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Hey guys,
First off, I am a master/diamond Terran who has been playing since beta, so I think my experience has to count for something in this matchup.
Recently playing multiple TvZ, I found that the matchup to continue to get more and more difficult. From the cries of TvZ imba during retail to now, Zerg has definitely made this matchup much much harder than what it was a couple months ago.
Now the current trend has established as Marine Tank. This army composition makes a lot of sense, to deal with mass units, tank's splash + bonus attack to roaches is a must. Anti air? Picking between marines/thors, marines will always win the debate. The combo of these two anti-ground and anti-air is undeniably the optimum way a Terran can go against a air/land heavy zerg army (Muta Roach Bling, or Muta Ling Baneling)
As zerg gets better and better, their army control gets better: this is also an undeniable fact. Mutalisk control and army positioning of zerg players have truly exponentiated in the past month and the ability to harass with muta and speedlings really punishes Terran's immobility with the Tank.
However, i believe the problem of the current terran is that with the MUCH bigger maps, tank push in mid/late game is WAY too slow to be effective. Terran has to mind 3 things,
1. slow siege hopping from where the zerg's creep starts to prevent baneling destroying ur army with unsieged tanks
2. Keeping ur marines around ur tanks at all times to prevent mutas from getting free kills
3. Watch for counter attack.
The fact that Tanks are so immobile, and when u push ur marines HAVE to stay with them, ur base is basically bare to muta harass while u push. Also, marines are pretty slow unless stimmed to run around ur base to defend the harass. I find that many Terran's judgement on how many turrets they need is incredibly underestimated. Mutas running around the map can make a terran go crazy, and once zerg hits around 20-30 mutas, 1-5 turrets dont even matter, a thor doesnt even really make the trick anymore. Terran will probably be so confused on where to send their marines, their push will get demolished anyways. The fact of the matter is, Marines are NOT the answers for base defending and tank defending in mid/late game TvZ
I believe that Terran must understand the uniqueness of this match up of TvZ and accept the fact that we can't push any faster than the speed "slow" and should fully dive in to "slow pushing" I believe if terran construct a lot more turrets around bases AND the push can make their time a lot easier. Although marines are one of the strongest units in the game, the mobility limited by protecting siege tank AND bases really exposes their weakness. Stims cost health and micro, spending that 100 minerals on a turret to me sounds like a better deal.
What do you guys think? should terran start constructing 20+ turrets per game from here on out? i think by making turret lines around ur tanks (as seen sometimes when pushing thorugh scrap station) will truly make the matchup a lot easier for terran.
And yes, i do know terran can make thors, but the fact of the matter is. Thors = factory build time = less tanks. I dont think thor is a solution to this problem because they are terrible against all zerg units except un-magicboxxed mutas and the cost of having 1.5 less siegetanks per thor is too great.
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thors are actually good against everything zerg except for lings and broodlords having 1 or 2 really forces zerg to magicbox and creates micro for the zerg and punishes hard if he does not do it well. thors are also great single target dps against everything.
as for the turrets I think you definately need more turrets as muta numbers go up but relying on turrets will allow zerg to expand more because you spend so much on SD, on larger maps it could really be hard to stop zerg from taking the map especially since tanks are so immobile.
I think getting mass turret is one way of dealing with mutas but getting better on marine control is needed either way.
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If you have that big of a problem with muta harass while pushing, yes, build turrets. I thought this was known since the game came out.
Thors are not terrible against all zerg units. They are not ONLY good at stacked mutas. They keep the mutas away from your tanks since it has much more range than they do. And if they decide to magic box your thor, you have marines there. Mid to late game, if they have too many mutas, thors are really great, almost a must, I'd say.
I don't know what you're bringing up that is new.
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A lot can be done with Turret placement as well.
A turret has 6 range, while a Mutalisk has 3 range. If you build two turrets, they shouldn't be built with more than 3 range between them, so if one turret is attacked, the other one will fire as well.
Protoss have the same problem. If they see the opponent going banshee - build the friggin' Photon cannon. It's cheaper than 10+ probes and zero map presence because your stalkers are behind your mineral lines.
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Thors are really good against mutas and once you have 5-6 it doesn't even matter if they magic box.
I also think that getting 20+ turrets is a lot of recourses that could be put to better use, instead it might be better getting only a few turrets with the upgrade from the engineering bay!
I feel like this upgrade is Greatly underused, it increases the armor on ALL building by 2. This makes mutas less effective because they rely on splash damage to defeat the turrets because they only do 6ish damage so reducing that down to 4 can make a BIG difference.
This upgrade can also make the PF stronger and your wall offs against the Z much stronger as well.
Hope that helps and good luck in further TvZs!
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I tried that  it didnt work for me. I can defend my mining bases with 1 thor and 5-6 well placed turrets (sometimes even upgraded). The problem is my slow push becomes even slower cuz i spend resources on static defense wich i might even not need (how the hell am i supposed to know if the zerg uses the larva for 10 more mutas or for 10 roaches? --no relation to the zerg QQ "We cant scout meeeeehhh!!!).
By the time you get to the zergs base he has a 200/200 upgraded army with broodlords or shitloads of infestors (lately). Yeah your main/nat is safe from muta harrass but you didnt get a third up cuz if you tried and the zerg is not stupid he either muta wtfpwned it or if you defended with marines he went and wtfpwned your slow push.
Idra used to say that on metalopolis if you get close spawns tvz the matchup is heavy T favored and if you get cross positions its heavy Z favored. Now 90% of maps are 'metalopolis cross positions'...
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Thors are incredibly underrated in TvZ. While I agree that a few extra turrets in your base (and building armor, definitely - that upgrade rocks!) are needed as the game progresses, assuming the Z goes muta heavy, trying to guard your tank push with turrets isn't nearly as good as bringing 1-2 Thors. Thors have incredible range, they make sure Zerg can't use stacked Muta ball to snipe tanks, and they make great meatshields against ling/bling. While I can understand not making Thors early, as you get your 3rd up, there's no reason not to.
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Can we get a replay of this being effective or ineffecive?
Personally I would prefer 40 marines over 20 turrets but i am a zerg not a terran.
Spend 2000 minerals on turrets means you have a solid defense and sure if you have enough time you can likely still max but terran max armies aren't like the protoss deathball and can be destroyed by a zerg max army much easier.
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I agree with OP - tank marine doesn't cut it on large maps.
Another way to formulate it: A well placed tank marine combo with good spread and sieged tanks hard counter ling/bling/muta. Tanks and marines on the move get hard countered by the same composition (especially on creep).
The bigger maps mean we must slow-push longer distances which in turn give mutas free time to destroy the economy.
A few thors are good since their long range protects tanks well but you can't mass them vs Z or you loose to ling/bling.
We need a counter build vs ling/bling/muta on large maps (get to work iEchoic).
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On April 04 2011 18:34 andy186 wrote:
Can we get a replay of this being effective or ineffecive?
Personally I would prefer 40 marines over 20 turrets but i am a zerg not a terran.
Spend 2000 minerals on turrets means you have a solid defense and sure if you have enough time you can likely still max but terran max armies aren't like the protoss deathball and can be destroyed by a zerg max army much easier.
40 marines in your base or in your tank line for the slow push. Cant have both .
I dont know . Since season 2 i lost every damn TvZ. I even lost to a baneling bust through 3rax wall with bunker and siege tank behind.... Before the big ass maps if the zerg failed 1-2 baneling busts he would be screwed (as it should be). Now by the time you get to his base he already has 50 zerglings and 30 banelings...
Maybe i just suck or need to try more 1 base cheeses or something ...
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the way i see it is even if you are going marine tank army comp you should always include 2-3 Thor's at the back of your army for support. as a Zerg what i find the hardest to deal with and to be most efficient for the Terran is if they patrol the map with their marine tank army and push on the Zerg's expansions at leave one Thor at each of their bases, then when the Terran feels they are in a good position they pull the Thor's from the expansion and push with their entire army. this way the Zerg can't afford to harass with Muta's while the Terran is pushing at his from door, and you cannot Muta harass if a Thor is there defending.
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well , solution is simple , make Vikings just "a little" more than rubbish vs Mutalisks , i tried it long time ago , cause even with marines , still Muta harras is winner . u loose lots of HP cause of stim and yet mutalisks just kite you into un-grounded spaces , and even with higher upgrades , you loose in battle of vikings vs mutas , simply they can out number you anyways and there is no aoe on vikings while Muta has AOE attacks wich is the key to win.so add some buff to vikings , something GOOD on air like Valkyrie would be awesome.
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I dont know if it is wise to spend so much minerals in turrets, but it may be the only way to keep units on the front line and not make thors. However, too few or too spread away turrets will just get picked off by mutas.
The sure thing is that making just a few turrets can only buy you time to get your shit sorted out (push to death, get vickings or thors, I dont know your game plan).
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On April 04 2011 18:59 NDsOdapOp wrote:
the way i see it is even if you are going marine tank army comp you should always include 2-3 Thor's at the back of your army for support. as a Zerg what i find the hardest to deal with and to be most efficient for the Terran is if they patrol the map with their marine tank army and push on the Zerg's expansions at leave one Thor at each of their bases, then when the Terran feels they are in a good position they pull the Thor's from the expansion and push with their entire army. this way the Zerg can't afford to harass with Muta's while the Terran is pushing at his from door, and you cannot Muta harass if a Thor is there defending.
You have turrets to support the thor right? else its just a free thor kill + scvs for a magic box of mutas.
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I really think, that once you hit the lategame as terran, you should be either extremly aggressive with your Marines, or you should switch to more thors, as massed, they are just way better AA than marines.
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I play zerg, but honestly I think you get the marine/tank composition purpose wrong. imho marines are one of best units in the game in terms of price for power. What you said that tanks are a must vs roaches is imho wrong, since 2 marines with stim already get more price effective than one roach and this effect gets bigger as the marine ball gets bigger meaning roaches stop to 'counter' roaches pretty quickly and you have to apply banelings. Banelings as you know are armored low hp units that tend to clump up. that's where tanks come to play since they have long range and splash and bonus against armor and can snipe them really well, with a bit of micro. On top of that tanks are also good against anything on ground zerg has. And then zerg is forced to bring something that doesn't get killed so easily with tanks, so a flyer - mutalisk and snipe your tanks before you get too many of those as well.
While keeping his opponents tanks amount low zerg is trying to get higher number of mutas so he can effectively harass, since with higher number (20-30) of mutas you can pretty quickly snipe turrets and buildings without losing much. That's where thor comes to play - one mismicro can easily lead to loss of a LOT of mutas.
anyway, concerning turrets, I think few turrets per base (2-3) can help against early harass. Later you need something better because with high muta count those turrets just won't help much at all.
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hellion and raven is good combo, drones can setup a tempoary hard point/zone the map into the marine ball
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On April 04 2011 19:13 Big J wrote:
I really think, that once you hit the lategame as terran, you should be either extremly aggressive with your Marines, or you should switch to more thors, as massed, they are just way better AA than marines.
Yes, but they are way slower, suck vs lings and can't kite/spread vs banelings.
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I think that turrets + turret upgrades are *essential* in any TvZ where mutas are involved.
I have started getting faster e-bay since if your turrets are up late and mutas get in your base, you're basically dead (or at least you have to have some extremely good marine micro (assuming your on 2 base) and you will lose SCVs/mining time no matter how good your micro is.
I've found that upgrading turret range + armor is extremely effective against mutas, and most zergs are not used to microing around that extra +1 range on those turrets, so they take a lot of extra hits.
Once you hit 3 bases, you can't just have your army defending one and turrets stacked at the other, you need a single thor at each base where your army is not (so if you're pushing, 3 thors at home) + around 10-15 turrets per base. I place the turrets very close together in a line perpendicular to the line of attack from the mutas (e.g. close air spawns on LT/Shattered Temple place them parallel to the air edge of your base. Turrets with range deal a crap ton of damage to mutas, and if you're like me and don't stop SCV production and instead use them in your army, they can be quite and unkillable defense mechanism. 10 SCVs +5 turrets with range and armor can kill off A LOT of mutas before they die, and if a thor is there, they're forced to micro their mutas, and this can distract them from spreading banelings against the tanks, and sometimes even force them to just turn around and give up
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On April 04 2011 19:20 TibblesEvilCat wrote:
hellion and raven is good combo, drones can setup a tempoary hard point/zone the map into the marine ball
What do you mean? PDD help against muta for a while, but won't last against 20+ mutas? Do you mean as an addition to marine&tank?
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EPT
