Warp Ray

I think "long range bombardment" is just Blizzard throwing words at you Ych9.  This time around, whoever's in charge of all the lore and write ups and stuff seem to kinda suck at it anyway.

Traditionally in SC, when you say siege unit, it usually implied that the unit had an attack range of 8 or longer(towers range is 7).  This included reaver, carrier, siege tank, BC(yama), and guardian.

I seriously doubt that warprays will be a siege unit in that sense.  Protoss already has too many units that fill that role already.

Reaver and carrier are both back this time, although the exact attack range of the tempest is left to be seen.  The MS through its abilities also fits the role of tier 3 siege air unit, like the old carrier, BC, and guardian.  The MS has already demonstrated this in the demo.

I think it's best if we interpret "long range bombardment" merely as "ranged support firepower."

 

As long Chris Metzen is not doing the lore, Starcraft can survive.

 

hmm what?

Chris Metzen is doing the story (or was I not paying attention?) . Wouldn't it be a good thing if he was since he started it all...

Starcraft would survive if Metzen didn't do the story? whaaaa?

 

With most RTS's, ranged units usually focus fire for the most effective strategy. Like the Warp rays did against the battlecruisers in the gameplay trailer. What I'm wondering is whether it would be more effective to have all the warp rays take down the BC's one at a time, or each warp ray focusing on a different target so they dont have to switch targets and lose the built up power they already gained. ???

 

lol. this is even better than the colossus.

 

Id use warprays in combination with colossus,

Colossus owns everysingle small target.
Warprays take down structures and heavy units.

On its own I'd say the warp ray is pretty useless.

 

Warp rays are probably best combined with stalkers and zealots. It's like the muta-ling combo. The WR can take out most air units, While fast moving zealots and the stalkers can take out most ground units.
But I think to tech up to a fleet of warp rays will be quite expensive and time comsuming. So maybe a mass fleet of zealots + stalkers + archons + immortals + a few colossus would be more ideal.

 

Getting up a decent amount of WarpRays will require a bit of time because from the 1up article, their build-time is 90 sec. Tempest and Star Relic on the other hand, only needs 60 sec. So I'm assuming that WarpRays will be very specialized on what they are doing. It will be very hard to mass a fleet of them and it won't be effective. But with combined forces, it can take out key units in battle with efficiency.

 

From looking at the video and reading the warp ray info. It does very little damage at first. After a bit it increases damage. After a while it does even more damage. If you notice it took approx 5 - 7 seconds to kill a single marine with a warp ray. 7 seconds that the marine is firing back. The warp ray is probably a costly unit. Against a single marine it should live. Against 2 marines it should live. Against a squad....

If you think a fleet a warp rays would defeat an equal size marine force? It should! However, the warp rays will probably cost 5 times as much as a single marine. In theory the classic Million Marine march should over whelm the Warp Rays. I betcha that a fleet of 12 warp rays will cost as much as 5 groups of 12 marines and probably take as much time to build (but build time is unknown). Protoss has always been gas heavy for upper level tech. I would imagine the Warp Ray is no different - gas heavy. Marines, are classically 50 minerals and 0 gas.

Warp Rays seem to be the protoss answer to direct artillery. I would use them in the back ground to break the static defenses like enemy tanks and fortifications. The enemy has allot of static defenses (such as protoss cannons) I would send a few suicide units to distract the cannons while I use the Warp Rays to take out the static defenses. Against the ultimate terran defense I would use the Warp Rays to attack the storage depots that the terran is using as a wall and then move the warp rays to the tanks and missle defenses.

 

You realize they said in the first footage NOT to put warp rays against Marines? Infantry and small units but they used Marines specifically. So that was pretty much a given...

Yeah... Warp rays need more range if they're long range bombardment, perhaps he was talking in a zerglings point of view?

 

I sincerely hope Warp Rays can move faster the longer they stay on movement, just like the Shuttle in SC1. After the Scout is gone, i'm missing a fast moving air unit to raid enemy bases. :-(

 

i hear you man, gonna miss the scout.


i like the warp ray consept. it is like the ideal protoss unit. owerup:

 

the warp ray introduces a new strategy - building harassment

 

Well based on my thoughts, Protoss Warp ray now, is good enough to change and improved in sc2 right ???

 

The ability to completely abliterate buildings before suficient enemy retaliation can arive will help the protoss become excelent base raiders

especially against ppl who build miltiple bases all over the map to collect resources but don't use great defences to protect them like tanks, hydras, and AA units

 

Sorry to resurrect such an old thread, but I was wondering about the Warp Ray's colouration. I know that it originally had the 'High' colour scheme and that it was changed to have the 'Dark' colour scheme, but in a recent screenshot it looked as though it wasn't really either. I left in the Stalker and surrounding buildings so that you can compare it to the other colour scheme and it doesn't looks as dark and blue as the Stalker, nor does it look as bright and yellow as the buildings. It's definitely closer to the Stalker's than the buildings' colour, but it's definitely not the same.
[img width=500 height=183]http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/itzahexgor/Warpraystalker.jpg[/img]

 

The Stalker is standing in the shadow, which could explain why the Warp Ray is more shiny.

 

It doesn't look as though it's in a shadow. You can see the shadows on the ground and the Stalker doesn't seem to be in one. Also, the buildings are all the same colour throughout, so I doubt it's a shadow related issue.

 

True. Maybe they just want it to look slightly different to avoid selection confusion during battles.

 

Maybe, but they don't seem to have that problem with the normal, yellow coloured units, and there are a lot more of them as well.