• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 22:35
CEST 04:35
KST 11:35
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
[ASL19] Ro4 Recap : The Peak6DreamHack Dallas 2025 - Info & Preview11herO wins GSL Code S Season 1 (2025)15Code S RO4 & Finals Preview: herO, GuMiho, Classic, Cure6Code S RO8 Preview: Classic, Reynor, Maru, GuMiho4
Community News
[BSL20] RO20 Group Stage0EWC 2025 Regional Qualifiers (May 28-June 1)7Weekly Cups (May 12-18): Clem sweeps WardiTV May3Code S Season 2 (2025) - Qualifier Results212025 GSL Season 2 (Qualifiers)14
StarCraft 2
General
DreamHack Dallas 2025 - Info & Preview Any reason why RuFF's stream is still on sidebar? Power Rank: October 2018 herO wins GSL Code S Season 1 (2025) Code S Season 2 (2025) - Qualifier Results
Tourneys
DreamHack Dallas 2025 EWC 2025 Regional Qualifiers (May 28-June 1) [GSL 2025] Code S Season 1 - RO4 and Grand Finals RSL: Revival, a new crowdfunded tournament series DreamHack Dallas 2025 announced (May 23-25)
Strategy
Simple Questions Simple Answers [G] PvT Cheese: 13 Gate Proxy Robo
Custom Maps
[UMS] Zillion Zerglings
External Content
Mutation # 474 Futile Resistance Mutation # 473 Cold is the Void Mutation # 472 Dead Heat Mutation # 471 Delivery Guaranteed
Brood War
General
[ASL19] Ro4 Recap : The Peak BW General Discussion BGH auto balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ Artosis baned on twitch ? who is JiriKara /Cipisek/ from CZ
Tourneys
[ASL19] Semifinal B [BSL20] RO20 Group Stage [Megathread] Daily Proleagues Small VOD Thread 2.0
Strategy
I am doing this better than progamers do. [G] How to get started on ladder as a new Z player
Other Games
General Games
Beyond All Reason What do you want from future RTS games? Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Grand Theft Auto VI Nintendo Switch Thread
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
LiquidLegends to reintegrate into TL.net
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers
Hearthstone
Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
Vanilla Mini Mafia TL Mafia Community Thread TL Mafia Plays: Diplomacy TL Mafia: Generative Agents Showdown Survivor II: The Amazon
Community
General
Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine US Politics Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread Trading/Investing Thread Men's Fashion Thread
Fan Clubs
Serral Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
[Manga] One Piece Movie Discussion! Anime Discussion Thread [Books] Wool by Hugh Howey
Sports
2024 - 2025 Football Thread Formula 1 Discussion NHL Playoffs 2024 NBA General Discussion
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread Cleaning My Mechanical Keyboard How to clean a TTe Thermaltake keyboard?
TL Community
The Automated Ban List TL.net Ten Commandments
Blogs
Yes Sir! How Commanding Impr…
TrAiDoS
Poker
Nebuchad
Info SLEgma_12
SLEgma_12
SECOND COMMING
XenOsky
WombaT’s Old BW Terran Theme …
WombaT
Heero Yuy & the Tax…
KrillinFromwales
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 11479 users

[R] Against MMM - Medivac or MM ball first?

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
Post a Reply
0xDEADFISH
Profile Joined July 2010
United States10 Posts
August 15 2010 09:59 GMT
#1
Like the title says. If you're fighting against an MMM ball (let's just say around midgame, so maybe 60 foodish ball), and you see ~6 medivacs, what do you focus first? Assume you are Z or P (no colossi/psi storm yet, which means you can't mow down the ball without medivacs adding to their effective hp).

Option 1) Focus down all the medivacs first, but the MM ball will pound you to smithereens while you do this.

Option 2) Ignore them, fight the MM ball. Their effective HP is greatly increased.

Option 3) Don't give a crap and 1a into the ball.

As a ~400 diamond z, I usually just ignore the medivacs. I'm usually going with roach/hydra/ling at this point, and the hydras' have too much valuable DPS to waste on medivacs.

If I played as protoss, I might take a bit of effort to take ~3 stalkers and focus down the highest mana medivac, but I'm not sure if this would be worth it.

Your thoughts?

Obviously the situation matters (positioning, mana on medivacs, etc.) Note that what IS a big deal is if you lose your entire army, but didn't bother killing any medivacs. By the time the rest of the terran ball gets to your base it will be full HP again and ready to stim and own. Plus something excessive like 8 medivacs makes it impossible to focus them all down, and good terran micro can make it hard.

On the flip side, as a terran, you might want your medivacs to tank some of the damage. I never played brood war much, but I've heard that medics soaked damage for M&Ms. Is this the same in SC2?
"Dead fish smell."
Apollys
Profile Joined July 2010
United States278 Posts
August 15 2010 10:13 GMT
#2
I use stalkers to focus down the Medivac, and then try to get in a few forcefields to hold them in position while my zealots charge into their faces. I guess if they had like 15 medivacs and 10 marauders I would just focus down the marauders, but yeah that's generally how I approach this, not sure if it's the best way.
When you're feeling down, I'll be there to feel you up!
pilsken
Profile Joined April 2010
Germany441 Posts
August 15 2010 10:27 GMT
#3
As Z, Muta/Ling/Bling gives you a much better shot vs. big MMM balls. Roach/Hydra just gets melted unless the numbers are way bigger, since Stim+Heal makes for ridiciulous fighting power head-to-head. When you're playing Muta/Bling everything you need to do is to take out the marines, which melt to banelings which makes their medivacs entirely useless and let your Mutas clean-up the rest like np. I don't see how you can take on mmm-deathballs without Infestors or BLings, Hydra/Roach is really not going to help there that much (and once he adds like 2-3 tanks not much you can do there).
entropius
Profile Joined June 2010
United States1046 Posts
August 15 2010 10:33 GMT
#4
I imagine it depends on where the medivacs *are*. When I have a bioball and I'm charging into a fight I stim before I attack -- this lets the medivacs get a headstart on healing before I start taking fire, but it also means the medivacs are behind the firing line, and trying to run stalkers in there to pick them off means that they're taking unanswered fire to get there.

Also, some math: medivacs have 150 hp and heal 13.5 hp/sec. If you blast the medivacs first, you're wasting 150 damage to kill each one. In order for this to be worth it, they'd have to heal for 11 seconds if you didn't kill them, plus however long it takes you to focus them all down. Plus, while you're shooting at medivacs you're not decreasing the dps you're receiving,

If you kill the guys first, the medivacs stop being relevant, and if you have blink stalkers you can probably kill a couple after the battle anyway as they fly away.
LoLiver
Profile Joined July 2010
United Kingdom22 Posts
August 15 2010 10:44 GMT
#5
When you're feeling down, I'll be there to feel you up!


lol'd. HARD.
For MMM I tend to attack AS SOON as possible to avoid it growing in numbers, a 45 man MMM ball is tough to deal with so I just attack before they can get on their feet.
Also focus down the Medivacs with ranged units and tank the troops with melee. This tends to work especially well for Protoss (Zealots are tough to kill and Guardian Shield is a godsend against Terran)
Flying Zerglings. Good idea? or Greatest idea?
evilK
Profile Joined July 2009
Spain34 Posts
August 15 2010 13:29 GMT
#6
Good question, nowadays i still don't know as P how to win a battle (equal resource armys or even P favored) with gateway units against MMM, that first push with medivacs is so hard to stop if you are at open field, and you don't have too much tier 2 effectively costly options against it..
morimacil
Profile Joined March 2010
France921 Posts
August 15 2010 13:43 GMT
#7
I suspect the best way to go about this would be to focus fire. If you have your army in multiple control groups, and are focus firing the actual units, and not the medivacs, then the medivacs wont be healing much at all, just the stim really. And then spending 600/600 on medivacs starts to look a bit silly if its just for healing up the stim damage.
But ofc, that would require quite a lot more micro than just a-moving your single control group army blob.
Competent
Profile Joined April 2010
United States406 Posts
August 15 2010 13:50 GMT
#8
Well damn! OP already has it figured out with his 123 examples. Looks like he don't need us here since those scenarios are obviously the right way about things!

OP what you and alot of people need to understand is just because the unit is built out of a barracks doesn't mean it comes cheap. You said it yourself 6+ medivacs? That's ALOT of money just to make barracks units work. 600/600, Plus the factory, starport, stim, shields, and shell?
Nurrrhhh, I'm gonna be A+ by Wendsday! -Day[9] "I'm going to spread out my lings so it looks like there is more. Lots of animals do that." -CatZ
StormWeapon
Profile Joined July 2010
United States159 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-15 14:12:43
August 15 2010 14:04 GMT
#9
By the time dropships come out I often am teching to templar or robo.
Going robo I'll have some stalkers to shoot medivacs, but probably wont.
Templar/zealots own m/m/m better i think. Especially with feedback killing medivacs, which can end all kinds of shenanigans.

Which reminds me. Feedbacking a thorship is the greatest feeling.
Tyrant Potato
Snowfield
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
1289 Posts
August 15 2010 19:42 GMT
#10
feedback medivacs, best solution
National
Profile Joined August 2010
Israel11 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-15 20:00:48
August 15 2010 19:57 GMT
#11
@snowfield
Would be better to Psi-storm and if they load up to feedback.
That's kind of off-topic though, cause he's a zerg.
i'd say lure them into a baneling trap, but i guess that depends on the exact situation/map/resources etc, but generally i think that's a good idea
Awesome.
Kpyolysis32
Profile Joined April 2010
553 Posts
August 15 2010 20:16 GMT
#12
I usually prefer to target ground units when I have the choice, but my army is almost always very Chargelot and Immortal heavy by Medivac time, so I don't really have to make that decision frequently.
Man, do I not keep this up to date, or what?
Cerion
Profile Joined May 2010
213 Posts
August 15 2010 20:40 GMT
#13
Once T has medivacs up, P and Z need tech of their own to even the odds. Better to focus on microing sentries/banelings/templar/infestors than worry about whether your troops are shooting at medivacs or not imo.

Also, optimally you'd kill marines first, but it's very impractical to actually focus fire them in a large battle.
Jupiter.sKy
Profile Joined December 2009
United States50 Posts
August 15 2010 23:15 GMT
#14
if your playing protoss and you descided to get colossi, your better off just having your whole army kill off the ball as your colossi will hit nearly the whole ball at once. If you decided to get templar, always storm before you feedback. As medivac's can only heal one unit at a time, each medivac will only ensure that one unit out of the whole ball will live through the storm, especially if the ball is surrounded by chargelots.

As zerg, infestor/ling/baneling will make short work of the whole ball, no need to worry about medivacs. In fact, if your playing agianst a bio terran, its probably better to skip hydras for infestors until you see them chain pumping vikings or dropping a tech lab at their starport.
EnderCN
Profile Joined May 2010
United States499 Posts
August 15 2010 23:20 GMT
#15
I generally target the marines first, they just melt away after a stim and they do so much damage. After the marines are gone you bring up air units to help finish off the medivacs.
Pokedude1013
Profile Joined August 2010
116 Posts
August 15 2010 23:37 GMT
#16
On August 15 2010 19:33 entropius wrote:
I imagine it depends on where the medivacs *are*. When I have a bioball and I'm charging into a fight I stim before I attack -- this lets the medivacs get a headstart on healing before I start taking fire, but it also means the medivacs are behind the firing line, and trying to run stalkers in there to pick them off means that they're taking unanswered fire to get there.

Also, some math: medivacs have 150 hp and heal 13.5 hp/sec. If you blast the medivacs first, you're wasting 150 damage to kill each one. In order for this to be worth it, they'd have to heal for 11 seconds if you didn't kill them, plus however long it takes you to focus them all down. Plus, while you're shooting at medivacs you're not decreasing the dps you're receiving,

If you kill the guys first, the medivacs stop being relevant, and if you have blink stalkers you can probably kill a couple after the battle anyway as they fly away.


But keep in mind when you are attacking unless your dps is greatly reduced because of the medivac.(unless you focus fire individual marauders but then you get overkill)

Let's say in this situation each of your stalkers attack one marauder. Stalker attacks at 1.5 and does 14 damage, while medivac heals 13.5hp per second. So you'd be doing no damage. Say two stalkers were attacking. For every 3 seconds; that heals 40.5 and you're doing 56 damage. That's 16 damage per 3 seconds. While he's doing 40 to your stalkers with that one marauder. And this is in situations where you have more stalkers than marauders.

You need about ten stalkers to one-shot marauders, which would be the way you would have to do to negate the healing effect.

But yeah it would be foolhardy to walk past the marauders to attack the medivacs I agree.
This is why you should have collossi or ht out by the time they have medivacs
Get out
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
OSC
00:00
OSC Elite Rising Star #15
Nicoract vs ChanceLIVE!
Moja vs MindelVK
INexorable vs TBD
Shameless vs TBD
Demi vs TBD
xJustxJordanx5
Liquipedia
Replay Cast
00:00
2025 GSL S2 - Qualifiers
CranKy Ducklings132
EnkiAlexander 72
LiquipediaDiscussion
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
JimRising 516
PiGStarcraft481
RuFF_SC2 194
CosmosSc2 61
StarCraft: Brood War
Britney 3332
PianO 494
Sharp 114
NaDa 89
Icarus 9
Dota 2
monkeys_forever407
Counter-Strike
Fnx 2865
Stewie2K477
Super Smash Bros
C9.Mang0709
Heroes of the Storm
Khaldor112
Other Games
summit1g15649
tarik_tv8604
shahzam490
ViBE236
Trikslyr57
Organizations
Other Games
BasetradeTV161
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 14 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• Berry_CruncH80
• HeavenSC 31
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
• sooper7s
StarCraft: Brood War
• Azhi_Dahaki9
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
Other Games
• Scarra1769
Upcoming Events
Replay Cast
7h 25m
Road to EWC
12h 25m
Replay Cast
1d 7h
SC Evo League
1d 9h
Road to EWC
1d 12h
Afreeca Starleague
2 days
BeSt vs Soulkey
Road to EWC
2 days
Wardi Open
3 days
SOOP
4 days
NightMare vs Wayne
Replay Cast
4 days
[ Show More ]
Replay Cast
4 days
GSL Code S
5 days
Cure vs Zoun
Solar vs Creator
The PondCast
5 days
Online Event
5 days
Clem vs ShoWTimE
herO vs MaxPax
GSL Code S
6 days
GuMiho vs Bunny
ByuN vs SHIN
Online Event
6 days
Replay Cast
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

Proleague 2025-05-16
2025 GSL S1
Calamity Stars S2

Ongoing

JPL Season 2
ASL Season 19
YSL S1
BSL 2v2 Season 3
BSL Season 20
China & Korea Top Challenge
KCM Race Survival 2025 Season 2
NPSL S3
DreamHack Dallas 2025
Heroes 10 EU
ESL Impact League Season 7
IEM Dallas 2025
PGL Astana 2025
Asian Champions League '25
ECL Season 49: Europe
BLAST Rivals Spring 2025
MESA Nomadic Masters
CCT Season 2 Global Finals
IEM Melbourne 2025
YaLLa Compass Qatar 2025
PGL Bucharest 2025
BLAST Open Spring 2025
ESL Pro League S21

Upcoming

Rose Open S1
Copa Latinoamericana 4
CSLPRO Last Chance 2025
CSLAN 2025
K-Championship
SEL Season 2 Championship
Esports World Cup 2025
HSC XXVII
Championship of Russia 2025
Bellum Gens Elite Stara Zagora 2025
2025 GSL S2
BLAST Bounty Fall Qual
IEM Cologne 2025
FISSURE Playground #1
BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2025 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.