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I like to think I can counter anything that is thrown at me with every race.
This is the one thing that's baffled me for quite a while now.
How DO protoss counter bio?
Gateway units feel weaker than barracks units, emp dominates high templar( and I guess sentries to some extent), and collosuses take a long time to get out and aren't even all that powerful considering the terran will have access to vikings(exact same tech route as medivacs).
It's just not clear cut enough for me to figure out what to do. I know it's beatable, because it has been beaten countless times, but I don't know how.
Protoss players, if you KNOW your opponent is going to go marines, marauders, ghosts, medivacs and vikings if you build collosi, what do you do?
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Storms and more storms.
EMP will rape you HTs, but that's why you need to spread 'em. Having obs spot their army helps you to position better and maybe even let u get off a few feedbacks on those ghosts. Turn on health bars and aim for the little purple bars.
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Tons of colossus, tons of stalkers, and then tech to some void rays. It's an unstoppable ball.
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On August 18 2010 15:46 Ryuu314 wrote:
Storms and more storms.
EMP will rape you HTs, but that's why you need to spread 'em. Having obs spot their army helps you to position better and maybe even let u get off a few feedbacks on those ghosts. Turn on health bars and aim for the little purple bars.
Pretty much this. I know ravens can spot your Obs, and even an alert terran player will emp Obs to take them out, but it's usually possible if you're careful to spot their army and feedback the ghosts. Besides that, I don't recommend hotkeying HTs with your main army. If you think the Terran will start mass producing vikings as soon as the collosus is seen you can use that to your advantage, by not making as many as he thinks you are going to make, thus giving him a mostly useless viking fleet.
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On August 18 2010 15:48 rackdude wrote:
Tons of colossus, tons of stalkers, and then tech to some void rays. It's an unstoppable ball.
If you get Colossi, I'm going to tech to Vikings to snipe them. I'm going to be ecstatic when your Rays come out because I already have the two best counter units I could possibly make for them and am probably about to win the game.
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If you're dealing with a MM timing push in the early game and know it's coming, shift your composition to be zealot/sentry heavy. Wait for him to get in a choke, FF off his retreat, and have your zealots go to town. Late game, like others have said, HTs are the answer. Colossi are less effective because of vikings' insane range.
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If they invest a ton in vikings, don't make more colossi, because you're going to lose them.
Get a lot of gateways and pump out chargelot/sentry/ht. Get observers around the map so you can see where they're moving - the most important aspect of the battle is positioning. T can happily 1ta right through your army while firing off an emp, P can most definitely not do something similar. Here are some thoughts from a 600 Diamond P (but hell, I'm looking for better tips myself because I hate bioball).
1: Spread, position, and use your casters. You need FF to limit the power of the bioball and keep them from ducking out of storms while on stims, and guardian shield has a massive effect (-2 on zeals that take 5/9 from marines/marauders already gives you a lot of staying power). Make sure the sentries aren't wobbling in the back when your zeals charge in, and aren't clumped for an EMP. Same thing for HTs - they're slow, don't let them get caught behind, but don't leave them clumped. Feedback snipes on ghosts and medivacs are great (and key) for limiting the power of the army for you to storm it flat.
2: Make units. This seems silly but if you want to take on a bioball, you're going to need a huge amount of stuff to throw at it. You should try to be on more bases than the T, and from that comes a lot of warpgates. Chances are, a battle is going to wipe out the bulk of both your forces - make sure you can come back before T can.
3: Harass. You need to not die until your hts kick in. But you also need to not let T peacefully expand and macro up freely. If you're going storm instead of colossi (since the OP referenced viking fleets), T won't use much on vikings normally, so use warp prisms to force T to make vikings for defense. Harass his minlines a little (but don't get greedy and throw away 1k minerals to kill a few scvs) - do anything to keep T in his base and let yourself get a macro lead.
4: Upgrade. T bioballs deal out low damage bursts incredibly quickly. Armor (as well as weapon) upgrades are absolutely essential to increase the staying power of the bulk of your units (zealots), which increases how much damage they can do and limits how freely T can dodge storms. Letting T get significantly ahead in weapons against your armor is going to result in your ground force evaporating against mass stim.
5: If all fails, use your tech. In the mentality of 'oh I am losing, make a round of DTs' in BW, you can always throw down 4 stargates at a quiet, hidden place and replenish your mutilated ground army with a swarm of void rays. Taking HT over colossi means viking numbers will be limited, and it can, in some circumstances, get you a win. What won't get you a win is throwing newly made warpgate units at a bioball that's already taken the lead on the ground, so don't be stubborn.
It does feel like P has to micro a little more than T, but that's just a reason to micro better, drop a dozen storms, and reply to their 'gg' with TERRANS OP lyrics.
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to be honest what ive been doing if a terran makes 3-4 rax is 1 basing on my ramp until I at least have heavy zealot stalker sentry army, charge or have a counter advantage. Then I move out and try to hold my natural while im getting collosus or templar. If you engage a equal - less then equal terran bio force without perfect conditions including some nice forcefields, it will decimate you unless you are holding the top of a ramp.
avoid all T2 vs T2 confrontations with Marine/marauder UNTIL you have T3 unless you are in heavily favored circumstances
If they are Marine heavy, armor upgrades will help too. If you get +2 armor and use guardian shield it stacks nicely
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Don't put all of your units into Control group 1.
Terran players typically use their EMPs on the vanguard of your army, particularly chargelots. If your HTs are far enough from the front line, they'll avoid being hit by the EMP.
This simple technique has ensured that I've never lost to a pure bioball when I reach Tier 3.
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On August 18 2010 16:19 Assymptotic wrote:
Don't put all of your units into Control group 1.
Terran players typically use their EMPs on the vanguard of your army, particularly chargelots. If your HTs are far enough from the front line, they'll avoid being hit by the EMP.
This simple technique has ensured that I've never lost to a Terran bioball when I reach Tier 3.
yep, just gotta live until you have T3 and it gets much easier
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Feedback the medivacs so they die/can't heal. Use chargelots to clean up whatever's left. If it's a massive force which stacks ranged damage nicely, you should either have enough forcefields to cut it in half (first big engagement), or storm to punish it(later engagements).
If it's coming pefore you have feedback and your charge's only about to finish (for example, you FE'd, they did 1base timing push), use whatever chrono is left besides charge research on warpgates, spam units asap, delay for time with forcefields AND use a bunch of probes from nat in combat to prevent kiting.
If you're still losing to a timing push, you probably need to watch replay, realise when you should've known it was coming, cut the probes for extra warpgates in next game and win.
If terran FEd and then went mass bio, if he adds tanks to mix you really need a 3rd. Otherwise, I'm not sure yet(~700 diamond still figuring the regular transitions here) - perhaps against something like 6raxes bio w/ or w/o medivacs you'd need to stay on 2bases and get HTs faster with more warpgates, or you could still take the 3rd...idk yet.
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get used to using Psi Storm. Try playing the Protoss spellcaster challenge, it's quite uesful for figuring out decent methods. Of course, it's just AI, and it won't run out of your storms, but you can get at least SOME practice in. Also, don't be afraid to send 3-4 hallucinated collosi to your opponent's mineral line. Even if they have turrets or realize they're hallucinations, that's a second or two that they spent looking at the hallucinations, possibly running their scv's away, etc. and that's a second or two that they didn't spend microing their army. Take advantage of that and feedback their medivacs, drop a storm in the center of the ball, drop 2 storms behind the ball so it forms sort of a triangle, then storm the ramp if they're close. A-move your army as you get the storms in position and the storms will generally fade as your chargelots get into position.
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as toss i feel REALLY vulnerable until i get HT's. Like the terran could roll me at any minute. but for some reason they turtle.
I saw another post, regarding a build 1 gate, robo, into 3 gate with immortals. This seems to handle the inital small marine/marauder push okay, but vs a decent terran I feel very much behind in econ. So after holding of the first push or 2, ill push back with 3-4 immortals and if the terran took a fast expand, THUS far im able to destroy his wall, or cause him to lift expo, while i expand...
But even with such a heavy one base aggressive build, it almost depends on the terran, making mistakes... I feel. Immortals are decent until the terrans bioball gets to a decent size then they just burn up.
(Im a low diamond and once i get HTs i almost always win, but if terran does some kind of timing push off one base i get rolled, even if I do 3+ gates and robo.)
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On August 18 2010 17:43 s4m222 wrote:
But even with such a heavy one base aggressive build, it almost depends on the terran, making mistakes... I feel. Immortals are decent until the terrans bioball gets to a decent size then they just burn up.
(Im a low diamond and once i get HTs i almost always win, but if terran does some kind of timing push off one base i get rolled, even if I do 3+ gates and robo.)
If you see terran powering on one base, you can do the same and rely on FF to take apart their army (assuming a map with a ramp/choke). Immortals with a mixed gateway complement can take apart marine/marauder forces quite quickly if the T can't make use of range and kiting - which FF accomplishes for you.
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Welp, to beat a bioball as Protoss is easy.
NOT THROUGH BRUTE FORCE.
Its common knowledge that the MMM decimates anything ground-based, and even air-based to some extent, so to beat it you need the following:
STRATEGY. Im talking Sentrys and HTs (along with a generic army)
Force field the army in half and then carpet storm them, the forcefields will not only prevent half the army from running away, but they won't be able to get away from the storms. 80 damage man. 80 damage. It obliterates bio.
Also Chargelots (its the only logical outcome as HT/Sentry eats gas)
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On August 18 2010 16:04 Inori wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2010 15:48 rackdude wrote:
Tons of colossus, tons of stalkers, and then tech to some void rays. It's an unstoppable ball. Dude, this is the right unit composition... for PvZ. For PvT this is just wrong in every possible way. Vikings >>> Colo. Marauders >>> Stalkers. Marines >>> VRs.
Or VR's >>> Marauders. Colo >>> Marines. Stalkers >>>Vikings.
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On August 18 2010 20:46 Supersrsbnz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2010 16:04 Inori wrote:On August 18 2010 15:48 rackdude wrote:
Tons of colossus, tons of stalkers, and then tech to some void rays. It's an unstoppable ball. Dude, this is the right unit composition... for PvZ. For PvT this is just wrong in every possible way. Vikings >>> Colo. Marauders >>> Stalkers. Marines >>> VRs. Or VR's >>> Marauders. Colo >>> Marines. Stalkers >>>Vikings.
And hence you inadvertently bring out the true issue. Beating a Bioball isn't about hard counters. If you want to know the real answer to why you can't beat it, you have to look at something more than step 1) build unit X step 2) win.
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Storm and Colossus are the best Protoss counters to Bioball - yes the Terran have counters for those (Dodge Storm, EMP Templar, Viking > Colossus), but you have counters for those (Feedback Ghosts, Spread Army, Blink > Viking), and they have counters for those, etc.
I suppose its possible to defeat Bio without those counters, but I have that one Bratok vs HuK (I think?) game stuck in my head where during the last battle he starts out 85 vs 95 and ends 80 vs 60, Marine Ghost Medivac vs Zealot Stalker Sentry Immortal.
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Canada9720 Posts
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EPT
