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Had a disagreement with my 2v2 partner over whether a Thor should generally be used for tanking and taking damage while my bio ball did primary damage, or the other way around. The specific situation:
- early-Mid game, TvZ
- Pushing to the Z base with M&M and one Thor
He was saying to keep the keep the Thor in front to take damage during the battle, and let the bio ball do the killing. I disagreed, for many reasons:
- Getting your thor FF'd and dying in the first couple seconds is a major bummer. Its more time consuming and expensive to replace, and at 400hp and 1 armor it doesn't exactly last so long.
- Even if my marauders are doing +10 armored, the Thor has better DPS. I would prefer that it survive the battle and do 30x2 per hit throughout instead of dying part way through and having a more marines and marauders left.
Damage and firing speed taking from Liquipedia II:
Thor: 30x2 @1.28 secs = 46.875DPS
Marauder: 10 (+10) @1.5 secs (1 with stim) = 13.33/20DPS
Marine: 6 @ 0.8608secs (0.57387 with stim) = 6.97/10.45DPS
There are obviously many situations with important variables that may sway your decision, e.g whether you have medivacs, scvs repairing thor, stim, vehicle or infantry upgrades, whether you are fighting ranged or melee units, etc. Those things being relatively equal, I think the argument could go either way.
Thoughts?
Edit: firing speeds and DPS corrected
Clarifications:
- By tanking, I don't mean siege tanks, I mean taking damage for your other units. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_(gaming)
- By FF I mean focus fired, not force fielded
I would also be interested in hearing from Toss players about protecting your collossi. Seems like a similar situation: high DPS unit with a lot of HP but can be FF'd easily, often surrounded by Stalkers. Probably less of any issue though since the Collossi can walk over the Stalkers and they outrange them with the range upgrade, which people usually get. But still, would you put your Collossi in front ever to soak up damage?
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My opponents have banelings and mutalisks. Thors are a waste of DPS against blings because they overkill them by twice their health. I use them to hinder zerg movement and surrounding maneuvers by placing it in front of my army, preferably in narrow lanes, so that I get a little more time for my stimmed marines to eliminate the threat.
Also, my opponents will be tempted to focus fire the thor with their mutas (well, magic boxed if they care about them), which is less damage on my bio ball.
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you sure you got marine atk spd right?
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How many are you getting before the push? If it's just one or two, I bring about 3 Scv's for each Thor and let them tank while my Marine/Marauder army uses stim. If your using a larger Thor army in the mid/late game, I would use the Marine/Marauder as tanking as they are extremely cheap and fast to replace (If your running off 5+ barracks).
You also have to take in account what your opponent is attacking you with, I wouldn't put Thor's in the front-line vs units that clearly destroy armored units.
^ I also see a lot of top end players using 1-2 Thor's to soak Tank damage as well.
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The main difference between tank and Thor is that tanks are actually more mobile than Thors. That being said, Thors are terrifying if you can keep the unit count down.
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Damage and firing speed taking from Liquipedia II:
Thor: 30x2 @1.875 secs = 32DPS
Marauder: 10 (+10) @2.25 secs (1.125 with stim) = 8.88/17.77DPS
Marine: 6 @ 2.25 secs (1.125 with stim) = 2.66/5.33DPS
how many marauders can you get for the price of a thor?
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Thors in front, dude. Just think of the baneling shots it can absorb compared to the number your bioball can absorb. And yeah your marine DPS calculation is wrong.
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What you are charging into depends on what goes first. Going vs Zerg (most common use for thors) I'll have hellions in front micro any lings and roaches to keep them from firing. When I move up the ramp put a thor first to block anything trying to get past/behind. Overall the thor is the highest single unit DPS overall. 3 marauders v 1 thor lose (about 90ish hp left) because you have to kill 400 hp to stop the 60smack damage vs losing one marauder means you lose that dps. I would like to see the difference in DPS Thor vs Tank as it should be pretty close. Ignoring the splash when the tank is in siege mode, I think the thor still does more damage. But you get 2 tanks for the price of a thor so unsieged can the tanks keep up?
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According to Shurafa's master unit table:
(https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AhiEl7_qc0ntdGhGWlJhcF84blFTQ0Y0bEdUU2EzOXc&hl=en#gid=23)
Thor DPS/Pop = 7.81
Marauder DPS/Pop= 6.67 (vs armored)
Marine DPS/Pop= 6.98
So even accounting for having 3 marauders per thor, thor is better DPS.
In terms of tanking damage, there are a few factors:
- Opponents that attack move will tend to target several different marauders in a cluster. less FF=less death.
- You should also have some medivacs along with your force, meaning marauders will tank more damage overal.
This, combined with the low cost and time to produce on marauders make them better tanks in my opinion. Perhaps bringing a long a bunch of SCV's would change this, and obviously vs banelings they are more cost effective.
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I made an excel sheet calculating all units dps and dps/unit cost. Does this site have some place where i can upload it ?
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Thors can't get ff'd, they're massive units and disperse them.
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On October 14 2010 07:42 Antisocialmunky wrote:
The main difference between tank and Thor is that tanks are actually more mobile than Thors. That being said, Thors are terrifying if you can keep the unit count down.
I'm pretty sure you failed to read.
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On October 14 2010 12:21 Daliniues wrote:
Thors can't get ff'd, they're massive units and disperse them.
they mean focus fired not forcefields... Also it depends on situation IMO against anything with splash in tvz or against blords I like thors in front just so tank splash on stuff doesn't completely fuck me though if you don't already have enough Vikings you're screwed. But against most other stuff marauders are better but never marines.
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Thor's tank and dps... most IMBA unit in the game. Absolutely no weakness to it.
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On October 14 2010 13:20 Benshin88 wrote:
Thor's tank and dps... most IMBA unit in the game. Absolutely no weakness to it.
...except the fact that its slow as balls?
to OP, i mean, if you have one marauder, two marines, and a thor, yes, the thor has the highest DPS. but your bioball puts out INSANE dps while your enemy is busy focus firing down your thor. and then, you can run your bioball away and heal them back to full health.
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On October 14 2010 13:20 Benshin88 wrote:
Thor's tank and dps... most IMBA unit in the game. Absolutely no weakness to it.
Banshees = Most imba imo. Flying dark templars ... I mean ... Come on :S
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You get a thor to own the shit out of small scale engagements, because it is, for cost, revoltingly powerful in those little starting fights. But, it is huge and concaves very poorly so it's not too useful to mass in TvT (TLO gets early thors, but gets the +1 weapon upgrade so he acn transition into tanks that 2 shot marauders and 3 shot other tanks). It has energy, so it's vulnerable to feedback and immortals in TvP, which leaves TvZ.
In TvZ the thor is fucking great for 2 reasons.
One is NOT that it is tanky. Good zergs do not a-move their banelings. it cannot tank them. A few can maybe block off an area and create a choke, but that's about it.
No, it's cool for two reasons.
One is flexibility. It shoots both up and down! the only 2 units you have that counter mutalisks are Marines and Thors. Marines are baneling food (still very useful! Just also baneling food), but the main thing you gotta use to counter thors is NP, which you do not often run with mass mutas. Or magic box, but with upgrades and backup marines the magic box can be dealt with nicely.
Two is damage. The thor doesn't have to concave very well against short ranged lings and roaches and mutas and ultras, so it's bulkiness is not a disadvantage. It performs very strongly against all those above units too, and if you've got loads more upgrades then they can do ok vs broodlords.
Three is that they are mech, and pure mech is only viable against Z atm. This is only cool because the same upgrades that benefit hellions and tanks also benefit my thor!
In terms of DPS in it's purest form, stimmed marines dothe most and they benefit the most from upgrades. Unfortunately, marines are, as I mentioned, food to banelings and fungal growth, two things that thors laugh off.
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OP, for me it depends so much on what units Z has. If he has some mass ground army with no banelings, thor at the back. If he has ground with banelings, thor at the front. If he has mutas and ground, thor at the back (I want it to live and take out as many mutas as possible). If he has muta and baneling... That's kinda lame and I want lots more thor 
Some rationale: Thor vs ground (no bling) - Thor at the back since it outputs huge DPS and if they want to FF it they will get slaughtered by my bioball in front first.
Thor vs ground (w/bling) - Thor at the front since it can absorb so many baneling hits. Especially in narrow chokes, forcing the bling to run around the sides of the thor, constricting their movement a lot.
Thor vs ground/muta - Thor at the back since thors destory muta. This way if he does magic box, thor will take out so much ground but if he clumps mutas... They will get destroyed SO fast.
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TvZ Thor, unless hes going heavy roach and cares not for mutas. Banelings are kinda meh. either will handle them when done right i suppose. I rarely see banelings with my build as i heavily discourage zerglings from the get-go with hellions. If i see them its for a bust which i already countered with my wall/hellions so its an auto win now. If he does choose to roll banelings into my thors ill take the trade anyday as its about 13 banelings to kill a thor (300/200 vs 650/325) between hellions and thors I have to really be asleep at the wheel to let banelings get to my marines or have to have already lost the game. Tanks do great vs roaches assuming they cant get to them, but marauders do the same with a lot more mobility.
TvT Tanks, no brainer. You can open thor in tvt but it sucks currently. Yes TLO does it but hes always crazy behind when he does it vs solid terrans, hes determined to make it work though so i guess props for his own handicap.
+ Show Spoiler + go watch gsl matches he does it in vs hyperdub he wins game 1 mostly because hyperdub 1a's and blows his lead and game two dub doesnt make the same mistake and rolls him early, the argument is of course he does it for the upgrades but at 200 gas for a thor theres no reason to not just go tank/siege for the extra 50 gas while getting the army and +1
TvP neither, unless youre a masochist if you have to make one maybe thor to break up FF, but theyre both lousy in this matchup. Zealots are crazy good vs both and beat them cheaply.
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6 rines has higher dps than 1 thor, so you want the thor to be tanking. Plus due to the low dmg of rines, less dmg is 'wasted' on final killing blows compared to a thor shooting at a target that had 1hp.
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Also the thor can tank significant damage before dying; while the thor is still alive your army dps remains at a constant rate. If the z is instead killing your rines and ignoring the thor, then your army dps is decreasing incrementally as each individual rine dies.
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Personally I always have my Collousi in the back they are soo good in the early to mid game that you want to keep it and stalkers/zealots are a dime a dozen plus each extra collousi you get in the mid game makes them that more powerful especially in pvp. Not to sure about thors tho but im assuming the same thing applies
Silver player here btw XD just to show not all of TL is mid Diamond lol i think im gonna get promoted soon tho i won my last 6 games
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Thor is for tanking. They just happen to have high DPS because it needs to have the approximate DPS value of a similar number of food/resources.
However, since you cannot guarantee that they will be shooting at the right things, it's really just a great use of gas, and not as backbone (still marines).
What they tank is not banelings (since good Z will not detonate on them, or will drop them), but roach and lings that would chase down your marines, as you spread and dance your marines. You use them as pillars essentially that you pull your marines through, while stationary marines/tanks/hellions target the appropriate units.
If you don't dump gas into thors, Z can threaten to just overpower the remainder of your army after baneling/fungal.
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Thor is for tanking no doubt. That's why you bring SCVs!! BUT if Z's got mutas you might want to save that last thor for defending against them...
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Have you also seen the TLO vs Nada reps from the latest TL weekyl? He goes Thor first in one of those to pretty damn good effect. It's possible he just had a bad day, although considering how much TvT he plays nowadays, TLO might be pretty damn confident with his Thor opening.
I kinda like the opening, what I don't like is that it's very vulnerable to early air play. It relies on setting up aggression so as to discourage sneaking a plane into the mineral line, but I'd still feel uneasy as hell doing it.
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On October 14 2010 13:20 Benshin88 wrote:
Thor's tank and dps... most IMBA unit in the game. Absolutely no weakness to it.
Dude if you can't beat thors you're doing something wrong. Only good matchup like previous poster stated is TvZ and then it's NP and slings. It's not OP since it costs craploads of gas and is as close to static defense as an army unit can get.
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Thors/Colossus don't get FF'ed
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I use a build that is basically pure marines off one barrack with reactor, thors out of one factory and medivacs out of one starport.
The point of the medivacs is to heal zealots and marines and microing thors. Thus I have thors right in the middle of everything so they have to kinda go out of their way to target it and then I medivac lift it so they loses focus and immediately drops it down.
this was I often manage to tank a lot of damage and not die with the thor. I also let the marines die to save the thors because they don't have grades etc.
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It really depends on situation. If you have 1 or 2 thors and there are mutalisks flying around, then you don't want your thors to tank everything because they need to be ready as anti air. But if there are banelings coming at you, you will want to put 1 thor in front so it can absorb that splash damage.
In TvT thors are for tanking and doing splash damage vs clumped vikings.
In PvT there are no thors.
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EPT
