Yeah, except a 120 supply army terran can ROFLSTOMP a 260~ supply Zerg (yes, im resorting back to when roaches were 1 supply and you coudl literally get 60 more roaches)
Do you see the issue here? OVER 2 X the supply cap, and the Terran's army will still win... Ultralisks would be the only hope, but with my recent tests in builds, the T push comes before more than 3 ultras can come out (3 ultras, and 10 roaches, 20 speedlings wont do ANYTHING to the mech ball) And i've been trying broodlords too... yeah-NO. Thors still do enough to kill them with marine and viking help...
PDD's useless against roaches
Roaches are powerful becasue of their powerful SLOW punches of attacks, 5 PDDS will COMPLETELY disable 100 roaches from firing twice, and by then EVERY roach will be dead to the mech.
@ Koffiegast
Yeah, im race swapping for sure until blizzard realises what they did wrong here. Honestly, T have to be VERY unlucky to lose in this MU now... OR instead of raceswitch, i'll do baneling busts =) VERY EASILY stoppable strat, but i mean its the ONLY way to beat a terran now
Edit: Apparently PDD's dont stop roaches? Either way, autoturrets are still great for harass =P Not to mention, its worth investing 200 gas and a quick swap from factories tech lab to win the game
On May 20 2010 05:15 nihlon wrote: Solution = Infested terran. Promise.
No, but seriously, maybe we should give it more than a week before we proclaim some unit combos unbeatable? *dunno*
I'm not sure, I saw a different game with 10+ tanks. The only time you could actually get near with ground army is when they are on the move and even that generates only a small window in which you can destroy his critical mass. Assuming he got sufficient thors/rines/other anti air units, it seems quite impossible to approach the tank mass, unless you simply overwhelm from say 5 sides for example.
Onto more theoretical approach, say you got 10 tanks sieged and tanks shoot tactically (dont overkill), 60 damage at the target and around it 30 or 15 dmg. Basically 600 dmg with a reload time of 3 seconds.
Now what kind of army can survive while its moving in? Let's assume the units get within the 13 range of the siege tanks and it takes them 2 seconds for fast units and 5 seconds for slower units (e.g. roach without creep). Obviously the fast units get in fast, but before that they get already 600 dmg spread out over the group, basically any zergling/baneling/drone dies instantly. So what about Hydras? 80 hp, assume it takes them 3 secs to get in close, that obviously means that every hydralisk that was shot directly is close to dead or has died due to aoe, if it survived it will die the next volley. Unless of course we have say 40 hydras coming in. So what about roaches and queens? Maybe 3 shots and most of them are down?
Let's show some videos:
from 3:37 onward, what would you do against that? 48 roaches vs 14 tanks 3 thors, I think the tanks will win hands down. From 8:12 onwards ourk attempts to make a drop. At 8:43 he moves in his roaches closer to the tanks (although I think not all of the tanks are within range) and you see his roaches obliterated within secs. Prior to this he lost a couple loose roaches, so about 30 (he sent in 36 of the roaches with 9 OLs) roaches moved in and died within secs? Obviously Ourk should never let his opponent get so many tanks, but what if you simply couldn't prevent it?
I saw another perfect video that illustrated how massive armies of Zerg die to about 12 tanks and a thor when stationary, but when moving die to zerg. I just can't seem to find it, but remember a couple things: it was on Blistering sands with terran left corner (I thought it was TLO but not sure), and zerg right corner. The game goes on for a while with the Zerg focussing roach+hydra, while Terran gets 1/2 thors, 10-12 tanks, couple hellions and about 8 vikings. The first battle was onesided win for Terran that had a lot of scvs repairing the tanks and hellions that were attacking the '4th' expansion of Zerg (bottom right, not the gold). Many roaches were obliterated within seconds that tried to flank the tanks. The zerg manages eventually to get a lot of his units back (simply cuz he had 4 bases and terran just 2) and kills off the terran but didnt defeat him. Not much later on, the Terran had a similar build basically but didnt have any scvs repairing and the zerg overran him. As the Terran was out of resources, he gave up. Ive been looking everywhere on youtube but I just can't seem to find it.
Well, I'm no expert, but in the first video you posted he had broodlords out there that he wasted on an expo (that he didn't even destroy) without much air support. It seems to me it could have been a much closer game than it ended up being if he had some units to protect the broodlords and attacking the tanks.
In the second video, TLO simply were the better player. Sure the roaches dies like flies there, but I don't see any concrete proof that the terran strategy is so unbeatable. (just from those two vids).
Yeah, except a 120 supply army terran can ROFLSTOMP a 260~ supply Zerg (yes, im resorting back to when roaches were 1 supply and you coudl literally get 60 more roaches)
Do you see the issue here? OVER 2 X the supply cap, and the Terran's army will still win... Ultralisks would be the only hope, but with my recent tests in builds, the T push comes before more than 3 ultras can come out (3 ultras, and 10 roaches, 20 speedlings wont do ANYTHING to the mech ball) And i've been trying broodlords too... yeah-NO. Thors still do enough to kill them with marine and viking help...
PDD's useless against roaches
LOL!?!??!!? How noob can you be??
Roaches are powerful becasue of their powerful SLOW punches of attacks, 5 PDDS will COMPLETELY disable 100 roaches from firing twice, and by then EVERY roach will be dead to the mech.
@ Koffiegast
Yeah, im race swapping for sure until blizzard realises what they did wrong here. Honestly, T have to be VERY unlucky to lose in this MU now... OR instead of raceswitch, i'll do baneling busts =) VERY EASILY stoppable strat, but i mean its the ONLY way to beat a terran now
Yeah that would be true if PDDs stopped roach attack from working, which it doesn't.
D: okay i'll admit im ignorant than if i didnt know that, but EVERY terran who gets ravens against me just uses auto turret drops anyways, so. Either way, Zerg really does need a better way to combat this (Even tasteless says so D: D
The problem is that siege tanks dont overkill anymore which negates almost all friendly fire and crushes all your roaches in seconds... Give the tanks overkill back and they will be fine
On May 20 2010 05:15 nihlon wrote: Solution = Infested terran. Promise.
No, but seriously, maybe we should give it more than a week before we proclaim some unit combos unbeatable? *dunno*
Well, I'm no expert, but in the first video you posted he had broodlords out there that he wasted on an expo (that he didn't even destroy) without much air support. It seems to me it could have been a much closer game than it ended up being if he had some units to protect the broodlords and attacking the tanks.
In the second video, TLO simply were the better player. Sure the roaches dies like flies there, but I don't see any concrete proof that the terran strategy is so unbeatable. (just from those two vids).
I wish I could show the one video that i just cant find. It shows how well terran mech is and at what times a zerg ground force can manage to win. I agree TLO was better in the mu.
Here's my attempt to theorycraft a solution to what I see as the hardest terran build order for zerg to deal with.
Terran opens with fairly fast marine hellion attack. Zerg should do normal early expand timing to get setup for a good econ and seeing preparation for this attack should set up 2 spinecrawlers and get a 3rd queen. Using third queen to tranfuse a crawler this should easily hold.
Terran follows up with banshees to harass. Zerg should tech to spire and on scouting banshees should get a 4th queen to hold bashees till mutas get out. Two queens at each base 1 charged to transfuse should hold till mutas are ready. Also depending on hellion count more spinecrawlers may be needed.
Zerg should use mutas to counter harass. Terran will be teching to thor but the mutas should be able to inflict some damage.
Zerg should be teching to infestors and research neural paracite while getting overloard speed and transport. Also zerg should get roachs once the tech is under way. Depending on effective of muta zerg may be able to take an expo.
Terran will be building tanks, hellions, and thors. Zerg should air lift roachs and infestors with muta escort to Terran main when terran force moves out.
Terran will have to pull back to defend. Tanks will be unsieged while moving in, use infestors to neural paracite thors allowing mutas to move in and focus fire the tanks with help of the controlled thors. Roachs can protect infestors from hellions.
This is where I'll stop as the game continues with zerg even or at an advantage (or wins) and can repeat this (on main again or expansions) when ever the Terran tries to move out expoiting the fact that the Terran will be out of position when fighting.
I would agree with you that your proposed build is the safest. Its difficult to get a footing in and our advantages are far and few between on this matchup. I've just been watching Artosis struggle with most of his ZvT games, his skill is still losing to tanks/thors/rines although winning when the T screws up BO and doesn't block roach push, hmmm can't wait for the light at the end of the tunnel if someone figures this out, perhaps 7 pool opening would help?.
You can't a-move into seiged tanks and expect to come out on top no matter how much you outnumber him by. Exploit the fact that you can mass expand and that seiged tanks can't move.
I would agree with you that your proposed build is the safest. Its difficult to get a footing in and our advantages are far and few between on this matchup. I've just been watching Artosis struggle with most of his ZvT games, his skill is still losing to tanks/thors/rines although winning when the T screws up BO and doesn't block roach push, hmmm can't wait for the light at the end of the tunnel if someone figures this out, perhaps 7 pool opening would help?.
Yeah, I just saw Artosis play against Terrans on his stream aswell. Especially the game on Kulas Ravine was brutal. Artosis had brilliant macro and beautiful Infestor placement. Even with way higher numbers, perfect infestor play and undetected burrowed roaches, he barely hold off Terrans first push. In Terrans second push he was also way ahead in numbers, but with one simple scan from the Terran, the 2-3 controlgroups of burrowed Roaches were detected and melted away in 5 seconds. Then it was gg. The mistake he did was, of course, to rely to much on his burrowed roaches. It's just too risky because of scans. I don't know how well Broodlords would have done, though, or how much it would have hurt his own ground army numbers. At least he is doing well with Broodlords against a Terran player as I write this.
In midgame, I would love to see someone perfectly execute a baneling airstrike with overlords.
On May 20 2010 12:04 aaaaaah wrote: How about you start putting early pressure on your opponent and try running units into they're base to harass the mineral line.
Yeah because terrans dont get a wall-in early...
I've been doing more and more baneling busts, especially on Kulas, Incineration, and Steppes. But even then, it's an all-in, and if he scouts it, it fails hard.
At the theorycrafting: T will have a thor out before i get my mutas (mutas are just as long of a tech as thors) Plus, as soon as he sees my spire / mutas killing his air, he will have enough turrets to kill anything less than 8 mutas (and i will not have 8 by this time)
Good point, I keep thinking zerg can get mutas up fast... which they can't due to lair and spire build times being much longer than their corresponding terran buildings.
yeah. I've tried spreading mutaas, but the marines end up shooting them down as well usually, although early spire is what i've been opting for to get broodlords, not getting ANY mutas, and only getting corruptors a bit before greater spire, so i can get broodlords right away, but without alot of ground help, Thors + vikings finish them easily
It really seems that zerg can't win end game unless they have a big econ lead (sort of like SC:BW now that I think about it). The problem is how does the zerg stall the terran since at the moment it's the terran that is pressuring the zerg not the other way around.
I thought mutas would work but they seem to come out much slower in SC2 than in SC:BW making them effectivly countered before you can get them as pointed out. I don't think fast teching to broodlord is a solution as it takes too long giving the terran too much time to prepare a counter since they have nothing else to worry about (terrans sees hive and great spire -> gets multi starport with reactor turning out vikings and actually can outproduce the zerg in the air war even if the zerg can dodge the ground support).
Standard ground army build up just doesn't work since tanks are so strong once they hit critical mass.
So it comes down to early ground pressure as seeming to be the only way to go. Going to have to start to look into 10 pool and may be even one base builds...
LOOOLL. So I tried playing terran for the first time today. What did I choose to do? Of course... MECH. God, it was unbelievabley easy. I could even keep my minerals down below 300 the entire game. Something I find difficult to do with zerg. So I didn't open with any harass, I just got tanks as early as possible and took my nat. I made marines and turrets to fight off early muta harass but my thor came just in time anyway. I upgraded everything through out the game.
And I even dropped some helions and killed a ton of his drones. But then he made broodlords and I was like "OH FUCK!". So I instinctively made 2 starports and pumped out as many vikings as I could. He made mass mutas and corruptors in reaction to my vikings. But... I just slowly pushed across the map with turrets, a bunker here and there, mass hellions, some marines, thors and tanks. When he would push in with his broodlords, I would just dance my vikings around. I'd one shot his BLs with my 12+ vikings and then I would retreat to my turrets, thors and marines that were an eyelash away. I would even scan his army to pick off stray broodlords at the very edge. God, he must've been feeling so frustrated there! I know I would. He even tried mass banelings and baneling drops on my army. I'm talking 50+ banelings but it did not work.
Near the end of the game, I took control of the middle, and my tanks caught about half of his army. He must've been macroing because that turned into a desperate suicide attack into my metal death ball. After that, I just flew around with my vikings and killed EVERY single overlord that he had. He was helpless.
Here's a replay of me doing a roach based strategy against mech. The strat isn't finished I definitely need to improve it a lot but it works well because the terran can't move around much with tank/thor and has to do a lot more clicking then you do to defend against it.
As you will see its difficult for him to defend multiple points as the game progresses there's more and more places you can hit to really frustrate him. You definitely want a spire up in case he abandons thors completely and tries to run you over with tanks. I hope this at least gives you guys some ideas about where to start. I know a lot of zergs are frustrated with this terran build.
It's funny, beacuse i was doing this earlier in the day yesturday. (i play Z as my main, i'm HORRIBLE with T, and have lost to silver players pre-patch that are zerg with my terran)
But post patch, i was beating people OVER 1800 plat, using my terran vs their zerg.
I Hellion blueflame harass for the lols, into a banshee if they haev only 2 queens, or a viking if they have more, get tanks + seige asap to take nat. After that, with ~10 vikings, and hellion drops for total map control, they may have 3 bases, but by the time i push with ~20 tanks, my 10 vikings, 20ish hellions, my thors, and my marines, and ONE raven (its seriosuly SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much easier than alot of terran think to get a raven out) that even their broodlord/roach/hydra/infestor/muta army couldnt stop it. I'm sorry, but when i saw his raoches with my tanks, i laughed when ipwned them all.
Oh BTW: People say nyduses + drops work well, but when i use them as Z, they fail, and i even had someone try to hydra drop my base before, i Lol'd when my vikings killed half of his in-air army, and 3 tanks sieged in different places killed all his hydras :D
EPT
