|
Disclaimer: I'm ~850 diamond Protoss player (sorry, I know some people don't like posting rating at the top, but I think it helps to have a sense of a poster's level of play)
Terran players have been using hellions to great effect against Zerg since early beta, but hellions are still widely underused in TvP. As a Protoss player, I find the hellion to be the most scary unit in the Terran arsenal by far. I believe hellions are presently underused because seeing their true values requires looking a little deeper into the meta-game, but soon, hellions will be widely regarded as a staple unit in TvP.
First, the obvious: hellions are great harassment units. They're one of the fastest units in the game, and their line of splash damage makes them perfectly suited to dash into a base and wipe out big chunks of workers in a flash. With the ignitor upgrade, they 2-shot probes, so a pair of hellions can easily kill 10+ workers on a saturated mineral line in a single volley if they get into position. They're also cheap, mineral-only units that come out of a mandatory tech structure, which means you can afford to lose them in harass, and they don't drain your precious gas away from the marauders, tanks, banshees and ravens that you want to have against Protoss.
To fully understand why hellions are so scary, however, you need to consider the interaction between bio and the Protoss composition options at T2 (when hellions are available). Ignoring phoenixes and void rays for the moment, (P can't responsively use phoenixes or void rays against hellions because they take too long to get up and running) P has zealots, stalkers, sentries and immortals available at T2. Marine-marauder with stim is an incredibly potent force when controlled well, and of the T2 options listed above, P is left with one answer that's clearly better than the rest: tanking shots with zealots.
Consider: Zealots cost 100 minerals and take 17 marauder shots to kill. Stalkers cost 125/50 and take 9 shots to kill. Sentries cost 50/100 and take 8 shots to kill. Immortals cost 250/100 and take 21 marauder shots to kill. For cost, zealots tank shots from MM about 3 times better than any other Protoss unit depending on how you value gas vs minerals and the ratio of marines to marauders. This is HUGE. Having zealots in front of your stalkers and immortals is like having the HP of your units multiplied by 3. Zealots are the reason Protoss can compete with MM in the early-to-mid-game. Without zealots, the effectiveness of the T2 Protoss army is roughly halved (durability is less than half, but the damage output is slightly increased by building more stalkers and immortals).
So by now, the true threat of the hellion should be becoming clear. Not only is the hellion an insanely good harassment unit, but it also crushes the one unit that is the lynchpin of any early or mid-game Protoss composition. If you throw in a handful of hellions with the pre-ignitor upgrade into your primary MM composition, Protoss's zealots will evaporate, leaving the squishy stalkers and immortals exposed. Unless P already has an economic lead giving him a substantially larger army, P's only option will be to fall back into his base to forcefield his ramp until T3 when he can use storm or collosi to push out. During this time, the Terran player has free reign over the map to expand, add tanks or banshees, and continue harassment.
So, in conclusion, if you're a Terran player, use hellions more, and get the pre-ignitor upgrade. They're great harassment units, but even better, they're an incredibly effective complement to your main MM composition. Building hellions with pre-ignitor is a rare opportunity to efficiently improve both your harassment potential and the strength of your main army composition. In my opinion, no other unit in the game is as strong in both harassment and augmenting your main army composition (banshees are a distant second followed by zerglings and blink stalkers, IMO).
And if you're a Protoss player....well, fear hellions with pre-ignitor. Terrans aren't using them much right now, but in time, they will, and they'll be really hard to deal with.
***
Results from unit tester. I used 1/1 infantry upgrades and no vehicle upgrades for Terran, 1/1 ground weapon/armor upgrades for Protoss, provided stim, conc shell, combat shield, pre-ignitor and charge. I used only limited micro to place zealots in front of stalkers before sending units and stimmed the MM right before they hit P army. Results:
Let's say P is concerned about facing a composition that's roughly half marines, half marauder by cost. To start, I tried 12 marauders and 22 marines against a balanced T2 Protoss army of 10 zealots, 10 stalkers and 2 immortals. Well, it turns out that:
12 marauders, 22 marines (2300/300) >> 10 zealots, 10 stalkers, 2 immortals (2750/700)
The Terran army, at significantly smaller cost, easily defeats this balanced Protoss composition every time. So our Protoss hero rethinks his composition, favoring zealots over stalkers. Results:
12 marauders, 22 marines (2300/300) is roughly equal to 16 zealots, 10 stalkers, 2 immortals (2725/450)
These battles went both ways, although I think the Protoss army came out on top more often. We'll call it even. While the cheaper Terran army is still roughly even with the Protoss composition, Protoss has to be happy that they can make their composition slightly less expensive and actually do much better against MM by skewing their composition toward zealots. This is in line with my earlier statement that zealots are ESSENTIAL against MM.
Now, let's try swapping in some hellions for marines against this more efficient Protoss composition:
12 marauders, 10 marines, 6 hellions (2300/300) narrowly beats 16 zealots, 10 stalkers, 2 immortals (2725/450)
So at the same cost, Terran can actually improve his composition against the more efficient zealot-heavy Protoss composition by replacing some of his marines with hellions.
Conclusion: These results indicate that, at the very least, Terran's main army composition is made no worse against an efficient Protoss mid-game composition by replacing some of the marines with hellions.
Now think about which composition is better for harass. Would you rather have 12 marauders and 22 marines for harassment, or would you take the 12 marauders, 10 marines and 6 hellions? It's not even close. Now, sure, the hellions aren't better than marines against more balanced Protoss compositions, but MM is so efficient against those compositions that you're guaranteed map control against those balanced compositions with either pure MM or MM+hellion.
Against a balanced Protoss composition, Terran will have mid-game map control with either MM or MM+hellion. Against a zealot-skewed Protoss composition, mid-game map control will be a battle
with a pure MM force, but a MM+hellion force will do somewhat better at winning Terran map control. A MM+hellion force is infinitely better for harassment than a pure MM force. So why wouldn't you add hellions to your mid-game composition?
***
Adding a thought that I buried in a comment in the thread to the OP because I'd like more people to read it.
I'd like to see a small nerf to hellion damage vs zealots. 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 slightly 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 most Terran players would really mind this change, as the vast majority of them already see hellions as harassment-only units.
What do people think about changing hellion damage from 8 + 8 vs light (8 + 16 vs light w/ pre-ignitor) to 8 + 8 vs light (8 + 13 vs light w/ pre-ignitor)? IMO, a corresponding reduction in the cost of the pre-ignitor upgrade from 150/150 to 100/100 would be prudent, since it would add only 5 points of damage instead of 8. I believe hellions would remain effective combat units against zealots, hydras and zerglings--their combat-effectiveness would just be more in line with their mobility.
|
Reposting my reply to the closed thread since you insist on reposting this everywhere:
I love my hellions, but I generally don't run bio in TvP. Chargelots with HT or colossi, sentry and stalker support do fine vs bioball + hellions, especially if you micro zealots out of tantalizing lines. FF is obviously effective at blocking them from reaching your HTs, making them path around, etc. If the Terran builds too many hellions, he won't have the minerals to make enough marauders to deal with the rest of your army.
|
On August 26 2010 02:37 Shaithis wrote:
Reposting my reply to the closed thread since you insist on reposting this everywhere:
I love my hellions, but I generally don't run bio in TvP. Chargelots with HT or colossi, sentry and stalker support do fine vs bioball + hellions, especially if you micro zealots out of tantalizing lines. FF is obviously effective at blocking them from reaching your HTs, making them path around, etc. If the Terran builds too many hellions, he won't have the minerals to make enough marauders to deal with the rest of your army.
It's a different thread with a different angle. I think this is a topic that's worthy of a thread, and it'd be nice if we could keep this one free of flaming.
|
hellions against P are not very good. in most situations I rather have 2 marines than a hellion. Yes they are good for harassing but including them in your army comp leaves your open to be countered alot easier. They will destroy all zealots and HTs with any micro but any smart P will quickly react to your lower mara numbers and produce more stalkers and immortals. After all your maras and damage dealers die 8 hellions are worthless against any number of stalkers. I do agree T should include hellions more, but more so for flanking a P army to snipe HTs or for harassing. Including them in your army just means less maras can hit the front line.
|
Aotearoa39261 Posts
Some replays/examples would really liven this thread up imo.
|
On August 26 2010 02:46 Plexa wrote:
Some replays/examples would really liven this thread up imo.
I agree, ill look for some of my own, seems like an opinion battle ATM
|
On August 26 2010 02:46 Plexa wrote:
Some replays/examples would really liven this thread up imo.
If you run equal cost compsitions of zealot/stalker/immortal vs MM and MM+blue hellion, you'll see what I'm talking about. I unfortunately don't have replays of it saved ATM because T plays so rarely use pre-ignitor. If a good T player wants to help generate some replays, let me know.
|
Its just (yet) another Gateway-unit-destroying option they have, although there are a lot of Terrans who use their Factory as nothing but a scout or advanced warning system, when they could be using it to produce some pretty scary harassment and Zealot-destroying units with excess minerals. Those ones will figure it out eventually.
I'd rather they replaced Marines with Hellions, because it means I don't need Psi Storm, I can stick with T2 and my Void Rays and Phoenixes can get at them easier. But, when they build Hellions alongside the Marines, that becomes a pretty big problem.
|
On August 26 2010 02:45 tipakee wrote:
hellions against P are not very good. in most situations I rather have 2 marines than a hellion.
Perhaps you should reconsider. With MM, marines are really there to kill zealots. Against stalkers, marauders do the same damage and have much better durability. Marines are helpful if P happens to have multiple immortals, but really, marines are there to deal with zealots.
Both stimmed marines and hellions do about 10 dps to zealots. Marines cost half as much, but hellions have double the HP of a stimmed marine (more than double w/o combat shield) and hellions have a big splash damage. So with regard to zealots (the marine's primary early-game purpose), hellions are substantially better in a head-to-head fight, and they also offer huge harrassment potential.
You definitely don't want to abandon marines entirely in favor of hellions. You need something that shoots up in case P gets a void ray, and marines will be helpful against immortals. But throwing in a handful of hellions with pre-ignitor is, IMO, a stronger play than spending that same money on marines.
|
I dont think hellions are that strong against protoss actually, they just have a few things going against them.
First of all protoss always get stalkers because of marauder kiting and reapers. Stalkers are just neccesary in every PvT opening and partly because of that PvT always starts with relatively fast warpgates as well. Those 2 facts combined mean hellion harass is quite easy to counter early on. 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).
Also it's important to note the hellion might be a anti-light unit but it's damage output is mainly dependant on splash damage because even against light it's damage output isn't that fantastic.
A hellion does 9.6 DPS against light with pre-igniter if it hits 1 unit. A zealot does 13.33 DPS against anything without upgrades. So the thing making hellions decent combat units is not their damage against light but it's splash on light units and against protoss it's just difficult to really splash lots of units. Zealots with charge tend to space out quite a bit and don't take as much damage then, up close the zealots kill the hellion really fast so as front line unit they aren't exactly good either.
All in all money is usually just better spent on marines then hellions, i'll just name a few more reasons:
- hellions can't be healed with your medivacs, it's generally easier to have a entire army that can be healed as that makes kiting far easier and you can heal up entirely from a storm that partly hit you. Hellions taking some hits from storms just sucks. Also hellions are dodgy with their kiting (acting differently then infantry) making it much harder to kite with a marine/marauder/hellion/medivac army.
- hellions dont benefit from your infantry upgrades, especially lacking armor really makes them cannon fodder when the protoss gets some attack upgrades. For example a zealot with 1 attack upgrade exactly 5 shots a non-upgraded hellion in 6 seconds, that same pre-ignited hellion takes 12.5 seconds to roast a EMP'ed zealot!
- the pre-igniter upgrade can be hassle to get if you don't bother with siege tanks. Sure you can put a tech lab on your factory and put that tech lab to a barracks later but why should you bother if hellions aren't worth it. Also pre-igniter is quite costly to get if you only intend on using 1 factory for hellions...
- Using the factory for hellions because it's otherwise idle anyway is a nice idea but 1 factory hellions aren't too much of a real output anyway. Also barracks aren't too expensive so just upping your barracks count isn't that high of a cost especially later in the game. Also lots of people prefer to use that 1 required factory for some siege tanks.
- Hellions may harass nicely but so do medivac drops. You usually have enough attention going to those that you aren't really waiting for hellions and their harass ability.
The real power of hellions lies early game imo. Then all these above mentioned issue's aren't there yet as you won't have medivacs, won't have upgrades and a idle building IS still a waste. Usage in the line of TLO's play is how I like them most. Using the factory for early game aggresion while at the same time teching quite quickly to starport(s).
Later on you're better off floating the factory or making siege tanks then getting into the trouble of researching pre-igniter, a ghost or a infantry attack upgrade is just a far better way to spend your 150m 150g....
Edit: There should really come a custom micro map for sc2. It would help solve a lot of discussions about which army composition is better then what. About half the discussions on here go about bio vs mech, colossi vs templar, roach/hydra vs ultra/ling etc etc. A micro map where players alternate between sides and play 20 marauders 30 marines 5 medivacs vs a toss army and then 20 marauders 20 marines 5 medivacs 5 blue flame hellions vs a toss army would easily solve the discussion of their army potential.
Marines are a much better way to spend your money once a few upgrades kick in imo but it's impossible to proof for me right now.
|
the problem with hellions is that they're so squishy if caught out of position and you really need blue flame to do good damage vs zealots. now it takes a tech lab to get blue flame, so it's kind of a meh situation. hellions aren't that good of a combat unit alone without blue flame, so unless you can get some kind of marine marauder hellion kiting thing going i don't think it'll be effective
mech is another story
i agree with harassing, don't think blue flame is needed for that though
|
The main idea is to use hellions to kill zealots as you stim kite the rest of the army. That way all the zealots are clumped up together and aren't wrapped around your army.
|
Once Terrans start harassing effectively with blue flame hellion drops, I don't realistically see Protoss winning. It's just impossible to cost effectively defend since hellions, if microed properly, eat probes so fast. Vultures could be killed by cannons before they could kill too many probes, but you can't even run probes vs hellions, and if they stand in the mineral line you just die to micro, even with 3 cannons.
Hellions are also good vs all gateway units and are decent vs Immortals.
|
Hellions aren't good vs stalkers, that was only the case when stalkers were useless, ie. did 8 dmg per shot in the beta. Stalkers eat them up quite fast nowadays.
|
Now that I think about it, these things are basically speedlings that are a bajillion times more deadly, but arrive later and are harder to mass.
Are we going to see Protoss having to wall-off with a wad of Stalkers against Terran soon?
|
as a random balance notion, i kind of wonder why they are light. it doesn't really make sense out of any balance notion as ranged units tend to deal bonus damage to armor, going against what would be the intuitive answer to them.
perhaps Dark Templar? getting Pre-Igniter is costly and to really feel safe against DT, they'd want Combat Shields (so DT don't one-shot them) and Ravens (so you can attack them). All of that will set back their core army size significantly. Dark Shrine is more costly than Pre-Igniter, but is at the same speed and they have to accommodate the threat.
I actually, like getting my Dark Shrine scouted and not specifically intend to make any of them as it's roughly the same cost as getting a Raven so it pays for itself right there. Since it's easy to warp in DT quickly, it's easy to just respond to how defensively they play, and punish them if they try to skimp on it.
But in this case if you can get it out, they pretty much might get one scan of pushing then have to fall back, if that at all. Going MMH would look to be pretty mineral intensive so I wouldn't be surprised if they had to Mule/Depot most of their energy.
|
On August 26 2010 03:27 Piy wrote:
Once Terrans start harassing effectively with blue flame hellion drops, I don't realistically see Protoss winning. It's just impossible to cost effectively defend since hellions, if microed properly, eat probes so fast. Vultures could be killed by cannons before they could kill too many probes, but you can't even run probes vs hellions, and if they stand in the mineral line you just die to micro, even with 3 cannons.
Hellions are also good vs all gateway units and are decent vs Immortals.
I really never seem to have much trouble with Helions, but maybe I simply haven't faced a Terran with the right control to pose a threat with them. In any case one route to stop Helions altogether would be to make a complete wall (i.e. closed) get blink stalkers and/or warp prisms to move your troops around. This way the T will have to go for an outright drop on the P base (which should be more easily defended) than simply run Helions up your ramp.
|
On August 26 2010 03:18 Markwerf wrote:
- hellions can't be healed with your medivacs, it's generally easier to have a entire army that can be healed as that makes kiting far easier and you can heal up entirely from a storm that partly hit you. Hellions taking some hits from storms just sucks. Also hellions are dodgy with their kiting (acting differently then infantry) making it much harder to kite with a marine/marauder/hellion/medivac army.
- hellions dont benefit from your infantry upgrades, especially lacking armor really makes them cannon fodder when the protoss gets some attack upgrades. For example a zealot with 1 attack upgrade exactly 5 shots a non-upgraded hellion in 6 seconds, that same pre-ignited hellion takes 12.5 seconds to roast a EMP'ed zealot!
.....
Edit: There should really come a custom micro map for sc2. It would help solve a lot of discussions about which army composition is better then what. About half the discussions on here go about bio vs mech, colossi vs templar, roach/hydra vs ultra/ling etc etc. A micro map where players alternate between sides and play 20 marauders 30 marines 5 medivacs vs a toss army and then 20 marauders 20 marines 5 medivacs 5 blue flame hellions vs a toss army would easily solve the discussion of their army potential.
Marines are a much better way to spend your money once a few upgrades kick in imo but it's impossible to proof for me right now.
That's a good point re: medivacs. Still, medivacs complement hellions nicely as well because hellion drops are about 20x as scary as bio drops. With a bio drop, you pull your probes away, and warp in a couple zealots while you get back in position. Bio drops are good, but they're easier to deal with. Hellion drops, however--well, you can't run your probes away from hellions. It bunches them up in an overlapping line, meaning two hellions will 1-shot every single probe you've got. Anyway, once medivacs and infantry upgrades are in play, yes, I believe marines are stronger in the main army, but I'd still keep a handful of hellions because they're almost as good and they can split off from the main army to hit multiple positions.
That's kind of a false comparison between zealots and hellions. Hellions will hit several targets with each shot, multiplying their damage output. Also, hellions kite zealots. Yes, a hellion takes 17.5 seconds to kill a zealot. For comparison, a stimmed marauder marauder takes 17 seconds to kill a zealot (12 seconds to kill an EMPed zealot) and they only hit a single target. A stimmed marine takes 16.6 seconds to kill a zealot. So against one zealot, you're probably better off with the other options. In a real game, however, a handful of hellions will evaporate P's entire complement of zealots in 2 shots meaning he won't even have time to reinforce. A handful of hellions are as or more cost-effective against P compositions than the same cost in marines in head-to-head fights, but they also open up a ton of harrassment opportunities. They're a really solid investment.
With regard to the micro map, that's a great idea.
|
Hellions are a cool unit they just need a ton of micro, and like previous posts have said, they lose their luster shortly after the early game. They aren't a bad unit to throw in the mix as a secondary, or tertiary control group though to help assist with zealots, but that's all about their good for. (workers are a given)
They need pre-igniter for sure, they have kind of low hp and cost 2 supply (lowest hp 2 supply unit in the game? someone correct me if i'm wrong), and are light armor. The low hp thing makes them pretty susceptible to colossus if they are in the wrong position (which ideally is backing up marines/marauders at the front lines dealing with zealots). They also fire really slow, additionally the splash is a fickle thing. Stop-attacking is sort of an art with them.
To really make them part of your army you're going to need some more factories since I don't know if many terran would be willing to sacrifice the production slot for a tank/thor. Don't get me wrong, they've got a lot of potential, but I think the amount of effort to make them work, both economically, and micro-wise. You may be better off building something else.
There's a good post about the GhostMech build which utilizes hellions with tanks and ghosts which is probably their best composition slot.
|
On August 26 2010 02:57 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2010 02:46 Plexa wrote:
Some replays/examples would really liven this thread up imo. If you run equal cost compsitions of zealot/stalker/immortal vs MM and MM+blue hellion, you'll see what I'm talking about. I unfortunately don't have replays of it saved ATM because T plays so rarely use pre-ignitor. If a good T player wants to help generate some replays, let me know.
I am more than willing to provide. My general bio followup is 2 factory, 1 with reactor 1 tech. Hellions from reactor, siege tanks from tech. From there I get ignitor then siege mode (siege is basically there to deal with substantial colossi numbers, but most people don't even get colossi anymore.)
Ignitor hellions are the proper followup unit in the current metagame. Chargelots are just too strong vs bio, and coupled with storm and immortals, shred any size bioball with extreme effectiveness. You HAVE to get ignitor hellions. In addition, the potential to wipe out an entire base of probes is completely amazing. I've won so many games by getting 2 hellions into the main or just barreling 12 hellions into their expos 1 by 1. Also, once hellions get to a nice number (8-10) they absolutely murder everything light. If you get even more (20+) they start to murder stalkers and immortals too, which is hilarious. The splash does eventually kick in and they start becoming ridiculously good.
The biggest fear you should have when making hellions is colossi and storm + ff. Trapped and stormed hellions melt instantly, but fortunately good control and just diving to pick HTs can solve that problem, as well as ghosts (though feedback often shuts that down.) Colossi just hard counter hellions, so of course you need tanks/air to take care of them.
|
Here's how I would use hellions vs P. Open with two barracks and a factory. Pump MM and hellions while researching stim, conc shell, and pre-ignitor. Time the research such that stim and pre-ignitor finish about the same time. After the research finishes, you're essentially guaranteed to be stronger than P on an open field meaning you'll have map control, so start a command center inside your base shortly before the research finishes. Initiate a timing attack at completion of stim and pre-ignitor. If P pulls back into his main to forcefield his ramp, just use your force to maintain map control and deny expansions. Build a starport. P will be teching either HT or collosi. If collosi, add vikings and medivacs. If HT, just add medivacs. Use hellions for drops and run-bys, preferably in multiple locations simultaneously. As the game progresses, P will become increasingly spread out, making hellions stronger.
|
On August 26 2010 04:23 kcdc wrote:Here's how I would use hellions vs P. + Show Spoiler +Open with two barracks and a factory. Pump MM and hellions while researching stim, conc shell, and pre-ignitor. Time the research such that stim and pre-ignitor finish about the same time. After the research finishes, you're essentially guaranteed to be stronger than P on an open field meaning you'll have map control, so start a command center inside your base shortly before the research finishes. Initiate a timing attack at completion of stim and pre-ignitor. If P pulls back into his main to forcefield his ramp, just use your force to maintain map control and deny expansions. Build a starport. P will be teching either HT or collosi. If collosi, add vikings and medivacs. If HT, just add medivacs. Use hellions for drops and run-bys, preferably in multiple locations simultaneously. As the game progresses, P will become increasingly spread out, making hellions stronger.
I think you're talking about a lot of "what ifs". A lot of things need to be accounted for, that's basically a situation where everything has gone perfect for you and the rush distance isn't too far, that walk across the map could mean 2-4 more units for the protoss.
It's just that after zealots die, hellions are just sort of... there. Sure they soak up damage, but they are kinda weak. Even if you hit them once or twice during the fight, that leaves them pretty vulnerable.
Additionally, have you ever seen a probe surround a hellion? Hellion won't be getting too many kills. The key to the hellion is a support unit that basically is only dangerous if it's in the right place at the right time.
Edit: Additionally, getting stim/ignitor at the same time means you probably dont' have combat shields, which significantly reduces the effectiveness of marines, stim a marine without combat shield. MEDIC!
|
On August 26 2010 04:55 Sv1 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2010 04:23 kcdc wrote:Here's how I would use hellions vs P. + Show Spoiler +Open with two barracks and a factory. Pump MM and hellions while researching stim, conc shell, and pre-ignitor. Time the research such that stim and pre-ignitor finish about the same time. After the research finishes, you're essentially guaranteed to be stronger than P on an open field meaning you'll have map control, so start a command center inside your base shortly before the research finishes. Initiate a timing attack at completion of stim and pre-ignitor. If P pulls back into his main to forcefield his ramp, just use your force to maintain map control and deny expansions. Build a starport. P will be teching either HT or collosi. If collosi, add vikings and medivacs. If HT, just add medivacs. Use hellions for drops and run-bys, preferably in multiple locations simultaneously. As the game progresses, P will become increasingly spread out, making hellions stronger. I think you're talking about a lot of "what ifs". A lot of things need to be accounted for, that's basically a situation where everything has gone perfect for you and the rush distance isn't too far, that walk across the map could mean 2-4 more units for the protoss. It's just that after zealots die, hellions are just sort of... there. Sure they soak up damage, but they are kinda weak. Even if you hit them once or twice during the fight, that leaves them pretty vulnerable. Additionally, have you ever seen a probe surround a hellion? Hellion won't be getting too many kills. The key to the hellion is a support unit that basically is only dangerous if it's in the right place at the right time. Edit: Additionally, getting stim/ignitor at the same time means you probably dont' have combat shields, which significantly reduces the effectiveness of marines, stim a marine without combat shield. MEDIC!
Ok, don't use them then. I'm primarily a Protoss player, and I win ~70% of my games vs T at ~850 diamond. I lose some games to poor control, but the only games where my play feels weak against Terran is when Terran uses hellions with pre-ignitor. Only 1 in 10 or so T players seems to get pre-ignitor, but when they do, I lose MUCH more often. At least against my style of play, pre-ignitor is the difference between me winning ~70% of the time and me winning ~30% of the time.
|
Now now, I'm not discrediting you, and yes you made mention of your diamond status, I don't doubt it. I'm just simply saying that I don't see hellions with pre-igniter winning a game outright.
|
It seems like this should provide some interesting opportunities for players to fine-tune their compositions. For example,
P has seen that T is building up marauders and marines, so he decides to sway his gateway composition towards Zealots to tank for his damage dealers.
But uh oh! P has seen that T is adding on quite a few Hellions into his composition. So many in fact that T must be planning to use them in his army and not just build a few for a drop/harassment. P knows this means 2 things: T will have fewer MM because of the minerals required for Hellions, and that T's tech be delayed because of the factory (and even more if T gets Igniter).
So P knows his Zealots are going to have a harder time tanking than he would like, but that every Hellion T built is going to have horrible DPS vs armored, so P starts adding Stalkers instead of Zealots. The Zealots will fall quickly, but the Hellions will begin to loose their oomph the fewer light units they have to wail on. Then P and T could begin trying to mix up their compositions to catch the other off guard during the rest of the game.
P also knows that the 100 gas that went into the factory is 100 gas that did not go into Stim or Combat Shields or 4 Marauders, and if he sees blue flames he knows that T is 150 gas farther in the hole.
---
So what I'm saying with all this is NOT that it's a bad idea for Terrans to begin adding Hellions into their army composition. I think it's a great idea, exactly for the reasons OP stated. It's a great idea because it encourages the deepening of strategy: it encourages each player to keep tabs on each other's army and constantly assess their own composition, instead of sitting back and macroing up until one army wanders into the other.
Now what I want to see is replays. 
|
On August 26 2010 05:30 Sv1 wrote:
Now now, I'm not discrediting you, and yes you made mention of your diamond status, I don't doubt it. I'm just simply saying that I don't see hellions with pre-igniter winning a game outright.
I'm not trying to browbeat or brag about my league placement. I know I'm not a very good player. But I have played a lot, and in my experience, pre-ignitor hellions are insanely good against Protoss, and I think if T players haven't played around with them much, they really ought to try them out before dismissing them out of hand. Like Floop said, once you get 6 or so of them, zealots just evaporate leaving the squishy stalkers exposed. Better yet, sneaking just 2 of them into your opponent's main can often instantly win you the game. Given how awesome they are on both fronts, I just don't understand why more Terran players don't give them a shot.
|
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-142776.jpg)
Reposting this replay from another thread. Not great play by either player, I make plenty of mistakes and was pretty much winging it (like I always do, the baddie I am).
I'm reposting it in this thread because there seem to be some naysayers, but let me say that hellions rape. I'm 100% positive I could have gotten more of them out faster since half the game I have like 1000 mins/gas in the bank. God I suck.
|
I agree that helions are underused but I don't agree that they should be used in the early game. If you think about what you're spending money on you should note that 1 healion = 2 marines. If you bring say 5 helions into an early game battle you miss out on 10 marines. 10 stimmed marines will outdamage 5 helions by far and marines are actually very good vs zealots as long as they have marauders that tank. When you get like 20+ marines with a good 8-10 marauders protoss needs colossus or storm. Zealots wont win them battles there. Often enough my zealots do 1 or 2 attacks against the tanking marauders when 20 stimmed marines are behind them.
However helions are great for harassing probe lines once protoss gets spread out on 3-4 bases and great for sniping stray HTs. They are also nice to harass zealots standing in the main army since there is nothing that can really slow them or instantly kill them.
|
I forget what it was.. maybe the ESL tourney 2 weeks ago? But yea during that, many Terran players were using a very balanced Rax/Fact unit composition (MM Hellion Tank Viking Medivac).
|
On August 26 2010 05:51 ltortoise wrote:Reposting this replay from another thread. Not great play by either player, I make plenty of mistakes and was pretty much winging it (like I always do, the baddie I am). I'm reposting it in this thread because there seem to be some naysayers, but let me say that hellions rape. I'm 100% positive I could have gotten more of them out faster since half the game I have like 1000 mins/gas in the bank. God I suck.
watching, I'll comment when I return
Edit: Ok after watching this game all that really showed was the power of hellions if they're allowed to slip by into an undefended base. However, the argument can be made that the amount of damage these hellions did was disproportionate to the investment in them AND that there will always be these opportunities ESPECIALLY against protoss players for hellions to "do work".
I am appalled by the protoss player's choice to go HT w/o a robo though... his own fault he lost.
|
My practice partner rushes me with 6scvs/6hellions/6marines. It's pretty ridiculous.
Hellions are severely underused vs P in both army compositions and harassment. It is ridiculous how effective they can be. Blue hellion surrounds on small packs of stalkers is reminiscent of spider mine surrounds on goons in BW.
|
On August 26 2010 09:56 Tump wrote:
My practice partner rushes me with 6scvs/6hellions/6marines. It's pretty ridiculous.
Hellions are severely underused vs P in both army compositions and harassment. It is ridiculous how effective they can be. Blue hellion surrounds on small packs of stalkers is reminiscent of spider mine surrounds on goons in BW.
except blue flames don't actually do extra damage versus stalkers
|
i like this build use it to drop on workers and works nice on zealot. do you think if i go mech with hellion, it work too
|
On August 26 2010 09:58 kNyTTyM wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2010 09:56 Tump wrote:
My practice partner rushes me with 6scvs/6hellions/6marines. It's pretty ridiculous.
Hellions are severely underused vs P in both army compositions and harassment. It is ridiculous how effective they can be. Blue hellion surrounds on small packs of stalkers is reminiscent of spider mine surrounds on goons in BW. except blue flames don't actually do extra damage versus stalkers
yea im an idiot, but still large packs of hellions with +damage upgrades can surround and rape stalkers in small groups (like when trying to defend an expansion from hellion aggression or moving out alone across the map, etc)
|
My main use of Hellions against Protoss right now are to open with a 1:1:1 build and hellion drop. Basically guaranteed to kill many in the mineral line.
|
how does pure mech actually fair TvP? seems it would be pretty good to me
|
On August 26 2010 10:13 Subversion wrote:
how does pure mech actually fair TvP? seems it would be pretty good to me
Voidrays become a huge problem if you don't have marines
|
On August 26 2010 10:13 Subversion wrote:
how does pure mech actually fair TvP? seems it would be pretty good to me
Pure mech? The above poster says voids are the problem, but it seems like you could just make vikings...
I think the problem would be immortals. You need either marines or ghosts to handle the immortals. Nothing on the mech tree can counter them.
|
On August 26 2010 09:56 Tump wrote:
My practice partner rushes me with 6scvs/6hellions/6marines. It's pretty ridiculous.
Hellions are severely underused vs P in both army compositions and harassment. It is ridiculous how effective they can be. Blue hellion surrounds on small packs of stalkers is reminiscent of spider mine surrounds on goons in BW.
Repair + hellions can be very strong in the early game. That's another advantage they have over early game marines--you can heal them before starport tech.
|
All you people who think hellions are good against P, feel free to use it because we need more victories against T. It's amazing how many good strats T have and people still come up with crap. they might be good for a drop if you don't want to waste the gas on reapers, but marines are better in a fight, esp with upgrades and medivac.
|
they don't get made as often, because seriously every unit terran makes can be an effective strategy vs protoss. I'm not neccesarily crying imbalance, but just saying they can use many different strategies and unit combinations to be extremely effective.
|
The biggest thing any Terran can do constant hellion drops. Those blue flame hellions are ridiculous; you can easily wipe out a mineral line in seconds. There's almost nothing you can do about either, since cannons can't kill fast enough. You need 6-8 stalkers in each mineral to actually deal with a 4 hellion drop before they roast all your probes.
|
I took a day-long vacation from trying and played mech Terran last week.
Vs protoss it was tanks, hellions, and vikings with a couple marines sprinkled in there.
It was funny how effective it all was as I would just have this giant wall of hellions wherever I needed it. Zealots would be fried instantly, and stalkers would end up blinking right into siege range.
The only unit I ever had issues with were immortals, but when I had enough hellions, it was just funny in general.
I felt like a shitty player though, so I had to go back to zerg and play for reals.
The funny part, my rating stayed the same all day, so screwing around with mech terran is just as good as busting my ass with zerg :/
<3 anything and everything being effective, wish I had that as zerg...
|
Hellions are only good for harass. They are not good in an army composition. Trust me, I've tried. Marines are almost always a better option in an army comp unless the Toss is making only zealot/HT.
|
Australia7069 Posts
When i play pure mech i make a ton of hellions. they're great buffers for your tanks, easy to micro out of storm, and all the splash they cause deals nicely with mass zealots and immo shields while the tanks melt everything. Also means you can focus on one lot of upgrades, and makes harass a no brainer. Also i've noticed once i get 2-3 reactored facts running i'm never running hot on minerals which is good, as i find that late game T i tend to end up with an excess
|
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).
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.
|
Except it costs you your army production to do so, so that's not really true. If Zerg had infinity larvae it would be, but they don't so it's not.
|
I hope T's start using hellions more. All this 'regular move'/'attack move' bio kiting micro is getting a little dry. Some hellion micro could REALLY make things interesting.
Also, my standard builds are great against any sort of early game hellion play. Hellions definitely have a place with bio in the late game when more zealots are likely to be on the field, bunching together all juicily - but a lot of P early play is lighter on zealots.
|
i like this post. my mmm play is pretty bad if i'm behind or in the late game, hellions definitely need closer attention in my gameplay.
|
i agree with the OP completely hellions are my worst nightmare. this thread should be hidden away somewhere. I have no problems handling bio but mech builds with helions and tanks drives me crazy.
|
On August 26 2010 13:27 charlie420247 wrote:Show 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). 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.
|
The thing about hellions, is that they have crap dps. They really do.
Even with blue flame against light units, they still have pretty bad dps.
The common way to deal with that is to simply use their superior speed to avoid taking damage while you murder light units, which then essentially makes their lower dps irrelevant, since they can kite, and not take damage.
The other way to deal with their bad dps is to use them in melee range, abusing the splash. Then they actually end up having decent damage, even against stalkers for example. But then they are in the front line, and they also have a bad health-cost ratio, and so are not amazing to soak damage 
Thus they are probably best left for harrassment, map control, and high templar sniping, instead of trying to incorporate them in an army.
|
listening to kawaiirice stream smack talking about this thread LOLOL, this is hilarious =)))
|
Pre-igniter hellions are just not worth it if you intend to go with a bio army otherwise. By the time you can be upgrading hellions with pre-igniter you should or could already be upgrading your infantry. A 1-1 marine is just better then a hellion on all occasions in battle because the hellion requires to be really upfront in battle.
Zealots just don't clump up the way zerglings do and zealots DPS kills hellions insanely fast, sure you can kite but the whole thing protoss thinks of during a game is using ways to prevent you kite. Marines just kite easier because they can be healed, hellions taking a few stalker shots means you need to repair or whatever which is just crap.
As for hellion drops, sure they are good but are they really worth the effort of pre-igniter? Beyond the early game a protoss will always have 6+ gateways ready to immediately warp in stalkers, offcourse you will get some probe kills if he responds late but you are also likely to lose the hellions and possibly the medivacs. Infantry drops imo are just as scary as hellion drops, as they can be done anywhere, not only the mineral line per se. Infantry drops are also much tougher to deal with by just stalkers as they usually drop mostly marauders. So it's less damage but also less risk for the terrran.
All in all, yes hellions can be good against a zealot HT army and yes they can harass well but are they worth it later on in most normal games? In my opinion not. Marines are just a better way to spend minerals.
|
On August 26 2010 17:17 NB wrote:
listening to kawaiirice stream smack talking about this thread LOLOL, this is hilarious =)))
What did he say?
|
Updated the OP with results from unit tester. Proper micro from each side would be better, but I think the results show pretty clearly that mixing in some hellions is an incredibly strong play. Overall, it doesn't hurt the strength of your main army while vastly improving your harassment capabilities.
|
On August 26 2010 17:17 NB wrote:
listening to kawaiirice stream smack talking about this thread LOLOL, this is hilarious =)))
That's not exactly surprising. He's a Terran player who probably doesn't face many Protoss players who attempt to out-macro him. My strategy against Terran uses the efficiency of zealots to contest mid-game map control so that I can try to stay one base ahead of Terran. I'll grant that in 1-base play, hellions aren't great. But if P tries to play a macro game against T, hellions are INSANELY strong because they simultaneously act as perfect harass units and perfect main army muscle units.
|
On August 26 2010 16:34 Gnial wrote:
I hope T's start using hellions more. All this 'regular move'/'attack move' bio kiting micro is getting a little dry. Some hellion micro could REALLY make things interesting.
Also, my standard builds are great against any sort of early game hellion play. Hellions definitely have a place with bio in the late game when more zealots are likely to be on the field, bunching together all juicily - but a lot of P early play is lighter on zealots.
Agreed, a lot of P players are opening with 1-base play right now. I know you like a stalker-void ray opening against T that transitions into chargelot/HT. It's definitely a strong opening, but I prefer a more macro-oriented opening. Like I said above, pre-ignitor hellions aren't worthwhile against a 1-base Protoss. As the game progresses, P will spread out over multiple bases, making hellion harass much harder to contain. At the same time, P will want to rely increasingly on zealots and HT (we both believe this to be the bread and butter mid-game PvT composition), so while hellion harass becomes more threating, hellions simultaneously become awesome head-to-head combat units. It's kind of ridiculous....
|
the whole point of hellions in a real fight is kind of negated though, if you can get your tanks sieged up. the bio army can just kite while the tanks take out all of the zealots. then the hellions do basically 0 damage to anything, so unless you wanted them to run into the base while you're still fighting their army, they aren't that useful.
however, if I'm up against high templar and somehow I have enough mineral left over from pumping marauders and tanks and vikings, I will get hellions, since marines just melt under storm and ff, but the extra gas needed to build the factories kind of makes it a little less appealing.
|
On August 26 2010 16:52 Chunkybuddha wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2010 13:27 charlie420247 wrote: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). 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
|
Hellions are also very good at sniping HT they can get out of storms pretty quick and with the ignitor upgrade the HT die very fast.
|
If Terran goes mech definitely Hellions should be used if they choose to go heavy zealots since you already have the production buildings in place and will share the same upgrades. However protoss usually won't go mass zealots vs mech so it's kind of moot.
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.
|
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.
|
I guess I dont fully understand why hellions lose their luster after early game, especially in light of all the trouble terrans are having with speedlot/HT builds. Hellions are fast, rape zeals/HTs, and can move quickly out of storms. I think the average T player is not used to microing large amounts of units. Bio-kiting is barely micro and toss dont seem to go collossus vs bio anymore so viking micro is pretty much a non-factor in this matchup now. I think the trouble with microinig the hellions is their bizarre movement animation and the fact that they are so fast. Its like trying to hold your zeals back from charging a lone marine into tank range or sending in your phoenix at around the same time you push up with army and them getting a little too far out ahead.
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
Hellions are terrible against P when not harrassing. End of story.
|
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.
|
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?
|
Imo, hellions arent really that great in a straight up fight, even against zealots.
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.
|
On August 27 2010 09:24 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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.
|
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.)
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
hellions are underused because every single unit the terran can build is awesome against toss, and the marauder is straight out broken
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
|
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....
|
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.
|
Thanks Jay for the input. Again, I don't think ignitor is a cost-effective option against a 1-base Protoss. Terran should not research it until P expands. As for the later game, I guess I'd have to see a replay, but in my testing, well-controlled MMM+ignitor hellion beats any P composition that doesn't involve collosi which, in turn, are easily countered by vikings. It sounds like Terran was simply behind by the time that P was going zealot-HT. I find it hard to believe that T was worse off with MMM+single factory ignitor hellion against zealot-HT than he would have been with pure MMM. It may be that T was simply going to lose either way.
|
I definitely agree with this - I've been experimenting with Marauder-Hellion in TvP. One thing you may also want to note is that Hellions are great for bringing down Immortals' shields as well, and shield-less immortals fall very quickly to marauders.
|
On August 27 2010 06:40 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +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. Show nested quote +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.
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.
|
On August 28 2010 04:35 mahnini wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2010 06:40 kcdc wrote: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. 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.
|
|
|
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
|
I'm currently playing a build against protoss which opens with 1/1/1 reactor marine, tank, raven into expand (with a lot of bunkers, because 90% of eu-protoss 1-base) into 4-fax midgame push with tank hellion.
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
|
A lot has been said already but i think ill make the key point clear
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.
|
Someone inform all the pros that make collossi that they're actually BAD, please.
|
Maybe I'm late here, but I noticed that the unit compositions in your OP didn't include any Sentries. Guardian Shield makes a huge difference for Marines (it basically negates the damage bonus from Stim) and makes Zealots significantly harder for Marauders to kill, to say nothing of Forcefields. Do you think you could have gotten better results for the Protoss player by allocating some of the gas into Sentries? I know you're already pretty short on Stalkers and Immortals, but it seems like Sentries could make the already dangerous Zealots even more durable.
This would likely emphasize the importance of Hellions, since Blue Flames - 2 still comes out to a lot.
|
Aotearoa39261 Posts
|
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.
|
Helions in TvP is sort of a waste imo to make it worth it u need to have a bunch and get the upgrade imo but the helions will be raped if he goes for a stalker heavy army or well anything else than sentries and zealots so I'd say that they aren't really worth it since I seldom go massive zealot armies vs T
|
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.
|
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.
|
On August 29 2010 23:07 PulseSUI wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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!
|
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
|
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.
|
One mistake I saw in the OT is that the first protoss army was 10,10,2, then you say you lowered the stalkers, but now the army is 16,10,2.
Anyway, one thing to consider is the insanely slow fire rate of hellions.
|
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.
|
On August 26 2010 03:27 Piy wrote:
Once Terrans start harassing effectively with blue flame hellion drops, I don't realistically see Protoss winning. Hellions are also good vs all gateway units and are decent vs Immortals.
Troll much? Lemme guess, if hellions were a zerg unit, they would SUCK BALLS!
I like to use hellions vs toss in a mech build simply for the forward scouting/kiting, also, opening up a possibility for harassment even if I dont get it, is always nice (as long as it dont cost too much). Once they nerf tanks to light, hellions will have to be used in a mech build because tanks are gonna suuuckkkkkk vs zealots. Oh well, I'll still make zerg cry.
|
Plexa,
thanks for posting the replay. You still won the game though! Might be attributed to the lack of marauders. But more to the point, when the drop happened were you all that concerned? You already had your natural, and I *think* you started the second. I think if you were to graph the effectiveness of a hellion drop over time, the later, the less impressive it will be. Note, that's drop, rather than a run-by. Steppes is one of those maps I think that you might have to just save those hellions for another time.
This weekend I got a good amount of ladder games in, a lot of protoss were out! In the spirit of this thread I made it a point to continue seeing what preignitor hellions did for me (saying blue flame I feel is the equivalent of saying "laser beam colossus"). Anyway I opened with marine/raven/banshee/hellion. The raven is really the key but when the hellions (about 4) get thrown in there they can lay a hurtin. Xel Naga Caverns proves to be one of the best maps for Hellion harassment (at least the natural). With about 5 hellions, 5 because their ai is so awkward you need an extra 1 or 2 just to get some overlap of damage, you can roast an entire natural. If people aren't doing it, certainly put a unit on patrol or a pylon/depot near that back choke to get vision, you'll regret it if you don't. Most times I did this I also attacked from the front, which I think really gets the most out of your harassment.
Plexa's opponent could have seiged the natural while dropping the hellions since he'd pulled a decent number of forces back to deal with them. I think this would have been the only way to really get in control, I think I only counted about 10 probe kills from the 3 hellions.
Also, Blink Stalkers/void rays were the only times I had issues with that open, but that's more of a discussion for a different thread.
|
Hellions TvP
Hellions stopped my economy many times in this game. I think I could have won, but I didn't notice an expansion of his. He managed to destroy my army a few times with hellions because he caught me with no stalkers, and he had a very ground based army. Maybe a transition to air is needed if the Terran stops producing marines with excess minerals and instead hellions?
|
helions give me a great reason to get stalkers, and making helions decrease a bio army by alot. zealots dont kill bio, they just tank for aoe. if you make helions i have no problem tanking with stalkers.
|
On September 12 2010 03:15 FortuneSyn wrote:
helions give me a great reason to get stalkers, and making helions decrease a bio army by alot. zealots dont kill bio, they just tank for aoe. if you make helions i have no problem tanking with stalkers.
Well he'll most probably just cut some marines and marauders for the hellions + preignitor, so stalkers aren't that much of an option as the marauders will still rape them.
I haven't seen much helion play in TvP, but one or two of them were pretty effective, especially if you can get some out fast and he's still having zealots as his damage soaks
|
I like to add hellions in the lategame if I went bio and the protoss switched to mainly speedlot templar.
Marines die soooo fast to both and even with ghosts the zealots will do a lot of damage or if he gets just 1 good storm. With hellions you can dodge storms pretty good and snipe templar and zealots and with preigniter 10+ hellions kill zealots so fast that I think its a great investment and you should have the money anyways.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
