobile builder. Why not make it buil AA-guns?

I dont understand why seeker missle is 125 energy, why cant it be 75 energy so that its more comparable to storm?

Seeker Missile cost too much energy and fairly slow.
200 gas
Need tech lab on starport
Stack in the air (Dem fungals)
Slow and fragile.

They're okay as a support unit for detection and a few PDD, but as a real caster :s:s:s:s:s
At least if they could morph in some kind of transformer when they're out of energy like HT, would be fun.
But i'm afraid we'll have to do with EMP.

Terran should be able to make terratrons with this buildings in the same group and just transform in 2 sec –––> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgO6APquCc4&feature=fvst

I actually like the idea of having a slightly faster raven - having 2 banshee's and a raven killing creep could be very cute, it's a little bit too dangerous to have that kind of gas flying around now ~

There are many problems with the raven: high cost, lots of upgrades, spells cost a ton of mana, they are slow and clunky.

With its cost you would think it would have a similar impact as casters like templar or infestors, but it really does not. Seeker missile, despite needing an upgrade and costing 50 extra energy, pales in effectiveness compared to storm or fungals.

The raven is a pretty baffling unit and the only reason Blizzard hasn't buffed the crap out of it is because they seem to think terran already has too much variety.

I build it for the voice alone. :)

--
Doofensmirtz
Blogging about bronze 1v1: http://www.verndroid.com

Only use is in TvT where I use it if I decide to go banshee, spot that my opponent is doing that too. Then I just make a raven and a viking. The PDD is worth about 4 vikings in a viking vs viking battle that is likely to happen so its cost efficient. But I rarely make more than that initial one and never get any upgrades for it. However, there is this terran dude Avilo (check out his stream) that uses Ravens extensively, he is GM/High masters.

Ketroc does crazy things with mass raven in TvZ and he's a master league player, look it up.

With range and armor upgrades auto-turrets are a pain to kill for zerg and will ravage his bases and drones pretty fast, and due to the swarmy units seeker missile can do terrible terrible damage as well.
Finally point defense drone allow you to negate all attack from: Queens, Spore crawlers, Mutalisks, Corruptors, Hydralisks... basically all units that could kill ravens (infested terrans aren't affected but they're so slow you can just easily move out of range).

they are usefull in the kind of lategame you don't get to that often.

Before that time you need to have reactors on you starports against toss because you need ALOT of medivacs and vikings.

Against Zerg they could be very very good with a mech army, but in the natural flow of things the same thing happens that happens against toss. Banshee are a bit cheesy and BC's are mostly useless so the reactor starport is a bit rare to have and vikings and medivacs are just so incredibly important

from personal high silver experience

Range on the raven sucks.

For all 3 abilities.

It should be at least 8, else raven is just a cannon fodder for feedback/emp.

more speed could be nice too.

Ketroc does crazy things with mass raven in TvZ and he's a master league player, look it up.

With range and armor upgrades auto-turrets are a pain to kill for zerg and will ravage his bases and drones pretty fast, and due to the swarmy units seeker missile can do terrible terrible damage as well.
Finally point defense drone allow you to negate all attack from: Queens, Spore crawlers, Mutalisks, Corruptors, Hydralisks... basically all units that could kill ravens (infested terrans aren't affected but they're so slow you can just easily move out of range).

Fact of the matter is you can do silly tactics in Master league and get away with it, as long as your mechanics are good enough. Come back when MVP or MMA does amazing things with Ravens

1 Raven vs 10 scans for detection to destroy creep.

my standart opening ( used it in masters ) included ravens autoturrets 2 block movement from zerglings behind mineralline and then drop so my autoturrets become sort of a wall. works rly well and is super costefficient. after that i just leave my raven somewhere in outerspace and when i drop later in the game i just drop autoturrets 2 so it is harder for my opponent 2 deal with. easy 2 counter tho but who sees a raven coming ? ^^