hopefully we'll be seeing more of this. i've played against two diamond rank 1 terrans who got up there with attack-move marauder/marines (lost one, won one).
protoss can respond with feedback (have fun microing that), terran possibly with ghosts, and zerg -- i don't know.
people are going to start playing this really rock-paper-scissors-ish game where either the other player catches them doing the raven thing and responds appropriately, or gets outnumbered by autoturrets and pdd.
on the other hand, i'm also afraid that we'll see too much of this. no other unit in the game has a spell for every situation, much less are there any such units that can fly.
ravens very much just take detection, dark swarm, reaver scarabs and infested terrans all onto a single unit.
this may very well be the silver bullet unit that everyone's been hoping there wouldn't be any of, save for certain scenarios.
TvP HTs completely nullify this. Feedback is a oneshot, and costs the T 200 gas
TvT, Bio play can easily work in ghosts. I don't know why your opponent didn't, but EMP again costs you so much gas investment. What is the rest of the force, marines? Then it's marines vs MMM. Keep in mind rank 1 means nothing - it's all points.
TvZ this sure can work... but really this is because Z doesn't have a good counter to anything but marines (banelings/infestor). Mass BC, mass vikings, mass thor, etc - pretty much anything is viable because even if Z scouts it, at best he can beat it at about 1.2:1 cost, and cannot follow up with an attack. So yeah, mass raven is viable, but it's not like this redefines the new play. If he went BC instead of raven, things would have been no different that match except it wouldn't have taken so long.
i dont think this was any particular strategy to win because greenpine said he did this after getting annoyed by repetitive TvT in ladder games one after another.
Horrible build, vikings would completely buttrape this build, and you get vikings almost always anyway no matter what unit composition you go, because air dominance is king.
PDD aint worth shit if you harrass him with your vikings, he can't keep dropping PDD's all the time, plus a few missile will get through. Its just not feasible, and your marine force will be raped by tanks.
It works until someone figures out that they can EMP or feedback. I've been doing this in 4v4s for the lulz, and HT or ghosts completely shut ravens down.
On September 18 2010 06:35 fdsdfg wrote: TvP HTs completely nullify this. Feedback is a oneshot, and costs the T 200 gas
TvT, Bio play can easily work in ghosts. I don't know why your opponent didn't, but EMP again costs you so much gas investment. What is the rest of the force, marines? Then it's marines vs MMM. Keep in mind rank 1 means nothing - it's all points.
TvZ this sure can work... but really this is because Z doesn't have a good counter to anything but marines (banelings/infestor). Mass BC, mass vikings, mass thor, etc - pretty much anything is viable because even if Z scouts it, at best he can beat it at about 1.2:1 cost, and cannot follow up with an attack. So yeah, mass raven is viable, but it's not like this redefines the new play. If he went BC instead of raven, things would have been no different that match except it wouldn't have taken so long.
If someone goes mass ravens, all you do as Z is macro and get.. whatever you want. Be it hydra or (preferably) muta. Muta are faster than hunter seeker missiles. They also cost 125 energy and Ravens only have a max of 200 energy. Bait out a couple and you are set. Or just mass hydras.. or anything you want. Infestors even. Your macro can be so strong and Terran will have invested so much into these ravens that it'll be gg fairly easily.
On September 18 2010 07:07 [-]Ocelot[-] wrote:Muta are faster than hunter seeker missiles.
throw down some auto turrets around a critical location, like a hatchery. force the mutas to come defend. without micro or upgrades on either side, 10 turrets will take down 12 mutalisks.
hydras with decent micro should fare better, though i still think the raven build is at least viable if not perfect.
On September 18 2010 06:35 fdsdfg wrote: TvP HTs completely nullify this. Feedback is a oneshot, and costs the T 200 gas
TvT, Bio play can easily work in ghosts. I don't know why your opponent didn't, but EMP again costs you so much gas investment. What is the rest of the force, marines? Then it's marines vs MMM. Keep in mind rank 1 means nothing - it's all points.
TvZ this sure can work... but really this is because Z doesn't have a good counter to anything but marines (banelings/infestor). Mass BC, mass vikings, mass thor, etc - pretty much anything is viable because even if Z scouts it, at best he can beat it at about 1.2:1 cost, and cannot follow up with an attack. So yeah, mass raven is viable, but it's not like this redefines the new play. If he went BC instead of raven, things would have been no different that match except it wouldn't have taken so long.
I really don't agree with the idea that HT's can nullify this. I don't think that any of the Ravens in that game had high enough energy to be one shot'd. While feedback takes out the energy, I'm sure that a hunter seeker or a bunch of auto turrets would have probably been dropped by the time you can feedback all of the ravens.
Also, if your HT dies, thats 150 gas and 50 minerals, which in itself is rather gas intensive.
As for counters I think blink stalkers would work because they could blink right under the ravens and (potentially) kill the ravens via their own splash damage (from the Hunter Seeker) + their DPS.
That was a cool build, but I wouldn't overreact to much to it. Just brainstorming a little here, and I think some of these responses would cripple the play. Frankly, the #1 error the opposing terran did was to let all those expos get up. This strategy simply doesn't work without immense gas income.
Ghosts would definitely work well, a single EMP and the raven blob is so much floating junk. That said, you would need to make multiple ghosts and keep them around in various defensive positions, lest the ravens just fly into a base and cover it in little presents for your return. As the replay showed, thors work well against them as well, but their immobility makes it difficult to deal with flying harass. MMM/G would probably be the most straightforward option, just start counter harassing his gas expos, then EMP + stim the ravens when they bother to show up. Late game, terran can always just transition in to battlecruisers - they have tons of health vs HSM, a lot of armor vs. the turrets, and can yamato cannon ravens in addition to their high dps.
Protoss would also have a number of options - blink stalkers, high templar (those ravens were bunching so nicely storm would inflict serious damage), and perhaps most simply, a few phoenix. The phoenix do incredible damage to the light ravens, fire fast enough to burn through PDD, and engage at suicide-ranges for HSM (not to mention they can dodge it if fired at range). Phoenix would pretty easily shut this down, esp. when combined with graviton harass on the expos - no gas income, no ravens.
Infestors would be super scary for the ravens to fight. The ravens really just want to drop their tech and run, leaving a hapless army to take losses to energy abilities. With fungal growth, the ravens would be stuck in place and sniped by hydras, though the zerg would need to be careful of HSM responses.
But really, any strategy would work so long as you have some plan to deal with the ravens when they show up, and you put pressure on or deny the expansions. You don't even need to kill the PFs, just fight out of range and snipe the refineries. A few DTs/marines/stalkers/lings/whatever would absolutely cripple the ability for the terran to maintain the econ he needs to fuel this tech.
On September 18 2010 14:59 MalVortex wrote:MMM/G would probably be the most straightforward option
bleh, would rather see too much mass raven than too much mmm/g.
it'd be interesting to see how people compensate for mmm/g's lack of mobility in comparison to ravens though.
On September 18 2010 14:59 MalVortex wrote: But really, any strategy would work so long as you have some plan to deal with the ravens when they show up, and you put pressure on or deny the expansions. You don't even need to kill the PFs, just fight out of range and snipe the refineries. A few DTs/marines/stalkers/lings/whatever would absolutely cripple the ability for the terran to maintain the econ he needs to fuel this tech.
i think the guy was just playing experimentally here, but once this strategy's refined, people will no doubt begin to leave at least one raven at each fortress, so dt will be out of the question.
i think sniping refineries is a good idea, though again, as the strategy's refined, people will start complementing it with marines and such.
On September 18 2010 14:59 MalVortex wrote: Protoss would also have a number of options - blink stalkers, high templar (those ravens were bunching so nicely storm would inflict serious damage), and perhaps most simply, a few phoenix.
...
With fungal growth, the ravens would be stuck in place and sniped by hydras, though the zerg would need to be careful of HSM responses.
now that you put it that way, i'm sorta excited to see all the fancy footwork people will be doing against mass ravens, if people decide to emulate it :D
I tried this in a tvt today, it didn't work out. I'll probably try it again but Vikings made it tough. None of my ravens had enough energy for hsm, that probably would have made a diffetence. I noticed that auto turrets don't do great until they get some upgrades, they weren't very good at killing tanks. That's just my first experience though, i'm not giving up on it yet!
Maybe a safer opening with a good transition into ravens would be a good idea? I felt like "bob" didn't really take advantage of that early timing window or stop...any expos.
I like sneaking that expo by the way, it feels great having so much gas income. I even did it in a standard tvt today on LT, but high risk high reward...if it was scouted that would have been pretty bad.
The only reason this worked is because he got to a critical mass. its not cost effective at all, unless you have 7 base to 3 base. 7 base 3 base, almost anything can work.
One emp equals no way to hold an expansion. also 2-3 thors which is very viable can take out 6-7 ravens, which is already hard to get to. Its easier and fast to get to a crit mass of thors than it is to get that crit mass of ravens.
This is almost like watching a fastest map possible and trying to pull a strat from a Mass one units vs Mass one unit game.
you know, it's really frustrating that the threat of emp forces players to not rely on spellcaster-ish units. it practically disables micro-oriented play styles.
I HATE the raven turrets. I wish they were like infested terrans instead.
You can easily shoot infested terrans in a mineral line, but turrets, no, you need to find some free spot with 4 spaces -_- They take so much space, and are so annoying to place, especially when there are units around :/
I think the focus here should be on "Bob"'s lack of scouting and passive style rather than how good Ravens are. I don't think he did a single harassment attack the entire game. A simple drop with 8 marauders in the opponent's main would've dealt a lot of damage or drain energy from the Ravens. Meanwhile, he should expanded more himself, because that Raven army can only attack one place at the time. Throw a few vikings on them to force PDDs in otherwise useless positions and the Raven player is completely neutralized.
It's one of those "shit happens" moments that happen to you once, but next time you'll know how to deal with it.
i love creative builds like this ... i think it can actually work in TvT if mix in a lot of vikings... mass hunter seeker missile harass mineral lines and marines if he choses to counter with MMM,
vs Toss i think its impossible vs Z it could prolly also work with mass vikings
EPT
