Predator, is it really nescessary?

We have the viking fighter form, which is a dedacated Anti air unit, do we really need a predator?

I know its not a direct damage anti air ship, but its main purpose is still anti air, is it really needed? Or should there be something else in its place?

 

well...we dont know what it does yet so im not sure

i dont like predators right now

i liked wraith for anti air its gone now

 

First the viking isnt just anti air becuase it starts off in its land form so it always has it.

Second the Predator doenst just prvode anti air firepower it provides a way for a Terran player to protect his battlecruisers and other heavy air from ground based defenses and evem some other A to A vessels.

 

i still liked the wraith better

its just scary when they cloak and kill your air by your opponent

when i am against terran or zerg players, i cloak them, get 11 and a seige tank: seige mode (for stack), and kill air units

if detectors come, i own them first xD except ground detectors and observers

 

yeah, im aware of both of those things, but the viking flight form is a purely anti air unit, and the predator seems like its attack is just like the old arbiter's attack mainly for show, the predator's ability to destroy projectiles sounds interesting, but is it really needed?

Would it stop the Warp ray's ray? Or the Phoenix lazers? Or stalker lazers? Or marine bullets? Or cobra rail guns? Or the carrier's interceptor's lazers? I mean thats a lot of different types of attacks, if it uses lazers to stop missles, i can imagine that, using lazers to stop other lazers or bullets is kinda of hard to imagine dont you think?

 

Bullets would be hard to imagine because of the way they work but other lasers im not sure about becuase it would probally involve physics that havnt been invneted yet. As for the Predators attack we really know nothing about it i think it is sikilar to the corsairs but slower but i could be wrong about that. Either way whether it is good or not comes down to numbers which wont be finalized until shortly before the release.

 

Thats true, the things i know about the predator atm, is that it deals 4 or 7 damage at normal speed and its only one projectile(unlike the missle turret,which says 2 on the tooltip), no bonus damage vs any type of unit.

We'll see i guess, but im being a little skeptical about its ability so far, to be more specific, to attack other units' attack which are not missles.

 

Yah thats pretty similar to what i heard but i could swear i read someplace that the attack is an aoe attack.

 

I've heard that when it transforms to the "defensive" form, it has multiple lazer cannons, so at first i thought that it fires several lazers for an AoE effect, but the tool tip said 1 attack.

I havent heard anything about a single lazer AoE, similar to the corsair, but i did think it did AoE at first, screenshots say differently so far though.

 

I think the Predator is like the Corsair in the sense that its meant more for its ability than it's actual fighting capabilities.

 

90% of the time protoss players did not use Disruptive web.

The corsair's fighting capabilities and harrasing vs zerg was its main purpose.

I dont think corsairs have been used vs terran on non air maps.

Same goes for valkyries vs protoss, and they are rarely used vs zerg.

 

I dont think we really can judge this unit until we get some more information about its mechanics and even still the final determiner of whether or not its good is going to be the numbers.

 

I think i heard somewhere, that the predator has four independently firing ATA lasers, making it good against masses of small, lightly armored targets.

 

Isn't that a Battlecruiser ability?

 

Can't really say that the Predator isn't necessary. Barely any information has been released on it. From what I can tell, Viking's Air-to-Air is good against single capital ships, and the Predator is good against many weaker ships (similar to Valkyrie), so there is a point to it because the units that it should target are different to that of the Viking.

 

Imo Predator should give splash dmg vs air units, like Tavisman said, this is something that terrans desperately need to fight the zerg. If it gave splash dmg vs air and was able to support other air units with his defense systems, then I think it would be a very important unit for the terrans.
But with the info we have now we just can't say for sure how valubale the predator fighter is.

 

The Predator is supposed to have an area of effect type attack, isn't it? If not then it has independently functioning weaponry, so that each of their guns can hit a different unit. It's supposed to be similar to the Valkyrie, so I doubt that it just has a single attack.

 

Sorry but is there any pictures or videos of the predator because I have never seen it nor heard of it before.

 

Not sure how to show an image, but it's at this site.

http://images.wikia.com/starcraft/images/e/e9/Predator.png

 

Ohk thanks and what kinda unit is it exactly exept for an air unit?