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So a few days ago, I discovered that mass hellions rock everything Zerg and Protoss. I'm not even nearly an experienced Terran player, by far my most practiced races are Protoss and Zerg even though I play random, but I still beat a fairly competent Protoss Diamond Protoss.
TvP
http://www.mediafire.com/?dn1k5ms2wlgfp08
This is a demonstration of how ridiculously effective Hellions are against a standard Protoss 4 gate, even when the Protoss is using almost entirely stalkers which are supposed to counter hellions. I don't even use Ghosts while I am sitting on 1k gas in the bank, this is so that I can prove a point about how I can beat a normally strong Protoss composition using nothing but 100 mineral Hellions. I have so much Gas left over I can do anything. Mass Battlecruisers are probably possible as soon as I take my second. If the Protoss tries to get some early void rays, you can counter with just marines/ghost. If the Protoss continues to use air, put some starports with reactors down and power out 20 vikings. In fact, you should probably make vikings anyway because they are just awesome.
I see no way for the Protoss to counter the Hellions other then High Templar + mass Force Fields to trap them inside the Psi Storm. As always, Ghosts can counter this just as well as they do in MMM builds and you have 3x as much gas to spend on Ghosts since your army costs nothing. Meanwhile, Hellions are even faster to get out of the Psi Storm then stimmed MM while having more health and being bigger, so less are hurt and killed by each usage. The only other thing that would work against Hellions, Colossi, can easily be taken out by Vikings.
As for Zerg, I haven't had time to play a good match, but I feel nearly the exact same strategy would work. Roaches are the only possible unit to use against the hellions, everything else before T3 will die before the Zerg can blink. While in a straight up fight Roaches are marginally better then an equal cost amount of hellions (decreasing advantage the larger each side becomes), while off creep you can easily kite them and tear them apart, so at best a mass roach Zerg can just keep you outside of his base. Assuming you get Vikings by the time your opponent gets Muta, there is absolutely nothing he can do to stop you from achieving complete map control until Ultralisks arrive.
TL;DR:
Mass Hellions > any T1/T2 Protoss/Zerg army while using no gas and less minerals then the units they take down.
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Mass hellions < roaches, stalkers.
even then a good amount of speedlings will last a decent amount of time against hellions, and throwing up 2 or 3 spine crawlers will generally cost less than there investment in hellions.
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Roach Rush will GG this fast. As well as a void ray rush would. You should also not be proud of 1k in the "bank" that is bad for SC. You should also be spending resources for the neccesary units and buildings.
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On August 24 2010 05:11 claricorp wrote:
Mass hellions < roaches, stalkers.
even then a good amount of speedlings will last a decent amount of time against hellions, and throwing up 2 or 3 spine crawlers will generally cost less than there investment in hellions.
Hellions < Roaches and Stalkers in small numbers. In large numbers, Splash damage trumps everything. At an equal mineral cost, once you get beyond about 15 Stalkers the Hellions will start to eat them alive and do it while costing no gas. Pity the Protoss if you EMP them as well.
For Roaches its much closer but you can also micro around their short range. If you are forcing Zerg to put down spine crawlers and stay on 2 bases the entire game until it techs to T3, and doing it all with only mineral units, haven't you pretty much already won?
On August 24 2010 05:16 XXXSmOke wrote:
Roach Rush will GG this fast. As well as a void ray rush would. You should also not be proud of 1k in the "bank" that is bad for SC. You should also be spending resources for the neccesary units and buildings.
You mistake what I am trying to do here. I am not saying 'lol make 100 hellions win the game'. I am saying 'Look, Hellions are ridiculously effective all on their own and force Z/P to rely on a very certain unit that barely holds them off. How could we make a well rounded build using them as your primary army unit, while high gas units support them?' Of course in a real game I would start spending that gas on SOMETHING.
As I mentioned, void ray rush should be easily beatable just by using ghosts + spare marines. Not sure about a pure roach rush.
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Mass hellions as army units is pretty wild idea man- it works against the right *(wrong?)* compositions, and i could see this working in the midgame. Early game, however, before you build up a decent hellion count, a 4 gate push would ruin you. So would a 5roach rush... so my thought is maybe transition into a 4-5 fact build after a standard opening (1-1-1, rax fac rax, etc)
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On August 24 2010 05:25 Zoltan wrote:
Mass hellions as army units is pretty wild idea man- it works against the right *(wrong?)* compositions, and i could see this working in the midgame. Early game, however, before you build up a decent hellion count, a 4 gate push would ruin you. So would a 5roach rush... so my thought is maybe transition into a 4-5 fact build after a standard opening (1-1-1, rax fac rax, etc)
Yeah, I'm sure if you tried to go straight for Hellions almost any rush could ruin you. In my TvP, I could have lost if he pushed earlier (though my build was also horrible because I don't play Terran, I could have had those Hellions out a minute earlier).
You could probably start investing in reactors for your barracks before making factories, pump out marines for your early defense. When you make the factory, swap them with the reactors and then pump your Hellions. Marines also serve invaluable defense against any air units, so I would keep making them anyway. Maybe you could pump out a few marauders to deal with the armored unit problem you have until you reach the critical mass of Hellions. I dunno, I'm not familiar with Terran timings, just putting this on the table so it can be discussed.
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Pretty sure the Mutalisk is a myth, this build is golden!
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I don't think the OP was citing 1k gas as something to be proud about, but to "prove a point about how [he] can beat a normally strong Protoss composition using nothing but 100 mineral Hellions. [Then he would] have so much Gas left over I can do anything."
I agree that hellions with preignitor upgrade are under utilized, especially v a charge zealot heavy army at mid game. If they provide the hard counter one needs vs light units, why not mass them while saving gas into the next tech transition? Seems to make sense. As far as hellions being the bees knees v any army composition, probably a little exaggerated, but good micro goes a long way I suppose. Personally, I'd have a hell of a time out microing stalkers with hellions, but I love the idea of having these around to protect my sieged tanks vs the chargelots that'll rip them apart with good numbers. I watched a replay on husky's channel in which the T player had a strong MMM build, but was up against chargelots and psi storm. Had he gone for the mass hellions and not siege tanks at a critical moment in the game, I bet the it would have turned out differently, especially since he was far ahead in macro.
As far as having vikings to counter possible mutas, I'd personally be spamming marines, too, if I knew they were on the way since vikings fall pretty fast to mutas.
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what about blink micro stalkers? or any type of micro stalkers?
hellions are not effective against them at all.
however, you can run your hellions around them and instagib probes. but therefore you only need a small number of hellions and you'd want a reasonable force elsewhere on the map to prevent a counter attack.
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well, the fact that attackmoved units are almost never good vs microed hellions was already proven in a video a long time ago, especially when it comes to big numbers.
This is obvious due to splashdamage beeing very good if used correctly.
However your replay shows nothing.
Youre playing against a friend of yours, both have 40 APM on avg and he isnt doing anything, except building a ton of stalkers and having them clumb as best as he can, so you can destroy them with hellions, congrats on that.
Please dont pretend like this is anyhow viable, only cause you added a replay, when that replay is sort of fake or at least not from a real game scenario
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As far as having vikings to counter possible mutas, I'd personally be spamming marines, too, if I knew they were on the way since vikings fall pretty fast to mutas.
I've heard this, and at first I believed it too. Vikings are supposed to be anti armored, right? Terran players all think vikings suck vs muta. I think this is just Terran being biased against Vikings because they are worse then lol 3 thors > 100 muta, which is what we have seen so far.
In actuality, simply A-moving Vikings 1:1 against Muta will make the vikings come out ahead. The Vikings cost 150/75 to Muta 100/100. Vikings can be produced 2 at a time with a reactor, so its not like they are harder to mass then Muta. Vikings can abuse their range while kiting to reduced damage significantly. Vikings can be repaired cheaply, Muta can't be healed unless you have a lot of extra Queen energy (and Muta can't escape vikings, but weak vikings can be pulled out of battle easily). I would say Vikings counter Muta very well and with great mobility. Now, I'm obviously not a TvZ expert, so correct me if I'm wrong.
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On August 24 2010 05:53 Cyclon wrote:Show nested quote +As far as having vikings to counter possible mutas, I'd personally be spamming marines, too, if I knew they were on the way since vikings fall pretty fast to mutas. I've heard this, and at first I believed it too. Vikings are supposed to be anti armored, right? Terran players all think vikings suck vs muta. I think this is just Terran being biased against Vikings because they are worse then lol 3 thors > 100 muta, which is what we have seen so far. In actuality, simply A-moving Vikings 1:1 against Muta will make the vikings come out ahead. The Vikings cost 150/75 to Muta 100/100. Vikings can be produced 2 at a time with a reactor, so its not like they are harder to mass then Muta. Vikings can abuse their range while kiting to reduced damage significantly. Vikings can be repaired cheaply, Muta can't be healed unless you have a lot of extra Queen energy (and Muta can't escape vikings, but weak vikings can be pulled out of battle easily). I would say Vikings counter Muta very well and with great mobility. Now, I'm obviously not a TvZ expert, so correct me if I'm wrong.
Muta: * Movement: 3.75
* Turn Rate: 1,499.94
* Acceleration: 3.25
Viking:
* Movement: 2.25
* Alternate: 2.75
* Turn Rate: 999.84
* Acceleration: 1,000.00
You are wrong. You can't kite muta.
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On August 24 2010 05:57 DanielD wrote:
Muta: * Movement: 3.75
* Turn Rate: 1,499.94
* Acceleration: 3.25
Viking:
* Movement: 2.25
* Alternate: 2.75
* Turn Rate: 999.84
* Acceleration: 1,000.00
You are wrong. You can't kite muta.
You can't completely kite Muta. You can still run away during the cooldown, reducing damage significantly as the Muta have to catch up and then fire. Your Vikings continue to output full DPS, the Muta have theirs reduced by a good 15-25% because they waste time chasing you around. Keep in mind, that even if you do nothing at all the Vikings still handily clean up an equal force of Muta. This is just icing on the cake.
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I use mass hellions with tanks and the air units which are needed all the time vs protoss and it works great vs. 800-900 diamond opponents.
Without tanks and ravens I don't see any chances against stalkers though, use hellions for zealots sentries and HTs and they'll kick ass!
Plus ravens and hellions in combination are like the deadliest harassing duo of all time 
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when the zerg has a spire and you a starport with no reactor, in the time your reactor is complete he will have destroyed all your scv's with his mtas
edit: lol you already have mass reactor on fact so you could just swap, hmm.
the build looks really cool imo, but the opponent has a small timing window before you get mass hellion, so he could rush you and f you have only marines and lets say a bunker, a 5roach rush + speedlings will overrun you. however, iwanna see a progamer do this 'build' and then transition into mass snipeghosts 
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On August 24 2010 05:53 Cyclon wrote:Show nested quote +As far as having vikings to counter possible mutas, I'd personally be spamming marines, too, if I knew they were on the way since vikings fall pretty fast to mutas. In actuality, simply A-moving Vikings 1:1 against Muta will make the vikings come out ahead. The Vikings cost 150/75 to Muta 100/100. Vikings can be produced 2 at a time with a reactor, so its not like they are harder to mass then Muta. Vikings can abuse their range while kiting to reduced damage significantly. Vikings can be repaired cheaply, Muta can't be healed unless you have a lot of extra Queen energy (and Muta can't escape vikings, but weak vikings can be pulled out of battle easily).
Point taken. Double producing vikings with reactor requires more resources to keep up with muta spawn rate, but this wouldn't be very hard like you say. Maybe the marine/viking mix would be good for transitioning to the higher tech units while trying to fend off mutas since it allows you to save some gas in the process. Guess it depends on the extent to which you want your army to consist of vikings, which just depends on how the game's going I guess. They do make for killer overlord sniping whatever the situation.
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EPT
