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Blazinghand
United States25563 Posts
Foreword
I'm writing this blog to talk about Terran Mech play. I won't sharpen any cakes and eat them before they hatch-- I'm not the best Terran player out there. There are better players than me everywhere, and I lose to them every day. But, as I look around the blogosphere, I haven't seen a blog like the one I plan to write, so here I am. I've had my share of ass-kickings and my share of wins and losses by dumb luck and poor decision-making, but I've had enough of them to know what's real and what's random. I'll parse what I've learned and share it here.
I'm going to be drawing from pro and semi-pro play I've watched and my own experience on the NA ladder. I'll be focusing on TvP, which is in my consideration the most difficult matchup for Terran Mechanized play for a number of reasons. In addition to my own theorycraft of Mech play and some build orders, I will update as regularly as possible with my own experience using Mech play on the North America ladder.
So, what exactly is Mechanized play?
I don't really know why I'm answering this question, since everyone already knows. Mech play is a unit composition for Terran that doesn't rely on Barracks units except for support. This means you're going to be getting lots of Tanks, some Hellions, some Thors, and some air units, with a sprinkling of barracks units to provide support through spells or to "fill in the gaps."
Why Mech?
After hundreds of custom and ladder matches as Terran, and countless losses to opponents, I came to realize that the Marauder was holding me back. Oh, Marauder with your bonus DPS to armored, Concussive Shells, and Stim Pack. How you synergize with Marines and Medivacs! I thought I could ride you from Bronze League all the way to the top. But as I got better, so did my opponents, and I fought daily against the heretical splashy discharges of Psionic Storms, the brutal efficiency of Collosi, the destructive Banelings that would knock the AA Marine legs out from under my Maruaders before the Mutalisks and Zerglings overwhelmed my poor biological units... moving towards Mech seemed like a natural way to develop my play.
But in a sense, I play Mech for the feeling of POWER. Factory Units are POWERFUL. They hit HARD. They CRUSH the opposition. They don't need to do tricky things like concussive shell stim-kiting or splitting to avoid splash or anything like that. They hit DPS or move fast or perform their function without needing to be fancy. Playing with Mech, I began to get the feeling that anything that comes out of a Factory is a Unit in an Army. When you make a unit out of a Factory, it's Real. Stuff that comes out of Barracks is just detail. Maybe a few marauders to help your thors wall out banelings, or some marines to dump some minerals into AA... or maybe a ghost for EMPing protoss doom balls. Details. These units were there to support the real army, of huge lumbering mechanical engines of destruction.
I will continue to walk this path and feel the power of the Factory Tech for as long as possible. I hope you guys enjoy it.
Acknowledgments
I'd like to thank Trinity for constant advice and being a Random practice partner who helped sharpen my Mech play in all matchups, Jykinturah for supporting me and helping me get out of the low leagues, and Wyred for helping me suck less at Theorycraft. These are all good guys, and if you run into them on the NA ladder, tell them "gl hf" for me. I love them, and they're good guys... so make sure you BEAT THEY ASS
 
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When it comes to lategame, mech can be quite strong but it often comes to rely on good EMPs versus the probably immortal counts you'll face. Because of how the composition works it can be quite susceptible to heavy air play aswell if you're not careful.
But I agree, in very lategame situations I prefer ghostmech over bio aswell, atleast on 2 player maps or close positions.
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Yeah, marauders sux. It's funny how they were considered THE overpowered unit during the first few months after release, before most people realise how they sux against non protosses oponents. For instance, just a few marauders in an army will deplete all your medivacs energy, basicaly rendering medivacs useless and a waste of ressource.
Yeah, this was offtopic, sorry xD
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On January 22 2011 23:37 MrCon wrote:
Yeah, marauders sux. It's funny how they were considered THE overpowered unit during the first few months after release, before most people realise how they sux against non protosses oponents. For instance, just a few marauders in an army will deplete all your medivacs energy, basicaly rendering medivacs useless and a waste of ressource.
Yeah, this was offtopic, sorry xD
wait wat
What were you hoping the medivacs would do? I seem to be under the impression you WANT them to use their energy healing bio....
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On January 23 2011 00:08 sob3k wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2011 23:37 MrCon wrote:
Yeah, marauders sux. It's funny how they were considered THE overpowered unit during the first few months after release, before most people realise how they sux against non protosses oponents. For instance, just a few marauders in an army will deplete all your medivacs energy, basicaly rendering medivacs useless and a waste of ressource.
Yeah, this was offtopic, sorry xD wait wat What were you hoping the medivacs would do? I seem to be under the impression you WANT them to use their energy healing bio....
yeah I know it's a bit paradoxal, but marauders are too much an energy sink, usualy it's more effective adding marauders instead of medivacs if you have a heavy marauder army. One medivac will deplete it's energy healing 5-6 marauders then will be useless, so it's more cost effective to not make medivacs when you have lots of marauders (unless you drop, not only for the drop itself but for the increased durability of your drop).
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On January 23 2011 01:31 MrCon wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2011 00:08 sob3k wrote:On January 22 2011 23:37 MrCon wrote:
Yeah, marauders sux. It's funny how they were considered THE overpowered unit during the first few months after release, before most people realise how they sux against non protosses oponents. For instance, just a few marauders in an army will deplete all your medivacs energy, basicaly rendering medivacs useless and a waste of ressource.
Yeah, this was offtopic, sorry xD wait wat What were you hoping the medivacs would do? I seem to be under the impression you WANT them to use their energy healing bio.... yeah I know it's a bit paradoxal, but marauders are too much an energy sink, usualy it's more effective adding marauders instead of medivacs if you have a heavy marauder army. One medivac will deplete it's energy healing 5-6 marauders then will be useless, so it's more cost effective to not make medivacs when you have lots of marauders (unless you drop, not only for the drop itself but for the increased durability of your drop). This makes no sense. Diminishing returns... if you have 20 marauders then 1 medivac will make a much greater impact than one more marauder. Its not like the energy is finite, either, as you suggest when you say its useless after running out.
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On January 23 2011 01:31 MrCon wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2011 00:08 sob3k wrote:On January 22 2011 23:37 MrCon wrote:
Yeah, marauders sux. It's funny how they were considered THE overpowered unit during the first few months after release, before most people realise how they sux against non protosses oponents. For instance, just a few marauders in an army will deplete all your medivacs energy, basicaly rendering medivacs useless and a waste of ressource.
Yeah, this was offtopic, sorry xD wait wat What were you hoping the medivacs would do? I seem to be under the impression you WANT them to use their energy healing bio.... yeah I know it's a bit paradoxal, but marauders are too much an energy sink, usualy it's more effective adding marauders instead of medivacs if you have a heavy marauder army. One medivac will deplete it's energy healing 5-6 marauders then will be useless, so it's more cost effective to not make medivacs when you have lots of marauders (unless you drop, not only for the drop itself but for the increased durability of your drop).
This makes absolutely no sense.
Medivacs always use the same amount of energy per heal no matter how many there are or how many marauders. As long as you don't have way too many medivacs, then the benefit of each medivac is exactly the same.
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I love factory tech! It's always been the route I go when playing TvZ, because I love seeing zerg buildings explode into thousands of tiny giblets after getting rained on by my sieged tanks, mutas turning to fine mist after running into a hail of missiles from my Thors, and everything getting roasted on the ground or turned into swiss cheese by hellions and marines.
Thing is, though...versus Protoss it seems a lot harder because of things like Colossus range, Immortal shields, the fact that zealots can charge (and have much greater health than zerglings or any sort of zerg ground unit), and void rays/phoenixes are armored, not light, and can pick off thors and tanks fairly easily when made en masse.
And then of course there was that decision to change tanks' sieged damage from 50 (+15) to 35 (+15) in patch 1.1.....which made me super sad. It was still a respectable amount of damage and wasn't too much of a problem versus terran and zerg, but against toss units mech seemed totally nullified because tanks simply couldn't deal with threats quickly enough. =[
I'll be interested in seeing how you explain this.
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Blazinghand
United States25563 Posts
On January 27 2011 11:54 punchabird wrote:
Thing is, though...versus Protoss it seems a lot harder because of things like Colossus range, Immortal shields, the fact that zealots can charge (and have much greater health than zerglings or any sort of zerg ground unit), and void rays/phoenixes are armored, not light, and can pick off thors and tanks fairly easily when made en masse.
And then of course there was that decision to change tanks' sieged damage from 50 (+15) to 35 (+15) in patch 1.1.....which made me super sad. It was still a respectable amount of damage and wasn't too much of a problem versus terran and zerg, but against toss units mech seemed totally nullified because tanks simply couldn't deal with threats quickly enough. =[
I'll be interested in seeing how you explain this.
It's absolutely true that mech is more complicated vs toss. A couple of notes, though:
- Phoenixes are light, so thors eat them like delicious delicious butterscotch candies. Also, Phoenixes can't pick up Thors, so there's that.
- the 35(+15) vs the 50 damage only affects zealots, templar, and sentries: zealots now take 5 shots to kill instead of 4, and sentries take 3 shots to kill instead of 2. Templar have the same reduction. There is no impact on damage output vs collosi, immortals, and stalkers. Anything that the nerfed siege tank is bad against, the blue flame hellions are good against.
- The real problem for TvP Mech are Chargelots, Immortals, and Templar and Carrier/Void Ray. Collosi don't have the range to deal with Tanks like they do with Infantry, and Thors can stomp FFs all day erry day.
I don't think TvP Mech has substantially more weaknesses compositionally than TvP Bio, given the presence of Storms and Collosi. I think it's just harder to deal with. My next post, on Blue Flame Hellions, will be up soon.
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In TvP, mech requires 2 things:
1. Ghosts- Near mandatory since they will probably have at least on of each: immotrals/sentries/ht
2.Vikings- Mech's weakness is AA so if they are going collosi/heavy air, get these.
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EPT
