EPTDay9's Request for TvP Mech games - Page 3
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Zombo Joe
Canada850 Posts
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HardMacro
Canada361 Posts
On December 07 2011 20:20 PoP wrote: Was playing mech only TvP at high/mid masters level last season (EU ladder). I had some very good success with one fac marines/tanks expo into double armory upgraded tanks/hellions/vikings plus ghosts for EMP. No idea if this is viable at GM/high GM level though as I'm not exactly super talented nor have enough time to practice a lot, but it's fun and lots of P have no idea how to deal with it. Replays please of high-mid masters on EU? That's impressive, considering the EU ladder is about half a league above its NA counterpart. Pure theorycrafting, but back in BW, 1 rax expo or 1 fact expo into double armory into 3 fast third into mid-game 1/1 upgraded mech push or a later 2/2 almost maxed push, was a legitimate build. Why? Because although it gave up some map control due to the super early double armories, protoss could still not expand completely freely because of spider mines and vultures. Also, siege tanks were just much stronger, and the toss has to constantly be on his game and be ready to fend off pushes. Now, here in SC2, you're doing essentially the same thing, which is bad in my opinion because if I ever play you, I would double expand and mass gates/robos with triple chrono'ed upgrades as soon as I see your factories making tanks with no starport and 2 armories. You probably had some success due to the rarity of the build, where tosses didn't optimally set themselves up for the mid-late game or failed to scout you. The problem honestly lies in the strength of the siege tank. In BW, it was OK for a terran to turtle, because a 200/200 mech army in broodwar with upgrades is usually unstoppable. Depending on micro/spell usage/terrain, a toss in BW usually is happy to trade his entire 6 control groups of units for half of his opponent's mech army, and the game is decided by whether the terran can take additional bases or kill toss expos before his army gets completed picked up by toss reinforcements. In SC2, mech just plain suck against toss, especially since your build gives so much time to the toss to tech and expand. You don't even need both; as long as colossi or templar tech is out, a protoss army trades cost effectively with the terran mech army, which is in my opinion utterly ridiculous. Again, the root of the problem is that siege tanks just don't do enough damage, especially when I play SC2 in a BW style going 1a2a3a4a5a6a from 6 angles to minimize splash damage making a nice concave. This is a serious problem because the siege tank does similar amounts of DPS unsieged vs sieged, the only difference being splash damage; this is great against zerglings/banelings, but against the much large stalker/colossi army with nice pre-engagement spreading, siege tanks blows balls. I'll look through my replays, but I distinctively remember a few games where I took an early economy hit due to a poorly defended hellion run-by or reapers (you should try proxying 1 rax near the toss base, then pumping 3 reapers with speed upgrade after the factory is complete, that shit is so gay if you don't see it coming @ guaranteed 8+ probe kills depending on his main army position), but came back easily winning easily simply because my opponent continued to mech whereas a bio transition probably would have killed me or denied me my third. I almost think it's better to go thor/hellion tvp than tank/hellion, I just cannot stress how much siege tanks such in TvP in SC2. In BW, whenever Terran units came out of the natural expo, it instill FEAR in me; it was an instinct to pull back my army and stall for additional time. In SC2 I could do the same, but army strength usually makes it my habit to just 1a everything every time I see the terran try to move out as long as my upgrades aren't like 30 seconds away from completion, usually to good results and a quick victory. I'm not saying mech is totally unplayable, but against equally skilled opponents, the terran player's win percentage would be much higher if he bio'ed every game rather than going mech. | ||
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VanGarde
Sweden755 Posts
When it comes to the theory of mech in TvP I am of the opinion that it is the way you get to a mech army that is the crucial part of this puzzle and not so much how to lategame mech vs toss. I see two major vulnerabilities for mech in TvP. The first one is being able to take enough of the map and to remax without just dying or getting contained before that, and the second is how to deal with very specialized protoss armies designed to take down your mech force. Mass immortal/chargelot for instance. I know mobility is also a vulnerability of mech but I reject the idea that this is of some particular importance in TvP. Terran bio is arguably way more mobile than protoss can ever be, and you can mech just fine vs pure bio. So whatever problems mech has to adjust for in terms of mobility the basic solutions from TvT will probably be applicable in TvP. So my thought is that people who try mech are way too focused on meching the whole game, where as I am more inclined to think that the goal would be to mech in the later stages of the game and use a set of solid transitions during the early and mid game which will get you into a meching position in the lategame while controlling protoss's decisions so that they can't just make that perfect army. While I don't know exactly how I would design this build or where it's weaknesses lie I am thinking of a two punch transition while expanding based on already viable terran strategies. Open with a 2 rax expand to instantly put pressure on protoss and punish greedy play while you get your first expand up safely. Then go into something on the lines of the old iechoic tvp or synystyrs tvp where you make banshees as actual fighting units and not just one or two to harass. What I am thinking about is that you play banshee's like mutas. You keep adding banshees while focusing on retaining all of them. You don't throw them away, keep harassing keep adding them up and keep killing off lone units, buildings etc. Use cloak and the ability to pick off observers to prevent toss from just going all in on you off 2 base. Hellion harass is probably viable during this phase as well. Basically the idea is to put a shitload of pressure on protoss while you take a third and maybe even a fourth and transition into pumping tanks 3 at a time. But the banshee play most importantly forces protoss into unit choices that are not ideal against mech. Everyone who says mech is impossible instantly jumps to the example of zealot/immortal vs tank based play but that is assuming you just let protoss go zealot/immortal. If you try to go marauder/hellion all game in TvZ zerg will not just allow that but will go mutas and punish you for it. If you retain a banshee ball protoss is forced to add anti air. Stalkers actually suck against banshees in higher numbers and even blink is pointless if you have PDD and just play it safely. I don't think that protoss can actually afford to not go air if you keep putting banshee pressure on and phoenixes deal very well with banshees. But that is the whole point, to force protoss unit comp into several tech paths. If not you get a situation that we occasionally see in TvT when one player goes mech and the other goes biotank where the meching player gets just one or two banshees and starts picking off the bio/tank players tanks because he has no air control. In the late game you just need a dash of banshees to pick off every single immportal on the field if protoss refuses to battle for air control. Feedback is useless if you keep using cloak to drain energy. Exactly what your composition would be in the lategame I don't know, I imagine that you would try to keep pressure on protoss to get to a tank/ghost core with banshee/raven mixed in small numbers. Then you need a buffer against zealots and blink stalkers and you need to have the anti air against a protoss air build. You could go for pure marines as buffer to deal with air or marine/hellion mix as a buffer or even just hellions and just play vikings reactively if you actually see protoss going air. I am just brainstorming here I actually do not know if you could make a build where you don't die to timing pushes while doing the transition from banshee's to mech or which unit compositions is the best one in the lategame, or even if 2 rax and then banshee is the best way to pressure and buy time. But my feeling is that this idea of using non tank based pressure to give yourself the room to go tanks, and to force protoss unit compositions is the key to mech. | ||
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HardMacro
Canada361 Posts
On December 08 2011 11:07 VanGarde wrote: I am working on this too, my feeling is that regardless of whether or not mech actually turns out to be viable at the end of a lot of people tinkering with this. The worst thing that can happen is that a lot of new stuff was learned on the way. When it comes to the theory of mech in TvP I am of the opinion that it is the way you get to a mech army that is the crucial part of this puzzle and not so much how to lategame mech vs toss. I see two major vulnerabilities for mech in TvP. The first one is being able to take enough of the map and to remax without just dying or getting contained before that, and the second is how to deal with very specialized protoss armies designed to take down your mech force. Mass immortal/chargelot for instance. I know mobility is also a vulnerability of mech but I reject the idea that this is of some particular importance in TvP. Terran bio is arguably way more mobile than protoss can ever be, and you can mech just fine vs pure bio. So whatever problems mech has to adjust for in terms of mobility the basic solutions from TvT will probably be applicable in TvP. So my thought is that people who try mech are way too focused on meching the whole game, where as I am more inclined to think that the goal would be to mech in the later stages of the game and use a set of solid transitions during the early and mid game which will get you into a meching position in the lategame while controlling protoss's decisions so that they can't just make that perfect army. While I don't know exactly how I would design this build or where it's weaknesses lie I am thinking of a two punch transition while expanding based on already viable terran strategies. Open with a 2 rax expand to instantly put pressure on protoss and punish greedy play while you get your first expand up safely. Then go into something on the lines of the old iechoic tvp or synystyrs tvp where you make banshees as actual fighting units and not just one or two to harass. What I am thinking about is that you play banshee's like mutas. You keep adding banshees while focusing on retaining all of them. You don't throw them away, keep harassing keep adding them up and keep killing off lone units, buildings etc. Use cloak and the ability to pick off observers to prevent toss from just going all in on you off 2 base. Hellion harass is probably viable during this phase as well. Basically the idea is to put a shitload of pressure on protoss while you take a third and maybe even a fourth and transition into pumping tanks 3 at a time. But the banshee play most importantly forces protoss into unit choices that are not ideal against mech. Everyone who says mech is impossible instantly jumps to the example of zealot/immortal vs tank based play but that is assuming you just let protoss go zealot/immortal. If you try to go marauder/hellion all game in TvZ zerg will not just allow that but will go mutas and punish you for it. If you retain a banshee ball protoss is forced to add anti air. Stalkers actually suck against banshees in higher numbers and even blink is pointless if you have PDD and just play it safely. I don't think that protoss can actually afford to not go air if you keep putting banshee pressure on and phoenixes deal very well with banshees. But that is the whole point, to force protoss unit comp into several tech paths. If not you get a situation that we occasionally see in TvT when one player goes mech and the other goes biotank where the meching player gets just one or two banshees and starts picking off the bio/tank players tanks because he has no air control. In the late game you just need a dash of banshees to pick off every single immportal on the field if protoss refuses to battle for air control. Feedback is useless if you keep using cloak to drain energy. Exactly what your composition would be in the lategame I don't know, I imagine that you would try to keep pressure on protoss to get to a tank/ghost core with banshee/raven mixed in small numbers. Then you need a buffer against zealots and blink stalkers and you need to have the anti air against a protoss air build. You could go for pure marines as buffer to deal with air or marine/hellion mix as a buffer or even just hellions and just play vikings reactively if you actually see protoss going air. I am just brainstorming here I actually do not know if you could make a build where you don't die to timing pushes while doing the transition from banshee's to mech or which unit compositions is the best one in the lategame, or even if 2 rax and then banshee is the best way to pressure and buy time. But my feeling is that this idea of using non tank based pressure to give yourself the room to go tanks, and to force protoss unit compositions is the key to mech. I skimmed your post, and it seems to me that every single one of your idea about making mech viable revolves around gaining some sort of early advantage, pretty much ignoring mech completely until you would win with anything anyway. 2 rax into expansion into continually pumped banshees... then after securing 1-2 more expansion purely with banshee/hellion harass, start making tanks 3 at a time? Seems to me if the toss is getting harassed so hard that he lets you take additional bases and mass tanks, then you've won already. | ||
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phiinix
United States1169 Posts
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sSoda
United States95 Posts
http://www.twitch.tv/supersoda13 Hopefully I can get a game vs Toss, it seems like all zerg TT | ||
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PoP
France15446 Posts
On December 08 2011 04:14 HardMacro wrote: Replays please of high-mid masters on EU? That's impressive, considering the EU ladder is about half a league above its NA counterpart. Pure theorycrafting, but back in BW, 1 rax expo or 1 fact expo into double armory into 3 fast third into mid-game 1/1 upgraded mech push or a later 2/2 almost maxed push, was a legitimate build. Why? Because although it gave up some map control due to the super early double armories, protoss could still not expand completely freely because of spider mines and vultures. Also, siege tanks were just much stronger, and the toss has to constantly be on his game and be ready to fend off pushes. Now, here in SC2, you're doing essentially the same thing, which is bad in my opinion because if I ever play you, I would double expand and mass gates/robos with triple chrono'ed upgrades as soon as I see your factories making tanks with no starport and 2 armories. You probably had some success due to the rarity of the build, where tosses didn't optimally set themselves up for the mid-late game or failed to scout you. The problem honestly lies in the strength of the siege tank. In BW, it was OK for a terran to turtle, because a 200/200 mech army in broodwar with upgrades is usually unstoppable. Depending on micro/spell usage/terrain, a toss in BW usually is happy to trade his entire 6 control groups of units for half of his opponent's mech army, and the game is decided by whether the terran can take additional bases or kill toss expos before his army gets completed picked up by toss reinforcements. In SC2, mech just plain suck against toss, especially since your build gives so much time to the toss to tech and expand. You don't even need both; as long as colossi or templar tech is out, a protoss army trades cost effectively with the terran mech army, which is in my opinion utterly ridiculous. Again, the root of the problem is that siege tanks just don't do enough damage, especially when I play SC2 in a BW style going 1a2a3a4a5a6a from 6 angles to minimize splash damage making a nice concave. This is a serious problem because the siege tank does similar amounts of DPS unsieged vs sieged, the only difference being splash damage; this is great against zerglings/banelings, but against the much large stalker/colossi army with nice pre-engagement spreading, siege tanks blows balls. I'll look through my replays, but I distinctively remember a few games where I took an early economy hit due to a poorly defended hellion run-by or reapers (you should try proxying 1 rax near the toss base, then pumping 3 reapers with speed upgrade after the factory is complete, that shit is so gay if you don't see it coming @ guaranteed 8+ probe kills depending on his main army position), but came back easily winning easily simply because my opponent continued to mech whereas a bio transition probably would have killed me or denied me my third. I almost think it's better to go thor/hellion tvp than tank/hellion, I just cannot stress how much siege tanks such in TvP in SC2. In BW, whenever Terran units came out of the natural expo, it instill FEAR in me; it was an instinct to pull back my army and stall for additional time. In SC2 I could do the same, but army strength usually makes it my habit to just 1a everything every time I see the terran try to move out as long as my upgrades aren't like 30 seconds away from completion, usually to good results and a quick victory. I'm not saying mech is totally unplayable, but against equally skilled opponents, the terran player's win percentage would be much higher if he bio'ed every game rather than going mech. I will post some replays of it when I get back home (older patch version though). I agree the main problem with the build is the lack of aggressive options until midgame, especially since even hellions come a bit late. But as you take more expansions yourself you essentially force a macro game unless the P commits to an early bust or some sort of cheesy opening. And when the upgraded BF hellions come in you can start poking around everywhere, preventing more expos and so forth. Then when you get your massive tanks/hellions/vikings force with 2-2 upgrades or more and a couple ghosts, P seems to have a hard time dealing with it unless they catch the tanks unsieged or make some kind of undetected, sudden air switch. Then again, BF hellions use to completely crap on zealots and EMPs were more effective when I used that build a lot. May not work as well today at the same level. Still I'll post a few replays later just in case. | ||
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knyttym
United States5797 Posts
I feel like the order in which you will develop your midgame is really really delicate compared to tvt and tvz. Since the final composition is so spread out (tank, hellion, thor, banshee, viking, ghost) you need to be really careful to develop properly. From my own experience with like 5 games, I feel like the banshee is the most important unit to mech properly. | ||
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treekiller
United States236 Posts
Add me Treekiller.591 on NA/AM | ||
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ChristianS
United States3235 Posts
It's like in TvZ; mech is viable, but if you don't have thors by the time mutas come out you're just... dead. Not only are you dead, you feel so stupid. You just watch him kill all your scvs. Or, if he prefers, swoop down on your tanks and hellions, and then just kill you with whatever other army he has. Or if you don't get tanks up soon enough and he roach pushes you, you'll just watch as roaches stream up your ramp and kill you. You might not even lose more often, but it's just plain demoralizing the way you lose. That being said, the siege tank is also probably the single biggest reason I chose Terran in BW, and I do wish there was more to the TvP matchup than marine marauder medivac and mini-emp ghosts. I understand that Terrans haven't had a lot of reason to try mech when MMM+ghost viking has been so successful, but tanks actually ain't bad against Protoss. Hell, pure immortal zealot doesn't even crush tanks as hard as you'd think with a decent hellion count in place. With the main bio AoE (EMP) nerfed, maybe Terrans will be looking around for alternatives? | ||
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Speake
United States494 Posts
On December 09 2011 19:22 ChristianS wrote: I for one hope some good mech builds come out of this challenge. I think people don't like playing mech not only because it's easy to mess up, but also because when you lose you feel really stupid. A bunch of stalkers blink on top of your tanks and you're just... dead. It's like in TvZ; mech is viable, but if you don't have thors by the time mutas come out you're just... dead. Not only are you dead, you feel so stupid. You just watch him kill all your scvs. Or, if he prefers, swoop down on your tanks and hellions, and then just kill you with whatever other army he has. Or if you don't get tanks up soon enough and he roach pushes you, you'll just watch as roaches stream up your ramp and kill you. You might not even lose more often, but it's just plain demoralizing the way you lose. That being said, the siege tank is also probably the single biggest reason I chose Terran in BW, and I do wish there was more to the TvP matchup than marine marauder medivac and mini-emp ghosts. I understand that Terrans haven't had a lot of reason to try mech when MMM+ghost viking has been so successful, but tanks actually ain't bad against Protoss. Hell, pure immortal zealot doesn't even crush tanks as hard as you'd think with a decent hellion count in place. With the main bio AoE (EMP) nerfed, maybe Terrans will be looking around for alternatives? This all used to be true, except hellions don't actually kill zealots very well at all any more | ||
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ChristianS
United States3235 Posts
On December 08 2011 00:56 Cyro wrote: Banshees get 1shot by feedback and if you stack them, you will loose your entire army to 1-2 storms, if you dont stack them, they are really not that good in combat. If you play air you are far more vunerable to storms than if you were to run with marine/marauder without any units to spot or any ghosts at like the half hour mark, your entire army is so low health. I havnt seen an air build work vs a decent protoss just because your entire army isnt really that good if it doesnt stack (cant prevent toss expanding almost at will) and if you do stack and try to micro banshees around etc you will just loose them all to one AOE shot, assuming you make it that far into the game without dieing to one of like 10 early-midgame pressure builds because you are committing to air. I havnt played against it enough to go into much detail but in general i just dont see it working because of AOE damage and no way to deny expansions and/or templar, it seems to be rolled over without competition when protoss plays with that style Also, learned a cool trick from a TL guide today: If you have banshees in your army and you don't want them to get one-shotted by feedback, select them all and alternate pressing C-D-C-D-C-D-C-D-C-D. Every cloak blows 25 energy, so if you do this pre-battle you can effectively waste any feedbacks that get spent on your banshees. Learn something new every day, eh? | ||
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sSoda
United States95 Posts
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rebuffering
Canada2436 Posts
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RoboBob
United States798 Posts
Bio=Rax units Mech=Factory units Sky/Air=Starport units I think many people in this thread are confusing "mech" with the attribute "mechanical". When Day9 was saying "mech", he was really refering to heavy factory play. So Thor with a sprinkle of Banshee would be fair game, but something like 4 port Bashee + 1 fact Thor would not. Anyway, a few weeks ago I went through all the Goody TvP replays I could find, post-BFH nerf. I have been having fun with Sky Terran in TvP, and I really wanted to figure out how to make mech TvP work too. Unfortunately, the results were not very encouraging. It's definitely Goody's weakest matchup. For the most part, it looked like his most successful "pure mech" opening was RFH+Banshee (without cloak). But even then, it was only somewhat okay against FEs, and terrible vs against 1 base. I think some of that has to do with name recognition. The Robo holds all the counters to mech: Observers to Blink up bases and defend against Cloak, Immortals to kill Tanks and Thors, Colossi to kill Hellions and Thors. Because everyone knows Goody goes mech, everyone goes Robo before expanding vs Goody...and Goody knows that, so he rarely goes Cloak. Kinda funny mind games going on there. Early Game: Most of Goody's TvP wins actually came from bio openings, such as 2 Rax FE and Reactor Marine/Tank, which would both later transition into 2 base Ghostmech. I noticed that his Marine/Tank openings in particular were very sensitive to the P's opening. If the P opened with a FE and Goody gets to push out, then he usually smashes the P's face. However, if the P stays on one base and forces Goody to stay inside his main, then Goody almost always loses. Stalker pressure is always too good at delaying his expo (Goody is usually fine vs Stargate). Goody really seems to struggle to make mech work with just 2 gas. The only other thing worth noting is that if Goody goes for less than 2 Rax worth of bio production, then he will definitely get a fast Viking for early anti-air + scouting. Mid Game: Here, Goody's play is surprisingly similar to MMMGV players. He gets double armory at about the same time MMMGV gets double Ebay. (he affords the Armories by not getting more than 1 Medivac for Hellion drops) He, too, scouts for Collosi/Templar at the standard time and adds on Vikings/Ghosts as needed. His army backbone is always Tank plus the least amount of Vikings he can get away with. Here in the midgame he'll also make a big Hellion ball with maybe 1 or 2 Medivacs/Banshees and suicide them around the map in order to buy time for his upgrades+Tank count to peak. He recycles Hellion supply for Ghost/Thor supply as soon as he can afford it. Late Game: If Goody gets to 3/3 and/or high Ghost count, then he usually wins. Goody always maintains a fleet of at least 5-6 Vikings to discourage sudden Colossi production. Other than that, it's pure Tank/Ghost with maybe a handful of Hellions. I guess it makes sense because as long as you can keep Colossi+Stargate off the field, Tanks destroy everything as long as you hit EMPs. Chargelots don't seem to bother Goody much, he just adds 1 or 2 Thors. It's shocking how fast Chargelots melt to 3/3 tank fire, compared to 0/0 tank fire. The extra armor on the tanks really helps mitigate the friendly fire problem. Goody will often build empty bunkers in front of his tanks just to zone out the Chargelots, which is pretty smart imo. You want some SCVs there anyway to repair after each battle. If there isn't anything to repair, then you might as well use them to build some throwaway fortifications. So yeah. The builds that seem to give Goody the most trouble are 1 base Blink Stalker and heavy Immortal pushes that hit before Goody gets 3/3 and/or a large number of Ghosts. Sometimes I see Goody win a 2+ base game without armories, but never a 2+ base game without Ghosts. I guess you cannot go pure mech in TvP like you can in TvZ and TvT. It really must be Ghostmech. For some reason Goody doesn't like floating his buildings during trades, and he doesn't like to abuse Cloak either. I think Goody is just personally bad at base trading+queueing. So it's not that it's an inherent weakness of mech, or anything like that. You just need to be as careful where you Siege your Tanks, just like everywhere else in the game. It is true that Goody does not like Sensor Towers in TvP. I think Artosis made a really good argument for them on SotG. However unlike Artosis, I don't believe that Goody is just ignorant. Goody does use Sensor Towers a *ton* in both TvT and TvZ (far, far more than the average Terran) so there's got to be a good reason why he doesn't also use them in TvP. I just don't know what it is. | ||
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BoggieMan
520 Posts
On December 07 2011 19:28 sSoda wrote: thors are not very good and they don't really add anything to the composition so only add one or two max. have you considered that the thors ability kills an immortal from 100% hp and stuns it during the entire time it takes to cast the ability ? obviously ht's counter it, but then again ghosts counter that... It also kills a collusi from 100% hp, but i don't think it "stuns" it because it is massive. | ||
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catid
United Kingdom47 Posts
I love playing this build when I TvP, yeah the VOD is pre-hellion nerf but I think the effect is negligible, you have 3 reactor'd factories pumping hellions and their purpose is more to give your push momentum rather than do massive amounts of damage. I think the gasless expand straight into factory might have some problems vs early pressure, but if you can feel it out and add bunkers/have scvs ready to repair I think you can hold and your siege tank+siege mode comes pretty fast. And pushing with so many hellions is fun, you can be really obnoxious and dart into mineral lines etc In my experience this build really crushes expand-> colossus play | ||
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Fealorin
United States21 Posts
The reason why I say mass hellions and tanks mostly is for several reasons actually: 1. Mass hellions and tanks = all splash. Even if the total dps is minimal, you can still do a lot of damage with splash because simply splash damage stacks up almost exponentially. I don't care what units you make, if you have enough splash, it will crush anything. 2. Hellions produce at a speed of 30 seconds. Tanks produce at a speed of 45 seconds. Those 2 units are probably the fastest producing units in a mech composition. If I'm not mistaken, marauders also produce at 30 seconds. You can make 2 hellions out of a reactor which is almost like having 2 barracks. Thors won't work because they take 60 seconds to build and are easily cut down by HT. 60 seconds is too long my friends. Likewise, banshees also take 60 seconds to build. I don't believe ghosts will be very helpful as they will eat into your tank count too much, especially in the mid game. Perhaps in the very very late game you can add a touch of ghosts. 3. Hellions provide a good mineral dump and are excellent at harassing. You have to use them like a zerg uses zerglings and do lots of hellion harass, hellion drops, hellion runbys and you only need to use 3-4 hellions to do it. Hellions are also very mobile and can abuse the immobility of protoss armies. Even if you have to do several hellion harasses at once to split the protoss army up, they are still effective at abusing immobility. So hellions are good for applying constant pressure throughout the game, and if you keep up the pressure, the protoss will be less inclined to move out to attack in fear of a hellion runby. Since we've talked about unit composition, let's talk about production. A fundamental problem with going mech TvP is simply that you can't produce at the same rate as your protoss counterpart should you trade armies. This is why it's imperative that you stick to mostly hellions and tanks since they only take 30 and 45 seconds to build. This is also why it is equally important to make more production capacity than what you can economically support with constant production. In other words, make MANY more factories than you would normally have. Go ape-shit with factories especially in the late game since you will have extra resources and mech armies tend to max out a lot. Every factory with an add-on will give you 3-4 supply every 30-45 seconds. Let's do some simple math: Warpgates have a 18-28s cooldown with or without chronoboost on zealots. Warpgates have a 30-45s cooldown on high templar. It takes 2 high templar to make an archon with an additional 12 seconds to build for a total build time of 42-57s. Immortals take 55 seconds to produce. Hellion tanks: Hellions take 30s to produce and can be produced 2 at a time for the cost of a 200/150 factory. Tanks take 45 seconds to produce. Keep in mind, protoss units are extremely expensive and terran units are relatively cheap compared to protoss. You don't see protoss constantly warping in units and using their gateways, do you? No a lot of protoss players like to build more gateways than they can economically support so that they can create a surge of reinforcements if they need to. Why not do the same thing with terran factories? Keep in mind we are talking more in the late game when resources are more abundant. HMMM... maybe it is possible to keep up with protoss production using mech.... Now upgrades, you should be able to stay relatively even with protoss, since you are doing mech and so that requires only 2 upgrades. Upgrades early on will be crucial to success. So now we have our end game strategy for winning: Keep pressure on the protoss with lots of harass and economic damage, take advantage of his immobility with hellions thus keeping him pinned from moving out, start upgrades early and be atleast even with upgrades, and try to be atleast even in bases. So, we have our strategic plan and a new problem arises: How do we get to that point? What opening do we use? What openings give us the most flexible and easy, smooth transitions? What transitions do we use to get the final result? Well my friends, I see some parallels in the matchup with other matchups such as mech TvZ. With mech TvZ, I'm finding that it is absolutely critical to apply early pressure, and so I've taken a build that Goody uses where he goes naked factory expand off 1 gas into a 9 minute marine tank hellion push. I believe we can abuse this same timing in TvP as a bridgestone for going into full mech, especially if protoss decides to do some type of early expand. Colossus doesn't show up until around 12 minutes after a protoss fast expand. At 9 minutes there's not a whole lot to threaten you. Blink stalkers shouldn't be much of a problem as you'll only have about 3 tanks with this push and a lot of marines and hellions, and I don't think he'll want to blink into a ball of marines and hellions after taking a volley of tank shells. Heck, I don't think you even have to siege up the tanks. Tanks have 7 range unsieged, stalkers have 6. Stalkers will have to get in range of your marines and hellions to do damage to tanks. Tanks also do more dps to a single unit when unsieged. Zealots and sentries aren't much of a worry because marines and hellions rip through zealots and sentries that early in the game. Immortals won't be a problem early in the game with such a high marine count. Probe pulls get roasted by hellions. As this push is happening, you definitely want to take your third base and transition over to full mech. With this opening you might think that you are vulnerable to early protoss shenanigans, and you would be correct, which is why you won't do it BLINDLY! This build gives you the flexibility to scout with an early hellion once your factory is complete. Your hellion scout will see what the protoss is doing in time. If you see 1 base protoss play, then go into defense mode and get extra bunkers. I believe we can all use 4K.Warden's early scouting TvP guide to read our opponent as to what he is doing and react appropriately. (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=232753 and http://imgur.com/r/starcraft/FVxdk) If you suspect air play, get a reactor on the factory to swap over to the rax and get a starport out for vikings. If you suspect 4 gate, then get extra bunkers and techlab on factory to get tanks. DTs? You have about 1 minute and 30 seconds to almost 2 minutes before they hit, plenty of time to get a turret at your ramp. So far I have not tried this opening yet, so this is only theoretics, but I believe it might work. However, there is an alternative opening. Happy's 111 banshee harass opening to keep the protoss pinned back from attacking and into an expand and getting a raven out and going for a 2 base push. I believe we can make a 2 base timing attack with marines, hellions, and tanks and not go for full mech UNTIL we do some damage and get a 3rd base up and running. These openings offer nice aggression and an awesomely smooth transition over into full mech. I truely believe that you won't be able to go full mech early to mid game in TvP. You need to be super aggressive early in the game and through out the game. I don't like the 2-3 rax openings that people are talking about because they don't transition to full mech in a smooth way. Any builds that require more than 1 rax in the early game I feel is wasteful and just adds extra pork to your build and deviates from your end goal. Much like Day9 said in his Daily #319 that any step you take AWAY from your main strategy is THAT much further you are going away and will take more effort to go back on track. I think it's very important to look at this from an efficient perspective. Using a reactor rax for mass marines early on does NOT deviate at all from the end goal of mass Hellion Tanks, because you are extending the purpose of that barracks. If you build a structure and only use it one time, then it is wasteful. We want to be efficient and make the most of all of our buildings, so the reactor rax gives us a nice bridge to transition over to full mech. Not to mention that a push with such numbers of marines and hellions allows you to be aggressive with tanks early in the game. I have used the big strategy of being constantly aggressive and doing lots of hellion harass and going hellion tank for pretty much the rest of the game after 2 base and I have used it with a little bit success as I have only recently started going mech TvP. It's that early game transition that's the bugger-oo and tricky part. I strongly believe that if you play more like a zerg in TvP and take advantage of toss immobiliy with hellions, then you will stand a good chance of winning. You will essentially keep the protoss on 2 bases as his 3rd base will nevery really become fully operational if you keep his probe count down. That's all I got folks, please feel free to critique my post and comment on it with your ideas. | ||
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Nizzy
United States839 Posts
For those of you who aren't familiar with him he's a Terran that plays a lot of mech games and late games/long macro games of mech vs all races. He breaks the current metagame of TvP using mech units vs toss very well. I highly recommend it. . source: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=297835 | ||
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Fealorin
United States21 Posts
On December 14 2011 06:11 catid wrote: http://www.gomtv.net/2011gslsponsors6/vod/66247 I love playing this build when I TvP, yeah the VOD is pre-hellion nerf but I think the effect is negligible, you have 3 reactor'd factories pumping hellions and their purpose is more to give your push momentum rather than do massive amounts of damage. I think the gasless expand straight into factory might have some problems vs early pressure, but if you can feel it out and add bunkers/have scvs ready to repair I think you can hold and your siege tank+siege mode comes pretty fast. And pushing with so many hellions is fun, you can be really obnoxious and dart into mineral lines etc In my experience this build really crushes expand-> colossus play This is actually a very similar build to what I was thinking about in my post, but factory expand instead and a 9 minute marine hellion tank push with about 2 tanks. It's a build Goody does in TvZ and I love it. It's a very great way to put on pressure early on the game and threaten the protoss natural. This essentially makes it so that the terran player is being aggressive with his mech and the marines and hellion allows the terran to get up in the face of the protoss. I think that's one important key is being able to get up in the protoss' face early on in the game. Who says that mech needs to be a passive style of play? You can actually be aggressive with mech if you open properly and have the right stuff at the right time and take advantage of certain timings. | ||
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