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First topic I started, because I'm really stuck on that. I'm a 700+ diamond terran and I do OK in most situations (still ironing out some flaws in my play) but I have trouble against high templar and I have a tough time figuring out what to do.
The way I see it, that High Templar wrecks havoc against:
- Marine/Marauder with storm
- Ghost with storm and feedback
- Thors with feedback
- Every starport unit cept the viking with feedback plus banshees (low hp) and battlecruisers (very slow) are vulnerable for storm, too
That leaves the terran arsenal with:
- Reaper, that are fended off with storm easily and die to everything that can catch them
- Hellions, see Reaper
- Tanks, very solid, but you can rarely win with tanks alone plus if you storm a sieged tank it's full damage and 2 storms destroy the tank
- Vikings, that fare horrible against most toss arsenal (colossi excluded).
So most of the games I play protoss goes 2 gate into robo into more gates and council/templar and I feel that I have to win before HT get deployed. The robotics gives them observers and immortals if the need arises and gateway units alone seem enough to crush me as they can be macroed up with ease, deployed whereever the toss needs them (try dropping a toss lategame when he has 12+ gateways) and just built way faster.
So here is my question:
It is the late midgame and I know the toss has robo, concil+archives and lots of gates. His army comp is obs, 4-6 HT, stalker and zealots with sentries and immortal as optional components. How should my army look so that I have good chances?
Please keep in mind, that ghost and EMP isn't really an answer (though it seems the obvious). I have thought of that, but it doesn't really work for the following reason:
In order to EMP the HT, I have to see them. EMP and Feedback both have a casting range of 9. EMP has splash, so in theory a tiny bit more range. But the problem is that HT are behind the opposing army, so I cannot get sight of them. If my ghosts advance in front of my army, they get killed. Cloak doesn't help because of observers. If I advance my army and then use the ghosts, storms are already on my army and EMP makes no sense. If I scanned, I have just payed 300+ minerals to warn my opponent that an attack is imminent. EMP is a strong spell against toss, but it lacks compared to storm, because it will never kill a unit.
Also keep in mind, that Ghosts are more expensive than HT and you can warp in HT within 5 sec, in contrast to the 60 sec build time for ghosts.
So if I go bio with MMM+G, I get owned by templar that feedback the medivacs (taking them out of the battle) and storm the troops. Intelligent storm placement means that even stimmed, I take tons of damage.
If I go pure mech, immortals own me. Plus chargelots and blinkstalkers are really strong. Templar make sure I have to stick to tanks, because thors take 100+ damage in their face from feedback and they are too slow to dodge the storm that kills all repairing SCVs I brought along.
Best results I had so far with marauder/tanks, that seem to fare best against templar, but it means I am immobile and chargelots still give me headaches. Plus warp prisms own me.
Bottom line:
I have trouble with toss employing high templar and mass gateway units. The trouble stems from templar empowering the gateway mix to win against my army while the gateway core means ridiculously fast reinforcements due to warpgates.
Also - as food for thought - I would like to propose a minor change in the protoss spell distribution:
Archons gain feedback
HT lose feedback but gain hallucination (no research for hallucination required)
sentries lose hallucination (which is underused anyhow atm)
This change is just meant as an additional discussion item. I realize, that I just have to play better against HT - hopefully with insights gained here.
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EMP
If you have EMP and he has Feedback it all comes down to micro, however you can cloak your Ghosts and EMP has a range of 10 with about 1-2 added since its AOE. Feedback has a range of 9 and it is definitely difficult to single-click target every single ghost if they are in a big bio ball.
Watch this replay by BratOK, it shows pure and utter terran dominance over a good Protoss (Socke) and features brilliant EMPing in the final battle.
The big thing is to always think about how you can EMP his templar & high shield units (try to EMP zealots last since they only have 50 shields)
http://www.sc2-replays.net/de/replays/404-socke-vs-brat_ok/
gl!
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Ghosts. Control them better.
Once HTs are in the field there is no magic combination to just beat him, you have to outplay him.
btw it's actually very easy to feedback ghosts, because when you misclick on a marine or whatever nothing happens, so you can just spam click until you hit the ghost..
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use ravens/scan + vikings to scout ahead of the army and kill the observers. then move in with cloaked ghosts to emp.
yeah you actually have to use more units and micro than just mmm, so does the P if he is going for an army composition vs T with HTs.
btw as far as i remember emp has 9 range and feedback only 8. addidionally storm has even a shorter range so you have plenty of time to emp before he gets storms out since its way harder for a P to spot ghosts in a mmm bioball, therefor feedback on ghost is unlikely.
if you have problems with that you just lack practice and click/control your ghosts too slowly.
PS: scan is NOT sacrificing 300 mins. you are just going back to even footing resource wise and choose to relinquish an economic advantage which btw is not really much later in the game if you are on 2base+
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As a protoss player I find ghosts most scary. They own both immortals and HT's (and make sentries useless). I think it all comes down to micro.
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Vatican City State95 Posts
I got in a late game vs a Toss and his entire 200/200 army was HT/Colossi/Stalker(maybe a few lots/sentry) My army was Tanks/Ghost/Viking and a few marines, I had a few ghosts get off EMP on the front line for the last battle, and also utilized a flank of some ghosts/rines in which I was able to EMP everything before all his HT's were able to get from the front to the back. From there it was GG.
Many people have said it before, not bunching up units, spreading them around and possibly attacking from two angles at once really turns the tide vs HT.
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Man i share you problems and think it is pretty hard to handle the hts
First thing i would say is to almost never attack at narrow spaces and try sending out a death squad of 6 marauders or so to snipe some hts.
Furthermore, if possible, move out with some cloaked ghosts (always research mobius reactor) and try scan killing the observer, although easier said than done. Most certainly, the toss will build more observers after that to prevent this.
The most important thing is your army placement. They should be spread out in a half circle while you push forward carefully. Try to get vision from the watch towers, or prevent the toss from doing so. On some narrow maps like KR or Metalopolis, it is very hard to attack because of the narrow passages.
You said drops are no real option because of 10+ warpgates with instant warp-in. I think you should try so, with good micro the toss has to move his army back because warped units can get killed pretty good, of course you have to watch for psi and dodge it as good as possible.
Although i didn't drop often in the later games, i believe this is very essential, if handled wisely.
Then you can watch for his army and send 12 marauders or so to kill a nexus at one of his expansions.
All in all, a full army attack is almost impossible, especially on some maps. You have to prevent the toss from getting ahead, while getting ahead of your own expansion-wise. If the toss gets ahead, and that will happen when you loose to much to psi, he has many options like getting VRs with speed upgrade. You have to use the terran mobility to its max to defeat a good toss.
Perhaps try some nasty things like dropping a ghost while attacking to get off the emp before getting feedbacked. Always remember to watch for observers.
That said, i think terran has a hard time dealing with toss in lategame and i will try to do more research of what the best possibilities are.
I am a 900 diamond player, so i have faced quite some good tosses.
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On August 24 2010 20:53 Thrombozyt wrote:
Also - as food for thought - I would like to propose a minor change in the protoss spell distribution:
Archons gain feedback
HT lose feedback but gain hallucination (no research for hallucination required)
sentries lose hallucination (which is underused anyhow atm)
As for these suggested changes, they would be quite major ones.
Sentries are available a lot earlier than HTs - this would delay access to hallucination for what balance reason exactly ?
Do you feel hallucination is a problem generally early in the game for you or is the only reason for it to be moved to force HTs to split their mana between storm and hallucination ? In this case, you mentioned yourself how hallucination is already an underused spell, I do not see this proposed change helping with that.
HTs with hallucination but not feedback would be seriously weakened, so this change might actually help you. Storm is lower range while EMP is range 10. Ghosts seriously would have the edge now. It would also delay access to Feedback.
And Archons getting feedback ? Hm, so basically Protoss would have only half the feedback casters (2 HTs -> 1 Archon) on a unit that has like 10 hp remaining after an EMP and is therefore rarely even considered useful against Terran ?
I am sorry, I do not want to sound too harsh here, but you are asking for some major Protoss nerf here with no compensation at all, and I do not think the current state of game balance calls for that.
Edit: edited to show correct EMP range of 10
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You cannot realistically rely on ghosts emping all the templar (especially once he has kydarian amulet and can just warp in storms on demand). Even EMP'd templar can transform into archons.
Your best bet is tank/hellion, and possibly thors mixed in if you can afford it. You have to spread your tanks out to counter storms and also counter chargealots which are very natural in the build. REmember to give your tank line as much depth as possible and abuse the massive range. Hellions are your next unit of choice. They do die if caught in too many storms, but just use 2 or 3 control groups of htem or send them in waves. They eat zealots up quickly and templar even more. Try to ambush the toss player.
Finally thors are better than you might think. Yes, they do get feedbacked and that's huge, but they can still tank very well for the... tanks in the back. Try to use them in a forward position to disrupt gateway heavy armies from killing all your hellions/tanks immediatly. They also do a ton of damage so that's great too.
So ultimatly I like to get tanks, a few ghosts for EMPing clumps of units, mass hellions and a few thors. As toss against this I usuaully switch into archons to soak tank fire while focusing on gateway units (or a VR transitino but usually it's too tight of a game) with charge/blink and a few HT for support, instead of a massive no-brained HT army.
There's no straight up counter, this is a very micro intesnive army matchup.
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This is easily the hardest part of mid/late TvP. Use scans to learn where templars and observers are positioned and then sneak in with ghosts & emp. The truth is that it's It's ridiculously hard. The ghosts need LOTS of energy to be able to emp AND stay cloked so you need to have your ghosts around for a while before you emp templars.
If ghosts fail use stimmed marauders to kite & coax the templars to cast storm then run back and get healed up by medivacs. Be ready to use marines to kill the blinking stalkers that follow.
I guess loosely positioned tanks might work also. never tried though...
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I really think ghosts hold the advantage in the hands of a good player. They are faster, can cloak, and can be pre positioned smartly in some cases. While I do agree many decent opponents wont let you feedback all templars, you just have to remove a significant amount, it's not like well controlled marauders totally melt if controlled well. I've played this matchup on both sides and find it really enjoyable, though a switch back to colossi once ghosts start showing up can really hurt.
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On August 24 2010 21:26 Nixda wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2010 20:53 Thrombozyt wrote:
Also - as food for thought - I would like to propose a minor change in the protoss spell distribution:
Archons gain feedback
HT lose feedback but gain hallucination (no research for hallucination required)
sentries lose hallucination (which is underused anyhow atm)
As for these suggested changes, they would be quite major ones. Sentries are available a lot earlier than HTs - this would delay access to hallucination for what balance reason exactly ? Do you feel hallucination is a problem generally early in the game for you or is the only reason for it to be moved to force HTs to split their mana between storm and hallucination ? In this case, you mentioned yourself how hallucination is already an underused spell, I do not see this proposed change helping with that. HTs with hallucination but not feedback would be seriously weakened, so this change might actually help you. Storm is lower range while EMP is range 10. Ghosts seriously would have the edge now. It would also delay access to Feedback. And Archons getting feedback ? Hm, so basically Protoss would have only half the feedback casters (2 HTs -> 1 Archon) on a unit that has like 10 hp remaining after an EMP and is therefore rarely even considered useful against Terran ? I am sorry, I do not want to sound too harsh here, but you are asking for some major Protoss nerf here with no compensation at all, and I do not think the current state of game balance calls for that. Edit: edited to show correct EMP range of 10
My thought process was more along the lines that HT are so effective, because they combine two very strong spells. If feedback and strom would be on two different units, it would involve more protoss decision making. Thus I transfered feedback to the archons, as storm is the signature spell of HT. That leaves HT without any spell before research. So I thought of hallucination, which isn't a bad spell per se. Sentries are great units even without hallucination (which is rarely researched).
I agree, that it would weaken protoss and I would be fine, if sentries or HT gained another ability instead. Archons could have double energy regen as well.
EDIT: I also want to point out, that SC2 EMP is NOT BW EMP. The shield loss caps at 100, so even if archons are hit by 2 EMPs, they still have 100 shields left.
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So far thank you for the input. I will try brushing up my ghost play as well as testing pure mech that sikyon suggested.
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EMP actually has a range of 10 if I'm not mistaken, in addition to pretty good AoE. A protoss must scout very well if there are cloaked ghosts in the field, as a single handful of them roaming around can completely nullify any storm attempts before a major battle starts. Even if you as a protoss player spot the ghosts when they are in range, the HTs are likely to die or get EMP'ed due to the fact that a siege tank in siege mode can almost outrun them.
As for the changes you propose: HTs don't have 250 energy anymore. In other words, they only have 2 storms and 1 FB per unit, given they got full energy. Giving HT an energy consuming spell like Hallucination will be a huge nerf, not a small one, as we then would have to make archons to counter Thors and BCs which they already are pretty crappy against. It's hard enough for us protoss players already to keep track of the ghosts in that huge bioball of yours, and keep in mind that EMP doesn't only affect the HTs. If you miss the HTs, the EMP will still not likely be completely wasted.
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Response against ht : make more bio, hit and run and kite to the hell those damn chargelots. ht are so slow they're not going to be in range, if they do they'll storm on you, kite and the storm will rain into zealots.
MMM + ghost is so damn easy to play, protoss needs at least 40+apm over his terran opponent and T3 units to defeat such a easy strategy...
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On August 24 2010 20:53 Thrombozyt wrote:
Also - as food for thought - I would like to propose a minor change in the protoss spell distribution:
Archons gain feedback
HT lose feedback but gain hallucination (no research for hallucination required)
sentries lose hallucination (which is underused anyhow atm)
Don't change it. Look at the range of EMP. Now look at the range of Feedback. Look back at the range of EMP. EMP has 3 or 4 more range. Have your Ghosts in the mid and before the HT's can even feedback you can EMP already. Also before they storm! The only problem you have is if the Toss player makes Phoenixes (thanks NightEnd) and lifts tanks and your ghosts you have a slight problem, though the marines should be able to fix that with focus fireing.
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I don't see how EMP is an effective solution once you reach the mid-late game point (3+bases) and protoss can afford to warp in half a dozen HTs, all ready to storm, even if you manage to land perfect emps on his existing HTs.
In games that reach this point, I don't think I've ever seen T pull ahead and win, unless he has some huge hidden advantage (massive fleet of bcs, etc.)
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I have to side with those who have said that emp is only a viable option when the game is still relatively early. Once templar numbers hit six or more and crystal is researched, emp becomes useless, especially if the protoss just spreads the templars out. Hellions with preigniter to flank and kill high templars that are hiding behind the ball is one option.
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ok, assuming you dont rush into some narrow passage where 10 fully charged templars are positioned in a half-circle to welcome you, your army should form a blop, which is bad, try do do 2 - 3 blops, wich is micromanagable ( i really wonder how you should move your army in a half- circle form effectively and still macro). this reduces the width of your amry, it should be as small as a roach attack goes, about 2-3 range. this is not that hard because terran bio armies are just so compact, compared to something like stalkers, immortals or ultralisks or so.
now it doesnt matter where your ghosts are. if a templar wants to storm the front of your army with range 9, even if your ghost is at the very back of your amry the space between your ghost and the templar should not be below 11or 12 which makes it possible for you to emp. the job is even easier done if the ghosts are at the front or in the middle of your army.
and dont engage directly, make the toss move his army, this way it is almost impossilbe for him to keep up the spread, that way you can just run in with like 4 ghosts and emp the hell out of him. and you can just pick of the chargelots, because that upgrade is soooo annoying sometimes for toss.
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EPT
