EPT[D] TvP--why hellions are really really good against P - P…
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kcdc
United States2311 Posts
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onionchowder
United States137 Posts
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mahnini
United States6862 Posts
On August 27 2010 06:40 kcdc wrote: Thanks. Corrected in OP. 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. you may or may not believe it but people also used to think dragoons sucked in pvt and it's kind of true. cost for cost, they were worse than vultures and tanks but they were still the staple damage dealer in the protoss army. the same thing goes for stalkers. i don't see a problem mid-late game of walling your expos with pylons or just clogging up the area behind the min lines and simcity your expos more since you can warp units in anywhere anyway. if all else fails maybe you could just build an extra gateway or two to keep idle (most of the time) and deal with various harassment. i don't know, i play bio a lot (that's all i know how to do) and i'm never really intimidated by any number of zealots, marauder/medivac in large numbers with slow just melt them and if i didn't feel like marauders were good enough i'd just mix in some marines. tvp i'm much more concerned with collossi / ht. | ||
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kcdc
United States2311 Posts
On August 28 2010 04:35 mahnini wrote: you may or may not believe it but people also used to think dragoons sucked in pvt and it's kind of true. cost for cost, they were worse than vultures and tanks but they were still the staple damage dealer in the protoss army. the same thing goes for stalkers. i don't see a problem mid-late game of walling your expos with pylons or just clogging up the area behind the min lines and simcity your expos more since you can warp units in anywhere anyway. if all else fails maybe you could just build an extra gateway or two to keep idle (most of the time) and deal with various harassment. i don't know, i play bio a lot (that's all i know how to do) and i'm never really intimidated by any number of zealots, marauder/medivac in large numbers with slow just melt them and if i didn't feel like marauders were good enough i'd just mix in some marines. tvp i'm much more concerned with collossi / ht. Good comparison re: stalker/dragoon vs T. Neither is 'efficient', but both are necessary in their respecitve games. The big difference between the respective roles of the dragoon and the stalker against Terran in SC:BW and SC2, however, is the presence of the marauder in SC2. In BW, the dragoon wasn't hard-countered by any Terran unit. Sieged tanks and mines would take goons down pretty quickly, but you could handle those issues with good control and catching the tanks on the move. In SC2, however, using stalkers as the core of your composition simply isn't an option because stimmed marauders crap all over them, especially when you start throwing in medivacs. You're also right that large numbers of marauder/medivac beats large numbers of zealots. The ranged MMM ball scales much better than the Protoss gateway composition, so storms or collosi are necessary. That said, you still need large numbers of zealots to deal with bio because storms + stalkers still loses to well-controlled bio at even cost. I can't speak to stalker+collosi vs MMM+viking because I haven't tried it much, but it sounds bad for Protoss to me. I guess P could try something like 6 gateway, triple robo-immortal + storm as a late-game composition. As for limiting the threat of hellions, I will definitely start making a concerted effort to sim-city my mineral lines with warpgates. They're really the perfect building to wall off your mineral lines with because you need so many of them and it doesn't matter where they're placed. It's something I've always done vs Z, and will start doing more against T. With a good sim-city, a cannon on each mineral line, and good map coverage, I think a good P will be able to handle hellion harrass decently. Honestly, I'm not there yet, but I think it can be done. The problem with the main army as I see it is (1) hellions are REALLY good against zealots, and (2) marauders are REALLY good against stalkers, leaving P without a good option with which to form the backbone of his composition against T. If you could make mardauders merely counter stalkers instead of COUNTERING stalkers, that would solve the problem. I'd make a ton of stalkers with a few zealots, and try to beat the marauders with economy, positioning, forcefield and storms. It wouldn't take a huge marauder-nerf or stalker-buff to make that work, but right now, the efficiency-gap is too big to beat marauders-based compositions with stalker-based compositions, even with superior play. I'd prefer to see a small nerf to hellion damage vs zealots, however. Hellions are clearly designed to be harassment units, and building harassment units over muscle units should hurt the strength of your main army composition at least slightly. (Think muta-ling vs roach-hydra) In my experience, adding hellions improves the strength of your main army, which makes them a little too good. IMO, nerfing their damage to 21 (so they still 2-shot drones) instead of 24 against light would more clearly define their role as a harassment unit. I don't think Terran players would really mind this change, as the vast majority of them already see hellions as harassment-only units. | ||
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kcdc
United States2311 Posts
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Bungle
Canada59 Posts
On August 28 2010 03:37 Jayrod wrote: Hi, ~300 bronze league 3v3 here... 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. Sup, King Bungle here - 1v1 copper league 124 pts If I recall correctly I was obs'ing the game between you and your 'friend' and would just like to add that the forcefield on the ramp was completely unnecessary, in fact you could have strolled down there and crushed his army with what you had when he showed up. Or if you were feeling particularly clever (as I am known to after a half dozen beers) you could have FF'd behind his units while they were walking up the ramp eliminating their retreat path. In short, I'd just like to say that the comp he pushed out with against your 2 gate robo wouldn't have lasted 4 seconds. Adieu, King Bungle | ||
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Bommes
Germany1226 Posts
It deals really well with pretty much anything a protoss can throw at you. I only lose when I make mistakes myself. And if the protoss is passive you have all the harass opportunities with hellion drop, raven autoturrets etc  | ||
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BrTarolg
United Kingdom3574 Posts
People that don't use hellions as the main part of the composition of their bio builds, don't understand just how important zealots are to the P army Currently, the only viable composition for P is zealot templar (give or take archons and sentries) Colossi are a BAD tech route, and stalkers SUCK. The amount of games i've seen people lose with a 50% bigger army because they had stalkers instead of zealot/temp is rediculous This build is ofc, hard countered by precisely 5 hellions along wih the rest of your army. People that think there are other viable compositions vs T bioballs except for the base zealot templar really need to play more PVT and understand how badly you are going to lose in terms of cost efficiency otherwise. | ||
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Yaotzin
South Africa4280 Posts
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Voyager I
United States260 Posts
This would likely emphasize the importance of Hellions, since Blue Flames - 2 still comes out to a lot. | ||
Plexa
Aotearoa39261 Posts
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ltortoise
633 Posts
On August 29 2010 22:00 Plexa wrote: http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Plexa/sc2_reps/20100829_221802.sc2replay seems relevant to the discussion. Blue hellion harass is ridiculous... I think you need to fan probes out rather than maynard them away, going to have to practice that this week I think. I think if you let the hellions get to your mineral line it's pretty much already too late. Stopping hellions has to be preventative. That being said, yeah. You're better off just letting your probes keep mining or splitting them in a million different directions like a maniac. Telling them all to move away in the same direction is pretty much the worst possible thing you could do. | ||
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simme123
Sweden810 Posts
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PulseSUI
Switzerland305 Posts
On August 29 2010 21:48 Yaotzin wrote: Someone inform all the pros that make collossi that they're actually BAD, please. most noticed it them self and shy away from early Colossus. Colossus is good in late game, when you can afford to pump them out of 3 Robos, but 1 or 2 base Colossus will more often then not loose you the game against a Bioball. | ||
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CharlieMurphy
United States22895 Posts
1- Nerf their life/damage (Maybe the dual wide flame from campaign instead of more damage as ignitor upg) 2- Pylons, Bunkers, etc. certain structures need to wall medium and large units but not small units. So you can make walls like people did in bw to keep vults out. 3- The maps need to have expansions and naturals that are safer. Take XNC, Metalopolis, Desert Oasis for example. They are just wide open for harassment from like 280° or more. | ||
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Yaotzin
South Africa4280 Posts
On August 29 2010 23:07 PulseSUI wrote: most noticed it them self and shy away from early Colossus. Colossus is good in late game, when you can afford to pump them out of 3 Robos, but 1 or 2 base Colossus will more often then not loose you the game against a Bioball. Many do go early colossi, but anyway. The post I was responding to categorically said colossi and stalkers are BAD, which pros clearly disagree with! | ||
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Plexa
Aotearoa39261 Posts
On August 29 2010 22:45 ltortoise wrote: I think if you let the hellions get to your mineral line it's pretty much already too late. Stopping hellions has to be preventative. That being said, yeah. You're better off just letting your probes keep mining or splitting them in a million different directions like a maniac. Telling them all to move away in the same direction is pretty much the worst possible thing you could do. Pretty hard to stop them getting there if they arrive via medivac  | ||
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Floophead_III
United States1832 Posts
On August 29 2010 23:10 CharlieMurphy wrote: I'm pretty sure one of three things needs to change to balance hellions: 1- Nerf their life/damage (Maybe the dual wide flame from campaign instead of more damage as ignitor upg) 2- Pylons, Bunkers, etc. certain structures need to wall medium and large units but not small units. So you can make walls like people did in bw to keep vults out. 3- The maps need to have expansions and naturals that are safer. Take XNC, Metalopolis, Desert Oasis for example. They are just wide open for harassment from like 280° or more. Hellions are fine as is. I do agree the maps need to have safer naturals, but that's a discussion for other threads. It's pretty much established that blizz can't make maps. | ||
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Sword_Acolyte
United States25 Posts
Anyway, one thing to consider is the insanely slow fire rate of hellions. | ||
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Voyager I
United States260 Posts
On August 29 2010 23:10 CharlieMurphy wrote: 2- Pylons, Bunkers, etc. certain structures need to wall medium and large units but not small units. So you can make walls like people did in bw to keep vults out. I believe buildings that touch diagonally will allow small units, but block anything larger. I'm not 100% on this though. | ||
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