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I am a diamond Protoss player. I am fairly confident with my play against Protoss and Zerg, but Terran is by far my worst match up. I must have something like a 25% win rate against them... it's not funny any more. I have struggled against them since the beginning, just assuming that everyone was having the same trouble as I was, but apparently that is not true. I have lately been watching streams, reading strategies, watching all my replays, etc etc, but there are still aspects I cannot seem to manage. I was hoping to get some advice from Terran players themselves. Some Protoss somewhere seem to be beating Terran, so when you Terrans get beat, what is it that beats you?
1. Firstly, when do I expand? I have gotten into the habit of keeping a close eye on my Protoss opponents' natural, and take action when they expand. Terran players, when are Protoss safe to expand against you, and when is it a good idea to stay on one base?
2. Late game MM&M. I have a very solid build against early-mid game MM&M and Ghosts. I get +1armor, Chargelots and GS Sentries. It dominates small amounts of MM&M, but Zealots cannot really break through a Terran wall, which makes it mostly a defensive build. Once it gets into the late game and the MM&M hits critical mass, Zealots are useless again. Should I switch to Stalkers to supplement my HT? Or would Stalkers get obliterated by Marauders too easily? Once they mix in a few tanks, there is almost nothing I can do to fight it.
3. Tanks. Ugh, total nightmare here. The Terran player sits in his main/natural and holds it indefinitely with Tanks and Marines. I cannot assault a base with Tanks, because he spreads out his Tanks and uses Marines with Stim to take out Immortals and Void Rays. He moves out when he has about 10+ tanks, and leapfrogs them towards my base. On a map like Desert Oasis, I have taken to Blinking into his base and forcing him to spread out his troops, and stay defending until he is out of resources. But on a map like Steppes of War, he defends his natural, and there is no way into his main. I have tried out-expanding him, but he moves out relatively quickly and then I am stuck with very few troops. HT can't get near enough to storm, and his Marines stick close enough to his tanks to prevent Cols from hitting them. If I cannot attack his base, and I cannot attack his army, how am I supposed to manage? How do Protoss players beat this push and build up? He has a reactor and a wall-off So I can't assault the main early. He gets a tank very quickly, so any assault is cleared easily. He leapfrogs his assault pretty slowly, so there is never a time when his tanks are unseiged, clumped, or particularly vulnerable. Any tips for this situation?
4. Void Rays. I read fairly often that I should get Void Rays to force the Terran to build a good amount of Marines, but with an early stim upgrade, Void Rays melt to as little as four Marines. I cannot keep these things alive for the life of me.
Any help I can get from Terran players would help IMMENSELY. Any answers to these questions? Any other hints or tips for beating Terran?
Thanks in advance.
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1. i think, when you have enough to defend against an early push. especially if you push out with a few units and are keeping terran in his base, thats a prime time to expand.
2. colossus! whenever i see a colossus going terran bio, i cry a little inside, and pray that i already have a few vikings ready. if you can keep the vikings at bay (i know its hard with the range) with stalkers and such, the colossus will destroy things. i've seen my friend's 2 colossi destroy 4 dropships full of marines without a loss.
3. gl hf. see if you can blink stalkers up to the tanks - they'll probably die, but so will the tanks. phoenix lifting the tanks work as well. collosus can take out a few tanks if there are distractions for the tanks to shoot at. of course, these are all situational, and its hard to beat...thats why i like tanks =]
4. you don't really have to kill anything, just snipe a depot here and there if you can. just their presence forces multiple marines (if you can get them to waste stims without a medivac, you're golden), turrets, and a "im staying right here in my base for a while" attitude. expand, tech, do something. you don't have to kill anything with the void rays.
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I have exactly the same problem. Mid-late game a mass Marauder Medivac army with stim destroys anything I throw at it, immortals get focus fired, gateway unit melt, a few vikings completely defeat any attempts at collosi. I have a practice partner that goes straight bio every game and we've played ~40 games the last 2 days, I didn't win 1. I literally tried every unit the protoss has, I simply don't know how to deal with that lategame army on equal ground. If I push early I can do enough damage to outmacro it, but I see no way to win a game where you are both even when the T goes with that sort of composition.
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I'm only a gold level protoss so my tactics may not apply to your game, but I'm fairly succesful against terran, especially tank builds.
In my opinion, the key to defeating a tank build is scouting.
I always make sure I know exactly where the terran army bulk is (observers are so awesome). A tank centred build is strong, but incredibly immobile. I always try to ambush it while on the move with a healthy collosus/immortal/chargelot mix, which in my games is very effective. This way, even if the terran tries to siege his tanks, half of them will be dead by the time the transition into siege mode is completed.
I NEVER try to break a 2-base wallin, I just take full mapcontrol and mass up, and eventually the terran will be forced to move out to take new bases, which is when you should strike.
I don't know if this works in Diamond, but I hope it helps you out a bit.
Cheers.
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On July 14 2010 02:12 n3mo wrote:
4. you don't really have to kill anything, just snipe a depot here and there if you can. just their presence forces multiple marines (if you can get them to waste stims without a medivac, you're golden), turrets, and a "im staying right here in my base for a while" attitude. expand, tech, do something. you don't have to kill anything with the void rays.
With that in mind I wonder if people will eventually go hallucination instead of starport. Poking in with a fake VR and retreating immediately as if you were waiting for more VRs before attacking might accomplish the same goal faster and for less ressources.
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I tried everything I could with storm, etc. and this is really damn hard to counter bio. I have the feeling that to beat that ball you need to be a micro monster. So before you reach top top diamond, you're gonna be owned by noobies who a-move (no hate, just what I see with my fellow protoss - even with a huge gap of skill, it's still insanely hard).
However, when you have the very good micro, bio seems not weak but far less frightening. That's also why we don't see it too often at pro level. I guess it's maybe because it doesn't use your micro to its best and it relies more in the P's hands...
That's why I am now trying out Void rays. At least, if the T is not very skilled, he panicks to harass, overreact, etc. so it's not as frustrating as going chargelots/storms and getting owned by a player who gets supply blocked 10 times and has 3k minerals in bank...
Check out xDaunt post in one of the latest similar thread, he gives good advices.
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BIO is not hard to counter as a protoss. All you need is good HT postiong and a decent amount of them.
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On July 14 2010 02:28 Tar-Moridin wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I'm only a gold level protoss so my tactics may not apply to your game, but I'm fairly succesful against terran, especially tank builds.
In my opinion, the key to defeating a tank build is scouting.
I always make sure I know exactly where the terran army bulk is (observers are so awesome). A tank centred build is strong, but incredibly immobile. I always try to ambush it while on the move with a healthy collosus/immortal/chargelot mix, which in my games is very effective. This way, even if the terran tries to siege his tanks, half of them will be dead by the time the transition into siege mode is completed.
I NEVER try to break a 2-base wallin, I just take full mapcontrol and mass up, and eventually the terran will be forced to move out to take new bases, which is when you should strike.
I don't know if this works in Diamond, but I hope it helps you out a bit.
Cheers. [/B]
Tanks aren't the problem, it's the bio ball that is in my experience. I have little trouble dealing with tank slow pushes (in fact these are the only games I win against that practice partner I was talking about). A bio army with medics and ghosts (similar to Brat_OK's play, you all know what I mean  ) is very difficult to face head on, and not only that but 2 medivacs full of stim marauders can snipe a nexus in seconds (I rage a lot at this).
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On July 14 2010 02:28 Back wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2010 02:12 n3mo wrote:
4. you don't really have to kill anything, just snipe a depot here and there if you can. just their presence forces multiple marines (if you can get them to waste stims without a medivac, you're golden), turrets, and a "im staying right here in my base for a while" attitude. expand, tech, do something. you don't have to kill anything with the void rays. With that in mind I wonder if people will eventually go hallucination instead of starport. Poking in with a fake VR and retreating immediately as if you were waiting for more VRs before attacking might accomplish the same goal faster and for less ressources.
...you're evil D=
i think i will now just play with hit point bars on so i see that no damage is being done...
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On July 14 2010 02:36 TheWarbler wrote:
BIO is not hard to counter as a protoss. All you need is good HT postiong and a decent amount of them.
No. It's the worst nightmare ever. Everything is goind really fast, you have to concentrate a lot and be very precise to snipe ghosts in the middle of the ball. Too late ? Woops. Emped. Everything is so fast with stim and if for the terran this is attack move + emp, the protoss player has lot more stuff to deal with.
Oh, and yeah... for the P to macro he has to look away from the battle.
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1. Pretty much what n3mo said.. if your army is bigger than his he cant kill you. If you are attacking his base / containing him then he cant kill your base since hes stuck in his.
2. I think.. chargelots+high templar is never bad no matter how many marine/marauders they have.. They charge in tanking all the damage while your high templar owns them all.. has worked everytime for me. If its not working for you then maybe your macro is not right since you probably dont have a big enough army.. or maybe your not upgrading at forge (oh yeah sentries guardian shield helps and forcefields.)
3. If terran is turtling then just expand everywhere..
4. like n3mo said.. although I like getting 3 void rays and charging on something then owning loads of marines lol.
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I'm a former diamond T player, I switched to P for phase 2 and am in diamond with over a 90% win ratio vs terran using a couple of builds.
Whitera did a similar build against TLO a couple days ago (or maybe it was against cloud?), but whitera was lagging too much to micro his void rays and lost.
The reason this build works is that you are abusing the mobility, range and shield regen of very early stalkers, void rays, and warp gates to make it very difficult for the terran to attack you or expand, allowing you to expand and gain a significant economic advantage. It also makes for a natural, easy progression to zealot/templar for the mid game, and tends to force the T to get an anti-armored and anti-air mid-game composition, making your zealot/templar even stronger. There is also ample opportunity to obtain an economic advantage from expanding earlier.
The key is you have to put constant, non-stop pressure on the T starting at about the 4:30 point, and only engage in a full battle on your own terms.
There are a few ways to do this, but personally I like to get 2 gateways and 2 fast stalkers, both out usually by around the 3:55 to 4:00 mark. Then, you can push up their ramp and take pot shots at the marines/marauder, or their wall if they pull their troops back, and then just fall back and let your shields recharge; rinse and repeat. The key is to try to hurt as many soldiers as possible, since medivacs are a long way off, and to damage the wall so you can snipe scvs if he goes to repair
Keep reinforcing with more stalkers and do more harass, staying on 2 gateways. Fast tech to void ray (i usually do when I have between 2 and 4 stalkers). The void rays tend to start popping when I have about 6 or 7 stalkers, and 3 or 4 warp gates. The void rays provide vision of the ramp for your stalkers, and can shoot the SD's and barracks that are walling the ramp. Its soooooo easy to micro your void ray when there are a bunch of stalkers underneath it which outrange marines, and the Terran has their own wall blocking their way. Heck, throw in a sentry so that if they try to push down their ramp to stop you from destroying their wall, you can force field their army in half or hold it at 6 range away from your stalkers. Also, if the opportunity to push presents itself, you can always just use the shield ability.
Then, the natural progression for my build is to keep sniping buildings and untis. Get blink, using the void rays to scout high ground and help cover. From there you can expand, tech to templars really easily, etc. Meanwhile, if you are micro'ing properly you shouldn't lose ANY units, so its just about wearing them down slowly and increasing your advantage. Blink will also help you harass any army that tries to push out, while being able to escape from concussive/stim.
There is the added advantage that if they do push out with a large army, you just send the void rays to their minerals and they have to fall back with some or all of their army. If they DON'T fall back you can jockey their army across the map with your stalkers, then just warp in some sentries at your main and block your ramp indefinitely (or cut their army in half) while the void rays work over their base and you build a larger army.
I just threw this build together yesterday taking bits from day9, whitera and a fast stalker build I worked on during the beta downtime - I've done this build 5 or 6 times, in small maps like steppes of war, and in big ones like cross-positional in Kulas Ravine and Metalopolis - and have yet to get past the early game (blink stalker phase) without winning. All games were against diamond or high platinum opponents. The terran has no map control, and tends to get really desperate and feel like they are way behind because of all the pressure and lack of expansion, and then they do stupid things like all-in rush.
You have to be comfortable macro'ing while doing pretty specific micro though. (My macro tends to suffer a bit)
I can't post replays from work - but if you're intested I can do it up later.
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Colossus Blink-stalker does very well against me. I often go ghost / mnmnm w/ tanks vs toss.
Most of my losses vs toss involve them being agressive with early stalkers, and getting a fairly early expansion to power a 4-5 gate 2 robo build. Templar do well, also, but good ghost play stops that pretty handily.
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Dear Gnial,
Thank you for your awesome post ! Always interesting to have feedback from a terran player. I tried to switch to understand the weaknesses of this race in TvP but it wasn't really useful.
You just confirmed what I said/thought: the key in PvT is VR. I was really unhappy about that for a while and sort of denied it... until I realised that even if it's not a "miracle build", it can at least beat bad players whithout requesting being Bisu...
I would be very interested to watch some replays, so hopefully you'll provide them when you come back from work =)
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Heh, I'll post some in 5 or 6 hours (provided I can figure out how)
Don't misread this build to only succeed because of void rays. I would consider the stalkers the key unit, with some sort of air unit to be used to provide vision. The alternate scouting units would be phoenix or hallucinate. I personally order them this way:
Void ray >> Hallucinate >> Phoenix
Phoenix I'm new to P so I don't even think I've actually tried phoenixes yet. It seems like you need a few of them to harass well, but that really takes a chunk out of your ground army. If you just get 1 or 2 to scout, you may as well get hallucinate since it is cheaper and you can avoid the stargate tech completely.
Hallucinate I really like this one since it is so cheap, it gives you a reason to build more sentries which can be used to help contain the T, and if they do push out you can hallucinate a zealot army to take the damage for your stalkers. You end up with a larger ground army this way, but, it lacks the harassing potential that phoenixes and void rays have.
Void Ray Void rays are just pretty meaty, and can pack a punch. My experience in a voidray/stalker vs marine/marauder battle, the marines and marauder both end up targetting the stalkers if you micro the void rays, while the void rays/stalkers target the marines because marines end up at the front line (shorter attack range than marauders). If your opponent gets more marauders instead of marines, since the marines die first, even if your stalkers all die you end up void ray vs marauder. Who wins that one? If your opponent gets more marines, I just find that I can micro my stalkers so well against them, and can use the sentry shield more effectively.
At the end of the day, you just need more units than them if you are actually going to fight them. Don't try to force a close battle and try to win with micro when you don't have to  I like this build since I seem to be able to get a larger army at some point in the early game.
Edit: Note that if you opt for a non-void-ray scouting unit, you end up with more stalkers to blink into their base with. Blinking into their base has the same effect as sending void rays into their base: they have to come back to defend, or try to base trade. There is quite a bit of room for personal preference. The key components are fast stalkers and aggression.
Also, I don't include observers as a scouting unit since, while they're valuable later (I get the robo bay usually as I'm expanding), this build relies on mobility. Immortals or colossus don't fit the EARLY game composition well, and a warp prism isn't necessary. Getting an observer early is too much of a resource drain.
However, for the mid game, getting that robo bay for observers and a warp prism becomes a great idea. Whitera LOVES harassing mineral lines with warp prisms filled with templars. It fits into that same idea: if the terran goes to attack, drop templars into his minerals, and then warp in zealots and all of a sudden he has to choose between losing his base, or retreating.
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Yup, what Gnial said. Everything I'm seeing, hearing, reading and feeling says fast Stalker harassment at the front door with Void Rays taking pot-shots at whatever they can find, keep him trapped in his base while you expand.
I'm still on the lookout for both a way to identify and counter an 8-minute 1/1/1 push with Marines, Tanks and a Raven, though. It has all of the benefits of being able to counter all Protoss timing pushes (the Tanks he was already building and a single Viking will thwart all Stalker and VR harass - so you had better have done some major damage before they get situated), while simultaneously being able to build its own utterly devastating timing push of its own.
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On July 14 2010 05:34 Bibdy wrote:
I'm still on the lookout for both a way to identify and counter an 8-minute 1/1/1 push with Marines, Tanks and a Raven, though. It has all of the benefits of being able to counter all Protoss timing pushes (the Tanks he was already building and a single Viking will thwart all Stalker and VR harass - so you had better have done some major damage before they get situated), while simultaneously being able to build its own utterly devastating timing push of its own.
Yeah, I can see tank/viking putting an end to the harass. So far I've only played against one 1-1-1 build using the stalker/void ray, and fortunately I got through his wall just as the first tank popped before the void ray or viking even came out.
Obviously that is a terrible sample size, and could just be luck. So I gotta keep puttering away with this build.
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That sounds pretty good Gnial. Do you go for the fast 2-stalker build (or if anybody else does, what is the build order for it)?
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9 pylon
12 gate
14 gas
15 gate
15 core
16 pylon
save the rest of your minerals for 2 stalkers, chrono boost both and either your next probe or save it for warpgate
MAKE SURE you transfer your probes to gas right when it finishes or you'll be stuck waiting on gas for your second stalker
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On July 14 2010 05:42 Skyro wrote:
That sounds pretty good Gnial. Do you go for the fast 2-stalker build (or if anybody else does, what is the build order for it)?
It depends. Usually with a larger rush distance I prefer to go with an economic 1-gate cyber build.
But 2-stalker builds are sooooooooo fun. I love em, so I try to do that whenever I can. If you can get the 2 stalkers to his base by the 4:00 mark, or close to it, the T usually only has a few marines, or 1 marauder. Its just really fun, and you can do really solid damage. Especially if you get the 3rd and 4th stalker there quickly. I've seen some terran's panic and do some really funny stuff.
But the 2-stalker build can be hard-countered by...1 bunker. So I've been shifting away from a really fast 2-stalker build (no longer cutting probes to get them, for instance) in favor of getting that faster economic boost, so that I can get the void ray + 6 or 7 stalkers faster, and get that expansion/templar tech faster.
Edit: Thanks Shifft for the build order
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EPT
