On October 26 2010 11:09 drdovetalk wrote: Love the discussion - As a zerg it's great to see the competition evolving.
I agree. And I've always felt that ravens will eventually become a standard part of TvZ composition, just like science vessels did in BW.
And especially now that FruitDealer has, on multiple occasions, burrowed banelings outside the Terran's choke, I feel like Terrans are finally going to figure out how awesome ravens are.
Very interesting build. Given how badly I'm doing vs zerg, I'm anxious to give this a go. I had 2 quick questions though. I really like the fact that this is anti-creep among everthing else.
1) Would it make any sense to get ship armor +1 to make the ravens a little more durable?
2) Also, in the scrap station game with the ultras. You flew by the big zerg ball in the middle at least once with your ravens. Could you have unloaded a few hsm on the big ball? I doubt he could avoid any of the hsm's if you decided to launch them. Just wondering if there was a strategic reason you held off. I don't have a ton of experience using ravens but I know you have to get pretty close to unload. Maybe infestors would be an issue.
Roach Infestor counters this extremely well marines just dont cut it vs the roaches unless you have significantly higher upgrades. Fungal works very well and infested T's can help tkae down the ravens.
Hey guys, been trying this out today against a friend of mine.
I have 2 replays.
As a preface, ignore my terrible macro/play.
The first one isn't very good; I forget combat shield for the first push which really hurts me at the start. Luckily he doesn't push. This one has a lot of Raven turret harass.
The second is a bit better. Theres a huge mis micro by me at his gold. Lost all my rines...ignore that mistake. There is a good battle at the end where seeker missle blows up a bunch of guys, check it out.
This is a pretty solid strategy which is really fun to play. Cheers to the OP.
OP, thanks for the quick response. Mass queens will certainly be massacred by marines with stim. Hence the need for infestors to root and roach or banes at the frontlines
Also, I will defer to your statement that turrets are not armored. sc2 wikia says that they are, so maybe the website is outdated. Luckily for zerg, liquedia says turrets are treated as structures (i always thought all structures are armored), so banelings still make some sense against them.
Watched all the replays in the OP, and wow, what a great composition. I like the mixing in of ghosts in the shakuras plateau game. This seems really strong, although at that point you had the game in the bag.
The game on jungle basin, the zerg could have developed some counter play if he didn't constantly ram the defended choke and just went around into your base / 3rd earlier.
I think a key to playing against this strat is to force Terran into dumping their energy on pdd / auto turrets and then change attack flanks. The marines aren't really that great at defending against AoE (fungal growth!), so the turrets are definitely needed to bolster the beefiness when you're defending. Also, bling/ling combo seems like a DUH, but it really doesn't deal with the main threat: the ravens. While it may man handle the marines, the zerg player is dumping a lot of gas into dealing with a mineral only threat that is easily replenished while the raven count slowly builds up to unmanageable numbers. Then when the situation gets out of control, zerg cannot muster up a decent response because of all the gas they dumped into blings, and they're trading units for energy at that point which is never a good idea. Early on it seems feasible, but I don't think its a good unit choice late-mid game because it becomes cost-ineffective.
Corruptors seem like a decent idea if you want to ranch the ravens, but I don't think zerg needs a tier 3 response to this play. Hive tech seems pretty useless (ultralisks bleh, broodlords double bleh).
Really enjoyed watching those games.
Oh, I had a question: does the opponent know what unit you've targeted with the HSM? Gotta isolate that unit to minimize damage. Since HSM is an energy sink, making Terran bungle a few HSM can buy a huge advantage.
why do i get the feeling that some people didnt even watch the replays?
Watch the eff'n things before making silly comments.
Most of the games mass roaches and infestor were involved. The whole point of this build that makes it so effective is that it is more mineral intensive and any gas spent is spent on ravens and upgrades only. To counter zerg needs to constantly build gas intensively. Yes infestors and roaches do hard counter marines. And yes you are going to lose alot of them but you can recover alot faster of 2 bases early on than zerg can. With little or no gas used to do it. Eventually you will outnumber zerg, the constant pressure means very little tine to drone properly. I think the idea is to exhaust zerg constantly. This is not intended to be a quick win like tvz matchup was. Its not even about trying to out macro him because you seldom can. Its forcing mineral expenditure on units not drones, spending a shit load of gas which comes in slower than minerals on tech and units, more specifically blings. Its not a terran auto win but rather a way to level the playing field.
Hey great post OP! I reviewed four of your featured replays.I tried this strategy and i did win my first game.
This link is a diamond rank 7 terran vs a diamond rank 7 zerg.
Check this out OP and offer me your suggestions please, i didnt have quite as good of macro as you.. also i didnt push out with small groups of marines as much as you did.
One question i have, is that when you have a 170+ army and the zerg has a 170 + army, and he rolls at your marines with like 40 banelings, what do you do? there was one situation where i had a big engagement and lost alot of marines.
On October 26 2010 16:04 Santi wrote: So i tried this, zerg made 8 spine crawlers+banelings next thing I know he pushes out with broadlords. fml what did i do wrong? lol
On October 26 2010 16:45 sodoff wrote: Hey great post OP! I reviewed four of your featured replays.I tried this strategy and i did win my first game.
This link is a diamond rank 7 terran vs a diamond rank 7 zerg.
Check this out OP and offer me your suggestions please, i didnt have quite as good of macro as you.. also i didnt push out with small groups of marines as much as you did.
One question i have, is that when you have a 170+ army and the zerg has a 170 + army, and he rolls at your marines with like 40 banelings, what do you do? there was one situation where i had a big engagement and lost alot of marines.
I reviewed his games more from the opposition pov and he just macroes the marines up again, with 8-9 raxxes that have reactors on them.
in between ravens, planetary fortresses and medivacs there solution from the zerg pow aint banelings.
To deal with one of the other Z options, like mass roach or infestors, you need to switch your composition as well.
You need to have ghost vs infestor, and tanks vs roach. You really do not want to do overdo the tanks, because you will always needs a consistent cloud of raven. 3 tanks one shot a roach, so 6-9 tanks is a good number in a 120-150 food fight.
Thanks for the detailed description and analysis of this build. I had heaps of trouble with Z in 1vs1 and just gave this a try, and it worked! Sure, the zerg player wasn't the best, but neither am I.
for crying out loud. Watch the replays. Concentrated marine stim fired MELTS ULTRAS! Do you guys have any idea how many marines we are talking about here?
Who can honestly say that they have won teching to thors post 1.1.2 against a decent zerg? They are expensive, they are useless in small groups unless being repaired by scvs which are food for roaches and fungal and banelings, if you manage to army trade, zerg could easily make 15 more roaches, possibly even ultras as i have seen done before in the time it took you to build 1 or 2 thors. Thors are slow they dont do a lot of damage when compared to 120 +3+3 stim shield marines that you can micro. They are good for splash damage only. Thats what hsm is for in a much larger radius, dealing shit tons more damage.
Us terrans cant rely on gimmicky immobile play vs zerg. They will steamroll you. You must push forward but be able to quickly retreat if you need to. Thors and tanks dont do that. IT DOESNT WORK ANYMORE! Zerg gets too far ahead too early.
wow, i just watched the replays, what an impressive tactic. really really strong. it basically forces the zerg into a constant war of attrition. by this, u dont let him drone up and exploit the larva sparsity compared to the production capabilities of a terran with constant scv production plus pumping marines out of reactored raxes as if it was nothing. really impressive stuff.
actually this build is good. i just tryed it couple of times in 1400 diamond and it looks pretty viable. only i think the Offensive system of ravens is way weak. HSM actually doesnt work against zerg speed and the energy cost is ridiculous . but imo what kills this tact is a good Muta Harras on your expans. it really hurted me , while my army could just kill the mutas simply , he wouldnt engage ( like every other muta lolmode harraser) and then i would lost many SCVs in his each attacks.i saw you upgraded Terran's building army but still mutas just pee on turret and with MAXIMUM 1 dead they detroy every single turret at base and do a fun harras. still adding 25% friendlyfire for Banelings and some slower speed for mutas could just "balance" the game :D even with this beautiful playstyle u made
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