The Blizzard dev team has made plenty of changes to the units and gameplay of StarCraft II in the recent months and undoubtedly is making changes as you read this, but perhaps the most interesting to me are those that involve the Terran. I've always been more of a Terran player than anything else and every time I read about the changes in Terran units I think about the effects those changes have on the overall balance of the game. This week I take a look at the new Terran Jackal and weigh its effectiveness against the unit it has replaced, the Vulture.
The original StarCraft saw limited use of the Vulture, it was a quick and agile scout that's best weapon was its spider mines, but you had to upgrade to get them first. Will the new Jackal simply take over the Vulture's place and role? Or will it redefine the role of scout by adding some offensive prowess to an otherwise limited and underused unit?
Vulture:
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Pros:
- Fast, light, agile scout unit
- Only 75 minerals
- Could upgrade to Ion Thrusters for even faster speed
- Could upgrade to spider mines which were excellent for defense, they could also attack cloaked units that walked near them even without a detector nearby
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Cons:
- Tier 2 unit made its scout role sometimes pointless because by the time you teched to it, you already scouted using SCVs or marines
- Weak offensive grenade launcher
- Relatively weak armor, 80hp makes it only slightly more durable than a marine
- Can't attack air
Jackal:
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Pros:
- Fast, armored tank-like unit
- Relatively inexpensive tier 2 unit comparable to the Vulture in price
- Very good linear AoE offensive flamethrower weapon that does heavy damage to groups of ground units giving you more bang for your buck
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Cons:
- Can't attack air
- Assumed to have armor comparable to the Vulture, 80-100hp range.
- No special abilities -- like spider mines -- known at this point
The Scorecard:
In my experience with the Vulture in StarCraft: Brood Wars, its uses were just too limited to make it a worth while investment. Perhaps on money maps you'd see players use them more without the worry of spending money on things not necessarily needed. I'm not saying it wasn't used at all, it was, but with such a weak offensive weapon it didn't add a hell of a lot to your offensive arsenal unless you researched spider mines and tried to use your vulture as a mineral line raider.
The Jackal seems to keep all of the good characteristics of the Vulture but adds a better offensive weapon to its capabilities thus making it more useful against groups of zerglings and marines/marauders/reapers. I believe that with the addition of units like the Reaper, the Jackal's scout role will be less featured and instead its linear AoE flamethrower will be the reason you invest minerals in this unit, thus making it a worthwhile tier two unit.
While the Vulture served its purpose during the Brood Wars, it finds itself simply obsolete in the ever changing StarCraft universe. With so many additions and changes being made to the Protoss and Zerg, the Vulture would be ineffective for the most part, especially since the Terran now have the Nomad's mine drone ability. I think the Jackal will not only give the Terran's some early tier two firepower but it will serve as an improved Firebat.
The Jackal wins this one in the 6th round by way of knock out.
