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[Q] What counters Ultralisks/Hydras as Terran?

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
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GoodNewsJim
Profile Joined February 2010
United States122 Posts
October 06 2010 01:45 GMT
#1
~1100 Diamond play

Lets say you have a 200 supply Terran army, and your Zerg opponent has 200

Your opponent has mostly Ultralisks but some Hydrolisks/Infestors and a handful of lings.

We went Thors/Siege tank/Hellion/marines/rauders, killing off the creep tumors so their units don't run as fast.

Everything is upgraded, but his upgrades are a little ahead because he knew he was focusing on Ultras.

The only unit I think we didn't try was BattleCruisers, but in theory unupgraded BC would never kill an Ultralisk because Ultras have like +6 armor and the BC only does like 8, so a BC would just sit above Ultralisks as the Ultralisks killed your entire base. Maybe if BC were the initial goal, we could have had upgrades for them.

Maybe Bancheese would have been ok, but I think if he would have seen it, he'd have went heavy hydrolisks. And don't heavy hydrolisks beat heavy bancheese?

So I'm just wondering: If you know they're going heavy ultralisk composition, what unit composition counters it as Terran?
God is real. Jesus is LORD
dave333
Profile Joined August 2010
United States915 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-10-06 01:47:36
October 06 2010 01:47 GMT
#2
Marauders/tanks/thors. They die fast, but they kill fast too. You are best off using hellions to tank the hits, or even rines as ultras don't too thaat much to light units. Marauders especially are effective.

Also try to fight them in enclosed spaces.

And yes BCs are pretty bad vs. zerg in general since zerg gets corruptors, hydras are decent.
klauz619
Profile Joined July 2010
453 Posts
October 06 2010 03:31 GMT
#3
Upgraded MMM tear through hydras, tanks are kinda underwhelming with the large damage nerf, but I guess they still do their job if you don't expose them.

Counter to ultras is to end the game before he spams a dozen of em every 60 seconds.
aztrorisk
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States896 Posts
October 06 2010 03:35 GMT
#4
Thor + 250mm cannon. Keep the thors in the back of your army and each thor should be able to take down a Ultralisk.
A lock that opens to many keys is a bad lock. A key that opens many locks is a master key.
Tazza
Profile Blog Joined May 2009
Korea (South)1678 Posts
October 06 2010 03:35 GMT
#5
Tanks aren't that great against ultras. I would get mmm. Stimmed rines rip apart hydras and stimmed marauders are very strong against ultras
Inkarnate
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Canada840 Posts
October 06 2010 03:38 GMT
#6
Marauder heavy bio ball backed with either unsieged tanks or thors
FakeDouble
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
Australia676 Posts
October 06 2010 03:49 GMT
#7
I've heard/read ghost snipe spamming supported with the above (tanks, marauders, thors) make ultras dissolve quite quick, since snipe ignores armour. Haven't played enough games to see mass ultralisks yet.

1-2 Yamato cannons? I'd guess they can just make more faster than your energy replenishes though...

Or...if you can protect your BCs from corruptors with vikings, maybe you can go on a base race while you keep a CC in the air? lol...
Formerly known as carbonaceous
Pobearo
Profile Joined August 2009
United States351 Posts
October 06 2010 03:49 GMT
#8
As people have said, MMM is a solid solution. Against Zerg I like to go for a mech army of thors, hellions and banshees. It actually works surprisingly well, as thors can go 1v1 against ultras, and banshees just add damage to that. Blue flame hellions do dirty things to hydras. It's not as easy as MMM but it works.
PaladiN_23
Profile Joined August 2010
84 Posts
October 06 2010 03:52 GMT
#9
As a zerg player the only thing that gives me trouble late game when i have mass ultra/hydra is hellions and marauders. The key thing is that u need to arc and spread ur marauders so they dont take too much splash damage and hellions melt hydras
mOnion
Profile Blog Joined August 2009
United States5657 Posts
October 06 2010 03:53 GMT
#10
On October 06 2010 10:45 GoodNewsJim wrote:
~1100 Diamond play

Lets say you have a 200 supply Terran army, and your Zerg opponent has 200


horrible way to think. in BW a Terran 200/200 mech army with full upgrades was unstoppable and everyone knew it. but the game was balanced. why? because you dont fucking attack something that big head on.

you're not going to counter it directly. ultra's are incredibly expensive and precious and slow to build. you need to be constantly whittling down the ultra numbers as best you can. other things you can do are things like dropping the main and killing the ultra cavern. scanning and catching ultras out of position. then there's the old attack his army and trade armies and reinforce faster.

many ways, none are "make A if he has B and he loses"
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TheMonkeyMon
Profile Joined September 2010
United States119 Posts
October 06 2010 03:55 GMT
#11
On October 06 2010 12:35 aztrorisk wrote:
Thor + 250mm cannon. Keep the thors in the back of your army and each thor should be able to take down a Ultralisk.


Considering that 250 mm takes time to set up, doesn't stun, pins the unit while its active, and does a bit less dps, I really don't think thats the way to go.
FuRong
Profile Joined April 2010
New Zealand3089 Posts
October 06 2010 04:07 GMT
#12
The short answer is that there is no counter. The matchup is just like that.

It's like in PvT, where if you let your Terran opponent mass an army of BC/Tank then you are basically screwed. This doesn't make the matchup imbalanced but it does dictate the way the game is played somewhat.

The best advice is to avoid this situation in the first place. If you allow your Zerg opponent to macro and tech up to an army like this, you're already in a lot of trouble and it's going to be difficult to win. You need to gain an advantage earlier in either army or economy before Ultras come out. Harrass him. Snipe Overlords. Deny his third. Be aggressive. If you are ahead going into the lategame then Ultras won't magically save him, but if you are on equal footing then Ultras will tip the balance drastically in his favour.

If you do get stuck in this position then Tank/Thor/Marauder is the best army composition, but you generally can't fight head on unless it's at a really narrow choke. Look to abuse drops (Marauders can take down a Hatchery in like 6 seconds) and try to split up his army to take out parts of it at a time.
Don't hate the player, hate the game
Parra
Profile Joined September 2010
United States152 Posts
October 06 2010 04:24 GMT
#13
Battlecruisers counter it because of yamato cannon, but he can hard counter your BC's much easier and faster than you can counter his ultralisks. If the game lasts that long, you really are almost screwed as a terran. Mass thor actually will counter ultras but it takes too long to get a critical mass of them. Try doing maurader/medivac hatchery snipings
Coolzx
Profile Joined May 2010
United States138 Posts
October 06 2010 05:15 GMT
#14
On October 06 2010 13:24 Parra wrote:
Battlecruisers counter it because of yamato cannon, but he can hard counter your BC's much easier and faster than you can counter his ultralisks. If the game lasts that long, you really are almost screwed as a terran. Mass thor actually will counter ultras but it takes too long to get a critical mass of them. Try doing maurader/medivac hatchery snipings


What he say, thor take a long time to build and we cant make like 10 at a time, thor also need to funnel ultra to win or they are going to lose. BC is laughably stupid to go since they do so little damage and can be easily kill with corruptor, if you want to keep the malive you are going to need viking in other word very little ground so blahh.

The best way i found to deal with ultra is to harrash a lot since ultra are only really good once there is a good number.
On the thread: HuK: "I want to be the next Lim Yo Hwan for SC2" On July 20 2010 11:12 IdrA wrote: ahahahahahahahahahahaha User was temp banned for this post.
GoodNewsJim
Profile Joined February 2010
United States122 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-10-06 07:23:43
October 06 2010 06:55 GMT
#15
On October 06 2010 12:53 mOnion wrote:
horrible way to think. in BW a Terran 200/200 mech army with full upgrades was unstoppable and everyone knew it. but the game was balanced. why? because you dont fucking attack something that big head on.

So the Zerg 200/200 army is just superior to a Terran 200/200? Yeah it does seem that way.

Sounds like a plan. We tried killing his army before he had 200, because my friend had +1 expo on him... We figured we could replenish faster, but his unit composition was better than tank/thor/hellion/infantry. The game plan was: Go for his army just to whittle it down, so we could replenish, but it didn't work out as well. Then he pushed his advantage and took down my friend's gold.

If we would have known: Don't engage mass ultra except in chokes, we would play differently.

We're going to do the following when we hit 200/200:
MASS Planetary fortresses at expands, 2-4 each mineral patch.
A Bunker crawl
AND
Extra factories to replenish Thor/Hellion

So the future looks reasonable: Mass static defense, and a mobile army that can fight in chokes. The bunker crawl is to bring the battle without getting fungaled and extra health to the battle. Kill the creep highway and come in with mass bunkers. For some reason, Blizzard thinks its balanced to give 100% mineral on salvage, so you can make like bunkers to a forward position, and then salvage all the bunkers back at the beginning of the trail. Now I'm not sure bunkers will be enough to really tip the scales of a 200/200 army, its something to add health to the board.

Everyone saying Marauder/Thor/Hellion, Yes, thats the composition thats preferable, but if you engage 12 ultralisks in open ground, it will not win. So at this point, it really comes down to the map I guess. Its funny how Terran needs to use chokes early game, and late game they're still using them.

Update: My friend just 200 vs 200 again, but got rolled by non upgraded Ultra/ling/mass baneling in a semi choke. My friend was making 3 PF at his newest expansion, but since the opponent got 200 supply(thats the magic number for most people to start their attack), my friend couldn't even slightly stop the army with Thors/Marauders/marines. I think the trick is to get the bunkers ASAP. Don't mess with PFs at expands, you can support them with units, but get 6-10 bunkers down where you want to defend at. We'll try that the next matchup.
God is real. Jesus is LORD
ganil
Profile Joined August 2009
253 Posts
October 06 2010 09:12 GMT
#16
I played a lot of games with an ~1400 zerg recently (I was happy he asked me too mass games ^^).
I tried thors/banshee (with support units like hellion/marine/raven/... ) and it works quite good against ultralisks.

The only problem I had is that the zerg I played against refused to go muta/ling/bling and I wanted to try it against that =/.
Parra
Profile Joined September 2010
United States152 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-10-06 12:30:06
October 06 2010 12:29 GMT
#17
It may sound stupid but if you have plenty of minerals, try placing a planetary fortress or two in key chokes and using marauders/marine to kite near them. It will drive the Zerg insane.
Zozo
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Brazil2579 Posts
October 06 2010 12:42 GMT
#18
If you get a good group of hellions you can scan around to reduce the creep and burn the hydras in case he makes a mistake. Hold your ground and slowly push him back, make PFs, bunkers and turrets so your thors and tanks can survive. The longer it goes more thors with full energy you are going to have, just leapfrog your way in and when he comits, snipe the ultras (even without the stun, the cannons are worth using against high armored targets).

Upgrades also help a lot, +3 hellions melt hydras and run from ultras with ease. Even blowing 4 medivacs full of hellions to kill a mineral line can be worth it that late in the game.
EGM guides me
Drunken.Jedi
Profile Joined June 2009
Germany446 Posts
October 06 2010 12:45 GMT
#19
A maxed Thor Hellion army can defeat any zerg army that does not contain broodlords (but in case of broodlords you can just mix in vikings and you'll be fine). Even on an open field on creep, this army does okay against any zerg ground army and in chokes, zerg doesn't stand a chance. On top of that, you have much better harassment because of hellions, so you should usually be in a better economic situation.
noD
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
2230 Posts
October 06 2010 12:49 GMT
#20
Hellion blue flame make bbq of hydras marine + marauder or marine + ghost tanking pretty much kill ultras if u stim , infestor are the tricky part but i would say tanks + raven if they burrow ... and banshees cloaked can keep doing damage while not much it´s permanent ...
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