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Why would you ever get more than 1 thor to support your army vs mutas? Stockpiling up 4-6 thors at 200 like Nada does, doesn't make you stronger, it makes you weaker - here's how:
300/200 Thor = 16 DPS to muta, 400hp.
200/0 4 Marine + 100/200 1 Raven = 42!!! DPS, 180 (stim marine HP) + raven spell contribution (~400 for 1 PDD).
You would need the thor to hit 3 muta at full damage. But in a full engage, mutas fly directly over your army with box, and you honestly only hit 1. So you are essentially shooting yourself in the foot bringing a 6 food unit that is potentially dealing the same DPS as 1.5 marines. This is ignoring that marines are ahead in upgrades of your mech.
More marines means that you are more resistant to a few unlucky bane/tank splashes, or a slightly off position engage, etc. More marines means you can resist more shock in composition skew before being overrun. PDD's mean that you will be able to engage the muta cloud successfully after clearing the ground with your remaining marines.
What thors do though is give 10 range. This lets you protect your tank line, since the marines may not always be in range when the mutas try to pick stuff off. A single thor will punish massively clumped mutas and dissuade this sort of play.
So stop shooting yourself in the foot by bringing an unit that does _not_ perform well in a straightup fight.
 
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Agreed. Though these days, I can't beat a zerg if I let them live long enough to force me a thor.
They really over did it with infestors (IMO).
Nada seems pretty confused these days but I always thought he makes one thor per base. He just calls them up in the last battle (maybe I'm wrong LOL).
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And if your one Thor dies?
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There is a bit more to the Thor (and any unit) than dps.
1 Thor will only discourage Muta harass 2+ negates it
Thor have burly dps vs ground
Most importantly they have massive health and the capability to be repaired. This means they are strong against pretty much everything the marine is not. While a fungal and some banelings will reduce an equivalent marine ball's dps precipitously, the thors will maintain power due to their armor and health. Thor are an excellent all around fighting unit.
Nothing is simple in SC.
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Its a little narrow minded to say that your bio upgrades are ahead of your mech, you dont know that every game is different. Also thors serve the purpose of a meatshield for the marines to kill all the other crap.
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Why is this in blogs lol.
Like you I am also the type that tries not to make any thors as much as possible (sort of like MMA).
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2-3 thors with 3-4 hellions at the front of your normal MMT army does wonders.
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The way fights go in TvZ, the end of the fight is typically your remaining handful of marines, that have survived the banelings, fungals, and speedlings, are left to deal with the mutas. The more marines you keep alive, the better you will fare against the mutas, and possibly drive them away and take the Z expansion. More marines = better.
I don't want to give off the impression that I'm going to sit here defending an idea to death, but I do want to correct some misconceptions about the matchup, or at least give my view, at ~1300 Masters level.
Re: GrapeD
Bio upgrades are ahead of mech by necessity. Many Z builds get early evos, so you need ebays to keep pace. You will at least have 1/0, if not 1/1 done by armory. The goal of the matchup is to control his gas spending with your superior mineral unit, so I can't really imagine any scenario other than gimmicky mech builds where bio upgrades are ignored.
Re: sob
It actually is really simple. Thors are simply the worst unit against typical zerg ground. Their DPS is all overkill against ling/bane, so it's more like 27 DPS (35/1.28). But that's actually still pitiful compared to 4 marines at 42. Fungal and banes will destroy marines, but you need tanks, not thors to do the same to Z.
If you lower your marine count for more thors, as most of these games have showcased, all that means is that your fewer marines will get mopped up, and then the thors will be picked apart trivially. This very scenario is what I was trying to address.
Re: nebffa
Who cares? You will hopefully already be at his expansion and sieging it. Make another one for the next push out.
Re: cive
I've started to do one thing late game against Z, sort of like how Morrow does mass spinecrawlers. I do mass bunkers vs infestor/bane. Mass bunkers (10-15) at critical chokes that I want to hold lets T siege up behind it, and simcity that area with tons of tiny pathways that fuck up ling movement, give marines immunity to fungal, and punish banelings. To do this though, it is necessary to be on the offensive to keep Z creep spread down so you can set up such positions.
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I agree with the idea of not needing more than 1 thor vs mutas, but if the Zerg has ultras or roaches in his army as well, then a couple more thors can be really helpful.
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the reason thors are used against zerg is because they do not have a counter other than zerglings (easily handled) and infestors (more annoying, but doable with good micro). this makes them extremely useful against the late-game zerg that is constantly tech switching. marines will always be the backbone of your army, it is rarely marines you are sacrificing for thors (and obviously marine thor is much better than pure marine). broodlords do somewhat counter thors, but youd sure as hell rather have thors than tanks vs those anyway.
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I agree with the OP. Thors are terrible when mixed with marine tank. They literally are only good against mutalisks, and marine tank outshines the thor in terms of cost efficiency in basically every fight unless your opponent afk'ed 40 mutas and didn't magic box.
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well...having a lot of thors with your main army late game is great because you can handle ultra switches 10x easier with a nice backbone of army.
whereas if you have mostly marines you're vulnerable to fungal, baneling, muta harass, or getting 1 thor sniped if you only had 1...also a thor backbone lets you make late game marauders since you can have fewer marines and then you can deal with infestors/ultras a lot better imo.
and what poke said. late game vs broods it's like..."uh, i have like 20 supply worth of tanks that are utterly useless vs mass upgraded lings and broods with infestors..." so having those resources into thors can work really good along with some ghosts.
i think the thors just give you huge flexiblity vs tech switches.
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Another thing~Thors are huge
I mean seriously, look at the size of those bamfmobiles.
You say more marines would make you resistant to unlucky banes... but if the banes can't get to your marines BECAUSE THERES A GARFLE-DRAINED GIANT ROBOT WITH KILLY GUNS IN THE WAY..... Marines are happy, banes are sad
And its not like thors take away much food, considering that you get long range-high hp protection from mutas, which tend to clump up a bit when they stop before respreading.... and you can't really get less mobile in tvz so slowness isn't an issue :D
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thors have great ground dps per supply and hp per supply. but they have abysmal air dps per supply unless shit's stacked. I never understand why pros go thors instead of vikings against mutas.
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On June 17 2011 18:02 LoneWolf.Alpha wrote:
thors have great ground dps per supply and hp per supply. but they have abysmal air dps per supply unless shit's stacked. I never understand why pros go thors instead of vikings against mutas.
6 vikings are a hell of a lot less scary for 20 mutas than 2 thors.
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6 thors is too much, but something like 3 or 4 is pretty good. They will one shot a gaggle of mutas, if the zerg player makes a single mistake. They can also block big ramps easily and especially against mutaling that's pretty devastating.
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On June 17 2011 13:45 nebffa wrote:
And if your one Thor dies?
This. It's not too hard for a single thor to get sniped. Seeing two or three would deter the Zerg for sure.
Plus the fact that mass thor pretty much beats anything in the game, even if you just a-move. Tack on some light infantry support or scv repair and it's just lol.
And keep in mind that you may want beefy mech against other units as well, as part of your general unit composition.
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Thors are used defensively so mutas do not pick off too many things. You never mass them. You only need around 2 or 3 maximum so the mutas do not do too much damage.
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On June 17 2011 15:35 KawaiiRice wrote:
I agree with the OP. Thors are terrible when mixed with marine tank. They literally are only good against mutalisks, and marine tank outshines the thor in terms of cost efficiency in basically every fight unless your opponent afk'ed 40 mutas and didn't magic box.
Isn't it worth having 1 thor just to make magic box a necessity though? I guess my micro at low masters is awful, so I don't know how much this is worth, but whenever there's a Thor out it seems almost impossible for Zerg to effectively snipe tanks and dropships, or at least much more difficult than it would otherwise be.
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DPS doesn't matter. Usually what happens is that the mutas fly in, take like 1 second or less of marine fire and just fly away. If you have a thor, the moment the mutas fly in (clumped) they take a lot of damage. That's much more scary to a zerg. When the engagement happens, the thors can soak up a lot of banelings as well.
I do agree that relying on thors too much against zerg is bad, but the main reason for that imo is neural parasite. Half your army will be turned against you.
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EPT
