|
As a terran player, I don't think terran mech is very imba because at prepatch platinum 2000+ and postpatch 500+ mech has not allowed me to get away with bad micro/macro.
TvZ
Terran mech definitely stomps zerg's only-gruond army with a tank-heavy army. However, FE into 2 base mutalisks pose a problem because MM lacks mobility and vikings are not great against mutalisks (1st wave of muta will overwhelm w/e initial number of vikings against a non-viking core build, and afterwards when zerg can just pump mutas and terran wants to make only the minimum amount of vikings). Therefore terran needs to get thors. But thors make for very critical weaknesses
1. It makes terran's anti ground significantly weaker b/c 2 tanks are much better investment.
2. A thor-centric army is terribly vulnerable to infestors later on.
3. Thor is not a viable AA against blords or corrupters, only mutas.It's very specialized, and if the opponent stops muta production it's a pretty mediocre investment that can hurt you through neural parasite
4. Having less tanks and more thors will delay the timing push against the inevitable ground army of lings/roach/hydra. Unless the zerg goes complete mutaling, which is a strong combo against bio but not very great final composition against mech.
So for these reasons terran want to get minimum number or thors to deal with mutas and use your resources and factories building tanks.
The overall weakness with mech is that it is very immobile and lets the zerg expand twice, which is enough for end-game army composition over time. Once the zerg gets broodlords, it counters all terran ground. Therefore, the terran's main challenge is to survive the zerg's first tech and macro up to have a final composition that can fight a superior zerg ground army and zerg's 3-base macro while being able to stand against broodlord support.
Right now, on my level of play, I feel that TvZ is very balanced; a better player will be able to win, and the better skill/play will definitely make itself clear during watching the replay.
TvP
Colossi do really well against tanks. And makes tank army much more immobile because a tank army cannot engage even an inferior colossi army unsieged because they get destroyed.
I used to think that mech was overpowered against protoss ground, but affter few games where I saw protoss's strengths in colo, stalker blink, and superior production mechanic allowing quick tech changes, I don't think it's op. Different maps will give advantage to different strategies, of course, in that in small maps mech is a lot more powerful b/c mobility is less of an issue, and in backdoormaps mech is a lot weaker b/c of the vulnerability during late-early and early-midgames.
|
dark swarm used to help get close to tanks
arbiter stasis field used to help get close to tanks
corsair disruption web used to help get close to tanks
queen broodling used to help agains tanks
tanks used to all shoot at even one unit, now they are "smarter"
you could exploit the tanks firing then droping a reaver or templar to storm, now you can't as much
Tanks in SC2 are not to be treated as tanks in SC1 :|
|
about hallucination: Against mech I'd rather have something that isnt gonna die in a split second, aka immortals. It's really the only thing that can take shots of a real mech army and not die in the very first volley of shots. Of course immortals become useless with the first emp.
What I find pretty annoying is that, opposite to bw, tanks dont even need hellion protection against zealot numbers that arent way superior, even with charge cause of the smarter attacking on the tanks. Also tanks just generally do waaaay less friendly fire damage than in sc1.
Not necessarily saying that anything is OP though, I might just need to improve as a player.
|
On June 02 2010 20:38 slowmanrunning wrote:Show nested quote +On June 02 2010 20:27 Sadistx wrote:Terran players used to go bio, almost always. Zerg and protoss were used to response to this with "1a", which was enough (most of the time). It didn't matter if their units were clumped. Then terran players found out how to do some decent mech-builds. Protoss and zerg players kept on doing their 1a style. They attack with 1 big clumped army, which is a party for terran their sieged tanks (splash). No, that's not how Z and P players responded to bio AT ALL. P responded with either colossi/speedlot or mass storm if they were smart, because their 1a just gets silly raped by emp + stimmed bio. I don't think you can completely circumvent bio in TvP, you need at least ghosts late game and a few marines/marauders early game. Z has this wonderful spell called fungal growth, which is like storm + plague + lockdown combined, costs 75 mana, does not require research and is available at lair tech, which makes pretty much any attempt at going bio = roflskate, unless you already had a huge advantage. Thus terran players responded by going mech. It's not really imba, since it's incredibly gas intensive. Z just also got another buff for their ultras, which should weaken mech somewhat. The one problem is that fungal growth is like a shitty version of all of those spells. It stops movement, but doesn't stop attacking. It does damage, but barely any. Also it has a tiny ass radius compared to storm. It's only real major factor is that it can delay a terran from attacking you, or prevent retreat. It's damage is barely noticable, compared to the fact that it stops them from moving.
1. It deals guaranteed damage and cannot be dodged unlike storm.
2. The damage is considerable against marines, which are a huge part of bio, it also drains medivacs of energy very quickly after the fight is over (if you actually have any bio left rofl)
3. The immobilizing effect is much much better than you imagine, if you actually have units other than infestors. It also removes bio's greatest advantage - mobility.
4. One thing I forgot before - does not hit friendly units, so it can be cast when your army already engaged right into the midst of battle.
5. Techwise you can get it much earlier than storm (200 gas for archives, 200 gas for storm compared to 100/100 for lair/pit).
The small radius is the only thing that makes it not game breaking, but only slightly OP. Otherwise it is a much better spell than storm all around.
|
Russian Federation125 Posts
I think that one of the main reasons why tanks are so powerful are map pool. Maps are too small, even large maps like kulas or lt can be easily controled by a batch of tanks, Build 2-3 sens tower and u will see all the drops.
Because of maps there are very few possibilities to spread your army in attack to minimize splash damage, and splash is much more powerful now. Like how many units can be hit by 1 tank in BW ? In sc2 it's like 8-10hydras\roaches.
Because of small maps it's hard to use immobility of tanks against good terrans, because distances isn't that big. And u cant make terran spread tanks to much so that u can break through tank line because maps aren't that big. Usually u can cover almost all your bases with just 1 army ball in the center of the map. And there are also vikings, they compensate immobility of the tanks and can defend against drops rather easy.
And 1 more reason - just look in TvT. Why there is only tanks+viking against tanks+vikings? Why terrans don't use thors\drop thors on tanks or maraders\drop maraders on tanks or use immobility of tanks make haras drops or harass with banshes? The answer is very simple - because tanks are imba, and if you would try using infantry or thors or banshe against standart terran mech you will most likly lose.
In fact TvT is the greatest prof how tanks are powerful, other races don't have anything that terran can't do against tanks, but still the only working stategy against tanks is tanks.
And that is why other races who don't have tanks suffer a lot.
|
This is what seperates good players from bad ones. Bad players encounter a strategy that seems tough and then come here to whine about how overpowered it is, while good players find a way around it. It has always been that way and it will always be that way. It's the failure to take the game for what it is and trying to win, and instead trying to make Blizzard ease it up for you. All these comparisons and the theorycrafting is just rationalizing. Get out there and play more games, find and way to win and quit the whining. Yes, your whining may possibly help Blizzard, but trust me when I tell you that you're never going to get anywhere as a player when you resort to whining rather than trying.
And please, don't give me crap about how highly ranked you are(speaking to anyone who responds), rank means nothing in this game at this stage. Without any prior SC experience I went top 10 platinum with 70% wins in my first 30 games just by macroing and attack-moving all the units I could build.
|
On June 02 2010 20:38 SpicyCrab wrote:show me a replay of that happening outside of some ridiculously contrived circumstance that would never actually happen in a real game. People need to be a little bit more realistic about the things they say... Really.
This is realistic. Try to [b]directly attack a terran mech build 100/200 with a regular 200/200 zerg army and you will lose.
I don't have any high level replays of this because high level players know not to 1a a terran mech army, which is in fact my point...
I am pretty confident that : 10 tanks, 15 hellions, 3 thors, 12 vikings, a couple marines and a few turrets (a little more than 100 i think ?) can wipe out most zerg (non full air) configuration in a 1a attack with minimum micro.
My opinion on the terran mech build is that, the terran needs to be as skilled as his zerg opponent in order to stay alive in the mid-early game. After that, the zerg player has to greatly out play the terran if he wants to stand a chance.
It's sort of imbalanced in the sense that late game = win for terran.
It's not imbalanced if you consider the fact that a slightly better zerg player will still be able to defeat his terran opponent most of the times.
|
Russian Federation125 Posts
I think that one of the main reasons why tanks are so powerful are map pool. Maps are too small, even large maps like kulas or lt can be easily controled by a batch of tanks, Build 2-3 sens tower and u will see all the drops.
Because of maps there are very few possibilities to spread your army in attack to minimize splash damage, and splash is much more powerful now. Like how many units can be hit by 1 tank in BW ? In sc2 it's like 8-10hydras\roaches.
Because of small maps it's hard to use immobility of tanks against good terrans, because distances isn't that big. And u cant make terran spread tanks to much so that u can break through tank line because maps aren't that big. Usually u can cover almost all your bases with just 1 army ball in the center of the map. And there are also vikings, they compensate immobility of the tanks and can defend against drops rather easy.
And 1 more reason - just look in TvT. Why there is only tanks+viking against tanks+vikings? Why terrans don't use thors\drop thors on tanks or maraders\drop maraders on tanks or use immobility of tanks make haras drops or harass with banshes? The answer is very simple - because tanks are imba, and if you would try using infantry or thors or banshe against standart terran mech you will most likly lose.
In fact TvT is the greatest prof how tanks are powerful, other races don't have anything that terran can't do against tanks, but still the only working stategy against tanks is tanks.
And that is why other races who don't have tanks suffer a lot.
|
On June 02 2010 21:09 Geiko wrote:Show nested quote +On June 02 2010 20:38 SpicyCrab wrote:
a 100/200 terran mech army runs over a 200/200 zerg.
show me a replay of that happening outside of some ridiculously contrived circumstance that would never actually happen in a real game. People need to be a little bit more realistic about the things they say... Really. This is realistic. Try to [b]directly attack a terran mech build 100/200 with a regular 200/200 zerg army and you will lose. I don't have any high level replays of this because high level players know not to 1a a terran mech army, which is in fact my point... I am pretty confident that : 10 tanks, 15 hellions, 3 thors, 12 vikings, a couple marines and a few turrets (a little more than 100 i think ?) can wipe out most zerg (non full air) configuration in a 1a attack with minimum micro. My opinion on the terran mech build is that, the terran needs to be as skilled as his zerg opponent in order to stay alive in the mid-early game. After that, the zerg player has to greatly out play the terran if he wants to stand a chance. It's sort of imbalanced in the sense that late game = win for terran. It's not imbalanced if you consider the fact that a slightly better zerg player will still be able to defeat his terran opponent most of the times.
Zerg can easily take many more expands than Terrans could dream of doing, so they don't need to be cost effective. Late-game is actually a losing battle for Terran most of the time because Zerg tends to expand a lot and once their economy kicks in they walk all over Terran. An imaginary 200/200 Terran army would probably beat an imaginary 200/200 zerg army, but this is alright because this isn't a 200 vs 200 supply arena. Zerg has many, many ways to handle a game to ensure that it never reaches that point. If the Zerg let's Terran expand as many times as he does, and loses because he can't fight cost effectively, he has failed to play Zerg in any sensible way and deserves to lose the game. Instead of focusing on how Zerg isn't cost effective, why not focus on how incredibly mobile and able to grasp map control they are? How Zerg can take expansions and scout any attempt the enemy makes at expanding quite fast? How incredibly quickly they can produce more units and switch up their unit composition to surprise Terran?
|
United States22883 Posts
On June 02 2010 20:22 slowmanrunning wrote:Show nested quote +On June 02 2010 20:17 Jibba wrote:
Drops are possible, but I think terran players are overstating how easy they are to accomplish. If the T player has a big ball army, then yeah, but if they're also being good about scouting and keeping units separate, then it's hard to find an opening that'll cause enough damage.
I think right now the number 1 problem are the maps people play on. Metalopolis and LT are the best maps for ZvT and even those have some features that are easily exploitable by T. Blizzard's maps suck, people need to start playing real maps in order to judge this kind of balance. Unfortunately though blizzard maps are the ones we're going to be playing while laddering, so that isn't really a valid argument. Hopefully after the game comes out, and some more professionally made maps come out, in HotS they take lessons from the maps people make. All in all though I think blizz's sc2 maps are quite good (some of them), if you look at the blizzard bw maps they tend to be weird, mechanic broke, and race favoring (expo with 4 mineral patches anyone?) Many maps lacked naturals, which they honestly should have thought would be anti zerg considering their hatcheries are cheaper than nexus/cc.
Did the SC1 Ladder mean anything to you?
The SC2 maps have plenty of those things you described.
|
I honestly think tank thor should be nerfed. Its becoming like roach hydra was for zerg, viable in every matchup, every game. Now, its not the best idea to go for in every game, but if you have solid early play, you can safely go for blind thor + tank (that is, just build thor tank without further scouting.) and do fine in the mide and late game.
|
On June 02 2010 21:17 Keyser wrote:Show nested quote +On June 02 2010 21:09 Geiko wrote:On June 02 2010 20:38 SpicyCrab wrote:
a 100/200 terran mech army runs over a 200/200 zerg.
show me a replay of that happening outside of some ridiculously contrived circumstance that would never actually happen in a real game. People need to be a little bit more realistic about the things they say... Really. This is realistic. Try to [b]directly attack a terran mech build 100/200 with a regular 200/200 zerg army and you will lose. I don't have any high level replays of this because high level players know not to 1a a terran mech army, which is in fact my point... I am pretty confident that : 10 tanks, 15 hellions, 3 thors, 12 vikings, a couple marines and a few turrets (a little more than 100 i think ?) can wipe out most zerg (non full air) configuration in a 1a attack with minimum micro. My opinion on the terran mech build is that, the terran needs to be as skilled as his zerg opponent in order to stay alive in the mid-early game. After that, the zerg player has to greatly out play the terran if he wants to stand a chance. It's sort of imbalanced in the sense that late game = win for terran. It's not imbalanced if you consider the fact that a slightly better zerg player will still be able to defeat his terran opponent most of the times. Zerg can easily take many more expands than Terrans could dream of doing, so they don't need to be cost effective. Late-game is actually a losing battle for Terran most of the time because Zerg tends to expand a lot and once their economy kicks in they walk all over Terran. An imaginary 200/200 Terran army would probably beat an imaginary 200/200 zerg army, but this is alright because this isn't a 200 vs 200 supply arena. Zerg has many, many ways to handle a game to ensure that it never reaches that point. If the Zerg let's Terran expand as many times as he does, and loses because he can't fight cost effectively, he has failed to play Zerg in any sensible way and deserves to lose the game. Instead of focusing on how Zerg isn't cost effective, why not focus on how incredibly mobile and able to grasp map control they are? How Zerg can take expansions and scout any attempt the enemy makes at expanding quite fast? How incredibly quickly they can produce more units and switch up their unit composition to surprise Terran?
Weird rationalization. Following your logic you'd call a game balanced in which one race always has to end the game early to win, because if they don't the other race will dominate. Shouldn't it be more like: every race has an equal chance to win at any time (early, mid, late game)?
|
I mostly agree with you Keyser. I just think ZvT might require a little bit more APM on the zerg side to keep up with the terran's cost effectivness.
The hardest thing i find when going against terran mech as zerg is that you can't use your mobility to "pick off" stray units as you would do against protoss or zerg. The terran can just leave 1 tank, 2 turrets and 2 hellion (possibily a thor) at any expensions and you know you are going to lose at least at much as he is if you try to attack there.
In fact when i'm not going heavy muta, i have a lot of problem dealing with a particular type of harass.
The terran drops 1 tank and 2 hellion in my base. and has 12 vikings a little behind and a raven as well for PDD if i send to many hydras. The tank eather manages to escape while i'm dealing with the hellions or else just does a bunch of damage anyways with total lost for him 2 helion and 1 tank and usualy a lot more on my side. Any ideas ?
|
Yesterday we've seen on ICCUP.tv "moman vs Lz". Lz won the game without much hassel while we saw moman playing like a god. I was CLEARLY giving moman the game till Lz got enough tanks. After that... it was clear that moman couldn't do anything.
After the game Lz and moman were invited to talk about their game and they asked Lz if HE felt that it was imba and said no. Than team root proceeded to make fun of him and asked the same question to all zergs or terran that would join in the king of the hill. MOST if not ALL admit that it was AT LEAST kinda unfair.
So that being said, I play both terran and zerg at diamond level (zerg being my best) and my POV on this matter stand still and its that thors AND tanks are wayyyyyy too strong.
Thors can own: Roaches/Hydra/Muta/Corrupter...
Weak against: Zerglins (and not even sure about it since they reduced the circle)
Tanks can own: Zerglins/hydra
Weak against: Air/Roaches (but even roaches are getting raped with proper tank count ~8)
So basicaly, Ling + muta + roache should be able to beat this combo.... but it's not the case so.... yah it's pretty OP! Sometime when I play Terran I'm sooo afraid of my zerg opp army and than I almost say GG and end up winning against a larger force cause of tanks/thors and i'm like OHHHH YAH!!!
|
@nyshak nope, the game isn't completely rock paper scissor where you own him there> and then that's it. Timings are existent in this game. Think SC1, Terran maxed out 3/3 on mech is the strongest on average.
Armies have completely different unit costs therefore when protoss win on average vs terran their army costs a like a buckload more gas and allthough inefficient in either minerals or gas, at least you've won the game.
Different armies different strength, same goes when zerg beats terran they spend too much gas or either minerals by the time the game ends. One resource or the other. not every unit can be microed to achieve efficiency and cost effectiveness. As long as you win that's the most important thing.
|
Sweden33719 Posts
On June 02 2010 20:19 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On June 02 2010 20:08 lew wrote:
Oh and as a terran player I really don't have a problem with a terran nerf. People should just play the game as blizzard offers it. Yeah, one patch they make Stim a lot cheaper and the next patch they fix it by dropping Viking ground damage by 2. Your nerf really makes it hard to want to keep playing T. I'm glad you're sticking with it.
He's saying he wouldn't have a problem with a future nerf... I think.
|
Only way to deal with any terran nowadays is to go lings/infestors/Brood---Ultra (Whatever of those you prefer)
You can controll the game with lings/infestors pretty damn well and harras his economy good enough, and keep him at bay while you tech, though, you need thirde exp (at least I get the feeling of it) to pull this off seemingly good, or end it mid/early game with the infestor /Ling combo.
And those of you saying "WTF tanks own infesoters" Yeah, they do but the burrowed speed buff we got and the small amount of resources spent on the burrow skill, really can make/break the game at an alarming speed, mix some banelings in there and you got a good strat that requires some micro / macro,
|
Short answer: No.
Long answer: It can't be considered imba at least in my mind that early after the changes that made it stronger. Imo most of the things people say are 'imba' (which along with op is a word I hate) will stay as either strong solid strategies or simply the standard.
|
On June 02 2010 22:07 FrozenArbiter wrote:Show nested quote +On June 02 2010 20:19 Jibba wrote:On June 02 2010 20:08 lew wrote:
Oh and as a terran player I really don't have a problem with a terran nerf. People should just play the game as blizzard offers it. Yeah, one patch they make Stim a lot cheaper and the next patch they fix it by dropping Viking ground damage by 2. Your nerf really makes it hard to want to keep playing T. I'm glad you're sticking with it. He's saying he wouldn't have a problem with a future nerf... I think.
Yeah he is , thought that would be pretty obvious =o
|
to OP: no, it's not.
and to person mentioning what LZ said after playing moman, LZ was spot on.
And too many players right now have "one control group command and conquer syndrome" so that is also making mech very lol strong versus Zerg.
It is the same as SC1. If you suicide into their army, you're going to lose.
Overlord drops, nydus worms, burrowed roaches, mass MASS muta (SC1 ZvT vs mech style was mass hydra/muta), infestor usage...all of these are good versus mech. The people saying that muta's suck seem to be the ones that build 12 and stop producing them entirely.
And I actually think mass banelings have potential with muta and/or mass roaches versus mech.
edit: and oh how I miss the days of brood war where players would actually brainstorm and come up with strategies / solutions to builds and such rather than giving up and saying, "oh that's imba! nerf it blizzard!"
just sighs. those were the good old days.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
