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Thors have great anti air against light units, but against armored air units, their air attack is beyond terrible. With equal upgrades against Carriers, Thors do 4x4 = 16 damage per volley. That's less DPS than a stimmed Marine.
Thors weakness against armored air targets would be reasonable if they weren't so high up on the attack priority. In a large battle with Carriers on one side and Thors on the other, Thors do basically no DPS, unless you manually target Thors on ground units, they spend the entire fight shooting Interceptors and Carriers.
Now I know what you're saying: Get Vikings to kill Armored air units. But the problem is that Vikings suck on the ground. The problem is that getting armored air units is almost always a win for the Protoss in TvP. This is only masked by the fact that most TvPs are over fairly quickly and don't ever get past 2-3 base for the P, because almost all Terrans use bio. There are three ways getting Vikings to counter Carriers can go:
1. The best case scenario is that you make just enough to kill his Carriers then hope you win the ground battle. Terran maybe comes out slightly ahead in this case. But it's very difficult to hit the exact right amount of Vikings.
2. If you lose the air battle and he has carriers left over you lose the battle. Nothing else you have that shoots up (Marines and Thors) are good vs Carriers with support.
3. If you win the air battle with too many vikings left over, you'll lose the ground fight. Vikings that are 0/0 and on the ground are pretty terrible.
Also they are on an entirely separate upgrade table so you're at 0/0 when they already have some upgrades.
There are a couple of solutions to this problem:
Change Thor anti-air damage to be 12x4, or 24x2 instead of 6+6lightx4.
Change Thors to automatically target ground units over armored air units and Interceptors.
If Thors were changed so that Terrans had a viable counter to armored air other than Viking/Marines, I believe we would see playstyles other than bio open up.
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Um...the reason that terrans go bio is not because they are afraid of carriers. It's because bio is strong.
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On November 18 2010 19:39 Daniel C wrote:
Um...the reason that terrans go bio is not because they are afraid of carriers. It's because bio is strong.
It's both, so both would need to be addressed I think. If protoss doesn't have workable answers to bio plays (debatable whether this is so) then play styles will remain as they are, but protoss air just kills to death almost all non-bio plays of terran at the same time.
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To be honest : in about 350 ladder games i have seen carriers maybe... once or twice. Protoss has the same problem with air-upgrades that you say the vikings have (if protoss starts with colossi,terrans sometimes get +1 air attack even, so...). Also letting thors do normal damage vs. armored would make them stronger vs. BCs/Broodlords also, so it would also effect the other matchups... i dont think this is a good idea to be honest
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Making Thors good against armored air would be kinda cool, and also open up other match ups such as ZvT (Mutas wont be hard countered by 1-2 thors). Terran already got mega strong turrets to use against mutas so it would be a cool change. But this won't be done by Blizzard as it is a way too big of a change to the game.
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I agree the reason people go bio is not because they are afraid of Carriers. But you'd see other things if Thors could hit armored air well.
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Or or you can get battlecruisers. Combine with EMP for instant-win.
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I'd love to see a Protoss player go Carrier tech vs. Terran and actually win. Vikings are just so good that even if he does tech switch to Mass Gateways and High Templar after you dominate his air forces, and even if you build 5-6 too many Vikings to deal with the threat, you'll still have enough of a ground army to take out whatever he manages to scrape together after wasting all those resources on Carrier tech. At the same time, you yourself can put up a Ghost Academy while he's tech switching to counter the inevitable High Templar that will come next, as the only other counter to terran Bio is Colossi, which are also countered by your "spare" Vikings.
Even if the Vikings have nothing to shoot, the Protoss player can't just ignore them. Vikings take away a LOT of the Protoss player's options.
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On November 18 2010 19:43 Espelz wrote:
To be honest : in about 350 ladder games i have seen carriers maybe... once or twice. Protoss has the same problem with air-upgrades that you say the vikings have (if protoss starts with colossi,terrans sometimes get +1 air attack even, so...). Also letting thors do normal damage vs. armored would make them stronger vs. BCs/Broodlords also, so it would also effect the other matchups... i dont think this is a good idea to be honest
Because you obviously don't play mech or you protoss opponents don't know how to respond to mech appropriately, it's really an issue. Mech is really really strong against protoss in late game, but weak thor AA makes it almost impossible to make a steady unitmix because you either have a groundarmy that obliterates everything and then you lose 15 tanks against 1 carrier or some void rays or you have 10 vikings and he just stops making air at all and vikings are really the most worthless unit in the game in the late game and just waste supply, so you lose the ground fight horribly. Plus they are on a different upgrade path, so they naturally aren't that good in later stages of the game.
Playing mech against mass gateway + starport + occassional robo/immortal is IMO not really winnable (steadily) if the protoss knows what to do, and that's really sad because mech would be a great response to protoss late game if it's upgradable AA would be existant.
Make thors much weaker against ground, change their 6(+6)x4 with 3.0s cd splash attack to something like 10x2 or 12x2 with 1.5s cooldown without or with really little splash, and they will be perfectly fine balanced. They are so slow, that they can't be the ultimate counter to air, because air naturally is very mobile, but at the same time they at least ARE some sort of Mech-AA possibility, which atm is non-existant and not even really viable against light air units without armor (mutalisks, phoenix) which they should counter gamedesign-wise.
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On November 18 2010 19:54 X-Codes wrote:
I'd love to see a Protoss player go Carrier tech vs. Terran and actually win. Vikings are just so good that even if he does tech switch to Mass Gateways and High Templar after you dominate his air forces, and even if you build 5-6 too many Vikings to deal with the threat, you'll still have enough of a ground army to take out whatever he manages to scrape together after wasting all those resources on Carrier tech. At the same time, you yourself can put up a Ghost Academy while he's tech switching to counter the inevitable High Templar that will come next, as the only other counter to terran Bio is Colossi, which are also countered by your "spare" Vikings.
Even if the Vikings have nothing to shoot, the Protoss player can't just ignore them. Vikings take away a LOT of the Protoss player's options.
Carriers are way way better than you think, Vikings do not beat them cost effectively, they roughly trade with Carriers. Especially since he'll be ahead in upgrades (he knows he's going Carriers before you know you're gonna need Vikings, has Chrono, and an idle Cybernetics Core while you probably have either no armory or a working armory).
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Marines are seemingly the most cost-effective unit in the game; I can't see a justification for Terran to play mech instead of Marine + Mech. In Broodwar, you saw pure mech because Vultures were much stronger than Hellions, and Marines had 40HP instead of 55...
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i'm confused doens/t thor beat all of protoss ground units for cost ?
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On November 18 2010 20:21 Severedevil wrote:
Marines are seemingly the most cost-effective unit in the game; I can't see a justification for Terran to play mech instead of Marine + Mech. In Broodwar, you saw pure mech because Vultures were much stronger than Hellions, and Marines had 40HP instead of 55...
Marines are extremely strong any time there isn't area effect damage going around, but their effectiveness greatly diminishes when Storm/Colossus are out.
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450 Minerals + 250 gas for 1 Carrier = 3 Vikings + 25 Gas leftover. 1 Carrier and 3 Vikings also have equal supply cost. Also, a Reactor'd Starport produces 3 Vikings in roughly the same amount of time it takes to create 1 Carrier from a perfectly Chronoboosted Stargate. With just a little more micro than a moving the Vikings into the Carriers, you should be able to not lose a single viking in this exchange. Yes, not ONE. Why not? Because Carriers are so laughably slow, even slower than Vikings, that they just can't catch a retreating Viking, and they can't escape from an engagement with them. I'm also not taking into account the inevitable Marine support that the first wave of Vikings will have.
Also, if you do any scouting at all then the Protoss player can't go all Suddenly... CARRIERS! on you. If they don't completely neglect their ground army, then they can probably fund 1 Stargate off 1 base and 3 Stargates off 2. So, you have an opportunity to scout their fast expo easily enough. Next is that it takes 1 minute to build the stargates and 1 more to build the Fleet Beacon. Only then do they get the pleasure of spending 2 minutes building 3 Carriers off these two bases. That's a huge window of opportunity to scout the stargates and build Vikings to counter whatever they're doing (and Vikings really do counter WHATEVER they do with Stargates).
Carriers vs. Terran is a trap of Ackbarian proportions.
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Can someone point me to a game where mech actually dominated lategame? I've only seen Goody do it TvP at high level, and he gets rolled more often than not, judging from the replay packs and whatnot.
How is mech with non-existant mobility beat a colossus+HT+gateway(assuming late late game as you said), let alone toss air.
I think most people go bio simply because bio / biomech > mech tvp
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You just NEED to work more with EMP - try EMP-ing the carriers (they are godawfulslow, impossible to miss), then they die like paperplanes.
If you say feedback, then yes, toss ALSO needs templars in play. But then again he can't have everything, all the time, everywhere.
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If the Toss goes heavy on the carriers, he cannot have a strong ground force at the same time, so going vikings is very viable and will not auto-lose you the ground battle, especially since you can just land them to get some extra firepower on the ground once the carriers are taken care of. Also, if he goes heavy air and gets air upgrades, he cant have a fully upgraded ground force at the same time making your ground army more cost effective against his so you can spare some supply on vikings.
changing the Thors AA so that it will do well against armoured air targets is a horrible, horrible idea balance wise since it would effectively create a unit that is good against pretty much everything.
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On November 18 2010 20:22 TibblesEvilCat wrote:
i'm confused doens/t thor beat all of protoss ground units for cost ?
Zealots.
Also ranged colossi, if you're kiting.
On November 18 2010 20:24 Nadagast wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 20:21 Severedevil wrote:
Marines are seemingly the most cost-effective unit in the game; I can't see a justification for Terran to play mech instead of Marine + Mech. In Broodwar, you saw pure mech because Vultures were much stronger than Hellions, and Marines had 40HP instead of 55... Marines are extremely strong any time there isn't area effect damage going around, but their effectiveness greatly diminishes when Storm/Colossus are out.
Hellions suffer from splash as well, but without the sick DPS to compensate. You have extra minerals to spend as a meching Terran; if it's not on Marines or Hellions, it'll have to be Turrets or SCVs or buildings.
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Marines really do have a place in just about every T strategy IMO. MMM has Marines in the name, any kind of Mech play generally needs AA support, which Marines have, and any kind of Starport Fast Tech requires a lot of Marines out of the initial rax to fend off early pressure.
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right.. show me replays because serriousley this feels like somone wanting thor to be anti all god unit.
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EPT
