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So I've been playing a lot recently, and lord and behold, I find myself getting terran mirror matches a good... 60% of the time.
Now, as a previous zerg player now playing T... I just haaatttteeeee mirror matches. It revolves around 60% luck, 20% scouting, and 30% timing (there is a 10% overlap between timing and luck)
So every TvT match I grudgingly go forth and attempt to secure a win, which I must say, odds dont favor me. I won maybeeee about a quarter of all my TvT matches, possibly less.
Though all the matches I have played so far however, I have came to the following facts about TvT;
Marauders > Thors
Thors > Air
Air >Marauders
which leads to the following;
4 rax opening > Thor opening
Thor opening > banshee opening
Banshee opening > 4 rax opening
(Not always, but its a good green rule to follow)
I am wondering if anyone has had sucess with TvT? Been attempting to find a way to win without any reaper cheese but, well, I'm stumped. I've tried mass mech, fast banshee, mass marauders, hell one time I even used mass ghosts and tried to use its snipe ability... Yeh ill let you picture how well that went.
(also, if anyone could supply with reps that would be AWESOME!)
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Now, as a previous zerg player now playing T... I just haaatttteeeee mirror matches. It revolves around 60% luck, 20% scouting, and 30% timing (there is a 10% overlap between timing and luck)
I'm a P, so I can't answer this, but I don't feel like a mirror match up is anything close to 60% luck..I don't see why it would be any more luck based than other match ups(I know the issues with BW zvz, but its to early to tell if that sort of thing is going on in SC2). I tend to see it as, you both have the exact same units to work with so, yes scouting is very important, but if you both go very similar builds, whoever does it more effectively wins. I tend to do better in mirrors than in the other match ups...So maybe thats why I don't hate them.
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A heavy bio push (4 rax) early also kills both fast banshee and fast tank openings, as 1-2 tanks falls to a handful of marauders, and 1-2 banshees falls to a handful of marines. Generally you can even kill a few depots very quickly which supply blocks them and makes it even more difficult for them to recover, even if they fend off your first wave. After that, you know to make more marines or more marauders.
I also recently lost a TvT where I went tank/viking and lost to mass MMM, this was mid/late game. Person had like 2 thors in there which mostly just soaked a few tank shots while the MMM got in range. I had never actually lost to that before (I had like 7 or 8 tanks, too), but it was enlightening. I also enjoyed it because of how soundly it beat me; made me want to go back to trying MMM TvT and keep the games out of the annoying tank/viking siege inching crapfest 
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TvT is what's making me not ladder as much as I would want. I could just leave every TvT but then I'd lose 50% of my matches + the ones I lose vs other races.
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I am a lower level player, but this thread might be of use to you:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=122708
The build is overall very solid I think and I use it when I mirror Terrans as well.
I actually switched from Zerg to Terran BECAUSE I find TvT way more enjoyable than ZvZ. I would rather play against a mirror race with lots of units and combination options.
I think finding a mirror you enjoy is a big part of settling on a race.
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I have been doing small reaper harass into a fast banshee with cloaking. Cloaking comes out while the second banshee is building. I have been winning TvT's like crazy (top ten Gold, with a glitch that causes me to never gain bonus pool), seriously I am rarely, rarely losing TvT's with this fast banshee strat. Honestly you don't even need to reaper harass, I just like to add it in there for a little flair, get some map control and scouting and maybe even some SCV kills. But I usually only make 2-3 early game and thats all for the reapers, need the gas too much. Sometimes I'm lazy and don't even bother, just go right for starports.
I get maurader slow, put one or two in my mineral line for potential reapers, then wall in with a bunker and put another two in there. Sometimes in this build I get enough extra minerals to get my second barracks before my first starport for marines, but usually I don't, I'm still tweaking it (I'm thinking if I do that it is a weakness, but the extra marines are nice to have for your opponent's inevitable all in push once you star blowing up all their SCV's and they use their only sweep just to have another banshee fly in right after..
If they go siege tanks, which generally they will in a TvT, you get your banshee there around 6:30 or 7:00 and send it straight for the scv's, the timing is usually very very nice. A good, well timed M&M push before you get banshees will kill you, but not too many people are doing that these days. A lot of people are going siege tank ---> thor right now in my experience. Which is a great build, but I usually beat it with banshees.
And if they do fend it off and the game goes on longer, they start going heavy anti air, and then you transition to marauders and mess their whole day up.
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The thing about mirror is that you can't approach it like the other matchups and think too much in builds since you can potentially have the same units.
I had a lot of trouble with TvT early on too but now I kinda feel like it is my best matchup.
I think the best advice when learning to become better at mirrors is just to play a fuckton of games, because the one thing I've learned about TvT is that it is all about on the fly transitions and intense scouting. TvT is an insanely fast matchup where you just need to be one step ahead of your opponent and you need to be the one forcing the builds. If you go for one build then your opponent is going to counter that build so you should be transitioning into a counter for his counter build at the same time, always being one step ahead.
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Thors don't beat all terran air, BCs slaughter them, even though it seems like they wouldn't. I think this is true even if you don't use/have yamato yet.
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TvT is not as simple as that, try going 1-2 rax marauder with vikings and you will see how interesting the match-up is.
I was the exact same way as you until i saw in a thread how it was reasoned out that marauder is the safest choice between marauder/marine/reaper, and viking was the safest choice between viking/banshee/viking+raven.
Losses I get now are very obvious what I did wrong for TvT, whereas before I would just be thinking, "oh, I didn't know it was coming, didn't know what to do"
This is coming from pretty high level plat ~1700 - 1900
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try going fast banshee cloak into expand marauder.
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On May 03 2010 11:30 HCastorp wrote:
Thors don't beat all terran air, BCs slaughter them, even though it seems like they wouldn't. I think this is true even if you don't use/have yamato yet.
Yah BCs slaughter Thors, one BC with like 6 SCVs repairing can like kill like 6+ THors.
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On May 03 2010 10:57 xav wrote:
A heavy bio push (4 rax) early also kills both fast banshee and fast tank openings, as 1-2 tanks falls to a handful of marauders, and 1-2 banshees falls to a handful of marines. Generally you can even kill a few depots very quickly which supply blocks them and makes it even more difficult for them to recover, even if they fend off your first wave. After that, you know to make more marines or more marauders.
What if the tanks are positioned behind the wall where maurauders can't get to them and Terran also has a small group of maurauders behind wall?
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On May 03 2010 12:58 jamvng wrote:Show nested quote +On May 03 2010 10:57 xav wrote:
A heavy bio push (4 rax) early also kills both fast banshee and fast tank openings, as 1-2 tanks falls to a handful of marauders, and 1-2 banshees falls to a handful of marines. Generally you can even kill a few depots very quickly which supply blocks them and makes it even more difficult for them to recover, even if they fend off your first wave. After that, you know to make more marines or more marauders. What if the tanks are positioned behind the wall where maurauders can't get to them and Terran also has a small group of maurauders behind wall?
I thought that would work, but when I tried it, the person just killed the surrounding structures and then massed enough to kill my few tanks I was able to get up before being supply blocked/etc.
When someone put tanks on their ramp I just stuffed it with marauders/marines and killed the depots and then the tanks. There window where the terran player going tanks and only has 1-3 they're extremely vulnerable.
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Here is a TvT mirror where I basically countered his units perfectly.
1. He goes for early reaper harass. I have a maurader out to defend my mineral line.
2. He goes for MnM and takes my expo. I have tanks and marines to defend my base.
3. He goes for banshees with cloak. I mass vikings + marines.
On top of this, I expanded early and denied his expansions, which allowed me to outmacro him later in the game. This guy is a perfect example of how you should NOT play terran mirror.
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I am a big fan of fast expanding as well in TvT simply because you have the same units, the same costs, the same build timers that even just a slight economic advantage will grow into a massive supply advantage very quickly. Also regardless of how the unit compositions are tossed around one thing remains a steady factor in TvT. You MUST have air superiority or you are dead and this almost always comes down to a game of who can build the most vikings because even if you think there are many options for shutting down your opponents air they are all really immobile beyond the viking and a good player will take advantage of this. Point defense drones nullify both turrets and thors and the player with a viking force will snipe your ravens faster than you can snipe his. Furthermore while marines are strong and relatively fast, banshee's are faster and he can force you to keep wasting scans by dancing away.
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Upgrading Thors will 1 shot a stim'd maruder; Ravens Point Defense Drone will prevent any Maruder damage being done for a few seconds. After the point defense drone the thors should have killed enough Maruders where they don't instantly die.
The issue with going a Mech build is mobility(thor slow, sieges can't move in siege), you cannot just push for their base you have to creep slowly and get position; stopping them from just running guys past your army. I have found sensor towers to be a huge help with a mech build; as it will make up for your lack of being mobile. Just be sure to throw up 2 and not just one on your army as it will give your position away.
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any ideas how to counter mass air (viking+banshee, or mass vikings)?
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On May 04 2010 00:19 PredY wrote:
any ideas how to counter mass air (viking+banshee, or mass vikings)?
1) Mass thor
2) ???
3) lololol
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On May 04 2010 00:20 pyr0ma5ta wrote:Show nested quote +On May 04 2010 00:19 PredY wrote:
any ideas how to counter mass air (viking+banshee, or mass vikings)? 1) Mass thor 2) ??? 3) lololol
oh yeah that really helped :o
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For me I have found early reaper harass -> 2x rax -> tanks early push with transition to vikings if banshees and more maurders if thors. Seems to cover most of what people do now and punishes people for fast teching. One problem is 3-4x rax pushes, but that mostly just comes down to scouting and usually the early reaper harass will set them back far enough to get your tanks out and pressure them.
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Mass Thors doesn't really work very well. Because Marauder wall + siege tank = gg your thors in cost.
Most TvT's end up with tanks/marines and vikings. I usually open with a starport reactor to make vikings and then start producing tanks with marines as my mineral dump.
The marines are your shields so your tanks don't die as fast. Its questionable to get marauders for TvT because their +armor dmg but it takes 6 hits from a marauder to kill a upgraded marine wheras it takes 7 to kill a marauder (you could have two marines as shields).
Anyway you just dig in and wait til air confrontation. Only fight if the battle is in your favor (ie you have better upgrades and same amount of units or fighting near your starport where you can pump out extra vikings in the fight. Always remember to focus fire as well too). Usually if you control the skies you win. If your opponent goes MM you can deny him medivacs with vikings and force him to make vikings of his own. Tanks destroy MM anyway.
- If he neglects to make any air; you start making banshees to kill his tanks. This means you must always control the skies. You cannot ever let your opponent have a bigger viking army because it will be harder for you to expand safely.
After all that its pretty much a slow campaign to his base with tanks moving up slowly.
Occasionally I start with a Thor drop because its able to 1 shot SCV's.
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On May 04 2010 00:41 whaTITdoz wrote:
For me I have found early reaper harass -> 2x rax -> tanks early push with transition to vikings if banshees and more maurders if thors. Seems to cover most of what people do now and punishes people for fast teching. One problem is 3-4x rax pushes, but that mostly just comes down to scouting and usually the early reaper harass will set them back far enough to get your tanks out and pressure them.
ive been doingsomething similar to this, pushing out with a blob of MM and two tanks, if they went for banshees i got marine heavy, generally its 2rax depending on scouting.
ive done especially well with this vs banshee builds, ill push out with two scans, or wait for raven depending on their harass, and if i killed the banshees/saw cloak tech
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Typically it's best to play with a MMM + mech build, mech being a combination of Thors and siege tanks. Each unit counters a specific element of the Terran arsenal:
Thor > banshee, tank, medivac
Tank > marine, RBG
RBG > Thor, RBG
Marine > Thor, RBG
Generally, you want to scale down on marine production once they commit to tanks. A small task force of banshees can be effective at popping tanks right before an assault.
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I used to hate tvt but I am starting to have some success with it. I am currently 19-2 or something in plat, and beat a couple people in the triple strike cup in tvt, so I think my tvt is decent. Here is my build with notable mentions
12 rax
12 scout for tech lab
--->if tech lab, place marines at likely ledges, watch for reapers
--->if 2 rax, bunker at your ramp sweet spot
--->if he is going marauders you will not be able to move out fast and FE with tanks
13 gas
15 OC
always constant marine production
factory when you have the gas
make another gas when you have enough mins
1 or 2 tanks,use 2nd or 3rd scan to see if they have a port with tech lab
--->if port has a tech lab drop a reactor on your rax, and swap it with your port when its done
--->if they have port, make your port after 1 tank is qued,
--->if no port, make your port after 2nd or 3rd tank.
Start to contain and push your opponents natural with tanks and vikings with a marine buffer for marauders
Expand after contain
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if your micro is good you should be going banshee/vikings. Thors are beatable by banshees if you spread them up and pull the one being targeted. Just don't let them get critical mass. Force them to turret and out expo them and tech switch to bc.
I actually like mirror matches and do very well in them and i typically open thor most games because my net has been very bad lately and the delay makes banshees a lot more difficult to use.
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I'm hoping to make a separate thread for it eventually, but I've been having a lot of success using a unit comp of Marines, Tanks, and Vikings. The three units compliment each other well (tanks being the core of the army, vikings providing vision and air support, and marines just being a cheap unit to get out which can hit both ground and air). It's been able to counter just about every unit composition thrown at it.
As far as defending reaper harass goes, making a marauder or two early (or just putting a bunker by your workers) works very well.
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Tank // viking
If they go 4 rax, then you land your vikings. and put your tanks BACK...FAR BACK. I have a pretty good record for tvt
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I'm having a lot of success with a lot of unit combination. Over committing to a unit combination can make or break you. Too many vikings spells trouble when thors and marauders are at your door. So far I'm having the most success with tank/viking.
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TvT is very random and unfun at the moment. ;( I loved it in BW, but it's a dice roll in SCII.
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On May 04 2010 02:41 starcraft911 wrote:
if your micro is good you should be going banshee/vikings. Thors are beatable by banshees if you spread them up and pull the one being targeted. Just don't let them get critical mass. Force them to turret and out expo them and tech switch to bc.
No.
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I've found that the person who goes thors instead of tanks tend to lose. I have a lot of success with marauder, tank, viking vs thor marauder tank forces. If he doesn't go banshee I'll just use my vikings to harass.
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On May 04 2010 03:00 HalfAmazing wrote:
TvT is very random and unfun at the moment. ;( I loved it in BW, but it's a dice roll in SCII.
How is it a dice roll?
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On May 04 2010 03:26 jamvng wrote:Show nested quote +On May 04 2010 03:00 HalfAmazing wrote:
TvT is very random and unfun at the moment. ;( I loved it in BW, but it's a dice roll in SCII. How is it a dice roll?
Compared to BW, sc2 TvT has a MUCH harder counter system. Also, T in sc2 has much worse scouting due to how expensive each scan is.
Sc1 TvT was mostly about positioning. Sc2 TvT is all about unit composition.
Combine harder counters with worse scouting and the result is: The matchup is MUCH more luck reliant.
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I haven't seen anyone mention Hellions in this thread at all. They're pretty much my favorite Terran unit right now...I've been opening against other races by having my first rax build a reactor and lift off and then building a factory in its place. Terrans generally wall off, though, so I like to harass with Reapers early and then use a group of Hellions to scout and harass any expos. I've also done a few Hellion drops early to get them around the wall. They're so fast and they do splash damage, and ridiculous damage to light units, so massed MM (especially if you can hit them on the move when their player isn't watching) will be a barbecue. They don't cost any gas, so if you can take a high-yield and minerals wind up becoming very abundant, you can just set a factory with a reactor to start cranking them out constantly.
If I'm pushing against a choke I'll hotkey two groups of siege tanks and leapfrog them, and keep a big group of Hellions on another hotkey to exploit any opportunity to drive through and hit the enemy mineral line, or move up fast if their splash will help (shuts down speedlings as a counter to siege tanks, works well if a Protoss tries to counter your siege tanks with massed immortals - ten Hellions will just about knock down an Immortal's shield in one attack, and if you do it right you'll hit a few of them with the splash and the tanks will clean them up).
Ravens are also important to build if your opponent might be Banshee-harassing...I also like to randomly throw down missile turrets near my mineral line if I've got some SCVs with nothing better to build. I'd rather not waste MULE energy on scanning my own base. I find that if I've been building Hellions I'll have plenty of gas for Ravens in decent numbers, and I really want to try using seeker missiles against viking/banshee after I saw a replay where someone used them to great effect against massed Brood Lords (no one's been kind enough to try that against me in numbers I couldn't handle with marines alone lately).
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On May 04 2010 03:51 link0 wrote:
Compared to BW, sc2 TvT has a MUCH harder counter system. Also, T in sc2 has much worse scouting due to how expensive each scan is.
Sc1 TvT was mostly about positioning. Sc2 TvT is all about unit composition.
Combine harder counters with worse scouting and the result is: The matchup is MUCH more luck reliant.
I strongly disagree here. If you use a balanced unit composition where the units actually compliment each other well and aren't easily hard countered (as mentioned above, I have a lot of success with marines, tanks, and vikings), it becomes much less luck based. It's a given in any matchup that using a build that has a hard counter to it will be more likely to fail if your opponent happens to pick the build which is that hard counter.
From my experience (high level in gold league), tanks are still very crucial to TvT and having good positioning of your units will give you a huge advantage. You still want SCVs building missile turrets along your tank lines. The difference is that armies are much more mobile now (vikings in particular completely change the scope of TvT).
As far as scouting goes, sensor towers are an excellent method of at least keeping track of where your opponent is. And while scans are expensive, try to figure out a good timing for using it. I find that using my third 50 energy on a scan will usually give me a good idea of what my opponent is doing, which is certainly well worth it.
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I find that I've been playing a lot of TvP's and TvT's lately too. It's like zerg's don't exist anymore.
Anyway, the way I see it, mirror matches are all about building economic separation between you and your opponent. Obviously you can do this by either pressuring early, or fast expanding. What i've been doing a lot lately is is building 1 or 2 reapers early, to reduce their SCV count. Then, I tech straight to Banshees, Ebay/ turrets if i see banshees/vikings, then I back tech to M&M&M, supported by thors or tanks and Ravens, obviously upgrades, and then just try to deny their 3rd while taking mine.
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While Viking/Tank/Marine is fairly balanced unit composition, it will usually fail if your opponent goes either mass air or mass ground.
One example of the huge dice game: You scan a starport with tech lab. It can either be banshees with cloak, banshees without cloak, or a Raven. Now what do you do? If you don't have turrets or a Raven, you are screwed if he goes banshees with cloak. If you do make turrets, you are way behind if he only made a raven or doesn't get cloak on his banshees. In high level TvT, being just a few hundred minerals behind at such an early stage in the game is huge.
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I find TvT to be really frustrating at the moment. I do pretty well in it but it always seems like a match of patients and waiting for someone to make the first mistake.
Generally I like to start by going for tanks with a few marines and marauders to support. I try to push in early and bunker up and prevent them from expoing. After my bunker I toss down a barracks and float it to give me sight to high ground start tank pushing. I push out some vikings to deal with any banshees and toss down some turrets for detection and added AA. After I switch into banshees to pick off any tanks they try to set up on high ground. Then just keep expanding and pushing in slowly.
This build is highly susceptible to a 4 rax MMM push if they come in before you have tanks out. If they are slow and you have 1-2 tanks out you should be able to push it back and get set up for your tank push.
Also while you are pushing you have to try to keep enough pressure to make sure he is not comfortable sneaking out a drop or air units to harass you with.
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Sounds like link0 explained my dice roll comment pretty well. Based on information gleaned from scouting there are a number of different options to consider, and if you pick incorrectly you're at a massive disadvantage. In almost every TvT I've played there's the inevitable switch to mass marauders and if you switch too late, you'll get overrun by a more efficient mineral to gas ratio army.
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On May 04 2010 04:44 link0 wrote:
While Viking/Tank/Marine is fairly balanced unit composition, it will usually fail if your opponent goes either mass air or mass ground.
Mass ground is definitely what gives this build the most trouble, but I can usually handle it if I play defensively, or if I can put early pressure on them before they have too many units. It only takes a couple of early tanks with a single viking to cause a lot of damage to the opponent's wall, and the ground units take a lot of splash damage when they funnel down the ramp to defend.
As far as mass air goes, I actually have a really easy time against it. If my opponent masses vikings, while he will generally outnumber my own vikings, my marines are what win the fight. If he lands his vikings to attack the marines, they just get torn apart by tanks. In the case of banshees, the vikings are a hard counter to them.
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I hear a lot of people talking about mass xyz and not a lot of talking about building a balanced army and continually scouting and reacting to that scouting... Generally I play every match with some mix of rines/marauders/tanks/medivacs/vikings/banshees. The %s change based on what you scout...! If they have heavy ground and their tanks are giving you trouble, mix in some banshees, if they have banshees that are troubling your tanks, mix in some vikings or marines ect. Try not to be too predictable. Generally all in strats are going to be epic or epic fail. If you are happy throwing away a potential win because your betting he wont scout your army then go for it but if you can beat them in a legit match why not take a sure thing?
Something i notice in TVT games is that the 1st expansion comes a little later than normal. I typically play fairly defensively and wait until they make a move that i counter before i expand. I also always keep like 1 marine behind their nat minerals so i can make sure that they aren't expanding w/o my knowledge.
Most matches i will throw out a 10 rax 10 gas 11 sup reaper harass but really its just to mess with them and pull their SCVs off of their minerals. I never make more than 2 reapers and after that its factory with 2nd rax w/reactor for marauders/rines/tanks depending on what i see. You should be scanning every other 50 energy from your OC to make sure you dont get cheesed. Also, send a few rines around the map to make sure he isnt proxying some cheese or taking a random expo before his natural or something like that.
Generally in TVT you dont want to wall your entrance as it leaves you open to reaper harass and with medivacs being so plentiful its not like they cant just pop in wherever they want anyways so dont plan on your main entrance being your source of defense. other than that, just play well :D
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On May 03 2010 11:30 HCastorp wrote:
Thors don't beat all terran air, BCs slaughter them, even though it seems like they wouldn't. I think this is true even if you don't use/have yamato yet.
Going BCs is suicide in TvT unless its unscouted. Reactor-port pumping vikings just dominates BCs.
This matchup I generally have no clue what I'm doing. Tank-viking seems strong if you see they aren't going any sort of heavy bio push. If they go heavy bio you need to make a ton of bio to complement and shield your tanks and defend well though.
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On May 04 2010 04:44 link0 wrote:
While Viking/Tank/Marine is fairly balanced unit composition, it will usually fail if your opponent goes either mass air or mass ground.
One example of the huge dice game: You scan a starport with tech lab. It can either be banshees with cloak, banshees without cloak, or a Raven. Now what do you do? If you don't have turrets or a Raven, you are screwed if he goes banshees with cloak. If you do make turrets, you are way behind if he only made a raven or doesn't get cloak on his banshees. In high level TvT, being just a few hundred minerals behind at such an early stage in the game is huge.
Guess thats why they call it strategy? The mental or mindgame aspect is kind of important
No different than tech switching as Zerg or cancelling a warping building after your opponent scouts and leaves
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Heavy bio pushes I dont have that much of a problem with. I mean, tanks destroy bio. if you have 2 tanks you can hold off a non-medivac push. And medivacs get countered by vikings...and then the vikings canland and make a wall...right?
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On May 04 2010 07:14 Prisom wrote:
Generally in TVT you dont want to wall your entrance as it leaves you open to reaper harass and with medivacs being so plentiful its not like they cant just pop in wherever they want anyways so dont plan on your main entrance being your source of defense. other than that, just play well :D
Ha, I wish the wall-off wasn't so much of a given for Terran players, otherwise my preferred harass strategy of blowing straight by their main force with Hellions, burninating all of their workers before they can react, and riding back out just as fast would work better. Hellions are quite a bit tougher than Reapers and stand up well against the fire of a few token Marauders near the mineral line, but if you wall off, they just can't get in with the surprise they need, even if you don't have any defenders on the wall.
Medivac drops with Hellions work quite well, though...two Medivacs and eight Hellions can show up, do damage, and get back out very quickly. I play mostly random 2v2 and hitting the mineral lines of both opposing players early on, one after another, will put them so far behind that I can win even if my partner is terrible. Some players will try to expo immediately after getting hit with a good harass as kind of a Hail Mary to get back on even footing in macro...it's pretty amusing to trash three or four bases with the same bunch of Hellions.
It does really well against Zerg at least, seeing as a good Hellion rush can often take out a Queen as well.
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Raven/thor/tank is unstoppable unless you have raven/thor/tank
Raven's pt defense drone 100% negates banshees, vikings, and marauders. Once you get 6-7 ravens, its ridiculously strong. Terran has no anti-air other than marines that can go through pt defense drone so your raven cloud can just fly around with impunity.
Thors with upgrades decimates air. Even if you can micro the banshees, ravens will, again, completely negate the damage and Thors with upgrades cut through banshees like no other.
If you have extra energy left, auto turrets decimate tank fortifications. Each auto turret can take 3 seige mode hits, and costs 50 energy. It also does 8 dmg which is somewhat negligible. So for 50 energy, you are basically getting a zealot bomb a la BW. Except thanks to pt defense drone, the enemy can't do anything about it.
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On May 04 2010 08:11 Xenocide_Knight wrote:
Raven/thor/tank is unstoppable unless you have raven/thor/tank
Raven's pt defense drone 100% negates banshees, vikings, and marauders. Once you get 6-7 ravens, its ridiculously strong. Terran has no anti-air other than marines that can go through pt defense drone so your raven cloud can just fly around with impunity.
Xenocide_Knight, while this unit comp certainly sounds powerful, the problem I see with it is that it really requires a lot of investment into teching (not to mention all of the gas that it costs), and I feel as though there would be a huge window of opportunity before you have the 6-7 ravens where you'd be very vulnerable. Unless this is your late game strategy, how do you successfully defend yourself while you get to this powerful combination of units? Unless you can do a sufficient job getting defenses set up, it seems like most builds would actually be very effective against this one (again assuming that this isn't some sort of late game strategy).
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On May 04 2010 08:11 Xenocide_Knight wrote:
Raven/thor/tank is unstoppable unless you have raven/thor/tank
Raven's pt defense drone 100% negates banshees, vikings, and marauders. Once you get 6-7 ravens, its ridiculously strong. Terran has no anti-air other than marines that can go through pt defense drone so your raven cloud can just fly around with impunity.
Thors with upgrades decimates air. Even if you can micro the banshees, ravens will, again, completely negate the damage and Thors with upgrades cut through banshees like no other.
If you have extra energy left, auto turrets decimate tank fortifications. Each auto turret can take 3 seige mode hits, and costs 50 energy. It also does 8 dmg which is somewhat negligible. So for 50 energy, you are basically getting a zealot bomb a la BW. Except thanks to pt defense drone, the enemy can't do anything about it.
I don't think that this unit composition would deal well with battlecruisers. Thors and autoturrets are not very good against battlecruisers, and i haven't seen point defense drones used against BCs but I don't think they would be very good since BCs have a high rate of fire and would drain the drones' energy quickly.
Also, tank/thor/raven is very slow and immobile which leaves yourself open for harrassment. It can work in some situations but I think you're lacking in map control. What will you do if they drop your base with a group of vikings and you're out trying to kill an expansion? bring your ravens back and setup autoturrets? I don't think that would work very well -__-
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On May 04 2010 11:10 caldo149 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 04 2010 08:11 Xenocide_Knight wrote:
Raven/thor/tank is unstoppable unless you have raven/thor/tank
Raven's pt defense drone 100% negates banshees, vikings, and marauders. Once you get 6-7 ravens, its ridiculously strong. Terran has no anti-air other than marines that can go through pt defense drone so your raven cloud can just fly around with impunity.
Thors with upgrades decimates air. Even if you can micro the banshees, ravens will, again, completely negate the damage and Thors with upgrades cut through banshees like no other.
If you have extra energy left, auto turrets decimate tank fortifications. Each auto turret can take 3 seige mode hits, and costs 50 energy. It also does 8 dmg which is somewhat negligible. So for 50 energy, you are basically getting a zealot bomb a la BW. Except thanks to pt defense drone, the enemy can't do anything about it.
I don't think that this unit composition would deal well with battlecruisers. Thors and autoturrets are not very good against battlecruisers, and i haven't seen point defense drones used against BCs but I don't think they would be very good since BCs have a high rate of fire and would drain the drones' energy quickly. Also, tank/thor/raven is very slow and immobile which leaves yourself open for harrassment. It can work in some situations but I think you're lacking in map control. What will you do if they drop your base with a group of vikings and you're out trying to kill an expansion? bring your ravens back and setup autoturrets? I don't think that would work very well -__-
Which is why you would scout the fusion core, and mix in vikings from reactored starports. It's a given that mass BCs with yamato demolishes everything, including vikings unless you outnumber them 3-4 to 1.
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Thors actually aren't too bad against bcs if you push with some scvs building turrets. I once had a game where I got battle cruisers to (apparently) counter thors, but he kept pushing up slowly with turrets and I couldn't get near them except with yamato gun.
I also find that PDD isn't too bad vs bcs. Not as good versus something like a hydralisk but it still blocks roughly 200 damage (or more if the bc has upgrades). Even though that damage is coming out faster it's still blocking just as much.
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Upgrades are huge in BC vs Thor, generally in the Thor's favor. A 0/0 BC can take two 0/0 Thors, one after another, whereas a 3/3 Thor can take (just barely) a 3/3 BC.
Source: http://sc2calc.net/
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I make double starport opening. One with reactor, another with tech lab. Then I go immediately for harass with banshees + vikings, while building expansion and starting pumping mass marauders. Under the pressure opponent build expand later and usually switches to mass vikings/thors and my marauders work really well.
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Thats why I 3rax, Factory, 2sp
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On May 03 2010 10:23 Energizer wrote:
So I've been playing a lot recently, and lord and behold.....
It is lo and behold
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Win air with Vikings and then you can do whatever you want
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On May 05 2010 00:57 Snowfield wrote:
Win air with Vikings and then you can do whatever you want
lol
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On May 04 2010 23:40 Shaithis wrote:Upgrades are huge in BC vs Thor, generally in the Thor's favor. A 0/0 BC can take two 0/0 Thors, one after another, whereas a 3/3 Thor can take (just barely) a 3/3 BC. Source: http://sc2calc.net/
That's because SC 2 calc has the wrong numbers for the Thor air attack upgrade. It's +1 per upgrade, not +5.
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On May 05 2010 05:10 Azarkon wrote:Show nested quote +On May 04 2010 23:40 Shaithis wrote:Upgrades are huge in BC vs Thor, generally in the Thor's favor. A 0/0 BC can take two 0/0 Thors, one after another, whereas a 3/3 Thor can take (just barely) a 3/3 BC. Source: http://sc2calc.net/ That's because SC 2 calc has the wrong numbers for the Thor air attack upgrade. It's +1 per upgrade, not +5.
Holy crap, I had a feeling something was off...
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Hey Chease!
On May 04 2010 02:26 CheAse wrote:
I used to hate tvt but I am starting to have some success with it. I am currently 19-2 or something in plat, and beat a couple people in the triple strike cup in tvt, so I think my tvt is decent. Here is my build with notable mentions
12 rax
12 scout for tech lab
--->if tech lab, place marines at likely ledges, watch for reapers
--->if 2 rax, bunker at your ramp sweet spot
--->if he is going marauders you will not be able to move out fast and FE with tanks
13 gas
15 OC
always constant marine production
factory when you have the gas
make another gas when you have enough mins
1 or 2 tanks,use 2nd or 3rd scan to see if they have a port with tech lab
--->if port has a tech lab drop a reactor on your rax, and swap it with your port when its done
--->if they have port, make your port after 1 tank is qued,
--->if no port, make your port after 2nd or 3rd tank.
Start to contain and push your opponents natural with tanks and vikings with a marine buffer for marauders
Expand after contain
This is good, everyone's gotta note the if statements here. You can't have a set build in your TvT past 15 OC. It just can't be done. You build one too many tanks and you lose to mass air. You build one too few tanks and you lose to mass infantry.
A good safe place to start is 1 barracks -> 1 factory -> 1 starport. Before your starport is complete, you need to know what the opponent is doing.
The key is that 3rd scan (or even better, if you somehow manage to scout them without a scan).
--> If they have the starport WITH TECH LAB (and possibly another starport), you either go mass viking OR thor (your choice) because they are going mass air.
--> If they have the starport WITH NO TECH LAB (and possibly with a reactor) that means they're "expecting" you to have banshee and they just want to have some air presence w/vikings (or they eventually want to go banshee themselves if you go no air). Your choices here are to also mass viking and "tie" them OR thor (best) OR ignore air completely and just push them (if they only have a starport w/reactor) because vikings are terrible if you have no air
--> If they don't have a starport but they do have a factory with a tech lab, then they're going siege tank. You can either go mass marauder OR big air. If you go big air, you have to bunker up otherwise you'll get rolled over before you can get a banshee out. Especially true if they also have a barracks with a reactor on it.
--> If they don't have a starport, and don't even have a factory (they have 3/4 barracks) then you need to BUNKER THE HELL UP and you have your choice of either M&M&M&Siege Tank OR Big Air (skip vikings, double starport w/banshee...or single starport w/banshee with cloak)
so the key is the 3rd scan. There's all sorts of things in between too. But mainly it comes down to being one step ahead of them in building the right units.
p.s. if your 12 scout sees a already complete barracks already and few scvs, or a complete barracks already with a refinery and a tech lab, or no barracks(!), you need to bunker the hell up your mineral line with probably 2 bunkers (one on both sides of your minerals)
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Yup. I just tested it in-game. BC performance against Thor remains awesome throughout the upgrade path. At full upgrades (+3/+3), a BC takes down a Thor losing slightly over 100 hp. Against 2 Thors at the same time, a BC kills both losing 300 hp. This is without Yamato cannon. With Yamato cannon, a BC can probably kill 3 Thors at the same time.
Thors are ridiculously powerful against Light air, especially when stacked, but against BCs, an armored unit with 3 starting armor, they simply fail.
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EPT
