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Feedback either kills a Raven outright, or badly damages it and renders it useless. It will also destroy a PDD
Vikings can annihilate them from distance, and are far enough away that they can effectively avoid HSM
EMP renders both them and PDD useless
Carriers will punch through a PDD in like 2 seconds (8 interceptors, each making 2 attacks=16 attacks. PDD only eats 20)
Pheonixes are fast enough that they can effortlessly avoid HSM, and their double attack lets them quickly eat through PDD, and they do bonus damage against Light, and they're like twice as fast as Ravens
Blink Stalkers can blink to easily catch up with them/avoid HSM
Ravens are a terrific unit to supplement an army with, but they are not without weaknesses or counters. I don't see mass ravens ever becoming viable.
In fact, I can't think of a single spellcaster unit that is viable to mass. Mass HT's? No. Mass Ghosts? No. Mass Infestors? No. Mass Sentries? No. The very nature of a spellcaster is that they can do some really awesome stuff...a couple of times, after which they're useless for a long time. You need ordinary units to capitalize on the impact that their spells create.
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there are good builds and there are builds that just work coz guy plays 20 times better than other
this im afraid is the later ...
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On September 18 2010 18:28 awu25 wrote:
is this the same happyminti - the rogue from WoW PvP?
Yes. :-)
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Japan514 Posts
On September 18 2010 22:35 Kaptein[konijn] wrote:
I think the focus here should be on "Bob"'s lack of scouting and passive style rather than how good Ravens are.
i wouldn't be too quick to blame bob for that. the thought that a raven might pop some turrets behind your mineral line at any time is pretty scary. keep in mind he had dozens of ravens, and he'd only need to pull one or two from his fleet to pull off something like that -- while effectively fending off a harassment like that is more costly.
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why does HD cast when he doesn't know what he's talking about? the fact that people watch that channel baffles me. greenpine played horribly, game was a fluke, obvious counters are obvious, why is this thread here, etc, etc, etc, etc.
i hate the sc2 masses for making this guy popular. 
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To be honest... How would mass ravens ever work?! There are so many obvious counters to this such as EMP , Feedback the only reason greenpine made that work was because he was able to secure all his expansions and "Bob" just got out macro-ed .. This replay isnt about Raven's being strong but just shows Greenpine was a better player than "Bob"
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This would never work, the guy had no early vikings and just let his units die to HSMs. Anyone with a little insight would just open with two vikings and not let HSMs hit them. Oh yeah, don't forget attacking a planetary fortress with like 10 marauders. Just really bad play, anything would look good against that.
Literally all you'd have to do to beat this is make vikings and attack the ravens every time he tries to leave his base. He'd need a lot of turrets to kill the vikings, in which case you'd just back up, wasting all the ravens' energy.
Don't get me wrong, was awesome to watch, though.
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this was a amazing game but a single ghost with emp could have taken this out. but since "bob" made a commitment to the mech units I feel like a sudden switch to ghost would be a total waste of resources.
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i have been toying with using more ravens in my tvt. They especially transition nicely out of banshee play.
I will say they are nice and are very versitile. Having 1-2 for pdd's is absoutly huge in vikings battles, and can make your 5 vikings beat 20(exageration...maybe?)
point is, i would never try mass ravens since it can get countered so easily, but i am convinced that having 1-2 ravens going into the late game helps alot.
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On September 19 2010 08:08 dump wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2010 22:35 Kaptein[konijn] wrote:
I think the focus here should be on "Bob"'s lack of scouting and passive style rather than how good Ravens are. i wouldn't be too quick to blame bob for that. the thought that a raven might pop some turrets behind your mineral line at any time is pretty scary. keep in mind he had dozens of ravens, and he'd only need to pull one or two from his fleet to pull off something like that -- while effectively fending off a harassment like that is more costly.
The moment the guy had "dozens of ravens", Bob had already made several fatal mistakes and had lost already. It IS about his opponent's bad play. Vikings, combined with an active playstyle, some random turrets, and expanding because of the low threat level, would've easily neutralized the raven-play and make sure that it's 7 vs 2 exps the moment he even reaches a dozen ravens.
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Although this game was great, this build worked mostly because of "Bob's" (Is that really going to be his name?) reactions to the build. Things that he could've done to counter the build:
EarlyGame
-Proxy reapers, or reapers in general. Taking out the gas quickly is crucial to this build, and for a while, GreenPine clearly had a blind spot to send in reapers
-In fact, any early cheese could easily beat this (save photon rush, most pro's can beat that, but either way, I'm pretty sure it would offset the build)
-Early tank/scan push w/ marine/marauder support to break the door/block the ramp/draw fire
Midgame
-THIS is the whole problem. Right here. He actually let this become a midgame. With so many expansions, he could've easily started harassing like crazy and taken out the gas. However, he didn't know this build was coming, so...
-Marine/Dropship/Stim would've PROBABLY sniped out the ravens quickly, just run from the autoturrets. Again, dropship harass would've helped.
Lategame
-Too late. He had so many gas expos compared to Bob's 3 bases that he was able to overwhelm him with ravens. With all those minerals, he could've easily gathered a large marine force as well. After all, marines are key to gas heavy builds since they use up all your minerals, and you want to maximize your resource usage at all times (unless he was looking not to get supply blocked by marines?).
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Japan514 Posts
On September 19 2010 11:52 SUSUGAM wrote:why does HD cast when he doesn't know what he's talking about? the fact that people watch that channel baffles me. greenpine played horribly, game was a fluke, obvious counters are obvious, why is this thread here, etc, etc, etc, etc. i hate the sc2 masses for making this guy popular.
i don't like hd either to be honest. he's, neither entertaining nor informative nor informed. on the other hand, his choice of replays is hard to disagree with.
i honestly would like to see something like this work more often, if not always. it sure beats mmm in entertainment value.
the "obvious" counter in this case, ghosts (and to some extent feedback), is somewhat disappointing. why should there be anything in the game that nullifies all spell caster builds?
greenpine didn't play very well, no, but that's exactly my point -- this strategy could be refined a lot more and possibly be made viable. i wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it.
and really, i'm not so sure that's a bad thing. do we really want to be stuck doing the obvious every game?
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Pretty interesting build, surprisingly effective. Am I wrong or didn't QXC do this in the TLA Season 3 - if so wouldn't that make him the originator of the mass raven build (or even someone else from mid Beta)? This isn't the first time I've seen mass Ravens, far from it, I've even massed them myself, but this is the only time I've seen such a refined and complete build.
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Obviously mass anything has issues to it. I think what this game highlights is that Ravens are an extremely important and underused unit. A single PDD or HSM can turn a losing battle into a winning one and a few well placed turrets can wreck havoc on an economy without having to sacrifice any units.
I know that I am slowly incorporating more and more ravens into my builds because of these facts. Lately I've been messing around with air builds that have had quite a bit of success since the only anti-air units that aren't affected by PDD are marines and void rays (HSM cleans up marines and vikings clean up void rays.) A couple vikings, ravens and banshees is a very mobile and scary force (as long as you don't suicide it into his main army.)
I also like raven heavy armies because I personally have a bad habit of not expanding enough and getting a lot of ravens encourages you to expand because you have a ton of minerals and no gas.
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Casting units have great timings. If you get them early enough they cause havoc in the enemies build, causing them to overreact, then you just sit and wait for the energy to rebuild.
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Fun game to watch, though I feel like GreenPine could have done even better if he used PDDs more, he lost quite a lot of ravens to turrets/thors which he didn't have to.
Nevertheless it was kind of obscene how many minerals both of them had, Bob could have plopped down 3 bunkers filled with marines at each expansions and pretty much counter any autoturret harass and still have 5000 minerals left over. GreenPine could have probably done a quadruple planetary fortress rush if he wanted to 
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A guy tried to do it agaisnt me, in lost temple. Since i saw he had nothing i teched straight to ultralisks while making lings to kill autoturrets, when i had about 4 ultra's i just destroyed his main. He didn't get HSM, but since i was unsure i got a couple of infestors with mind control \/:
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EPT
