What the Thor is

This is what the Thor is.
1. The Thor costs 300 Minerals, 200 Vespene, and 6 Supply. It is as big as an Ultralisk spacewise.
2. The Thor has 400 HP, and 1 Defense. If destroyed, it goes into wreckage mode, wherein it has another 400 HP. It will restore itself to functionality over time, but can also be repaired by SCVs to do so faster.
3. The Thor has a ground attack that deals 10*4=40 damage vs. Light ground units, 20*4=80 damage vs. Armored ground units, and has 6 range.
4. The Thor has an air attack that deals 4*4=16 damage vs. Light air units, 6*4=24 damage vs. Armored air units, and has 10 range.

The Thor is NOT a puny goliath. The Viking handle's the Goliaths AA role, the Thor handles the Valkyrie's AA role, but as a secondary aspect that isn't its primary focus.

The Thor is NOT a Siege unit. The Siege Tank is a Siege unit, and a Thor that bombarded would steal the Siege Tanks role. The Siege Tank is not a Tank though, whereas the Thor is.

The Thor is a multipurpose unit, though. Attempting to shoe-horn it is foolish. It can tank at the front, keep harassing air at bay, or eliminate enemy forces outright. It can kill any Tier 1 unit in 2 shots. Sure, it isn't as strong as an Utralisk, but the Ultralisk is limited to melee combat against ground units. The Thor is a Tank and an AA unit rolled up into one killing machine.

 

It's kind of funny: people have been going back and forth about what the Thor is and is not for months, with threads going into 3-4 pages. You, on the other hand, have just summed up exactly what the Thor is in less than three hundred words.

Not bad, wodan. You just earned yourself a powerup.

 

That... made things pretty clear.

 

didnt they say a thor can hit a Guardian before there in range??


edit: nvm i SC2armoryed the stats. its 10 vs 8 range.

Thor is my choice when it comes to AA...hands down.

 

The Thors going to be my choice for GtG.

 

The thor is going to be my "protector" when it comes to big battles. Takes alot of punishment and kills the enemy air. GG

 

when ever i make an expansion the CC will turn into a PF, and i'll build possible 1 bunker a few Missile Turret and 1 or 2 thors. Hell to be super annoying i'll fly a CC to the front of an enemys base land it sit some tanks behind it with 2 thors and turn the CC into a PF. OWNED!

 

I thought the team games by yourself really helps teamwork and was fun I had a burrowed zergling at a ramp then my tank would get the unit before im in range and he would have to get to tier 2 to make detecters i never really played Zerg and Protoss but i like having Zerg and Terran.

i wonder if they will have team games(i know they'll have the team i mean like 2 people in 1 guy) then i wonder what strategys will come out of it.

Thor, tanks and zerglings?
or even a ultiment assult group that could make it through any defence?

 

Im not too sure if i want to see such a big all around unit. In SC2 it seems units specialize a lot better, and there are less all around units. So i dont know how good it will be to have such a big, expensive all arounder.

 

...Why not? You really have a problem which can beat both a Guardians and an Archon in 1 on 1 combat.

 

I rather doubt a thor can beat a swarm guardian 1:1 (the swarm guardian does 1.5 times the AtG damage and creates broodlings each attack which will do a little bit of chipping damage). One of my worries about the thor is it's too weak at GtA. It's costed for its powerful GtG, and it's the terran's only good answer to mutalisks now that the much cheaper Predator is gone.

 

What you need to remember is that the Thor hits a large AOE with the AtG, and the SC2 engine was intentionally warped to encourage stacking.

Lets review the Thor's Damages against various units:
Overlord: 24 (ow...)
Viking, Banshee, Medivac, Nighthawk, Overseer, Corruptor, Void Ray: 20
Observer, Phoenix, Mutalisk, , Guardian, Mothership: 16
Battlecruiser: 12
Carrier: 8

Given that Thor reportedly has a "huge" AOE and air units tend to cluster, you can expect the Thor to hit 2-6 Air units, meaning that they do between 32-120 damage an attack against air forces. They suck against Battlecruisers and Carriers, but can handle just about anything else.

Guardian: Deals 24 Damage a shot against the Thor (low rate of fire), creates 2 Broodlings that deal 3 Damage a shot against the Thor (high rate of fire) with each attack, no more than 6 Broodlings will exist at time due to limited lifespan.
Thor: Deals 20 damage a shot against the Guardian (13 hits to kill)

Assuming that Thor attacks twice as fast as Guardian but half as fast as Broodling, and that it gets a free shot, Guardian lands 6 attacks before dying, and Broodlings inflict 3*8+3*16+3*24+3*24+3*24+3*24.. Ok, Guardian wins, due to being really overpowered. Each Broodling deals about 36 damage before dying (48 vs targets with no Armor), meaning that the Guardian deals about 97 damage a shot. Which is ridiculous.

 

You mentioned that the Thor is not a siege weapon. From what i have seen in the trailers, people keep using them for attacking enemy bases. Which is why i think it is a siege weapon. And it is very like the siege tank in a way.

 

The thor is a tank.

In Warcraft III, there existed a unit called the steam tank. This tank did not outrange enemy towers; however, it was so tough and did so much damage it could withstand cannon tower fire while destroying them quickly. Unlike the thor, it couldn't attack regular ground attacks. (Literally; it didn't suck at that, it just couldn't.) I suspect a properly used thor force is supposed to push the same way.

There was a similar NPC unit called the draenei saboteur. It didn't ourange towers either, but its attacks severely slowed them down and did high damage to towers, so again it could withstand blows.

I don't know if this counts as "siege" or not. IMO, siege units need a ground attack range of at least 8 so they can outrange towers and take no damage at all from them. The definition may have expanded in Warcraft III, or perhaps "assault" is simply a different way to take down towers effectively. (I should point out the thor's anti-ground attack has a range of only six.)

As for the swarm guardian, it costs 200/200/2, vs a thor's 300/200/6, which is kind of weird. However, thors aren't really "designed" to take on swarm guardians. (I read in a report from ESL that swarm guardians only produce broodlings about once every two or three hits. I'll let you do the math, you seem better at it.)

In older builds of the game (perhaps still true nowadays), as someone else mentioned, thors actually beat BCs but only by using Mechanical Rebirth.

Does the thor cover a large AoE with its anti-air weapon? Unfortunately, I've only seen one video where it targeted air, and it was a low-quality video. (Blizzard is warping the game engines so mutalisks can stack. I don't know if other air units will be allowed to stack. I may have this confused, however; perhaps Blizzard is specifically warping mutalisks so they can attack-n-move simultaneously the way they accidentally did in StarCraft I.)

 

Are you referring to the old trailers when it had siege cannons on the back instead of flak cannons, or are you referring to the general propensity for players to assume that any big unit should be thrown directly into the enemy base, regardless of its actual role?

 

I guess i was referring to the old trailers, I haven't actually seen any new ones.

 

yeah, i do kinda miss that predator unit idea...

 

I grow very tired of people repeatedly complaining about units or otherwise offering their opinions when they make virtually no effort to check up on the data regarding the unit, which can be found at multiple wikis. SC2 is in development, units change often, and knowledge about them fluctuates. Please try at least searching about the unit on a wiki before offering your verdict on it. Please. We argue enough about actual facts.

 

I do at some points. Look, I like starcraft and enjoy playing it, though i do not find myself mad enough to go on every thirty minutes and check on the new specs. I check when i got nothing else to do.

 

The Thor switching from Artillery Barrage mode to Flak Cannons has been known for months now, its not exactly new knowledge, and checking any thread would indicate that. You seem to be going off videos that were shown well over a year ago.

I haven't sought new information on SC2 in months, beyond updates at this website, and fact-checking myself before posting.