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On April 03 2010 02:49 agorist wrote:
I think the only real solution is to expect to lose a few probes -- get a zealot out that can keep pressure on the reaper while you wait for your stalker. You'll make up for the lost probes with chronoboost (as you're already way ahead of terran's worker count).
As you said, fast forge is fail and so is super fast stalker rush (to defend). That doesn't leave many options. You could try blocking some of the common reaper running routes with pylons too -- behind your mins, etc.
The problem is sir, that you won't be ahead of T's worker count. Terran can do a completely normal build aside from the fact that he may have proxy rax'd, not cutting workers at all, and managing to take out 4 or five of your probes by the time your first stalker is out. Then, by the time you get enough to push him, he'll straight up have a bigger ball than you and roll you over, or he could just keep going reaper for a while and you'll have no probes whatsoever.
I saw even orb play T and go mass reaper. It's so fast and so dangerous that P can't even leave his base, cause a dozen reapers will do so much damage. Forget probe losses, you'll lose your nexus and a gateway or two before your stalkers get back in time.
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I think you really just have to absorb the losses and outmacro them. Realize that they'll be a good 3 or so peons behind you since that reaper probably caused them to cut SCV's for a bit.
Absorb the loss, don't let it dictate what you do next. That's the real strength in early reaper harrass- it causes a lot of toss to go stalker-heavy (marauder pwnage) or zealot heavy (hellion pwnage) and THAT is what loses the game in reality.
don't overreact, sacrifice the drone or two, follow up wisely.
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yea reapers are insane against buildings and workers, they are completly worthless against anything else when you factor in their cost and build/train time.
Like what is the point if an harassing unit? to harass maybe ... if terran wants the reaper there before stalkers he needs the ultrafast rush to reapers, which will hurt his economy severerly, delaying workers from being built when supplydepot comes after both baracks and refinary, and taking 3 of the few scvs you have left to mine gas.
the protoss should expect to lose a few probes to this, and if he doesnt loose a lot of them he will many times come out ahead economywise.
P can also chronoboost probes so he replenish his workers faster.
I'd actually be happy if they reworked the reaper somehow, I barely get to use them much now as they are not very good aside from this type of rushing, they cost 50 gas!which is murder at tier1 for a unit that doesnt do squat against fighting units.
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Austin10831 Posts
You've got to think about the fast reaper the same way you would think about a very early pool build in brood war. The fact is it's going to get in to your base before you have anything to easily deflect it. The trick is to minimize probe losses. If he gets one or two and then you kill or deflect the reaper, you're fine. If you're losing 5-6 probes every time, you're doing something wrong.
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isn't the biggest issue here that the terran are able to sustain a decent econ off this rush?
the problem with the orbital command/mule mechanic is that while the other races are forced to choose early units vs early econ a fast rax build allows for both quick harass AND quick mules.
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On April 06 2010 01:22 BroOd wrote:
You've got to think about the fast reaper the same way you would think about a very early pool build in brood war. The fact is it's going to get in to your base before you have anything to easily deflect it. The trick is to minimize probe losses. If he gets one or two and then you kill or deflect the reaper, you're fine. If you're losing 5-6 probes every time, you're doing something wrong.
My thought exactly. Cycle workers to draw his reaper into the other mad workers, and just try to stall for the first stalker, which entirely shuts it down. I'm torn on the early zealot.
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What if you go forge first and if they 14cc you just cannon rush? :D
But seriously, I think the best you can do is a fast zealot and use pylons to limit reaper movement...
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On April 05 2010 23:00 Bane_ wrote:When I saw this replay I thought of this thread straight away since it's the best example of the reaper rush that I've seen so far. I know from the tourneys they've been having over there that Furion is a very good Protoss player and he takes all the right steps of chrono'ing a zealot, pulling probes to help stop the bunker being built and then getting stalkers to properly deal with the reapers. Anyway here's the link, just click on the underlined .sc2replay bit to download: http://playxp.com/sc2/replays/view.php?article_id=1933012
Furion vs Flash is the fastest reaper I've ever seen. It's an 8 rax, 8 refinery, 8 orbital command build. Reaper pops out at 3:45!
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On April 05 2010 23:00 Bane_ wrote:When I saw this replay I thought of this thread straight away since it's the best example of the reaper rush that I've seen so far. I know from the tourneys they've been having over there that Furion is a very good Protoss player and he takes all the right steps of chrono'ing a zealot, pulling probes to help stop the bunker being built and then getting stalkers to properly deal with the reapers. Anyway here's the link, just click on the underlined .sc2replay bit to download: http://playxp.com/sc2/replays/view.php?article_id=1933012
I would assume that is not the real FlaSh, but who is Furion playing against? (i.e. a nick from a previous game, like SC1, War3, etc) - it's a very good reaper rush
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Starting to see this in north american server more and more. Terran are bored of opening fast marauder and realised they can get an EVEN BETTER head-start with a fast reaper, plus it's that much more humiliating.
Lol@people suggesting "zealot pressure."
1. The reaper shows up
2. The reaper begins to orbit your nexus and mineral line
3. SCV builds a bunker just out of sight (or in-sight to distract a stalker that pops)
4. Another reaper shows up or a marauder shows up
That's the way it goes with a fast zealot to stalker. No way around it, you will at-best loose 2-3 probes and have to kill a bunker with a reaper in it (leaves you zealot and stalker with low hp). More likely you will have lost a few probes, your zealot, and any buildings in range of the bunker that goes up.
Pretty nasty stuff. That replay is a good example.
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Reapers are in the wrong position in the tech tree. They come out very early, jump past chokes and render melee units useless with speed + range. Such a unit simply should not be buildable so early in the game. They are already ridiculously weak - I have not seen any use of reapers whatsoever beyond the 4-minute cheese. However, because of the above advantages they can still feel overpowering.
IMO, Reapers would be much better with something like this:
- Requires engineering bay
- Nitro Packs must be researched at techlab BEFORE you can build any.
- 55 HP
- Can use stimpack
This would remove the current cheese but make them FAR stronger in the midgame due to stim.
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On April 06 2010 01:22 BroOd wrote:
You've got to think about the fast reaper the same way you would think about a very early pool build in brood war. The fact is it's going to get in to your base before you have anything to easily deflect it. The trick is to minimize probe losses. If he gets one or two and then you kill or deflect the reaper, you're fine. If you're losing 5-6 probes every time, you're doing something wrong.
plz explain how to defend a reaper with nothing but probes? orb just showed that fast zlot does absolutely NOTHING. reaper kills it in like 8 seconds then starts ravaging probe line. its the same as vulture vs drones, its not possible to win if they have any semblence of micro.
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Although not representative at all, I've actually managed to stop this twice when i scouted with my pylon probe and when i found them on first try. I just mess with their barracks and i don't let them build a psy lab either with pylon/cancel or just with the probe. If they chase the probe with scv they screw themselves up even more. While I was doing this one of the terrans wrote "I'm gonna nuke you for this". Lol. He died.
But yeah, I, too, especially on Metalopolis, feel this is pretty overpowered for a rush that's not 6 pool and that actually leaves decent options for midgame. I mean it's an all-in as far as the toss is concerned but without being an all in for the T. So that sucks.
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You could reduce the reapers speed before the upgrade, to let the zealot make the reaper run around more, and slightly reduce how early they arrive.
It'd be nice if reapers had enough hitpoints that you see a single one made after the 3 minute mark - that might be a nice way to balance the nerf.
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the main thing that makes this imbalanced is not the reaper, its mules
imagine if chrono boost AND comsat stations were removed from the game and then see this strategy... ok find remove chrono boost and mules but keep comsat scan, i dont care, im looking mostly at economy balance here
when the terran cuts probes and doesnt build a depot, he still gets that fast comsat which gives about 6 SCV's once its finished. the mule is 30 per mine and a scv is 5. wow.
so the terran cuts about 3-4 scv's, but he gets a very fast mule
the protoss will always lose 4-5 probes even with a chrono boosted zealot and chrono boosted stalker
so in the end its a terran advantage of 2workers plus the toss spends 250 minerals and time replacing his probes.
if comst and chrono boost were removed, the reaper would still come as fast and the zealot would come out a bit earlier and stalker too but at least the terran wouldnt have his 6 scv's. from the mule. in that scenario the terran would cut 4 scv's and the toss loses 4 probes so its about even
i just personally feel like mule is the best macro mechanic. 4 comsats in the late game, 1 lifts and lands in a yellow mineral location and drops 9 mules. in a minute those 9 mules will give you about 2500 minerals off the yellow crystals which easily pays the 550 mineral cost of the comsat. if the comsat dies who cares you just got 1950 min or 49 marines ... damn
back to reapers. the fix here is to reduce the build time of cyber core by 30 seconds imo, and increase gateway robo build time by 20 seconds each. i also think zealots could use a speedboost on psi or something "just say omg the zealots with their honor for toss omg they get speedboosted in the presence of pylons omg omg" but mostly the improved buildtimes of cyber core would fix the problem
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I reckon, Reapers need engineering bay, but reapers had their build time nerfed (for those who do not remember) because of this very problem. If EB is required the build time should to be changed back to the original build time, making them viable in combat (fast producing infantry). They aren't OPed in combat so that would be a good solution. Plus that will be good transition for reapers in mid game.
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So I downloaded the replay to watch it before commenting, but Battle.net is down and I can't even watch replays right now. Seriously, this just isn't acceptable.
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Here's an idea, a little out of the box guess. If the problem is waiting for the stalker gets you behind, couldn't you chrono your 1st zealot and counter attack? If he's walled he will have to use scv's and resources to repair and probably will call back the reapers buying you time for 1st stalker. It may require some testing but this could put the terran way behind if he already cut to get the fast reapers. The zeolot will obviously get killed, but it may be enough to neutralize this rush and give you a big economic advantage early.
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You can block the tech lab but if he proxies the rax and you don't find it in time its still going to do a lot of damage.
On 2 player maps this seems like the most optimal build in TvP. It applies pressure on the toss and forces him to get an early stalker and use his chrono on the gateway. The thing is that this attack also will also make early rushes with maurds even more deadly due to econ damage you suffer. Even if terran is a bit behind on scvs early on they make it up with their macro mechanic.
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The terran loses as much if not more in economy as the protoss. The bunker varient can be stopped with probes and the first zealot killing the scv that constructs it. You will lose 3 probes at least to 10 rax and 5 at least to 8 rax but the terran 'loses' more scv's by not building them that early.
Perhaps orbital command is slightly too good as it's way better then chrono boost but the strat itself is not that imbalanced.
The reaper however is a ugly design, it's only role is early on as it's too fragile lategame to be of any use. If it had a niche use against some units in big battle's then it could at least be a interesting unit. For example the batrider in wc3, it's a harass unit but also servers in battle by suiciding on cheap flyers (not really effective on higher hp flyers), the reaper should have some role in big battles as well. Perhaps a 'suicide attack' like the baneling but instead of rolling in and doing area of effect damage it could make a suicide jump with the jetpack doing high damage against a single unit so it could take out siege tanks for example.
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EPT
