[D] TvP in general - Page 2

On February 16 2012 00:03 Norseman wrote:
Here's my two cents. For the record I'm a Terran player, but you'll never hear me say unit 'x' is over or under powered because that solves nothing. You have to play the game as it is and accept everything in it as the way it's going to be.

When I used to go all bio I had a huge problem late game. I'd have my marauder, marine, medivac balls, maybe a ghost or two sprinkled in, and I'd see some of the following 'deathballs':

- Chargelot, archon, HT
- Stalker, zealot, sentry, collosus.
- Stalker, zealot, HT
- Stalker, voidray, zealot

Now as you can see the compositions there vary widely. Why then, as a Terran player, would I just assume my same basic MMMG composition is best suited to fight them all?

I think that's what Terrans are missing right now. You can't mass 2 units, add in a sprinkling of support units (ghost, medivac, viking) and simply expect to counter everything Protoss can do. How would that make sense?

The closest I've seen to anyone acknowledging this idea is Warden and his 'Terran Deathball' idea.Here

I know it seems the 'standard' for pro players are to mostly ignore hellions, tanks, thors, banshee, ravens, battlecruisers and reapers, and some other useful things like seeker missles. But i think a lot of strength can be found in these seldom used options.

For example, the first Protoss composition: Chargelot, archon, HT: A battlecruiser or two worked in could provide some great support. Draw the fire of archons, float past the archons and wreck HTs.

Or hellions. HTs clump up when the move. Push in with your bio ball, pull back to draw in the chargelots and archons, and flank with the hellions to hit the much slower and clumped up HTs with an AOE effect. Target down the archons with your bio ball and have the hellions join in to mop up the chargelots when all the HTs and Archons are gone.

Or a well placed seeker missle from a raven to accomplish the same thing.

Why not a line of 3-5 tanks behind your bio ball? For the second composition for example: stab out, attack the stalkers, pull back when they chase, and let a tank barraige or two soften them up. Draw the collosus into tank too to help tank them down quicker. 3-5 tanks won't break the bank and you can definitely get them out faster than you can max out a bio ball. Why are these units forgotten?


So my overall conclusion is that Terran isn't horribly inbalanced one way or another against Protoss at all. Terran is just limiting it's own potential by trying to use a fraction of their available units while Protoss has found numerous compositions to work with.

With a little more creativity from my Terran brethren I think we can come up with strategies that don't rely on simply massing two units and trying our best to dodge storms and collosus infernos.

...but that's just my opinion.

On February 16 2012 00:41 zezamer wrote:
Bio is the way to go in late game.

Army control and positioning wins/loses you lategame tvp matches.

Game is balanced.

On February 16 2012 01:00 Joedaddy wrote:
For me, I have a really hard time balancing my unit composition after we've traded armies in the mid-late game. Specifically ghosts, vikings and marines. If I crush the collossus count I end up stuck with "dead supply" in vikings while he goes templar/archon/chargelot. Maybe I over make vikings?

The other big thing is the basic unit control and engaging. Getting those good emp's off on HT and sentries, attacking collossus with vikings, and trying to micro bio away from as much collossus splash dmg as possible all at the same time doesn't ever go well for me. Maybe I'm doing it wrong?

Edit: I've been having some success going up to 3 and 4 starports after max (assuming i've made it past 3 bases also) and reinforcing with a more banshee heavy air force.

On February 16 2012 00:28 Sabin010 wrote:
The second a Protoss player scouts Mech, they're going to alter their composition to include immortal, phoenix, charge, and HT/archon. The lack of mobility of mech allows the protoss player to build warp prism for storm drops, and you basically get a reversal of roles, this time protoss can go and take map control to delay the slow push from the tanks and get up on a 3rd/4th faster than terran.

Using blink to engage sieged tanks is a disaster. That's not the way to engage tanks. The proper strategy for engaging tanks is to research charge first, and go in with zealot immortal and guardian shield, use pheonix to lift tanks or voidrays to focus them, and then the stalkers are used to target fire marines while the tanks are hitting zealots. The engagement is going to be on Protoss' terms unless the terran was able to push the protoss all the way to his natural.
If there are no marines and its a pure mech style, the immortals are just going to be too good if protoss chronoboosts 8 immortals and pushes with guardian shield its going to be tough to hold even with 3 bunkers.

On February 16 2012 01:15 Norseman wrote:


As someone who's been working on mech builds heavily lately I'd love to address some of your points.

The second a Protoss player scouts Mech, they're going to alter their composition to include immortal, pheonix, charge, and HT/archon.

Correct. And the second a Protoss scouts a bio ball they're going to get HTs, collosus, archons, etc. There are units that do good against other units regardless of what they are. Why is this a negative for mech and not bio?


This one is my FAVORITE: The lack of mobility of mech...this time protoss can go and take map control to delay the slow push from the tanks and get up on a 3rd/4th faster than terran.

I challenge that it's easier to have map control with mech than bio. Hellions are faster than marines and marauders by far and have more potential to do eco damage.

Early game example:
Let’s say I can have 2 medivacs full of units (8 marines, 4 marauders, 2 medivacs – 1,000 minerals, 300 gas, 20 supply). You have the tower on Shattered Temple let’s say and it’s cross positions. The Protoss army is pushing towards the tower. You can load one or both medivacs and do drop, but if the Protoss army keeps pushing you have nothing to defend at home. Also, while you might snipe a building or two, you’re not going to do much eco damage.

Same resources with a mech build: 3 hellions, 2 siege tanks, siege mode, 4 marines, one bunker (1,000 minerals, 350 gas, 16 supply).

My hellions are at the tower, Protoss army pushes. My hellions can flank the army and speed into the expo/main and start killing probes. If the Protoss pulls back he won’t be able to get there in time before I kill a good amount of probes. If he pushes forward I have 2 siege tanks sieged on the high ground and marines in a bunker to keep the army back.

I would feel more comfortable with the second option.

And as for mobility: why are marines and marauders so mobile? They don’t move faster than hellions. They’re mobile because of medivacs…. The same units that can pick up mech units too. One thing I’ve been playing with in my mech games is a mid-game 3-thor drop into the Protoss main when engaging their army. Even if a Protoss has 10 warpgates when you do this there is not a good unit composition to handle this. If it was 24 marines or 16 marines and 4 marauders being dropped instead that would be a much easier drop to handle.

A thor drop of that size would almost definitely require a bulk of the army to pull back and assist. Regardless of how quick that happened the thors would make quick work of some key buildings. Then, while the Protoss army is pulling back to fight off this threat, I move my main army into position and siege up the natural or the third. I also send hellions in to take down workers.

This is all theory, of course. Nothing is as easy as it sounds in a post. But my point remains: the events I’m outlining aren’t that crazy. Mid to late game you can easily have 3 thors that you could split off your army and still have a VERY strong main army. Hellions speed can be abused. There are ways to make this work.

On February 16 2012 01:23 NrGmonk wrote:
We've already seen successful and viable late-game terran innovations from some players. They include adding mass nukes, ghost heavy/marine light compositions, and mass bc transitions. Some combination of the 3 of these is the future of late game TvP imo.

On February 16 2012 01:32 xsevR wrote:
I think the most obvious solution would be a gas heavy unit, like the raven. I find it extremely odd that every tvp I watch has the Terran player floating 2k+ gas by the latter stages of the game. Yeah, I get it, you don't have anything to spend your gas on... so why mine it? Blows my mind that even pro level terran players haven't adjusted their builds for mass over-gas.

The solution seems tough though, because its already more than possible to stop a perfect protoss composition with MMMVG. It seems like any alternate composition would require more micro, not less...

On February 16 2012 01:49 xTrim wrote:


i wanna see the mass BC transition without it being a gimmick...
do u have the vods for that? it really interests me, because once i was playing mech vs toss (season 4 i played all mech) and i started using BCs after suiciding hellions for probe kills, chargelot kills, etc etc so my army was tank thor several ghosts and bc in 4 bases...

generaly nobody uses templars for storm vs mech, so not many feedbacks are available as well, and you do have ghosts so, bcs do well enough, and with yamato they snipe void rays