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Very few of the units feel great to use.
Pringworm
Well after blasting past the campaign and diving in multiplayer for about a week of play, I can honestly say that I don't like any of the units in the game. None of them feel great to use right now, they are just means to an end.
Right now the game just feels like spam cheese units until you can amass an A-move army. Picking the race determines the difficulty in doing that. So many units feel like garbage the later in the game you get. All tier 1 units and some tier 2 units mean jack diddly squat. They don't retain any value. Neither do Elites past a certain point.
And why does everything feel like it's moving through molasses? In 3v3 this is torture because unless you are A-moving you are risking getting punched in the ++heresy redacted++ and not being able to do anything about it.
And I know what some people are going to say. You got to use the abilities. I would, if my units lived long enough, were able to move fast enough, not get stunlocked, slowed, etc, before I could do that. There is too much casting ++heresy redacted++ in this game. I get that this is more what DOW2 was about, but I hated that aspect of the series and I really hate it here where the units are not even half as charming as they were in the second game.
Comments
GMJohnny
Okay, I complain a lot too... but the units do feel great to use, as all famous dark souls players have said git gud
Alchemist13
I think this game needs little less micro managing, every unit has a special ability, and I have to click on them then click on the button to activate the unit, and as far as I can tell there is no way way to do this. Relic not every single unit needs a ability let some units be able to fend for themselves instead of me having to babysit my units or they die so easily
Pringworm
O.K. Still feels like garbage to me. So we have two contrasting opinions. I need some one to actually give a reasonable validation as why the units feel inferior to thier predecessors from previous games. I mean tactical Marines from the first Dawn of War actually kill stuff.
PrimaGoosa
I felt like my units evaporated when I played the closed beta. Now, I feel like they only evaporate when I'm in a really bad position. Even my scouts live when I pay attention and don't put them somewhere terrible or run them up into a Dev squad. However, in general the game is still faster paced than both predecessors, so you need to make snap judgments on whether you stay in a fight or get out of dodge. You can't engage into a poor scenario or you'll start going down quickly. That's just part of the new design: line units caught in bad positions are going to explode, and as escalation phases ramp up, you'll be able to replenish them quickly.
Also, Elites are designed in such a way that they can make big plays if used properly, helping you turn the tide of a bad situation or capitalize on an ambush, etc. They contribute to a faster-paced combat where line units roll up supported by the big daddy rocks elites as they wade in and see who comes in swinging the hardest in the right places.
Some units like Tac Marines have been addressed by Relic as being skipped and needing review. But I've found good uses for Scouts, Scout Snipers, ASMs (duh, just listing everything), Lascannon Devs (incredibly good with the doctrine at chain stunning and burning down Walker elites), Dreadnoughts, Predators (both kinds, I've been using the standard version recently to pair with Paladine's command), and that's only because I haven't yet gone with a fast armory Tac build, I haven't played with Devs/Landspeeders at all yet (I just pop into team games when I get a chance to play), and honestly I'm still not even close to using these units to their potential on account of not having the muscle memory built for better micro.
It's very possible the pace just isn't your cup of tea. However, make sure you don't treat your units like they should be more survivable than they are, because it ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy (managing units too aggressively, they die, it's an issue that they die too fast even though they weren't treated with the appropriate care).
GMJohnny
The real reason this game is in a horrible state right now.. They wanted the big battles of DOW1 so they make it so its a 250 population cap (hard to control) then make it so theres abilities that are completely overpowered in hitting blobs. A few placed abilities can take down 80% of a full army if they are blobbed.
People will say (git gud) and spread out units. What other RTS in the market punishes you so much for blobbing in a death ball. I can not think of any game where you can lose 80% of your army to 1 or 2 abilities that are really really hard to dodge once there cast.
steinernein
Banelings. Raven Missiles. AHHH PLAGUUUUUUU. Reavers. Sturmtiger.
DaDokisinX
This is kind of the same way units work from a design perspective in Starcraft (in general anyway). So I don't really have a huge issue with this per se.
PrimaGoosa
In SC:BW, you literally can't blob unless you really focus on your micro and it is very much on point. Even then, it isn't blobbing, because you really only have 12 units in a control group at a time. It comes down to solid positioning, logical control groups, and a lot of practice.
In DoW 3, you can blob, but much of the game leans towards it being a bad idea. In SC2, you can blob, and most people do, but as @steinernein mentioned, Banelings (among other things) are going to absolutely ruin your day unless your fine-tuned micro and positioning are on point. Even then, though, I remember deathballing being a big complaint when SC2 released. I didn't fully understand how all of the technical limitations of SC:BW really brought the game to another competitive level until I saw some explanations, but nothing about safely deathballing around seems like inherently good design. It just seems like one way you could do things.
250 pop cap might be hard to control, but no one ever said an RTS had to be easy. I've been getting back into some old Day9 videos where he talks about his experience with SC:BW, and the amount he simply practiced the game, slamming match-ups 10+ hours a day every day, jumping into games and watching pathfinding to see how he could optimize movements, finding every little nook and cranny in nuance in the game to see how to use it to his advantage, it's all so jarring compared to people around here who play for a week, maybe two, and seem to think they're on the top of their game.
What is it about SC:BW that enticed people to take it so seriously, in an era where eSports basically didn't exist, with games that were simply difficult to play? Was it the magic of the first RTS people discovered at a crucial time in their life (high school/college) that really drew them?
What is it about DoW 3 where people can play a few times then dismiss it as horribly unbalanced/unfinished/poorly designed/etc.? I feel like if you have a lot of experience with RTSes in the past, and you are competitive, you should know that there are quite possibly a load of little nuances, from specific match-ups to map-specific tactics, and that when it comes to competitive maps, I don't think it was Blizzard who designed most of them for a game like SC:BW.
So, yeah. Don't blob, learn to control your army properly through practice. Just tonight, I caught a guy with his Deathwatch/Solaria/a few squads/I think Gabriel with 5 squads of Scouts, since he didn't have a worker nearby. I started dropping chain stuns on them, used my Venerable Dread's plasma shot on the blob, jumped my ASMs in to start slapping Solaria, and rolled Preds in to also apply AoE pressure. It all came together beautifully, and I wasted the elites/what units there were in the army with the loss of only a few tanks and a few infantry here and there.
The moral of that story isn't "AoE is too strong", it's "keep workers around to catch scouts". Sometimes the moral isn't as straightforward as it looks.
GMJohnny
Not reading all that.. sorry
PrimaGoosa
It's fine, odds are this is another rabbit hole conversation anyway. If you can't be bothered to have a discussion about the game, you probably can't be bothered to try to get better either.
So when you say that the game is in a horrible state, I picture Daria arguing that volleyball is a poorly designed sport.
Akranadas
I think it comes down to character. Units (sans orks) just don't have character like they did in previous games.
Theres very little unit taunts or chat when entering battle. It's all very quiet.
KotCR
Yeah, I think this is a bit of a problem with the MP game in general. The whole thing is too quiet.
Little unit chatter, barely existing music. There's the sounds of occasional gunfire and lasers sure, but that's about it. Short of the Roks, not even most explosions are particularly loud.