EPT[D] TvP--why hellions are really really good against P - P…
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Komodo
Mexico89 Posts
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Skyro
United States1823 Posts
Mixing in with a bio army seems odd. Mid-game your resources are still at a stage where you can't afford too much extra tech or production buildings. Hellions also have a worse cost/health ratio than marines w/ shields and they can't be healed with medivacs so they will be wittled down by storm pretty quickly. Plus when it goes into late-game if they switch into immortals + HT, which is a popular late-game mix vs bio, hellions start to become quite useless. They are a great harassment unit though, even w/o the upgrade. | ||
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Ezareth
United States60 Posts
Maurauders take 17 shots to kill one Zealot. 10 * 5 shots against the 50 shields + 10- 1 * 12 shots against the 100 Health due to the 1 armor. The last shot is for 1 hitpoint. | ||
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Jayrod
1820 Posts
I dont see why so many T's are opposed to trying them out or are stuck in this mindset that hellions are only a harassment tool (one of MANY). People point out stalkers, but honestly stalkers are barely viable in this matchup at all and would only be gotten for blink harass or in response to some type of air. This is because stalkers are pathetic against mass bio and almost every terran build has a little bio involved at a minimum. Now, if I saw a bunch of hellions, I would probably replace some zealots with stalkers knowing that the hellions probably replaced some bio. At that point it comes down to micro... making sure your units are hitting the most effective target. This is critical for protoss players to get used to because our units are fewer, more expensive, but potentially more powerful. Its like using collossus against a hydra/roach opponent. Many times, if your colli are hitting the roaches at all... you will flat out lose. If instead you assign them to hit hydras and focus stalkers on the roaches, the battle might tip in your favor. Watching some replays in frustration I see terran players time and time again stimming their bio ball and having it cycle through targets, without any assignment based on armor class, etc. The DPS of a bio ball is simply so great that it can burn any target down extremely quickly with very little micro effort (which is not to say great terran players dont micro, its to say that in order to be GOOD at terran you dont need much in the way of battle micro). I can see hellions with ignition forcing a response out of the zealot/HT mix, but it may be that the immortals that are right around the corner could do the job of the stalker against hellion. It just seems as if the terran mentality is: If I cant mass it, and it doesn't harass... what does it do for me? whereas the other races is: maybe adding a couple of these would help against these units allowing my other units to do more damage to the targets I want. TLDR: theres a reason so many people play terran. | ||
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kcdc
United States2311 Posts
On August 27 2010 04:43 Ezareth wrote: One correction: Maurauders take 17 shots to kill one Zealot. 10 * 5 shots against the 50 shields + 10- 1 * 12 shots against the 100 Health due to the 1 armor. The last shot is for 1 hitpoint. Thanks. Corrected in OP. On August 27 2010 04:51 Jayrod wrote: I dont see why so many T's are opposed to trying them out or are stuck in this mindset that hellions are only a harassment tool (one of MANY). People point out stalkers, but honestly stalkers are barely viable in this matchup at all and would only be gotten for blink harass or in response to some type of air. This is because stalkers are pathetic against mass bio and almost every terran build has a little bio involved at a minimum. Exactly. Stalkers get crushed by marauders and lose for cost to marines, even without combat shield. Throw in medivacs and stim the whole ball, and, well, getting a large number of stalkers aginst any amount of bio is a joke. Immortals are a similar story. They get crushed by marines and lose for cost to stimmed marauders. The only situation in which immortals are good against bio is if zealots are tanking the shots. And you're also right that hellions become better and better as the game goes on. Protoss becomes more spread out defending multiple bases and has to rely increasingly on the efficiency of zealots to compete with MMM. In steps the hellion with pre-ignitor to screw over a mid-to-late game Protoss on both fronts. Honestly, I don't know what P's mid/late-game answer is to pre-ignitor hellions. Once you're on 3 bases, it's a nightmare to try to kill 4 hellions before they can get off a single shot on one of your mineral lines. Cannons simply don't kill them fast enough. And in the main army, if you add more stalkers and immortals, you just lose to the MMM. For now, my plan is to kill them before they remember that pre-ignitor hellions exist. IMO, the Terran players who don't understand the threat of hellions just don't yet realize how critical zealots are against bio. Sure, hellions aren't good against any other Protoss unit, but if you can neutralize the zealot, you've effectively defeated the entire Protoss composition. | ||
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whateversclever
United States197 Posts
That's not to say, if they don't get to that point it's not absurdly strong. But I think the answer to the threat is to just apply pressure to him so that he simply cannot afford to make such a fast shift in production. The thing is your Gateways just become increasingly powerful because you can get Tier 3 units out of them, and if they aren't constantly reinforcing their army but instead try to make such a dramatic shift, then I would say you have a very large advantage. There might be some build where they could do this, but I don't think a simple tech-switch mid-game would be enough. | ||
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kcdc
United States2311 Posts
On August 27 2010 08:55 whateversclever wrote: It's not like Protoss where we can just build Stalkers rather than Zealots from Gateways, Terran have to change their entire infrastructure, and it's a whole different set of upgrades. It's more like if we had been pumping Stargate units, then suddenly shifted to Robo. It's very difficult. And really, for Terran by that point it's probably better to tech-up rather than tech down. Remember Hellions are a Tier 2 ground unit so that means they come out of a Tier 2 building which is more expensive. I would love to just swap out Stalkers for Immortals in the mid-game, but it's very expensive to build the Robotics Facilities to do this. I would imagine it's more the fact that Hellions come out of a Factory that precludes the sort of abuse that you are describing, then some unit weakness. That's not to say, if they don't get to that point it's not absurdly strong. But I think the answer to the threat is to just apply pressure to him so that he simply cannot afford to make such a fast shift in production. The thing is your Gateways just become increasingly powerful because you can get Tier 3 units out of them, and if they aren't constantly reinforcing their army but instead try to make such a dramatic shift, then I would say you have a very large advantage. There might be some build where they could do this, but I don't think a simple tech-switch mid-game would be enough. With bio, you need a factory anyway to get medivacs. At some point in the mid-game when P is starting to spread out over multiple bases and use a lot of zealots, research pre-ignitor and then throw a reactor on the factory. A reactor on the mandatory single factor will produce more than enough hellions to do some harass and then swing back around to join the main composition for some zealot-roasting. Yes, the pre-ignitor upgrade is 150/150 that you wouldn't ordinary spend, and the reactor is an extra 50/50 (although you could plan your build such that it's used on another building earlier and then switched to the factory), so there is a small additional infrastructure cost. But it's far from 'having to change their entire infrastructure.' It's actually a very lean transition that has a HUGE payoff. | ||
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charlie420247
United States692 Posts
On August 26 2010 16:52 Chunkybuddha wrote: Hide nested quote - Later on hellion harass isn't superb against toss either because (blink) stalkers can be warped in a substantial amount and protoss has the least trouble of all races to quickly replace probes (excess nexus energy). On August 26 2010 13:27 charlie420247 wrote: not sure but ive lost all my drones at an expansion befor(20~ or so) and replaced them all in secods after the harrass is taken care of. zerg is by far the best race for replacing lost drones since you can make any number at one time. Lol. OK, then you have no larva, gg next macro round. I love when zergs think rebuilding all their drones at once means they arent behind Until they start to think thats like 20 hydralisks or something they could have had but they now dont have i never fucking said replacing all your drones doesnt mean your behind!!!! OF COURSE YOUR BEHIND!!!! what i said was that you can rebuild your drones faster as zerg than you can as protoss. period. its a fucking fact. late game (3 base+) if an expansion loses all its drones you make 15 drones and will still have larva for units. if you lose a base worth of drones and just make 20 hydras instead of drones sure you have units now but you just fucked your economy later. your behind either way because you lost 20 fucking drones. still doesnt change the fact that zerg can replenish workers faster than the other races. | ||
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link0
United States1071 Posts
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ltortoise
633 Posts
On August 27 2010 15:22 link0 wrote: Hellions are terrible against P when not harrassing. End of story. The chargelots I roasted during a huge battle last game happen to disagree. | ||
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ChickenLips
2912 Posts
On August 27 2010 15:22 link0 wrote: Hellions are terrible against P when not harrassing. End of story. Get out of these forums, we don't want your kind here. If you are in the strategy forums at least try to formulate a reply that doesn't look like a monkey just shat all over himself. How do you come to that conclusion when numerous others have found that hellions are great in TvP? | ||
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morimacil
France921 Posts
I mean sure, when you are kiting zealots with hellions, then they are awesome, you can kill an infinite amount of them. But when not kiting, they tend to die pretty fast. Also, another reason is that bio does well enough :/ Sure, 10 blue flamed hellions do nice stuff to zealots. But 20 stimmed marines and a ghost cost the same, and are still quite good against zealots. I would say probably better when not kiting. But they also do much better against stalkers, immortals, and pretty much every other unit in the mid game. And when you start to have medivacs, and upgrades, it tends to be even more in the marine's favor. Also, its a whole lot of additional micro with hellions. They move faster, and you dont want them to be in the front line due to their poor health for cost ratio and the fact that they cannot be healed. Personally, I dont use many hellions appart from harrassment mostly because I feel they suck when they arent kiting. | ||
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whateversclever
United States197 Posts
On August 27 2010 09:24 kcdc wrote: With bio, you need a factory anyway to get medivacs. At some point in the mid-game when P is starting to spread out over multiple bases and use a lot of zealots, research pre-ignitor and then throw a reactor on the factory. A reactor on the mandatory single factor will produce more than enough hellions to do some harass and then swing back around to join the main composition for some zealot-roasting. Yes, the pre-ignitor upgrade is 150/150 that you wouldn't ordinary spend, and the reactor is an extra 50/50 (although you could plan your build such that it's used on another building earlier and then switched to the factory), so there is a small additional infrastructure cost. But it's far from 'having to change their entire infrastructure.' It's actually a very lean transition that has a HUGE payoff. Well, I was talking more of a transition, and what you're describing is more just successful harass into support. If it's just a lone Factory with a Reactor, I don't think you'll really see enough Hellions that it'll make Zealots ineffective and it's more a question of defending harassment then unit responses. I would say that in any case of trying to out-macro your opponent going air is essential. Protoss are really weak at defending expansions. Protoss's biggest weakness imo is their inability to use ground forces to defend expansions well. You can warp in, but that's highly production dependent. It's not necessarily that your ground army is slow, but for it to be an effective answer you need to kill the harassment quickly, and that's not what your army is built for. "Terran immobility" is pretty much a myth. Sure, Siege Tanks and Thors are immobile, but then there is every other unit they have, not to mention just leap frogging their Orbital Commands and spamming Mules. The reality is you just can't defend very many bases with ground forces, and I think Protoss tend to overestimate their ability to do so. But going mass Gateway is a very lean strategy, and you don't really need an inordinate number of bases. It's more just waiting for upgrades. If you want to expand as a threat, I would say getting some Stargates is the way to go. Otherwise, you're just adding liabilities. Factories are pretty inept against Void Ray harass, and Phoenix can pick off the Hellions and Tanks well. You also have a nice transition to Carriers for an end game which you should be able to just power through with. | ||
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kcdc
United States2311 Posts
On August 27 2010 23:44 whateversclever wrote: Well, I was talking more of a transition, and what you're describing is more just successful harass into support. If it's just a lone Factory with a Reactor, I don't think you'll really see enough Hellions that it'll make Zealots ineffective and it's more a question of defending harassment then unit responses. Within 2 minutes, you can produce 8 of them. 8 hellions with blue flame do an absolutely silly amount of damage to zealots when kiting a gateway ball with MMM. The zealots line up as they chase the MMM ball and evaporate in 2-3 shots. Without the hellions there, those zealots take an eternity to fall. On August 27 2010 15:22 link0 wrote: Hellions are terrible against P when not harrassing. End of story. This is just silly. Are you saying blue hellions aren't good against zealots, or are you saying that P has a way to compete with well-controlled MMM for cost that doesn't involve zealots. (Note: if you include collosi in the equal cost composition, you have to assume that Terran is smart enough to respond with vikings.) | ||
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Sv1
United States204 Posts
As my previous comments have stated, I have a love/hate relationship with hellions that I think most people do as well, so finding a use for them has been something I've been looking at since beta (TvZ aside). The build I opened with looks like a 1-1-1 based on when the probe arrives to scout, or it could potentially look like a delayed reaper. It's standard terran 10/12/13/15. 2nd Gas/Factory@19 I generally build my techlab to my first barracks after the 2nd marine. Start stim research as factory finishes and start building techlab on factory When Factory Tech finishes, start preignitor. Pump Marauders/Marines while keeping up your supply from being blocked. Assuming no zealots/stalkers have come, this puts you at around 6 marauders, 4 hellions, 8 marines a little bit before 8 minutes and around 50food. You can rush with this on a large ramp/close distance map or against a fast expand. This is about all I've seen this good for. Generally protoss have been able to sit behind sentries. In the end, you just keep pumping into your bio force. This force I find isn't entirely strong enough to charge up a ramp. You still have 45hp marines (35 if you waste a stim). I played probably close to 15 games against toss and found limited success, at least going this route. I think if you're going to use hellions early, you may as well go with iEchoic's hellion drop. Going early preignite delays your starport, which delays your medivacs, or a banshee. The banshee delay is probably the most severe as warpgates will certainly be up, and you won't really have an element of surprise. Additionally, if you spot a stargate this build shouldn't be used at all as you will most certainly not have enough marines to really protect yourself against voidrays. Mid Game: You can certainly pepper your army with with hellions to take care of any zealots, but you'll need roughly about 6. If he has any more than 10 zealots. Also mid game dropping hellions on the main isn't all that helpful as they can't kill buildings too well and most workers *should* be transferred at this point. Late Game: I think you have to hope that you've gotten to late game with map control that involves a seiged middle with some hellion/ground support and possibly even transitioning to BCs. The more templar are out, I don't care how many hellions you have to take care of the zealots, storms are storms and kill hellions fast, warpgates grant a lot of momentum and you will essentially need to answer every one of those warpgates with a factory or you'll be on your backfoot the wohle time. The best maps to harass natural expansions are: XNC, Desert Oasis, Metalopolis. The mineral lines are as such that you can get in and out relatively easy. Of course the second that stalkers start warping in things will get too hot. Blistering Sands, Steppes, Scrap Station, LT, Delta Quadrant all have secondary expansions that are easy to harass. As was previously mentioned the biggest weakness in hellions is their hp and survivability. It's almost imperative to keep your hellions alive with an scv or 2 out on the field set to auto repair. The other thing about hellions is that you need to have some good scouting throughout. It's easy for a toss player to warp in 7 or 8 zealots, not so much for hellions. Frankly I'm still not sold on the reactor core on a factory, and see it as a last ditch effort. I'd rather toss up 2 more factories with techs than bother with the core and be unable to switch to tanks should I need them. Bottom line, Hellion is still a very situational unit vs toss. With Zealot/HT strats being used, you'll be ok. I still think that any other composition of units from Protoss will still favor the protoss. | ||
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kcdc
United States2311 Posts
On August 28 2010 00:08 Sv1 wrote: After some initial comments earlier this week I decided to do some testing. I don't have any replays to show (I do most of my posting from work, though I do have SC2 installed here I probably could get some together). I imagine this will make most people stop reading, but I'm gonna post anyway! As my previous comments have stated, I have a love/hate relationship with hellions that I think most people do as well, so finding a use for them has been something I've been looking at since beta (TvZ aside). The build I opened with looks like a 1-1-1 based on when the probe arrives to scout, or it could potentially look like a delayed reaper. It's standard terran 10/12/13/15. 2nd Gas/Factory@19 I generally build my techlab to my first barracks after the 2nd marine. Start stim research as factory finishes and start building techlab on factory When Factory Tech finishes, start preignitor. Pump Marauders/Marines while keeping up your supply from being blocked. Assuming no zealots/stalkers have come, this puts you at around 6 marauders, 4 hellions, 8 marines a little bit before 8 minutes and around 50food. You can rush with this on a large ramp/close distance map or against a fast expand. This is about all I've seen this good for. Generally protoss have been able to sit behind sentries. In the end, you just keep pumping into your bio force. This force I find isn't entirely strong enough to charge up a ramp. You still have 45hp marines (35 if you waste a stim). I played probably close to 15 games against toss and found limited success, at least going this route. I think if you're going to use hellions early, you may as well go with iEchoic's hellion drop. Going early preignite delays your starport, which delays your medivacs, or a banshee. The banshee delay is probably the most severe as warpgates will certainly be up, and you won't really have an element of surprise. Additionally, if you spot a stargate this build shouldn't be used at all as you will most certainly not have enough marines to really protect yourself against voidrays. Mid Game: You can certainly pepper your army with with hellions to take care of any zealots, but you'll need roughly about 6. If he has any more than 10 zealots. Also mid game dropping hellions on the main isn't all that helpful as they can't kill buildings too well and most workers *should* be transferred at this point. Late Game: I think you have to hope that you've gotten to late game with map control that involves a seiged middle with some hellion/ground support and possibly even transitioning to BCs. The more templar are out, I don't care how many hellions you have to take care of the zealots, storms are storms and kill hellions fast, warpgates grant a lot of momentum and you will essentially need to answer every one of those warpgates with a factory or you'll be on your backfoot the wohle time. The best maps to harass natural expansions are: XNC, Desert Oasis, Metalopolis. The mineral lines are as such that you can get in and out relatively easy. Of course the second that stalkers start warping in things will get too hot. Blistering Sands, Steppes, Scrap Station, LT, Delta Quadrant all have secondary expansions that are easy to harass. As was previously mentioned the biggest weakness in hellions is their hp and survivability. It's almost imperative to keep your hellions alive with an scv or 2 out on the field set to auto repair. The other thing about hellions is that you need to have some good scouting throughout. It's easy for a toss player to warp in 7 or 8 zealots, not so much for hellions. Frankly I'm still not sold on the reactor core on a factory, and see it as a last ditch effort. I'd rather toss up 2 more factories with techs than bother with the core and be unable to switch to tanks should I need them. Bottom line, Hellion is still a very situational unit vs toss. With Zealot/HT strats being used, you'll be ok. I still think that any other composition of units from Protoss will still favor the protoss. Good response. The big caveat that I'd add is that you're assuming a 1-base Protoss in the early-mid game, and you're lamenting the fact that you aren't able to push up P's ramp with your composition because of forcefield. However, I've found that the strongest PvT play by far is an early expansion after cybercore, and that Terran simply getting to the bottom of my ramp in the mid-game would be a huge win. Against a 1-base Protoss, hellions aren't worthwhile, so I wouldn't recommend them in the early game unless P is fast-expanding (which I believe will become very common at the higher tiers). In the mid-game when P has multiple bases to defend, however, I think hellions will be very strong against any ground-based Protoss play. | ||
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ltortoise
633 Posts
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summerloud
Austria1201 Posts
rauders have been a joke ever since the beta started, whoever ever thought a 125 hp unit with high damage and slow should have stim should be shot in the nuts | ||
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kcdc
United States2311 Posts
On August 28 2010 02:28 ltortoise wrote: The upcoming tank nerf (35 damage a shot to light units - 1 = 34 to zealots) makes hellions pretty much THE T2 counter to chargelots. If your protoss opponent isn't making a lot of stalkers, I see absolutely no reason to mass up tanks now over hellions, especially when your gas could be much better used for more marauder/medivac. What makes you think that nerf will happen? Edit: Nevermind, saw the changes Blizz says they're working on. Overall, I like the changes, but you're right--that patch will really bring hellions to the main stage in TvP. Nerfing the tank's damage to zealots will make marines, hellions and banshees T's only responses to zealots. Marines and banshees are crap against HT....so hellions will be the only good response. Once Terrans start using a lot of hellions tho, this MU is going to get tough for P. Time to start using anti-zergling building placement wall-offs against Terrans.... | ||
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Jayrod
1820 Posts
My friend sv1 and I have been posting on/following this thread. We tried this out, he is a T and I am a P. We came to the conclusion that the hellion timing push is not effective, at least at 50 food, and probably never because you need 3 upgrades and 300/300 to make it effective. The push was 4 hellion 4 marauder and like 6 marines or so (I think thats what I counted in the replay). Basically the time and resoures needed to conc shell the marauders is wasted if you are replacing four of them with 4 hellions. A more effective push is still with more marauders. You save resources from pre-ignition that can be better used elsewhere during early stages of the game. Your conc shell upgrade also applies to more units within that push. I was able to forcefield the ramp for one more wave of gateway units and a second immortal, then moved out and completely crushed his push (only lost 1 stalker and 1 zealot). The game continued (to my surprise as I stopped building completely and went full retard thinking we were just testing). Late game he supplemented his army with the pre-ignition hellions as I was zealot/ht/immortal with a couple sentries. We discovered another problem here. Yes, the hellions were able to make quick work of the zealots, making the fights fairly close, though the zeals still did enough tanking to do their part overall. The problem for the terran is actually counterintuitive to the idea that protoss transitions so much slower than terran. When it comes to the warpgate and gateway-oriented armies. Terran are actually SLOWER to respond than the toss. Noticing his now hellion-scattered army, I warped in a higher ration of stalker with fewer zealots (you still need some) and it crushed his hellions. There's no possible way for a terran to adapt a ground army AFTER a fight has happened as quickly as toss for a followup push. When the game becomes a macro game, and the protoss has multiple bases and 10+ gateways, he can pick and choose a comp that will shit on an army with hellion-based mech. I'm sure my ladder teammate can comment further, but a timing push with hellions is out of the question. I suggested to him a smaller bio timing push at the ramp while you hellion drop in the main, but this is a whole new build. | ||
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