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First: I'm bad. I'm in gold league.
Now to my question, I find it hard to attack a Terran opponent that has a lot of siege tanks (5+) sieged everywhere, especially on maps that have the cliff/high-ground advantage.
When I see this I have tried to get void rays (is this proper?) because they are the only you that can hard counter them, but I find them not cost-effective against marines (which the Terran player will usually pump out as well). Stims and medivacs really hurt the expensive void rays, and I cannot get my ground force in effectively because of the siege tanks. Collosi do not out-range a sieged tank, right (with the extended thermal lance upgrade)?
Recently, as soon as I see more than 3 tanks I will research Zealot charge and I have found them MUCH more effective not only in terms of damage, but also in terms of resources. I will try to proxy them somewhere close to the enemy, or in a corner behind their base so that I can kill a few tanks before the enemy's main army comes.
Is this the right choice? Or am I supposed to get better with void rays?
Thank you!
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Even in Dimoand ive been destorying protoss players with a Siege tank ghost combo. Void rays would be very good. But the Best you can probley do is High templars unless they have sensor towers which they probley wont since your in gold. If they are bunched up use high templars storm.
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Thanks for that idea! I will try that! But usually they are lined up, fairly separated on along a cliff, or they are spread throughout the base to defend critical spots... 
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Phx's to lift up the tanks + chargelots, with HTs later to take out the marines.
Mass void ray does work if he makes too many tanks/marauders and not enough marines, but this is late late game I wouldn't try to mass void rays early on.
Immortals work if they don't have ghosts or a ton of marines. Another thing you can do is research hallucinate and use hallucinated immortals to tank for your chargelots.
But usually the safest route is to just try to outmacro the terran, and catch them when they are moving their army to take an expo.
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Sweden33719 Posts
If he's making marine/tank, I actually think mass colossus are pretty good, as his marines will die way too quick, and his army will be really immobile.
The problem is that tank/viking should pretty much rape this.
Best way to deal with mass tanks is probably to just not fight him - use a lot of warp prism harass (dts are nice in this role for midgame) and get some void rays. Phoenix might be worth a try as well, but if his combo is tank marine, I'm unsure of how good it is.
Expand a lot, and at different places on the map - mech is slow, warp in is fast. Force fielding expansion ramps is pretty nice for holding off pushes on maps like LT while you commit to counter attacking or warping in stuff in his main.
An idea worth exploring would be avoiding taking your natural and instead expanding to another main or an island, to give him less easy push targets.
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Blink stalkers are the best answer if you are having trouble reaching the tanks. If he is relying on open ground or is slow pushing, then I would use a combination of immortals and chargelots.
The other thing is you can just have a big ground army and catch him out of position when he is pushing. I used to think that a Terran player who had enough time to build up tanks would roll my Colossi, but that isn't so. If you can beat his economy (Not that hard considering tanks provide little map control), then a big group of Colossi will melt tanks anyways. Colossi are pretty fast and have a lot of health, so when you attack he has to choose what he wants to kill, Colossi or your ground army.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On June 02 2010 06:33 Percutio wrote:
Blinks stalkers are the best answer if you are having trouble reaching the tanks. If he is relying on open ground or is slow pushing, then I would use a combination of immortals and chargelots.
The other thing is you can just have a big ground army and catch him out of position when he is pushing. I used to think that a Terran player who had enough time to build up tanks would roll my Colossi, but that isn't so. If you can beat his economy (Not that hard considering tanks provide little map control), then a big group of Colossi will melt tanks anyways. Colossi are pretty fast and have a lot of health, so when you attack he has to choose what he wants to kill, Colossi or your ground army.
Agree with everything here. Colossi are really strong as long as you can catch him while he's re-sieging, and due to their range+strength (and the fact that siege tanks only have their max range with spotters), it will sort of force the terran to either commit all tanks at once (as having just a few in range will mean those tanks die, then the colossi retreat), or get vikings.
Blink is excellent for constantly killing add-ons and other important buildings whenever a T tries to move out. Very annoying and the stalkers are so fast they are hard to catch for a meching player (no marauder slow, no spider mines).
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Typically if you try to push against siege tank compositions on maps where the main/nat are easy to defend you're going to lose unless your composition is perfect. I've had a couple games on LT where I flat out refused to attack even with like a 50 food advantage because its just so goddamn expensive to attack a sieged up army.
Depending on the situation you either want to go with the advice elsewhere in this thread - namely, attacking only when the T tries to take another base and is thus forced to move, or just outmacroing and getting a fuckton of production buildings up to rapidly replace losses.
If the T turtles really hardcore you can slowly build up a bunch of carriers to whittle away at tanks while you wait for the T to mine himself out, but this probably wont work against good Ts.
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On June 02 2010 06:30 FrozenArbiter wrote:
If he's making marine/tank, I actually think mass colossus are pretty good, as his marines will die way too quick, and his army will be really immobile.
The problem is that tank/viking should pretty much rape this.
Best way to deal with mass tanks is probably to just not fight him - use a lot of warp prism harass (dts are nice in this role for midgame) and get some void rays. Phoenix might be worth a try as well, but if his combo is tank marine, I'm unsure of how good it is.
Expand a lot, and at different places on the map - mech is slow, warp in is fast. Force fielding expansion ramps is pretty nice for holding off pushes on maps like LT while you commit to counter attacking or warping in stuff in his main.
An idea worth exploring would be avoiding taking your natural and instead expanding to another main or an island, to give him less easy push targets.
PvT vs siege tanks right now is a huge, huge problem, and I'm going to explain why. There are two variations to a tank heavy build that I see. The first is to make tanks, hellions, and vikings, and the second is to make tanks, marines, and vikings.
This can be beat with a unit composition of colossi, phoenixes, stalkers, zealots, immortals. The exact ratio you use I am not totally sure on, but the theory behind this is really easy. When you see tanks first being made, you need to add a stargate and start making phoenixes, it's critical that when he does push out that you have a lot of phoenix's to lift up the tanks. Phoenixes don't take much damage from vikings, so you will be able to get lifts on the tanks, and that should take care of the majority of his tank army for now. Your colossi will rip up the marines very, very quickly, you only need four seconds or so to completely decimate them. After that, you can re-lift tanks with your remaining phoenix's and then move in the rest of your army.
So what's the problem? The problem is if you opponent makes siege tanks, hellions, and vikings, you're going to in a lot of trouble. For the above strategy to work, you have to add a stargate and pump phoenix from the beginning of the game, once you know he is doing a siege tank build. If you try this versus siege tank, hellion, and vikings, it will fail really bad. The problem is that colossi and your regular army can't tear through hellions quick enough. Colossi don't hit as many because hellions are bigger, and they have more HP. You can move in with phoenix's and lift tanks, but you won't be able to get through the rest of his army in time before the tanks land, and when they do, your army is going to get smashed.
So what works versus siege tank, hellions, and vikings? Nothing. I have played over twenty games with a practice partner and he has not lost a single game, and we have tried every possible combination. Siege tanks simply destroy every thing on the ground when you hit a certain number of them (~15). Vikings also do not lose to anything in the air that Protoss can offer. Vikings beat void rays, they are even with carriers, and while they lose slightly to phoenixes in even cost, phoenixes aren't going to help you deal with the actual tank force. Every possible combination I have tried, and every possible combination has failed. Open up unit tester and try different mixtures yourself, as long as you give the Terran ~15 tanks, nothing will come close to winning.
The weakness of the Terran tank army is mobility, I could easily imagine in a game being able to harass their base with blink stalkers when they move out too far away from their main, or just counter their expansions when they push you a la SC:BW. However you still have to deal with their army at some point, and you simply cannot. The only strategies I have been able to think of are to either avoid their army and try to destroy their ability to rebuild, and then have carriers building some where on the map. Carriers will be an even resource count of vikings slightly, and I suppose if the Terran couldn't replenish, you would win the game.
The other strategy would be to not let Terran get to a critical number of tanks, unfortunately they can do this off of two base. I've tried strategies of blinking in to a Terran's base to whittle down their tank numbers, but this doesn't work very well either. The best strategy is to simply rush the Terran and kill them that way, before the option of massing tanks even opens itself up.
In Starcraft PvT, the Terran ball was very hard to kill too, when they had 3-3 upgrades it was a very difficult battle. However stasis and good flanking ensured that you could whittle it down, unfortunately that isn't possible for SC II, you cannot even effectively take away a third of their army while sacrificing your own. I am completely out of options for this style of play and I have yet to see a replay of how to properly deal with this.
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As a terran player I can tell you that I very much fear early-mid timing pushes with an immortal and a colossus or two, coming in right before I start to get my critical mass of tanks/ghosts.
Once I get six or seven tanks I feel pretty safe. Tanks are pretty immobile, I find there's almost always one little corner of my base I can't really afford to defend and I just have to hope toss doesn't find it. Really great terran players will probably be able to cover every thing a bit better then, but for 90% of the crappy terran players on diamond ladder (like me) you can probably find a hole somewhere and abuse it.
Oh yeah, and phoenixes can lift up siege mode tanks so if the terran doesn't have enough marines ,tanks, or vikings you can pick up all of his tanks and push in. You'll be amazed how badly you destroy him when most of the resources he spent on his army are floating up in the air. I have gotten WRECKED like this before so it is something to consider.
Even if he takes out your phoenixes it will give you time to close the distance and take out the rest of his army, especially if you have a good number of phoenixes.
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On June 02 2010 14:48 SpicyCrab wrote:
As a terran player I can tell you that I very much fear early-mid timing pushes with an immortal and a colossus or two, coming in right before I start to get my critical mass of tanks/ghosts.
Once I get six or seven tanks I feel pretty safe. Tanks are pretty immobile, I find there's almost always one little corner of my base I can't really afford to defend and I just have to hope toss doesn't find it. Really great terran players will probably be able to cover every thing a bit better then, but for 90% of the crappy terran players on diamond ladder (like me) you can probably find a whole somewhere and abuse it.
Oh yeah, and phoenixes can lift up siege mode tanks so if the terran doesn't have enough marines ,tanks, or vikings you can pick up all of his tanks and push in. You'll be amazed how badly you destroy him when most of the resources he spent on his army are floating up in the air. I have gotten WRECKED like this before so it is something to consider.
Even if he takes out your phoenixes it will give you time to close the game and take out the rest of his army, especially if you have a good number of phoenixes.
The best way to kill a Terran that is looking to go for a siege tank style of play is to kill them quickly. Blink stalkers and immortals can do a decent push against Terran, and that is what I favour PvT right now, because late game is a lost cause. Phoenixes can lift up the siege tanks, and that is viable versus a marine/tank/viking opening, but it will fail badly against a hellion opening. If the Terran is poor enough to not make enough vikings then you probably could have won numerous other ways as well.
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Many options, see how white ra does it vs maka, hidden stargate void ray.
other builds include 5 x phoenix and zealot spam to win.
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On June 02 2010 14:52 Salv wrote:
Blink stalkers and immortals can do a decent push against Terran
They can have siege mode before these two techs are finished. MAYBE you could pull it off if you go some suicidal hardcore tech build which would die to one marauder and a marine early on. My timing might be very off though. This is just my experience.
On the subject, I have tried MANY many builds against a good few terran practice partners. What I have discovered is that a stargate is almost necessary...not matter what. Phoenix is crucial vs tanks. Without them, good luck unless you catch the T EXTREMELY out of position. Also, 4 gate push is pretty good against terran doing 1/1/1. It's definitely a tough thing to go against though, at least for me.
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I've had a fair bit of trouble with this too, and the best strategy I've found is
1) Poke early and contain. Until he has seige tech he usually won't be able to push out (when he does you have to back off). While doing this...
2) Expand like a no one's business. Like FrozenArbiter said, he's slow, you're fast. Get a macro advantage.
3) Plant an obs at his front door and a Warp prism at his back. Poke with the warp earlier if you want, but when you see him moving out and you can't get in position in time, drop 3 zealots in his base and destroy his mineral line. He'll pull back and you can get into position for the next time he moves out.
I still can't beat it head on, but I don't think its the kind of build you're supposed to take head on.
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As a low-diamond terran player I have to say fighting against toss with like 4-5 phoenixes (Combined with a normal toss army - colossus/immortal/gateway units) can be a pain in the ass with the lift-off ability. It takes a well-placed EMP to counter, which can be tough since the toss usually is the one engaging when your tanks are set up. My two cents.
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Later on you can mass voidrays + HTs with storm. On high level 2v2 this combination is frequently used, luckily enough not in 1v1. That combination beats everything that terran has, the marines get melted away with storm, vikings clump up in battle so storm is also very effective versus them, and the rest is raped by the voidray, especially if you catch him with his guard down and he doens't have mass vikings yet (the only remotely viable counter).
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The biggest problem for me when I play against terran is when T starts to get ravens and drops down the drone defense, pretty much making my stalkers completely useless. I've played my friend about 20 times and one of the only ways to really slow him down is constant zealot harass as early as possible. Skipping the gas and going straight 2 gate off the bat and just pounding his base. The drawback of this is that on 4 player maps it will take longer to get to his base. From there on out I think you just need to out expand T and prevent them from expanding. Oh and my friend throws up towers constantly around his siege tanks, it's literally a moving wall of defense and slowly squeezes me out.
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Have to 2nd that hallucination. It's cheap and quick to tech up. FF aren't that good vs mech armies, so sentries are kinda useless. Even guardian shields don't do much since mech tend to have high base dmg. Make a bunch of fake immortals and bum rush them in front follow by heaps of charge lots and whatever else u want, colossus or HT. The point of all this is whatever u do, just make sure ur zealots survive til they get into melee range. Once in, tanks will splash their own armies.
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On June 02 2010 14:29 Salv wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On June 02 2010 06:30 FrozenArbiter wrote:
If he's making marine/tank, I actually think mass colossus are pretty good, as his marines will die way too quick, and his army will be really immobile.
The problem is that tank/viking should pretty much rape this.
Best way to deal with mass tanks is probably to just not fight him - use a lot of warp prism harass (dts are nice in this role for midgame) and get some void rays. Phoenix might be worth a try as well, but if his combo is tank marine, I'm unsure of how good it is.
Expand a lot, and at different places on the map - mech is slow, warp in is fast. Force fielding expansion ramps is pretty nice for holding off pushes on maps like LT while you commit to counter attacking or warping in stuff in his main.
An idea worth exploring would be avoiding taking your natural and instead expanding to another main or an island, to give him less easy push targets. PvT vs siege tanks right now is a huge, huge problem, and I'm going to explain why. There are two variations to a tank heavy build that I see. The first is to make tanks, hellions, and vikings, and the second is to make tanks, marines, and vikings. This can be beat with a unit composition of colossi, phoenixes, stalkers, zealots, immortals. The exact ratio you use I am not totally sure on, but the theory behind this is really easy. When you see tanks first being made, you need to add a stargate and start making phoenixes, it's critical that when he does push out that you have a lot of phoenix's to lift up the tanks. Phoenixes don't take much damage from vikings, so you will be able to get lifts on the tanks, and that should take care of the majority of his tank army for now. Your colossi will rip up the marines very, very quickly, you only need four seconds or so to completely decimate them. After that, you can re-lift tanks with your remaining phoenix's and then move in the rest of your army. So what's the problem? The problem is if you opponent makes siege tanks, hellions, and vikings, you're going to in a lot of trouble. For the above strategy to work, you have to add a stargate and pump phoenix from the beginning of the game, once you know he is doing a siege tank build. If you try this versus siege tank, hellion, and vikings, it will fail really bad. The problem is that colossi and your regular army can't tear through hellions quick enough. Colossi don't hit as many because hellions are bigger, and they have more HP. You can move in with phoenix's and lift tanks, but you won't be able to get through the rest of his army in time before the tanks land, and when they do, your army is going to get smashed. So what works versus siege tank, hellions, and vikings? Nothing. I have played over twenty games with a practice partner and he has not lost a single game, and we have tried every possible combination. Siege tanks simply destroy every thing on the ground when you hit a certain number of them (~15). Vikings also do not lose to anything in the air that Protoss can offer. Vikings beat void rays, they are even with carriers, and while they lose slightly to phoenixes in even cost, phoenixes aren't going to help you deal with the actual tank force. Every possible combination I have tried, and every possible combination has failed. Open up unit tester and try different mixtures yourself, as long as you give the Terran ~15 tanks, nothing will come close to winning. The weakness of the Terran tank army is mobility, I could easily imagine in a game being able to harass their base with blink stalkers when they move out too far away from their main, or just counter their expansions when they push you a la SC:BW. However you still have to deal with their army at some point, and you simply cannot. The only strategies I have been able to think of are to either avoid their army and try to destroy their ability to rebuild, and then have carriers building some where on the map. Carriers will be an even resource count of vikings slightly, and I suppose if the Terran couldn't replenish, you would win the game. The other strategy would be to not let Terran get to a critical number of tanks, unfortunately they can do this off of two base. I've tried strategies of blinking in to a Terran's base to whittle down their tank numbers, but this doesn't work very well either. The best strategy is to simply rush the Terran and kill them that way, before the option of massing tanks even opens itself up. In Starcraft PvT, the Terran ball was very hard to kill too, when they had 3-3 upgrades it was a very difficult battle. However stasis and good flanking ensured that you could whittle it down, unfortunately that isn't possible for SC II, you cannot even effectively take away a third of their army while sacrificing your own. I am completely out of options for this style of play and I have yet to see a replay of how to properly deal with this.
Carriers do not beat vikings in equal cost, they've got to have an advantage in cost or upgrades to win.
A carrier does beat 3 vikings, but this is only because the carrier deals his full DPS all the time, while an army of carriers will lose DPS as it's being damaged, since some of the carriers will be destroyed.
For example: 3 carriers vs 9 vikings is a win for the vikings with 3 of them surviving.
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I played a terran yesterday that did everything right during his late game push. I had him contained for the rest of the game but couldn't stop the push on LT.
After I lost for being dumb and thinking i had an opening when i really dint... i started thinking a little.
- He can't move freely.
- His expos are almost empty. DTs can kill a planetary fortress or all its workers ridiculously fast.
- If he's tanks are out of position for even a little bit you can send in 3:4 ratio of phoenix and rape his entire army then proceed to kill the tanks
- If its late into the game suiciding a mothership into his tank cluster to vortex is huge.
- If its REALLY late into the game you can even recall into his base to kill production buildings Send your mothership back and recall again to prevent a base trade situation
All these things have 1 thing in common. You need to know exactly where he is or rather where his tanks are. That was prolly my biggest mistake. I should've kept like 3 observers flying around his army constantly to keep me informed of where his tanks and infantry were at all times.
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pvt is pretty imbalanced right now in my opinion. vikings absolutely destroy colossi and void rays. largely because they are untouchable because of their range and speed. I find that lately the only chance I have is to go fast blink stalkers and catch him with his pants down. You can get about 7 stalkers and storm his base when he only has a few marines and a tank or 2. This build order also protects against banshees and reapers. if he goes strong marauder you might have trouble unless your mico is good. before he gets too many marauder u can blink the damaged ones to the back. This is very effective. Also you can go to void rays real fast if he is very marauder heavy.
Scouting is very good. You can do a lot of harass with your drone to prevent them from getting a tech lab. Place your drone where the tech lab goes, or build a pylon. when he lifts off, u keep ur drone under his barracks and it will mess him up pretty badly.
If you let the game go on too long, you are bound to lose. no one can fend off even 5 tanks, a medium size bioball, and vikings, and its pretty easy to get that.
I personally dont like HT, but a lot of people do. Ghosts take them out pretty easily and i find that storm doesnt do enough damage. even with your storms he will still have all his tanks and have his bioball.
DT can be very annoying for terran if you catch him without an engineering bay or raven and if he is using his energy on mules, but this is risky because of the gas and time involved in the tech. send them 1 or 2 at a time to avoid losing 6 to scans. they can be very good at keeping him in his base. (until he builds a raven).
If terran goes fast raven you are in trouble. PDD shuts down stalkers like nobodies business.
To sum up. I find that a fast stalker rush is pretty much the only viable option. let the game go on and tanks shut down all ground and vikings shut down all air. and u lose. Your other option is to mass expand and play a huge macro game. get like 10 gateways and keep summoning mass zealots and HT. This requires you to outplay, and macro, and out micro your opponent, who can 1a 2a. hence the imbalance.
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tanks can be pretty challenging but if you look back to brood war and when vultures had spider mines imo it was a lot harder. i usually dont try to go into late game (when terran can get the "death ball" with 5+ tanks but if i do i take advantage of my mobility to win.
a good example is lost temple where the terran can defend there natural very easily cuz of the high ground and the narrow choke. i would never attack into that natural cuz ur army will get lit up in such a situation take map control and safely expand (like don't double expand just cuz hes contained) and get a macro advantage if u kept him contained which you can do because he cant unsiege (and if he does attack because he wont get any volleys off until your armys have collided) he will be starting on his third while you are at 4+ bases at which point you can afford to enter skirmishes that are unfavorable because you can still rebuild your army faster than he will. i think a lot of people has this mentaility that if im not attacking im not winning , but in this case if you just macro harder you will gain a healthy lead
im not saying dont pressure the terran though look to exploit any weaknesses, like if he has no aa get phoenixes or vr's etc. when scouting with your observers and u see his units are defending his natural go harass his main with blinking stalkers or drops. these are all things that can disrupt the terran and possibly throw him off his game and make a mistake.
day9 puts it the best "u dont have to win by a lot u just have to do enough to win" take your macro advantage let that extend out through the game because it will get bigger and bigger. also terran are not op they would be if you could only 1a but fortunately this is not C&C, its starcraft 2 and you can utilize tactics and macro to win.
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On June 02 2010 21:25 johngalt90 wrote:
tanks can be pretty challenging but if you look back to brood war and when vultures had spider mines imo it was a lot harder. i usually dont try to go into late game (when terran can get the "death ball" with 5+ tanks but if i do i take advantage of my mobility to win.
a good example is lost temple where the terran can defend there natural very easily cuz of the high ground and the narrow choke. i would never attack into that natural cuz ur army will get lit up in such a situation take map control and safely expand (like don't double expand just cuz hes contained) and get a macro advantage if u kept him contained which you can do because he cant unsiege (and if he does attack because he wont get any volleys off until your armys have collided) he will be starting on his third while you are at 4+ bases at which point you can afford to enter skirmishes that are unfavorable because you can still rebuild your army faster than he will. i think a lot of people has this mentaility that if im not attacking im not winning , but in this case if you just macro harder you will gain a healthy lead
im not saying dont pressure the terran though look to exploit any weaknesses, like if he has no aa get phoenixes or vr's etc. when scouting with your observers and u see his units are defending his natural go harass his main with blinking stalkers or drops. these are all things that can disrupt the terran and possibly throw him off his game and make a mistake.
day9 puts it the best "u dont have to win by a lot u just have to do enough to win" take your macro advantage let that extend out through the game because it will get bigger and bigger. also terran are not op they would be if you could only 1a but fortunately this is not C&C, its starcraft 2 and you can utilize tactics and macro to win.
People are aware that you can take advantage of the immobility of a siege tank type of play, the problem is that you eventually have to deal with their army, and you can't. In BW, stasis, mine drags, zealot bombs, etc. all helped you whittle down their army. This isn't even half as effective in SC2. Try any combination of army against a maxed or near maxed Terran army. Not only will you lose, but you won't do any damage whatsoever, you will kill a few tanks if that. You would have to sacrifice a full army multiple, multiple times to finally weaken the Terran army to the point where you can kill it with a final assault. Even then, that would only work if you were able to fully take out their entire reinforcement process.
I even stated in my above post, mid-game I can easily see a scenario where I blink in to their bases, drop immortals, and things such as that to try and give myself the lead. The problem is that it doesn't matter the amount of lead I have when I go to mid-game, you cannot stop their army, or come close to weakening it a significant amount with any unit composition. That's the problem.
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Man, I remember not too long ago, all the Terrans were complaining of Immortal imba...
Echoing what everyone is saying, don't engage, abuse immobility and mass expand, and you might have a chance.
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On June 03 2010 01:37 captainwaffles wrote:
Man, I remember not too long ago, all the Terrans were complaining of Immortal imba...
Echoing what everyone is saying, don't engage, abuse immobility and mass expand, and you might have a chance.
How? The point is that they will eventually hit that composition that is impossible to break.
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Abusing the terran's lack of mobility isn't even possible on some maps, such as Steppes of War, where the distances between bases and expansions is so short. Generally, I've found that if I'm unable to prevent the terran from getting his third up, I'm probably screwed.
I'm not sure that the problem is the siege tank as much as it is the viking. That thing is just too good for how cheap it is. Either the range or the damage needs to be decreased. The viking shuts down pretty much everything that the protoss has that can counter tanks and large terran ground armies other than high templar.
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You only have to win, not decisively. I'm not going to get down into the details, but you snipe his expos or get into his main (warp prism, mother ship, void rays) and snipe unit producing buildings. Just be every where he isn't, and for god sakes don't forget to make cannons at your expansions. One of my favorite things to do EVER: win a battle or make him retreat, IMMEDIATELY load a medivac or two and drop expos, works like a charm.
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On June 03 2010 01:54 captainwaffles wrote:
You only have to win, not decisively. I'm not going to get down into the details, but you snipe his expos or get into his main (warp prism, mother ship, void rays) and snipe unit producing buildings. Just be every where he isn't, and for god sakes don't forget to make cannons at your expansions. One of my favorite things to do EVER: win a battle or make him retreat, IMMEDIATELY load a medivac or two and drop expos, works like a charm.
At this point in PvT mech, I would be satisfied to win by the skin of my teeth. Like I said, let's assume you deal reasonable economic damage, delay expansions, kill some SCVs. You still have to deal with his army, you cannot avoid his army all game and then he'll type out, as long as you haven't touched his army he will stay in the game. There simply isn't a composition that deals with siege tank/hellion/viking, as far as my own testing goes, it doesn't exist. If you cannot reasonably weaken a Terran's army, you stand no chance of winning. Even in Brood War you could use stasis, mine drags, zealot drops to slowly whittle down their army, and then use your expansion advantage to replenish, I know how that works, I played a lot of BW PvT. That same strategy doesn't work, SC II Protoss don't have a way to whittle down the army, that's the problem.
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yay, after a long time of lurking, finally a post by me 
During the last couple of days, I have thaught very much about the current PvT. I was pretty despaired about the actual mech play and on my way to figure out how to deal with it, I often ended up in sleepless nights and drowning in my own tears while biting in my keyboard.
Probably the biggest mistake is to try to beat a Terran in a similar style like I deal with PvP or PvZ, which means, get an army which is superior to his and beat him in one big battle to gain the winning advantage.
So i have tried the classic immortal push or nonys phenix style in order to get raped by the more and more common mass marine tank support.
Long Story Short, even my maxed out Protoss Force, inclusive illusions to eat the first tank shots, got raped by a bunkering terran (and his f***ing tanks!)
After several very frustrating experiences i have taken a friend of mine who plays this defensive Mech play very well and started many practice matches to figure out how to beat it.
My Solution:
In my experience, a Stalker opening works quite well against nearly every Terran Opener... exspecially it provides a fairly good position against the actual rare M&M&M Terrans.
If the Terran is going for Mech, ill go for a 3 Gate Blinkstalker opening.
Usually i keep my Stalkers near by the Terrans base to punish early Attacks with fast Blink in - Tank Snipe - Blink out. Mostly i force the Terran to retreat back into the safety of his Base without losing many Stalkers.
I use a Probe or, if the Map allows it, the Watchtowers to check for Terran Attacks.
I set up my expansion soon after my 3thd gate and add a Robo/Starport for High Ground Vision and efficient scouting.
While saturating my Natural, i increase my Stalker count and start Templar Tech (DT and HT).
The DTs help me to keep the Terran inside his Base, if he wont placed Turrets all over his Base, i usually poke him with some warp prism Harass.
After the full saturation of my natural im going for my third and add some robos and tons of warpgates in order to add immortals and more warpgate stuff (inclusive HTs) to my Army.
This is usually the time when the Terran gets strong enough to break my light contain and pushes out to save his fairly late third.
Now, with my superior production capability, i attack the Terran Army.
I try to attack from 2 or 3 different directions to guaranty an optimal split up of my army. The Immortals who lead the charge, soak the first tankshots and allow my Warpgate Stuff (exspecially my HTs) to get into combat range. Now Storm Spam before the EMPs get my Templars (sometimes they waste it for the incoming immortals... but its rare) to maximise the dmg against the non tank Terran groundforce.
While my offensive is running, i secure my 4th, reproduce like hell (the same stuff) and continue to add robos and warpgates to support my increasing income.
Usually i loose the first big battle, unless the Terran isnt that good, but the target was just to harm the Terran Force enough to turn a possible counter attack harmless and force him to restock his Army
With superior Production capabilitys, my own army reaches its old strenght much faster and ill start another suicidal attack. And on and on and on.
If im able to stay ahead in expos and dont become a sloppy victim of drop play, (spread observer and control pylons to scout for incoming drops) the Terran will slowly die.
Sometimes im able to add a bunch of Stargates in the Lategame (6-8) and surprise him with a tech switch into mass Voidrays... often a great way to seal the deal because after 2-3 battles against your mostly ground force, the Terran overcommit to anti ground which leaves him more vulnerable to the anyway ridicoulus strong mass voidray attack.
Anyway, there is nearly no way to end a PvT against a mech Terran early if the Terran knows what he`s doing and stay fokussed. Just prepare yourself for a very long Makro game, dont expect to clearly win every battle and on the long term Protoss regains domination.
My best and most entertaining games were against Terran... No other Protoss MU allows such intense Makro games far beyond a third base.
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what about a mothership in late game once you have map control lol
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On June 03 2010 02:22 FreeZEternal wrote:
what about a mothership in late game once you have map control lol
I've personally tried this. It's completely plausible to get out a mothership, because you will be able to keep a Terran in his base long enough to build one; immortals and blink stalkers are very good versus smaller numbers of tanks, so you can deter them from moving out until they have the appropriate numbers. You will almost certainly get a mothership's vortex off before it dies, they are pretty durable at 350 HP/ 350 shields, but in my experience it isn't enough to turn the tide of battle in your favour.
I will say however that I have only tried this twice, so more testing could be done to see if this is a viable option.
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jep, probably a viable alternative... a good vortex could end the match much earlyer
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On June 03 2010 02:22 FreeZEternal wrote:
what about a mothership in late game once you have map control lol
If the terran has a large viking mass (which terrans always do by late game), your mothership won't get close enough to do anything useful before it gets burned down and destroyed.
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No Terran will go for mass Vikings if you dont deliver a reason for it. If you dont add colossi or any kind of air units, Terrans usually favor Ravens and Medvacs.
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On June 03 2010 02:45 Voodo0 wrote:
No Terran will go for mass Vikings if you dont deliver a reason for it. If you dont add colossi or any kind of air units, Terrans usually favor Ravens and Medvacs.
The problem is that if the terran has tanks, the protoss needs some type of air support, particularly as the terran tank mass grows.
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I play T and use this strategy against most players (even against other T and sometimes Z)
I usually do a factory/starport tech lab swap at the start to get an early raven, then pump banshees if the P isn't making voids, or swap the starport+barracks (which has a reactor) and start pumping vikings to counter the voids.
It's a very powerful build and I win a lot v. P in upper gold (pre 13 - haven't played as much since 13-14 released)
The things I lose to are:
- early phoenix. if I only have 3-4 tanks, a couple of early phoenixes and some zealots will decimate me. Just lift up a couple of tanks, and let the zealots charge in to kill any other tanks (kill the tanks first of course, then marines)
- heavy zealots + charge. These eat up early tanks if you play them well. Keep the tank count low and you'll keep the T on the defensive. T needs to play this build aggressively or you can out-macro fairly easily. Usually the very first timing push decides the game ( for me it's usually when the first banshee is out, so I have a bunch of rines, 2 tanks, raven, banshee. I you can rush in w/ a few zealots and kill the tanks quick, it's tough for the T to stay on the offensive
- attacks when I'm moving. If I unseige and move out, and P hits just then (either w/ chargealots to hit the tanks quick, or stalker+blink to the tanks) it can be pretty bad. Not always a game loser if I have tanks building in my main, but can definitely swing the map control to P if that first army is wounded / taken out.
- cheese. someone mentioned a warp prism in the back of a base - while I don't recall this ever happening, it sounds like it would be pretty bad. Sometimes I'll lose to a T who does a good drop in my main to take out SCVs
Stuff that doesn't work:
- DT's - since I do early raven, I very rarely lose to any DT play, and usually it's a complete slaughter if they do this
- void rays. this build is really easy to switch to mass viking, and since it's marine heavy already, VRs usually fall pretty quick. even more so since the VR range reduction. It's just important for the T to scout, so maybe if you manage to hide your starports it could work very early
- immortals/collossus are usually not that great - I'll focus the immortals w/ the marines and they drop pretty quick. Collossus do ok, but they seem so expensive/slow it's tough to get a lot out w/ the terran camping at your front door.
- stalkers. PDD eats the stalker blasts, so even a mass stalker army is useless for the first few seconds of a fight if I drop a PDD, giving me a large advantage
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So ironic how siege tank counters immortals, the unit it's supposed to hard counter.
In PvT, if you go immortals, you lose.
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On June 03 2010 03:29 jstar wrote:
So ironic how siege tank counters immortals, the unit it's supposed to hard counter.
In PvT, if you go immortals, you lose.
Tanks don't really counter immortals until there are very large numbers of tanks. The real problem is the ghost. I kinda think that immortals should be tweaked such that they have 50 more shields and 50 less hp, just so that 1 EMP doesn't make them useless.
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Posted this in another thread about mech play versus Protoss. Special thanks to FreezEternal.
On June 03 2010 03:39 Salv wrote:After some extensive testing, the mothership is by far to most critical unit in breaking a terran tank ball. Someone posted about the mothership, and I had tested it before, but I wasn't impressed by the small vortex radius. This time i tried mass recall, and it works in a weird way. Remember back to SC:BW PvT, if you hit a recall, the blue wormhole animation would appear, and about two seconds later, the units near that wormhole would be teleported to the arbiter. If the arbiter died before the wormhole sucked the units through, nothing would happen. That's not how mass recall works. The second you hit mass recall, all your units targeted disappear, but it's not for two seconds later that they appear under the mothership. So it's possible for your units to be in limbo, where they are being recalled to the mothership, and they are no where on the map. What happens if the mothership dies while your units are still in that teleporting limbo? They will still appear where the mothership was, meaning that you can cast a mass recall just as your mothership is about to die and the units will warp in. I tried recalling immortals, stalkers, and zealots, as well as immortals, colossi, stalkers, and zealots. The first composition did a lot of damage, killing most of my opponents army, the second composition beat the entirety of the Terran army and a few immortals were left over. The actual testing was done with either: - 5 immortal, 18 stalkers, 7 zealot, 3 colossi, 1 mothership -VS- 16 siege tanks, 7 vikings, 19 hellions, 1 raven. The cost of these two armies are very, very similar, and if anything, the Protoss would have the economic advantage. The second composition was the same, except three more immortals instead of the 3 colossi.
There are a couple flaws from what I could see. Firstly, a ghost EMP would render this useless. Secondly, later on when the Terran has more vikings, the mothership wouldn't be able to survive as long before it has to use it's recall. In tested situations where I had to recall earlier than ideally expected, there was still significant damage done to the Terran, where they had about 20% of their army leftover. The ghost EMP and mass vikings at first would make me think this strategy couldn't work, but I don't know how many Terrans would have a ghost, or would be able to use their ghost quickly enough, but the mothership moves at a decent speed for a mass recall when you allow it to accelerate to it's maximum movement. Secondly, as long as you wait until the Terran isn't near a Xel'Naga watch tower, they would have to react near instantly to your mothership to catch it in an EMP. Actual in game testing will reveal whether or not that's going to happen often, but at that stage in the game, although losing a mothership sucks, it wouldn't be game-ending as you can simply chronoboost out another, and because the Terran turtled, you should have the economic advantage.
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On June 03 2010 03:29 jstar wrote:
So ironic how siege tank counters immortals, the unit it's supposed to hard counter.
In PvT, if you go immortals, you lose.
In my games, the marines+banshees are what counter the immortals -
lots of marines > a couple of immortals
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immortals in PvT are just for taking the first tank shots....if they reach the combat range of the terran ball they die instantly.... they just have to soak the first few shots.
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It seems that no matter what Protoss does, if the Terran does well placed EMPs, Immortals, Motherships, and High Templars will are be rendered useless and the push will fail.
I need to get some practice in against Ghost Mech. or watch some pros deal with it
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On June 03 2010 03:50 Kajean wrote:
It seems that no matter what Protoss does, if the Terran does well placed EMPs, Immortals, Motherships, and High Templars will are be rendered useless and the push will fail.
Read what I said about the mothership, I don't know if what you are saying is actually the case. If you engage when the Terran is away from their Xel'Naga tower, I think you stand a very good chance of getting a mass recall off. Especially because it works instantly, the second you use it, the units disappear and are in teleportation limbo.
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I found that the first timing push of 1-3 tanks and marines is pretty easy to take down with a mix of gateway units and phoenixes. After that it gets tough.
The only time I win PvT when they make a lot of siege tanks is when I do a fairly early timing push and contain them to one base. I found that doing a gas steal is definitely worth it when you expect this sort of build - delaying gas delays those first few tanks and may give you a slight upper hand.
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On June 03 2010 03:55 gdroxor wrote:
I found that the first timing push of 1-3 tanks and marines is pretty easy to take down with a mix of gateway units and phoenixes. After that it gets tough.
The only time I win PvT when they make a lot of siege tanks is when I do a fairly early timing push and contain them to one base. I found that doing a gas steal is definitely worth it when you expect this sort of build - delaying gas delays those first few tanks and may give you a slight upper hand.
The problem I have with early phoenixes is that I'm pretty certain you would have to have already been going phoenixes for the plan to work. You can't get scouting done on a Terran that obliterates all your probes before they can see anything while they can comfortably scan your base and see everything (assuming you didn't hide any tech somewhere). This makes it so you can't adapt to what they're doing and go phoenixes because you need to do it if you're going to try for an early attack, it seems like you just have to get lucky.
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On June 03 2010 04:08 Kajean wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2010 03:55 gdroxor wrote:
I found that the first timing push of 1-3 tanks and marines is pretty easy to take down with a mix of gateway units and phoenixes. After that it gets tough.
The only time I win PvT when they make a lot of siege tanks is when I do a fairly early timing push and contain them to one base. I found that doing a gas steal is definitely worth it when you expect this sort of build - delaying gas delays those first few tanks and may give you a slight upper hand. The problem I have with early phoenixes is that I'm pretty certain you would have to have already been going phoenixes for the plan to work. You can't get scouting done on a Terran that obliterates all your probes before they can see anything while they can comfortably scan your base and see everything (assuming you didn't hide any tech somewhere). This makes it so you can't adapt to what they're doing and go phoenixes because you need to do it if you're going to try for an early attack, it seems like you just have to get lucky.
True, but opening with 2 warpgates + phoenixes is very safe against most every terran opening. The first phoenix will give you a free and easy look at what the terran is doing and then you can adjust accordingly.
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On June 03 2010 04:41 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2010 04:08 Kajean wrote:On June 03 2010 03:55 gdroxor wrote:
I found that the first timing push of 1-3 tanks and marines is pretty easy to take down with a mix of gateway units and phoenixes. After that it gets tough.
The only time I win PvT when they make a lot of siege tanks is when I do a fairly early timing push and contain them to one base. I found that doing a gas steal is definitely worth it when you expect this sort of build - delaying gas delays those first few tanks and may give you a slight upper hand. The problem I have with early phoenixes is that I'm pretty certain you would have to have already been going phoenixes for the plan to work. You can't get scouting done on a Terran that obliterates all your probes before they can see anything while they can comfortably scan your base and see everything (assuming you didn't hide any tech somewhere). This makes it so you can't adapt to what they're doing and go phoenixes because you need to do it if you're going to try for an early attack, it seems like you just have to get lucky. True, but opening with 2 warpgates + phoenixes is very safe against most every terran opening. The first phoenix will give you a free and easy look at what the terran is doing and then you can adjust accordingly.
I've been scouting with a hallucinated phoenix, then I know whether I want phoenixes or voidrays
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Ok I have had great luck with use of the phoenix against terran siege. with just 4 or 5 flying around with your army its easy to swoop into the back and quickly lift up all his siege tanks well your ground army goes to work. the beauty of this is if you get them quickly enough you can grab his first tank before he pushes out of his base as well as harass his mineral line well you happily expand. If he happens to mass viking behind them them this could be a problem, if you let it happen, keep up on your scouting and try to snipe viking as they are coming out (your phoenix will be coming out before his viking) other then that play defensively and dont rush into a battle just because wait for good position.
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One build I was completely destroyed by, as a terran against protoss, was a Forge FE on blistering sands into 4gate Blink Stalkers. My opponent was so fast at getting mass stalkers and I chose to push him just as I saw his transfer of probes to destroy the FE and actually lost to over 15 stalkers blinking around my seiged tanks and then into my base through the backdoor. Don't know if its particularily viable in other maps, but it is certainly a possibility some toss players can try.
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go heavier zealot, i prefer zealot immortal =)
or mix in a couple of void rays to piss him off, but Thors will counter that xD
EDIT: Make sure zealot have charge =O
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I've been finding a lot of success w/ just a mid game push, either 4-gate, sometimes w/ a twilight council if he goes heavy marine or 3gate robo if he's more marauder heavy. A lot of terrans in diamond (I'm floating around 1800) seem to either push w/ heavy infantry or tech into tanks or banshees. So on maps where you can get around his choke/ramp via backdoors or blink it's usually gg if they are teching.
Otherwise you have your heavy gateway army to fend off the early infantry push. The main thing to watch closely is his army comp so you can adjust your comp accordingly b/c if you don't have the right mix of gateway units you can get steamrolled.
I have not found a fast stargate very effective anymore with all the infantry pushes I've been seeing lately, but a transition into stargate later on to supplement your heavy gateway army is still viable. I usually end up going this route if I see tanks and they hole up pretty good.
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On June 03 2010 05:57 Parodoxx wrote:
Ok I have had great luck with use of the phoenix against terran siege. with just 4 or 5 flying around with your army its easy to swoop into the back and quickly lift up all his siege tanks well your ground army goes to work. the beauty of this is if you get them quickly enough you can grab his first tank before he pushes out of his base as well as harass his mineral line well you happily expand. If he happens to mass viking behind them them this could be a problem, if you let it happen, keep up on your scouting and try to snipe viking as they are coming out (your phoenix will be coming out before his viking) other then that play defensively and dont rush into a battle just because wait for good position.
On June 03 2010 07:41 Phoenix_XY wrote:
One build I was completely destroyed by, as a terran against protoss, was a Forge FE on blistering sands into 4gate Blink Stalkers. My opponent was so fast at getting mass stalkers and I chose to push him just as I saw his transfer of probes to destroy the FE and actually lost to over 15 stalkers blinking around my seiged tanks and then into my base through the backdoor. Don't know if its particularily viable in other maps, but it is certainly a possibility some toss players can try.
Dealing with early siege tanks isn't a problem. A Protoss utilizing blink stalkers and immortals can hold off a Terran who goes a siege tank style of play well in to mid-game. The problem is when they get a certain amount of siege tanks (~15), which is impossible to break with a Protoss ground army. Compounding this problem is that vikings beat Protoss air as well, so once a Terran has a high enough supply, you cannot touch their army. Every combination of units has proved futile, and given sensor towers, it's very, very hard to flank, and even when you do, you only do moderately well.
It's not difficult to gain an economic advantage versus a turtling Terran, but it doesn't matter how many bases you take, because when they do push out, you can't touch their force, that is the issue. In BW, between stasis, zealot drops, and mine drags, you could damage the Terran army, even when maxed. It was difficult, and a 200/200 vs 200/200 battle would go in the Terrans favour, but you could whittle them down with good attacks and use your superior economy to keep throwing units at them until they broke. Combine that with recalls and counter-attacking expansions, and that was late-game PvT in a nutshell.
Now, mothership mass recall on top of the Terran ground force (or simply close to the tank force) results in a respectable amount of damage, you can take out 2/3 or 3/4 of a Terran's tank army this way. Vikings will take down a mothership quickly however, and a ghost EMP would make your attack futile. However, if you bring in the mothership after distracting the Terran, or you make sure they have no other vision when you move in (away from their sensor towers and xel'naga towers; AKA, they are attacking you), then your chances of getting off a decent mass recall goes up substantially, I have to do more testing to be sure, and I plan on doing that later, but just realize what the actual problem is. It's not that tanks are too hard to kill in small numbers, it's that their exponential power growth along with viking air domination makes late-game ridiculous for the Protoss.
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the problem seems to be that the 1/1/1 covers a ton of options (immorts most notably being shrugged off by marines), but isn't a demanding build. the lack of extensive minerals and zero gas on clean marine pumping from a reactor core makes plenty of resource room for tanks and vikings/medivac (if you don't see colossi). i'd suggest opening (i'm assuming this is an early/mid game problem) with an equally resource balanced build, meaning zealot/sentry/2-3 phoenixes (a few stalkers, but only as a support role), eventually moving into HT once after you get your expo up. reducing the marine clumps to even 3/4 marines makes dealing with the tanks ten times easier. I think issues of getting EMP'd by ghosts can indeed be stressful, but with some good scouting and map control, you should be able to keep your HT on the backline until needed. constantly scout with phoenixes and if you can take out a tank for even two phoenixes cost, it'll prevent the T from reaching that crucial 3/4 tank critical mass. once you get your econ rolling a balance of immortal/zealot (keeping the zealots there to meatshield the marines is important) and HT/phoenix or void ray, one of the ultimate critical mass units
i can also strongly vouche for blink stalkers against tanks if your build can accommodate it, though it is a ton of resources. obviously same for chargelots. i feel like you'd be spreading yourself thin by relying to heavily on gateway tech
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On June 03 2010 03:46 Voodo0 wrote:
immortals in PvT are just for taking the first tank shots....if they reach the combat range of the terran ball they die instantly.... they just have to soak the first few shots.
This is exactly why immortals are terrible. They are a waste of resources, range of 5, by the time they reach the death ball, they are dead before doing much. So yep, just meatshield for tank fire to allow zealots to engage.
SOO... why not just get hallucination, make fake immortals (hardened shield works!) and achieve the same result without the huge expenditure, allowing for a bigger or more diverse army. Nobody ever uses hallucination, yet it's such a good & cheap ability. FF or guardian shield is useless vs mech. Use that energy for fake meatshields instead.
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i think something to take into consideration is that mech terran gives you an abundance of timing windows (rarely do i see such a late macro game that is so even) to take advanatge of also terran mech is focal around siege tanks the main dps of the terran mech ball just like BW.
In BW, stasis, mine drags, zealot bombs, etc. all helped you whittle down their army. This isn't even half as effective in SC2. Try any combination of army against a maxed or near maxed Terran army. Not only will you lose, but you won't do any damage whatsoever, you will kill a few tanks if that. You would have to sacrifice a full army multiple, multiple times to finally weaken the Terran army to the point where you can kill it with a final assault. Even then, that would only work if you were able to fully take out their entire reinforcement process.
to comment on this there are not spider mines anymore the terran player doesnt have something to wall off his tank line which is what imo made mech such a nitemare in bw. i will conceed two things though the protoss doesnt have arbiters (and even if they did ghost having emp would nullify them) and reaver and zealot bombiing dont exist anymore. so we do have fewer tools.
now lets examine imo current zvp which can be similiar because the collossus is pretty much the same role as the siege tank if not better in many ways. once you have 5-6 collossus the protoss bll is almost unstoppable against zerg unti compositions (the corruptor is limited in the same way phoenixes are and neural parasite is a cute little trick but the infestor gets dropped way too fast) so zerg is like omg how am i supposed to win against a ball that terminates my army and the answer is mobility.zerg utilizes its mobility to achieve victory the same way you should be in pvt. if you harassed correctly the terran wont be able to get that deathball and it will stay manageable just keep the pressure. the toss are a race wth a lot of powerful single units and if you dont pressure you wont win (passive macro seems to favor the zerg and terran.
my final thought is the pvt matchup is too tight right now i agree with many people on the forum that terran can afford many more mistakes. i think a few tweaks could be made but a lot of the forum qq has been imo from people who think in starcraft 2 you build units and 1a. harrasment works if you have a replay where you harassed and contained (and didnt forget to macro) and he still lost i would like to see it because i fully believe that mobility> terran mech.
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Pheonix builds with decent micro absolutely RAPES tank builds. It makes me cry =[
I'm actually still trying to find a counter to pheonix that doesn't involve going back to the boring bioball.
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On June 03 2010 15:31 link0 wrote:
Pheonix builds with decent micro absolutely RAPES tank builds. It makes me cry =[
I'm actually still trying to find a counter to pheonix that doesn't involve going back to the boring bioball.
They only rape tank builds during the early and mid game. Once the terran gets a mass of vikings to support his tanks, the phoenixes aren't worth much.
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Terran just needs a bunch of marienes to protect his tank. Thanks to theire low price and the reactor, a critical number which destroys every phenix nearly instant, can be get fast. So the Tanks wont stay lifted long enough to come close enough with your Groundforce.
Still... to win this MU, a clear makro advantage is necessary. I go for a contain with Ninja Build, get as many expos as possible... and if the terran is finally able to break the contain, wear him down with a better economy and faster production capability.
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On June 04 2010 00:10 Voodo0 wrote:
Terran just needs a bunch of marienes to protect his tank. Thanks to theire low price and the reactor, a critical number which destroys every phenix nearly instant, can be get fast. So the Tanks wont stay lifted long enough to come close enough with your Groundforce.
Still... to win this MU, a clear makro advantage is necessary. I go for a contain with Ninja Build, get as many expos as possible... and if the terran is finally able to break the contain, wear him down with a better economy and faster production capability.
Marines actually don't do that well against phoenixes because AI autotargets ground units instead of the phoenixes. As long as the protoss coordinates his attack well, the phoenixes won't die. I've yet to see a terran player focus-fire my phoenixes. Even if he did, then he'd get chewed up by my zealot/sentry/stalker force.
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i would like to see a replay of a well executed phoenix push against a mariene tank terran. Maybe I just make mikro mistakes. A prime exampel could make phoenix viable for me again... if i play phoenix, mostly my groundforce wont deal enough dmg because of the high ground advantage of the terran... my zealots just need too long to get on the high ground, and only stalker and sentrys arent fast enough to kill the tanks before my phoenixes die. Probably this whole thing would work if the Terran trys to push out... but this seems very rare to me. Usually they dont leave their base/natural until phoenix play isnt viable anymore. So you talk about success with phoenix play with actually attacking a Terran in his Base? or just catch a push?
It would be terrific to know how to execute a strat which ends PvTs a little bit faster . ATM I dont have much problems winning the MU, but the games took nearly always 20-30 minutes. Sometimes fun, but even Terran players who are much badder then me took me this long to beat
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Sweden33719 Posts
On June 03 2010 15:31 link0 wrote:
Pheonix builds with decent micro absolutely RAPES tank builds. It makes me cry =[
I'm actually still trying to find a counter to pheonix that doesn't involve going back to the boring bioball.
Thors are pretty good against phoenix.
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On June 03 2010 08:20 Salv wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2010 05:57 Parodoxx wrote:
Ok I have had great luck with use of the phoenix against terran siege. with just 4 or 5 flying around with your army its easy to swoop into the back and quickly lift up all his siege tanks well your ground army goes to work. the beauty of this is if you get them quickly enough you can grab his first tank before he pushes out of his base as well as harass his mineral line well you happily expand. If he happens to mass viking behind them them this could be a problem, if you let it happen, keep up on your scouting and try to snipe viking as they are coming out (your phoenix will be coming out before his viking) other then that play defensively and dont rush into a battle just because wait for good position. Show nested quote +On June 03 2010 07:41 Phoenix_XY wrote:
One build I was completely destroyed by, as a terran against protoss, was a Forge FE on blistering sands into 4gate Blink Stalkers. My opponent was so fast at getting mass stalkers and I chose to push him just as I saw his transfer of probes to destroy the FE and actually lost to over 15 stalkers blinking around my seiged tanks and then into my base through the backdoor. Don't know if its particularily viable in other maps, but it is certainly a possibility some toss players can try. Dealing with early siege tanks isn't a problem. A Protoss utilizing blink stalkers and immortals can hold off a Terran who goes a siege tank style of play well in to mid-game. The problem is when they get a certain amount of siege tanks (~15), which is impossible to break with a Protoss ground army. Compounding this problem is that vikings beat Protoss air as well, so once a Terran has a high enough supply, you cannot touch their army. Every combination of units has proved futile, and given sensor towers, it's very, very hard to flank, and even when you do, you only do moderately well. It's not difficult to gain an economic advantage versus a turtling Terran, but it doesn't matter how many bases you take, because when they do push out, you can't touch their force, that is the issue. In BW, between stasis, zealot drops, and mine drags, you could damage the Terran army, even when maxed. It was difficult, and a 200/200 vs 200/200 battle would go in the Terrans favour, but you could whittle them down with good attacks and use your superior economy to keep throwing units at them until they broke. Combine that with recalls and counter-attacking expansions, and that was late-game PvT in a nutshell. Now, mothership mass recall on top of the Terran ground force (or simply close to the tank force) results in a respectable amount of damage, you can take out 2/3 or 3/4 of a Terran's tank army this way. Vikings will take down a mothership quickly however, and a ghost EMP would make your attack futile. However, if you bring in the mothership after distracting the Terran, or you make sure they have no other vision when you move in (away from their sensor towers and xel'naga towers; AKA, they are attacking you), then your chances of getting off a decent mass recall goes up substantially, I have to do more testing to be sure, and I plan on doing that later, but just realize what the actual problem is. It's not that tanks are too hard to kill in small numbers, it's that their exponential power growth along with viking air domination makes late-game ridiculous for the Protoss.
Just mass 3/3 void rays if you have outmacro'ed him and the majority of his army is in siege tanks (15 tanks = 45 food which is like 1/3 his army). I think people vastly overrate vikings, they get obliterated by charged void rays and pheonixes stand on equal footing with them.
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its definately viable to go for mass voidrays after outmacro him... but its too risky to go straight for voidrays after containing him. If he manages to break through before you got the needed critical mass of voidrays, the game is over.
Setup 6-8 Stargates, get the Upgrades, attack once more with a solid Groundforce... and then go for mass voidrays.
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While my answer doesn't directly answer your question, I've found that it helps a lot to push out when terran only has 1-3 tanks. My build usually rushes to obs and i have the observer sit outside their base to monitor movement/composition. After the first obs is built I usually just pump immortals from 1 robo and have about 3 warpgates to support. Expand if possible and usually push out simultaneously. Hit before they can siege. If you have to engage and they've already sieged, usually sentries + immortals can move around the army quickly enough to snipe the tanks. If they've been focus fired by mauraders to slow or something, my zealots can usually take out the bio support and i simply pull back, macro a bit, and repush. I've used this strategy consistanly and won almost every game. Haven't really encountered ghost/viking usage, but maybe I hit too early for that to work well? I use this at the platinum level and I'm ranked around 20-25ish in my division. The key thing is to just keep whittling away at them so they can never get enough units to push while you take an economic advantage. eventually, they'll have to expand to match you (and you can overrun them) or they'll keep producing units (in which you just stall them).
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I've had definite success going Void Ray with Phoenix for lift and anti air, supplied by a good ground force of stalkers/sentry with a sprinkle of zealot. I'll even sprinkle some dark templar into the mix because with such a great AA focused army, I can kill the ravens super quickly. I don't see any real counter to this strat, as I've had 100% win percentage since patch 12, I know that sounds like a really outlandish claim, but i don't even remember losing even bio ball terrans recently... It's definitely a strat worth trying out!
I'm uploading some video about this strat in a few hours or so, I'll probably blog about it as soon as it pops.
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On June 04 2010 03:24 Skyro wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2010 08:20 Salv wrote:On June 03 2010 05:57 Parodoxx wrote:
Ok I have had great luck with use of the phoenix against terran siege. with just 4 or 5 flying around with your army its easy to swoop into the back and quickly lift up all his siege tanks well your ground army goes to work. the beauty of this is if you get them quickly enough you can grab his first tank before he pushes out of his base as well as harass his mineral line well you happily expand. If he happens to mass viking behind them them this could be a problem, if you let it happen, keep up on your scouting and try to snipe viking as they are coming out (your phoenix will be coming out before his viking) other then that play defensively and dont rush into a battle just because wait for good position. On June 03 2010 07:41 Phoenix_XY wrote:
One build I was completely destroyed by, as a terran against protoss, was a Forge FE on blistering sands into 4gate Blink Stalkers. My opponent was so fast at getting mass stalkers and I chose to push him just as I saw his transfer of probes to destroy the FE and actually lost to over 15 stalkers blinking around my seiged tanks and then into my base through the backdoor. Don't know if its particularily viable in other maps, but it is certainly a possibility some toss players can try. Dealing with early siege tanks isn't a problem. A Protoss utilizing blink stalkers and immortals can hold off a Terran who goes a siege tank style of play well in to mid-game. The problem is when they get a certain amount of siege tanks (~15), which is impossible to break with a Protoss ground army. Compounding this problem is that vikings beat Protoss air as well, so once a Terran has a high enough supply, you cannot touch their army. Every combination of units has proved futile, and given sensor towers, it's very, very hard to flank, and even when you do, you only do moderately well. It's not difficult to gain an economic advantage versus a turtling Terran, but it doesn't matter how many bases you take, because when they do push out, you can't touch their force, that is the issue. In BW, between stasis, zealot drops, and mine drags, you could damage the Terran army, even when maxed. It was difficult, and a 200/200 vs 200/200 battle would go in the Terrans favour, but you could whittle them down with good attacks and use your superior economy to keep throwing units at them until they broke. Combine that with recalls and counter-attacking expansions, and that was late-game PvT in a nutshell. Now, mothership mass recall on top of the Terran ground force (or simply close to the tank force) results in a respectable amount of damage, you can take out 2/3 or 3/4 of a Terran's tank army this way. Vikings will take down a mothership quickly however, and a ghost EMP would make your attack futile. However, if you bring in the mothership after distracting the Terran, or you make sure they have no other vision when you move in (away from their sensor towers and xel'naga towers; AKA, they are attacking you), then your chances of getting off a decent mass recall goes up substantially, I have to do more testing to be sure, and I plan on doing that later, but just realize what the actual problem is. It's not that tanks are too hard to kill in small numbers, it's that their exponential power growth along with viking air domination makes late-game ridiculous for the Protoss. Just mass 3/3 void rays if you have outmacro'ed him and the majority of his army is in siege tanks (15 tanks = 45 food which is like 1/3 his army). I think people vastly overrate vikings, they get obliterated by charged void rays and pheonixes stand on equal footing with them.
Getting the void rays charged up before they engage the vikings isn't always easy though.
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On June 04 2010 05:09 Legendary- wrote:
I've had definite success going Void Ray with Phoenix for lift and anti air, supplied by a good ground force of stalkers/sentry with a sprinkle of zealot. I'll even sprinkle some dark templar into the mix because with such a great AA focused army, I can kill the ravens super quickly. I don't see any real counter to this strat, as I've had 100% win percentage since patch 12, I know that sounds like a really outlandish claim, but i don't even remember losing even bio ball terrans recently... It's definitely a strat worth trying out!
I'm uploading some video about this strat in a few hours or so, I'll probably blog about it as soon as it pops.
Looking forward to it! Reply here or post your blog link! Thank you!
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On June 04 2010 05:13 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2010 03:24 Skyro wrote:On June 03 2010 08:20 Salv wrote:On June 03 2010 05:57 Parodoxx wrote:
Ok I have had great luck with use of the phoenix against terran siege. with just 4 or 5 flying around with your army its easy to swoop into the back and quickly lift up all his siege tanks well your ground army goes to work. the beauty of this is if you get them quickly enough you can grab his first tank before he pushes out of his base as well as harass his mineral line well you happily expand. If he happens to mass viking behind them them this could be a problem, if you let it happen, keep up on your scouting and try to snipe viking as they are coming out (your phoenix will be coming out before his viking) other then that play defensively and dont rush into a battle just because wait for good position. On June 03 2010 07:41 Phoenix_XY wrote:
One build I was completely destroyed by, as a terran against protoss, was a Forge FE on blistering sands into 4gate Blink Stalkers. My opponent was so fast at getting mass stalkers and I chose to push him just as I saw his transfer of probes to destroy the FE and actually lost to over 15 stalkers blinking around my seiged tanks and then into my base through the backdoor. Don't know if its particularily viable in other maps, but it is certainly a possibility some toss players can try. Dealing with early siege tanks isn't a problem. A Protoss utilizing blink stalkers and immortals can hold off a Terran who goes a siege tank style of play well in to mid-game. The problem is when they get a certain amount of siege tanks (~15), which is impossible to break with a Protoss ground army. Compounding this problem is that vikings beat Protoss air as well, so once a Terran has a high enough supply, you cannot touch their army. Every combination of units has proved futile, and given sensor towers, it's very, very hard to flank, and even when you do, you only do moderately well. It's not difficult to gain an economic advantage versus a turtling Terran, but it doesn't matter how many bases you take, because when they do push out, you can't touch their force, that is the issue. In BW, between stasis, zealot drops, and mine drags, you could damage the Terran army, even when maxed. It was difficult, and a 200/200 vs 200/200 battle would go in the Terrans favour, but you could whittle them down with good attacks and use your superior economy to keep throwing units at them until they broke. Combine that with recalls and counter-attacking expansions, and that was late-game PvT in a nutshell. Now, mothership mass recall on top of the Terran ground force (or simply close to the tank force) results in a respectable amount of damage, you can take out 2/3 or 3/4 of a Terran's tank army this way. Vikings will take down a mothership quickly however, and a ghost EMP would make your attack futile. However, if you bring in the mothership after distracting the Terran, or you make sure they have no other vision when you move in (away from their sensor towers and xel'naga towers; AKA, they are attacking you), then your chances of getting off a decent mass recall goes up substantially, I have to do more testing to be sure, and I plan on doing that later, but just realize what the actual problem is. It's not that tanks are too hard to kill in small numbers, it's that their exponential power growth along with viking air domination makes late-game ridiculous for the Protoss. Just mass 3/3 void rays if you have outmacro'ed him and the majority of his army is in siege tanks (15 tanks = 45 food which is like 1/3 his army). I think people vastly overrate vikings, they get obliterated by charged void rays and pheonixes stand on equal footing with them. Getting the void rays charged up before they engage the vikings isn't always easy though.
I've never actually had to pre-charge my void rays to engage vikings b/c they simply wouldn't have enough vikings due to their large ground army if you have him contained and out macro'ed. Usually you can find some buildings or rocks on the edge of their bases to just charge up on away from the vikings and by the time they get to your void rays they'll be charged. Or if you want to be really fancy hallucinate a bunch of extra void rays/phx's and use those to charge up and tank viking damage for you. But really all that is probably unnecessary.
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Here is PvT play, where Protoss wins.
The game started with DT harass while expanding. Then the idea was to wait until my opponent ran out of minerals at his main (20 min mark). After Terran transered 30+ SCVs to his new main I attacked with splash dmg to kill them all and possibly expansion itself. In the meantime I made a transition to Void Rays. Luckily, with my economy unharmed I fended off the Terran and started preparations for final battle.
To sum up if opponent have gone Marines instead of Hellions I would have probably lost last battle and the game itself at that point. 20 zealots raging into 18 tanks just vanished into thin air.
Before I ran into the tanks I turned Warp Gates back into Gateways and just queued units while other die. Turned out to be a good idea.
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So now that Siege tank got the nerf bat (hard)...
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On June 04 2010 03:24 Skyro wrote:
Just mass 3/3 void rays if you have outmacro'ed him and the majority of his army is in siege tanks (15 tanks = 45 food which is like 1/3 his army). I think people vastly overrate vikings, they get obliterated by charged void rays and pheonixes stand on equal footing with them.
That isn't going to work. Even fully charged +1 void rays lose to vikings of equal resource numbers. If you're going to get 3/3 air, you might as well make carriers.
On June 04 2010 11:49 Asunder wrote:
So now that Siege tank got the nerf bat (hard)...
A 17% damage reduction isn't hard. Siege tanks will still be useful, it just will make dealing with them a little bit easier.
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Hey i'm a toss player mid level diamond and i came up against a tanking terran the other day, whilst i was attempting a push with 2 immortals, i decided to back out and double expand rather than suicide into his tanks. I then went double robo and started pumping Collosi and zealots with a dash of stalkers for Anti-Air. When he moved out to take his third i blinked stalkers and charged zealots up whilst moving up with the Col, it was pretty close but i managed to take his army and destroy his CC and clean up from there.
Yeah a bit of waffle baisically i out expanded him and attacked when he was vunerable simple stuff ^^
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On June 02 2010 06:17 JOmega wrote:Thanks for that idea! I will try that! But usually they are lined up, fairly separated on along a cliff, or they are spread throughout the base to defend critical spots...
Dont attack a seiged terran base. Never (untill you learn the game and know when it is possible).
On June 04 2010 09:49 Nah wrote:
the idea was to wait until my opponent ran out of minerals at his main (20 min mark). After Terran transered 30+ SCVs to his new main I attacked with splash dmg to kill them all and possibly expansion itself.
You must be kidding.
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On June 04 2010 21:59 Cheerio wrote:
You must be kidding.
Why? Just watch the replay.
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On June 04 2010 12:36 Salv wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2010 03:24 Skyro wrote:
Just mass 3/3 void rays if you have outmacro'ed him and the majority of his army is in siege tanks (15 tanks = 45 food which is like 1/3 his army). I think people vastly overrate vikings, they get obliterated by charged void rays and pheonixes stand on equal footing with them. That isn't going to work. Even fully charged +1 void rays lose to vikings of equal resource numbers. If you're going to get 3/3 air, you might as well make carriers. Show nested quote +On June 04 2010 11:49 Asunder wrote:
So now that Siege tank got the nerf bat (hard)... A 17% damage reduction isn't hard. Siege tanks will still be useful, it just will make dealing with them a little bit easier.
Read the post I was responding to. To clarify, he was asking what to do vs bust through a turtling terran who you had outmacro'ed/contained and had a large army of tanks. Thus in that situation due to his large army of ground forces they would indeed not have an equal resource numbers of vikings.
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On June 05 2010 05:08 Skyro wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2010 12:36 Salv wrote:On June 04 2010 03:24 Skyro wrote:
Just mass 3/3 void rays if you have outmacro'ed him and the majority of his army is in siege tanks (15 tanks = 45 food which is like 1/3 his army). I think people vastly overrate vikings, they get obliterated by charged void rays and pheonixes stand on equal footing with them. That isn't going to work. Even fully charged +1 void rays lose to vikings of equal resource numbers. If you're going to get 3/3 air, you might as well make carriers. On June 04 2010 11:49 Asunder wrote:
So now that Siege tank got the nerf bat (hard)... A 17% damage reduction isn't hard. Siege tanks will still be useful, it just will make dealing with them a little bit easier. Read the post I was responding to. To clarify, he was asking what to do vs bust through a turtling terran who you had outmacro'ed/contained and had a large army of tanks. Thus in that situation due to his large army of ground forces they would indeed not have an equal resource numbers of vikings.
what if the terran spends minerals on getting some missile turrets as well beside the tanks to completely wreck your void rays??
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On June 05 2010 10:38 darkkinz wrote:Show nested quote +On June 05 2010 05:08 Skyro wrote:On June 04 2010 12:36 Salv wrote:On June 04 2010 03:24 Skyro wrote:
Just mass 3/3 void rays if you have outmacro'ed him and the majority of his army is in siege tanks (15 tanks = 45 food which is like 1/3 his army). I think people vastly overrate vikings, they get obliterated by charged void rays and pheonixes stand on equal footing with them. That isn't going to work. Even fully charged +1 void rays lose to vikings of equal resource numbers. If you're going to get 3/3 air, you might as well make carriers. On June 04 2010 11:49 Asunder wrote:
So now that Siege tank got the nerf bat (hard)... A 17% damage reduction isn't hard. Siege tanks will still be useful, it just will make dealing with them a little bit easier. Read the post I was responding to. To clarify, he was asking what to do vs bust through a turtling terran who you had outmacro'ed/contained and had a large army of tanks. Thus in that situation due to his large army of ground forces they would indeed not have an equal resource numbers of vikings. what if the terran spends minerals on getting some missile turrets as well beside the tanks to completely wreck your void rays??
With turrets it's easier to come in w/ charged void rays, if needed. Mass charged void rays melt turrets nearly instantly. It's similar to the whole scenario of how to break a turtling terran on an island expo. The answer is mass void rays. You can even hallucinate some void rays to tank damage if you so desire.
But again, this scenario is so rare (where you have complete map control and T is stuck in 1 mining base) in a game-to-game basis. This is basically only comes up when the T has lost but just chooses to drag the game on to annoy you.
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On June 02 2010 05:46 JOmega wrote:
First: I'm bad. I'm in gold league.
Now to my question, I find it hard to attack a Terran opponent that has a lot of siege tanks (5+) sieged everywhere, especially on maps that have the cliff/high-ground advantage.
When I see this I have tried to get void rays (is this proper?) because they are the only you that can hard counter them, but I find them not cost-effective against marines (which the Terran player will usually pump out as well). Stims and medivacs really hurt the expensive void rays, and I cannot get my ground force in effectively because of the siege tanks. Collosi do not out-range a sieged tank, right (with the extended thermal lance upgrade)?
Recently, as soon as I see more than 3 tanks I will research Zealot charge and I have found them MUCH more effective not only in terms of damage, but also in terms of resources. I will try to proxy them somewhere close to the enemy, or in a corner behind their base so that I can kill a few tanks before the enemy's main army comes.
Is this the right choice? Or am I supposed to get better with void rays?
Thank you!
I've made panic rays when I've gone into a terrans base and seen 5+ siege tanks as well, it won't work.
I played a game today where the terran had about 9 siege tanks and some marines/marauders. I used a stalker heavy army (about 20) with 4 lancer colossi and 2 immortals and I steamrolled the terran.
Maybe try that?
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also try to shift attack with your immortals
i think an immortal needs 3 shots for a tank so if u have like 3 then u can one hit them
requires of course that u can pass that was to them or if they are on a cliff just use an obs and chargelots are a must have in any PvT that takes longer than 15-17 mins
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Here's the build I pretty much always go against terran if they're doing the 1-1-1 build that seems to be getting quite popular (racks with reactor, fact for siege tanks, port for ravens), or just any build that involves a lot of tanks.
I did this during my placement matches against someone in gold, so there was somewhat of a skill differential, but it's pretty much how it goes.
The 'NonY' 2 gate stargate build.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/45875/Starc...build.SC2Replay
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Vatican City State431 Posts
The protoss has so many options its not even funny! For the Terran to make mass tanks it requires huge amount of time and resources especially in SC2! Just expand all over the map in the meanwhile 
BTW: Immortalls are specially designed to counter tanks.
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On June 02 2010 14:29 Salv wrote:
So what's the problem? The problem is if you opponent makes siege tanks, hellions, and vikings, you're going to in a lot of trouble. For the above strategy to work, you have to add a stargate and pump phoenix from the beginning of the game, once you know he is doing a siege tank build. If you try this versus siege tank, hellion, and vikings, it will fail really bad. The problem is that colossi and your regular army can't tear through hellions quick enough. Colossi don't hit as many because hellions are bigger, and they have more HP. You can move in with phoenix's and lift tanks, but you won't be able to get through the rest of his army in time before the tanks land, and when they do, your army is going to get smashed.
Well, with no rines on the field you can just macro up and move in with the phoenixes or add some voidrays? Attacking a sieged up area with your groundforce is obviously plain stupidity.
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I've had some troubles vs this build aswell but have started to get phoenixes and mothership lately, seem to be working really well.
Phoenix harrass is really good but most importantly during "the big" engage which will happen eventually, you just lift tanks to prevent dmg onto your own army.
Mothership I don't know why but I won lately vs tanks when i got it and lost when I didn't, however im in gold but this is what have been working for me.
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Solid macro toss should beat any terran player, every time. No exceptions.
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308 Posts
On June 06 2010 03:40 HalfAmazing wrote:
Solid macro toss should beat any terran player, every time. No exceptions.
In other words, play zerg-like against terran tanks using protoss. It really is a different mindset, which is why it's so psychologically different.
Basically, as toss, your usually trained to be like "yeaaa, this is my toss army, it kills everythingthat tries to touch you", so you kill zerg with collosus, high templars, and everything vaporizes, same thing with toss and collosus, and bioballs with high templars. And of course, you get used to this "manly feeling" that your army composition just owns everything.
Of course, when you don't get this feeling, you usually feel like your doing something wrong as toss. (If your a zerg player, your usually used to your units getting wiped out ... you just make new ones) However, against a turtle terran, you just out macro and send in swarms and swarms of units, whether itd be mass void rays, soem high templars etc. anything you can, and eventually you'll whittle terran down.
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On June 06 2010 03:57 ScythedBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2010 03:40 HalfAmazing wrote:
Solid macro toss should beat any terran player, every time. No exceptions. In other words, play zerg-like against terran tanks using protoss. It really is a different mindset, which is why it's so psychologically different. Basically, as toss, your usually trained to be like "yeaaa, this is my toss army, it kills everythingthat tries to touch you", so you kill zerg with collosus, high templars, and everything vaporizes, same thing with toss and collosus, and bioballs with high templars. And of course, you get used to this "manly feeling" that your army composition just owns everything. Of course, when you don't get this feeling, you usually feel like your doing something wrong as toss. (If your a zerg player, your usually used to your units getting wiped out ... you just make new ones) However, against a turtle terran, you just out macro and send in swarms and swarms of units, whether itd be mass void rays, soem high templars etc. anything you can, and eventually you'll whittle terran down.
This is so true, but I want to be MANtoss!! I need a way to be the MANtoss in SC1 again!!
I used to get zealot and charge directly to the tanks, bringing in the spider mines, but now...even dropping zealot bomb is not effective anymore. I guess we need to find a way to utilize immortals ma be?
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This is so true, but I want to be MANtoss!! I need a way to be the MANtoss in SC1 again!!
I used to get zealot and charge directly to the tanks, bringing in the spider mines, but now...even dropping zealot bomb is not effective anymore. I guess we need to find a way to utilize immortals ma be?
i dont think starcraft 1 you could mantoss either if im not mistaken. play the way muta ling zerg play against toss which means be obnoxious. imo dt openings should be standrad against T (i've watched some pros and day 9 do this and it allows you to begin the game with a macro advantage if not outright win) dt's are a nitemare for the terran to deal with and he cant push out until he gets a raven and in this time frame you have picked up an extra base putting you ahead. if they go 1/1/1 you should be 20-30 food ahead by the time he moves out. after this i love to do things like storm drops or phoenix play. so consider this:
-your already one base ahead
-you have the tech for leg speed
-your dt's can do dmg on top of the contain
-your next tech can be a templar archives if he went bioball
-he has used fewer mules cuz of scans
-phoenix transition is rather painless as well (for dealing with tanks)
harrasment from prisms dt's phoenixes and voidrays will usually get the terran agitated and increase the chances he will make a mistake.
lastly some pointers
-if the terran ball is in the ravine and his tanks are on high ground (i.e the natural at lost temple) snipe with an immortal and then retreat (u have an observe so sight works)
-a three base terran will have to spread his units out to effectively defend so abuse the fact there wont be a "ball"
-if he utilizes emps just retreat (ur shields will recharge faster than their energy)
-ur the protoss u get to choose when to engage 90% of the time
-spend money...
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It all comes down to scouting at every minute of the game. I'm a protoss player and my usual Terran play is.
-Quick stalker.
-Put a probe outside his base (incase he is early attacking)
-Tech to warpgate as quick as possible (ignore building units except maybe zealots). Also make sure you have 3 gates + a tech building...any of the three will be fine depending on what you scout....if its a tech id go robo...if its going to be a straight marine push get fastlots quick.
Get hallucination and fly a fake phoenix over his base to see what build he is going. (if I know already he is getting marauders i usually get a robo and send a observer over instead of rushing to hallucination)
-If he is going mass air gotta get phoenixes + stalkers with blink fast.
-If he is going mech (really common now) with just marines + tanks just get fastlots with phenoix or fastlots with void (make sure you snipe the tanks)
-If he is going thors (i hardly see this) just go immortals
-If he is going MMM get psi storm as quick as possible.
The most important upgrade i think to much of terran ground builds is chargelots. It is much better than blink (unless you scout and see holes in their defense...this can often be exploited and you can use your fake phoenix to blink up into his base). This is almost the opposite of zerg play which blink is really really good if microed correctly (unless he is going hydra than i love chargelots)
When I say get chargelots you should prob have a few stalkers in the mix and sentries. As gas frees up.
Also i think immortals are overrated against a mech build...their range is so small trying to snipe a tank is really hard for them....so id rather have a void ray in the mix than them. In early game they are really important against marauder rushes though.
Oh and on some games i like to DT rush and expand while he is annoyed....(leave one outside his base while the other one annoys him incase he has energy for one scan)...no terran i know techs to missile turrets...although some now a days get quick ravens.
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I am in my first season in the meagre Silver League so this may not work against higher division players but I found it to work most of the time for pvts where they go for marine siege tank mass with a few marauders.
I go 4-gate and if I see that I wont break up the ramp I immediately macro and go for 2nd expansions while trying to contain him. As soon as my second has enough probes and double gas I add four more gates and start sending out a warp prism with 4 stalkers. Keep an obs on his siege and where hes defending and sneak into his main, warp out 8 zealots and drop the stalkers and go for the mineral line or tech. He usually responds with moving a lot of his MM troops out but if thats not enough troops pulled, pick up 2 stalkers in the prism and go to his second. By now the warpgate timer has cooled down and spam more zealots here. He will be forced to move away from his siege tanks and maybe even unsiege them. My main force is waiting just outside range of tanks and vision and as soon as the front is mainly siege tanks I go for the kill sending out 2 or 3 zealots a little early with charge.
Even if this strategy fails to brake him it can really hurt the mineral line and allow protoss to expand and gain map control
User was warned for this post
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On June 04 2010 01:19 Liquid`Jinro wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2010 15:31 link0 wrote:
Pheonix builds with decent micro absolutely RAPES tank builds. It makes me cry =[
I'm actually still trying to find a counter to pheonix that doesn't involve going back to the boring bioball. Thors are pretty good against phoenix.
I have been leaning towards the phoenix/colossus composition in pvt, becuase the zealot archon fad is frankly the stupidest stuff ever. A terran was complaining about it, and I told him to build a thor; he insisted that it was just a bad unit and he couldn't make it.
I'm like...
If I have like 20+ phoenix, I think you can get a damn thor.
Please, terrans, if you see a phoenix heavy compositon just get some thors and play slow. You cannot beat a maxed colossus phoenix with pure bio/viking, it just won't happen. Sorry.
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On September 24 2011 15:54 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2010 01:19 Liquid`Jinro wrote:On June 03 2010 15:31 link0 wrote:
Pheonix builds with decent micro absolutely RAPES tank builds. It makes me cry =[
I'm actually still trying to find a counter to pheonix that doesn't involve going back to the boring bioball. Thors are pretty good against phoenix. I have been leaning towards the phoenix/colossus composition in pvt, becuase the zealot archon fad is frankly the stupidest stuff ever. A terran was complaining about it, and I told him to build a thor; he insisted that it was just a bad unit and he couldn't make it. I'm like... If I have like 20+ phoenix, I think you can get a damn thor. Please, terrans, if you see a phoenix heavy compositon just get some thors and play slow. You cannot beat a maxed colossus phoenix with pure bio/viking, it just won't happen. Sorry.
14 vikings focus firing the collosus + emp. I dont care if you have 20 phoenix, just means your ground force is gonna melt to marauders. The vikings will take out at least 3 collosus.
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^ What he said. Nightend vs Boxer in TSL 3 ro32 is a good example of this. Nightend did same army comp as did boxer in all 3 games, and the difference was that in one game boxer missed the emps...
Or at least afaik.
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On September 24 2011 16:08 Alpino wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2011 15:54 sam!zdat wrote:On June 04 2010 01:19 Liquid`Jinro wrote:On June 03 2010 15:31 link0 wrote:
Pheonix builds with decent micro absolutely RAPES tank builds. It makes me cry =[
I'm actually still trying to find a counter to pheonix that doesn't involve going back to the boring bioball. Thors are pretty good against phoenix. I have been leaning towards the phoenix/colossus composition in pvt, becuase the zealot archon fad is frankly the stupidest stuff ever. A terran was complaining about it, and I told him to build a thor; he insisted that it was just a bad unit and he couldn't make it. I'm like... If I have like 20+ phoenix, I think you can get a damn thor. Please, terrans, if you see a phoenix heavy compositon just get some thors and play slow. You cannot beat a maxed colossus phoenix with pure bio/viking, it just won't happen. Sorry. 14 vikings focus firing the collosus + emp. I dont care if you have 20 phoenix, just means your ground force is gonna melt to marauders. The vikings will take out at least 3 collosus.
This hasn't been my experience. Often the battle will end with both of you having nothing on the ground, but toss keeps his phoenix. Phoenix means medivacs cannot escape, and you can pick off any retreating bio. You can then cut phoenix and go double robo and get a lot of zealot to tank.
You want to build very few stalker and make sure you get 1/1 on your air.
EDIT: the reason I like this build is that I find it is much more resilient to emp.
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EPT
