Won't reapers be overpowered?

Well we know that the reaper does 3x2 damage meaning each pistol does 3 damage.
According to a Q&A SC2 unit attack upgrade won't be based on percentage like in WC3 but in a set number (so fully upgrade zerglings do +60% damage while dragoons do +30% damage). If that is the case though then wouldn't reapers do 6x2 damage? That would be a +100% increase in damage.

Of course that can effectively be countered with armor upgrade but I still think its a bit ridiculous.

 

well in the case of this it would depend on there speed and also 6 +2 would be the last upgrade possible

 

According to sc2armory, damages will be 4(x2). What are the right damages ?

 

Hm, the armory website says they do 2x4 +4 vs. light. Is the website out of date? Well, either way it's still a big increase.

Going from the second battle report, it looked like they're effective against zerglings but they would probably get beat handily by an equal cost zergling army if the lings could surround them, unless the terran used D8 charges really well. Roaches on the other hand seemed like a pretty strong counter to reapers, having almost the same range but doing much more damage (8+8 vs. biological) while at the same time being much tougher because of their armor and regeneration. I think Hellions and Stalkers would counter reapers fairly well too, and these are all early game units. Basically I'm saying reapers don't look that strong in a head on fight with a prepared enemy army. As soon as the zerg had built up a diverse army, the terran player in the battle report pretty much gave up on reapers and went back to using marines.

I think the fact that they aren't that hard to counter is going to force players to use their jetpacks and D8 charges to get the most out of them. In an open battlefield you'll have to use tactics like flanking in order for D8 charges to be most effective since they can be run away from, and to make up for the reapers short range.

And of course they're still great for raiding, depending on the terrain.

I guess I haven't really talked about the upgrades, but like you said yourself it is completely nullified if you keep up in armor, and even if you're one upgrade ahead of them it's just 1 extra damage (compared to if they had 1 attack that did +1 per up).

Compare the starcraft 1 firebat, which was much stronger for it's cost against light units (doing 2x8 with AOE, being cheaper than a reaper, and it could stim pack), but was also even easier to counter and had no versatility.

 

Sorry Necromas, but the Armory is always out of date. They all are. One of the reasons we have no frequently updated database: the values change to often. Even between the builds we get the batches an movies from.

Also, things like plus 1 or minus two damge... Just trust Blizzard to balance that. Have they ever failed in that field? Not that I know of.

However, doing 200 percent of the stock damage after upgrades is ridiculous imo. If that makes it to the boxed version, the Reaper will be the most crappy balanced unit in the game. --scratches chin to look smart--

 

Think of it this way, if upgrades don't make it do 200% of stock damage, they will be completely useless once the enemy gets armor upgrades.