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Pre-face: I'm currently in Diamond with 1696 pts. I currently have 579 points in my bonus pool. I simply haven't played enough games yet (I've finally finished 200 1v1s). My win rate is 56%. However, I wasn't serious about laddering until a couple of weeks ago, and since that point, I have actually gone 82:44, giving me a win rate at around 65%. I've also been matched up with people varying from gold level (lol, not gonna go there), to 2600+ pt diamonds, and have won against all these groups. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that, in normal situations, I'm not terrible. I'm not good, and I definitely have a lot of room for improvement, but I'm not terrible.
As such, for anyone giving some advice - please realize that. There's a reason that TL looks like this:
+ Show Spoiler +
to me.
Back in the Beta, and before the one patch, I used to exclusively open 10 rax 10 depot 12 OC. The reason was that I was 100% cheese proof. Yea, it wasn't ideal, but I definitely think that my mid and late-game decision making are my strong points, so I'd rather get the game to that point, rather than take the risks. That's just how I am.
Because we now have to make a depot before rax, I've started using the 10 depot 12 rax 13 gas 15 OC opening. In 99% of the situations I've faced, a 13 scout is early enough to get the information I need. The other 2 games out of 200 were against an in-base proxy gate strategy.
I know, in BW, you could use 2 SCVs attacking it while it was warping in, and then up that to 5 as soon as it was finished warping in, and you would kill it before a zealot popped out. I have a feeling that in SC2, this is not the proper response. But I'm not sure what it is.
In both of these games, I tried using a bunker. I clearly overestimated the ability of my units in both of the games, and lost both of them. After one of them, I chatted with my opponent for what seemed like 20 minutes. He was a Z player, who was doing it as an off-race. He's currently unable to micro and macro properly because of a new keyboard and mouse setup. He's also not lost to a Terran player while using this strat. He had no suggestion on how to beat it.
The replays + Show Spoiler +
I've reviewed the replays, and I can't think of how to deal with it properly. I'm sure there is a way to deal with it, otherwise P's all over the world would be using this in a tourney, and nobody would play T anymore. I just can't think of what it is. I do realize that I played it poorly, but even when going through single player games to check the timings, I still fall way short of being able to comfortably defend it.
If you look at it, my opponents do not have to cut too many probes to pull it off (8 pylon, 8 gate, 10 gate, 11 probes and 3 zealots for the first 17 supply, then a pylon in his own base, after that, he can pump probes and zealots comfortably, as well as transition into stalkers/warpgates/whatever). At the same time, there is no way for me to get a bunker in place to cover my entire minline + vespene geysers, so if I choose to cover my minline, I can't get gas, and my opponent can transition into stalkers easily and kill me since I don't have marauders to fight off the stalkers. If I do cover my gas, I lose out on a lot of mining because I can't cover the entire minline. It also seems to be really, really micro-intensive to defend, while not requiring much micro to actually pull off.
I don't want to scout at 8, because even if I do, it doesn't guarantee that i'll be able to respond well in time. Changing my build order is also going to be impossible, because this takes place before I can even get my Orbital, and Blizz has made it clear that they don't want a T to get their barracks before depot anymore..... And, even with scouting at 13, I find that I'm held up with my build order because of a lack of a small amount of minerals, at any given time for the first 30 supply. Scouting around my base at an arbitrary point in time, roughly during the building of my rax, will put me even further behind, screwing up any timing attacks I actually attempt later on in the game.
I know I'm not playing it right, and likely, my mindset is off. If anyone knows how to deal with it, would you please share your wisdom with a noob?
I simply don't know what to do, and it's bugging the hell out of me. I can deal with cannon rushes, 6 pools, proxy reaper/marauder/whatever. But proxying in my base has me stumped.
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Eh, why do you feel that pulling scvs isn't the proper response? How bout giving it a shot and then deciding whether to use it or not?
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terrans have been rushed a lot lately, with the proxy gateway and 12-drone rush from Z
this is exactly what oGsMC did against Rain on steppes in the GSL3 final
it sounds like you need gosu marine/scv micro + 2 bunkers to shut it down, from the tastosis commentary
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On December 20 2010 15:27 neobowman wrote:
Eh, why do you feel that pulling scvs isn't the proper response? How bout giving it a shot and then deciding whether to use it or not?
Why? Because instead of 2 while morphing + 3 after its finished, it taked 3 while morphing + 5 when finished, to stop a zealot from finishing, thanks to Chronoboost.....
Against 2 gates, that's 16 scvs needed. I don't have that many at the time..... +1 for chasing after his probe, to prevent it from killing any of my SCVs.....
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I'm at work right now so can't watch the replays or test things out, but I'll try it when I get home.
Is it possible to build a Bunker in your mineral line? I'm talking about the space between your CC and the minerals. Obviously placing it there would block access to mining several patches, but you would be able to cover both gas and minerals at the same time, and you can always salvage it once you've defended successfully.
Also, I was under the impression that 4 SCVs attacking a building gateway would kill it before the Zealot comes out, although I could be wrong.
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On December 20 2010 16:14 FuRong wrote:
I'm at work right now so can't watch the replays or test things out, but I'll try it when I get home.
Is it possible to build a Bunker in your mineral line? I'm talking about the space between your CC and the minerals. Obviously placing it there would block access to mining several patches, but you would be able to cover both gas and minerals at the same time, and you can always salvage it once you've defended successfully.
Also, I was under the impression that 4 SCVs attacking a building gateway would kill it before the Zealot comes out, although I could be wrong.
You can put one in your min line, but it won't cover everywhere..... You need at least 2 for that to work.....
Of course, I try to wall off. That means I have a depot at my ramp, and a rax going up at my ramp. That makes it much more difficult to defend against an in-base proxy gate strat.
And, yea, it takes a lot more than 4 to get it down. That's also assuming that you see it as soon as it starts warping in..... Which is not always the case.....
The only replays I've found where people defended it were either a vast difference in skill level, or they scouted it really early and weren't trying to wall off..... I haven't found any good replay to study for the appropriate response.....
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I saw a game where Gretorp played vs ONEgatored on steppes and defended it perfectly well. He built a wall around his mineral line and one bunker inside. He did not send scvs to attack the gateways.
the replay pack of the tourney can be dled here: http://therushnetwork.com/index.php?s=replay
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On December 20 2010 17:27 Polar_Nada wrote:I saw a game where Gretorp played vs ONEgatored on steppes and defended it perfectly well. He built a wall around his mineral line and one bunker inside. He did not send scvs to attack the gateways. the replay pack of the tourney can be dled here: http://therushnetwork.com/index.php?s=replay
Thanks a lot for this, Gretorp's response seems to be the best.
1) Build your rax in the correct place to start off with
2) Upon scouting proxy, cancel gas immediately and throw down a second rax
3) Start Bunker immediately as your first rax finishes
4) Once you have 3-4 Marines, micro them in and out of Bunker to protect the other side of your mineral line
It definitely helped that Gretorp went 11 rax instead of 12, but I think he would have held it off anyway with the standard 12 rax opening.
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You're right in your feeling of not attacking the proxy with scvs as the protoss can just cancel the buildings before they finish and remake them while you lose more minerals then him in lost mining time. You should however pull one worker to chase the probe around.
I acctually don't early wall off vs protoss in 1v1 anymore as I feel much to exposed to this kind of cheesey play. I've found that useing your first supply depot and barracks to sim city around your mineral line/command center helps alot in hindering the zealots movement. It also makes it much easier to micro/macro since you're focusing on only the area immedietly around your command center. After this it's just all up to microing the marines in and out of bunkers to wear down his zealots while trying to scout if he has built gas or cyber so you know when to get mauraders.
I know it isn't exactly ideal since typically you want to wall off as soon as possible, but if I scout them and see them playing standard I never feel as though I'm behind since a bunker or 2 at the ramp is just as good as any other wall in detering the protoss.
I've played against this type of rush and used it as protoss and I find it hilarious exactly how much the terran needs to do to stop what seems like such a simple rush.
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On December 20 2010 17:27 Polar_Nada wrote:I saw a game where Gretorp played vs ONEgatored on steppes and defended it perfectly well. He built a wall around his mineral line and one bunker inside. He did not send scvs to attack the gateways. the replay pack of the tourney can be dled here: http://therushnetwork.com/index.php?s=replay
Gretorp didn't wall off, and he scouted it blindly..... I've already seen this replay.....
Also, ONEgatored didn't have any planned followup for it, it was completely all-in, even though he had the mineral income to actually support probe production during the battle, which would have given him an advantage, since at one point, he actually had more workers than Gretorp anyways..... If he snuck a few probes in, he could have afforded a cyber core and gas, and started pumping stalkers as well. That would have ended it.....
I don't like the idea of not walling vs P..... Standard early gate plays or non in-base proxy 2 gate plays are much harder to hold off without a wall..... Essentially, I'd be giving an advantage to P in most cases by not walling.....
Also, I'm trying to come up with a "standard" opening that can be used vs all 3 races, at least until I am sure I know what they are doing, that way I'm prepared for any R player I face. A 2 rax or 3 rax opening doesn't seem to be versatile enough, so I've been getting a factory with my first 100 gas.
I need to wall vs most Z and most P openings, so I've been suffering through TvTs with a wall-in because of the Random factor. Without a wall-in, I can't make the factory with my first 100 gas, because I'll outright die to many types of early aggression..... And with a wall-in, I'm pretty fucked vs the in-base proxy gates.....
I have no idea what adjustment I can make to my opening to account for the in-base proxy gates, where it won't affect my play vs Z or T players..... Blindly scout my main every time I'm on a 2 player map? Yay for delaying any push I make by 5-10 seconds as well as delaying my ability to deal with enemy pushes by 5-10 seconds, losing me many more games than it saves.....
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wait, scouted blindly?? My brain does not compute that... expound. I thought scouts are generally finding information. Are there such things as scouting non blindly :O!
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Ok, I guess I said that wrong. It wasn't totally blindly..... It was an awesome decision to check along the edge like that. But do you do that type of early in-base scouting for 100% of your games?
Btw, that was an awesome job in that game!
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Sim city. Build your first depot to block off a mineral opening on one side of your mineral patch between geyser and CC and use your rax to wall that side of your base off (depot can interupt mining as you can lower it but rax cannot. Basically wall off 1 end of your base with hte depot rax. Take gas on the opposite end. Make the bunker on the opposite end so that it can cover the gas. If he tries to attack from the rax side, he has to go all the way around. You can position marines behind this wall to hit hte zealots running around and retreat to the bunker. If he hacks at scv's just micro them away while your marine pounds on the zealot.
Just micro you rmarines alot. If the zealots chase the marines run them back. If the zealots chase scv's let the marines shoot and run the scv's (he has to target fire scv's). When you get back tot he bunker the zealot has to retreat. Bunker his gates. If you can build a bunker near his proxy gate he will lose that gate, it forces at least 1 zealot to fall back and harass the scv.
Also set 1 scv to auto repair other scv;'s in your mineral line. This will prevent the zealot from being able to com back and snipe damaged scv's. If, for example, he is building a zealot and you get your rax up before it pops out but there's a few seconds before the marine can come out to fight, start a bunker in both your min line and next to his gate. You are not going to need gas or orbital early anyways - you should have 3 marines before you need to make that techlab and get a marauder out for the stalkers, so a delayed refinery is no problem. Anyhow if you offensivly make a bunker next to his gate he has to either chase that scv around which is not near the minerals or he goes for the minerals and lets that bunker finish, meaning your second marine will be able to take down his proxy gate.
Also note that if you try to offesnivly bunker then you should probably bring 2 scv's down because any toss player worth his salt will use the proxy probe to kill your bunker scv if you don't.
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