Here are 3 replays of Jinro crushing TTOne's robo builds with variations of the Polt timing attack at MLG Dallas: Jinro Polt Timing Attack Replay Pack
I recently saw some guy using this build to great effect in a CraftCup Lite today, and it looks ridiculously strong. I've never played against this myself, but how do you stop a build like this if you plan to go Robo?
When you scout Terran, you'll see the Starport with a tech lab, which basically means that you need some sort of detection because of the threat of cloaked banshees. If you got the Robo for the observer, you need to get Stalkers to defend against the Banshee harass. However, there's still a huge Marine Marauder ball with this push, so you need to tech to Colossi. But then the push comes when you only have 2 Colossi and the PDD prevents your Stalkers from stopping the Banshees from killing your Colossi and then the MM ball destroys your army! @_@ <pant, wheeze>
Is there a correct response to this after you've already decided to do something like a 2 Gate Robo Expand?
Its really hard to stop.. in general you want to try and force them to drop PDD by poking at their army on the way to your base. If you let them get to your natural unmolested and drop the PDD in a good spot you are in trouble
Throwing up 1-2 cannons can help too. They can shoot the banshees with PDD down and give backup detection if he snipes your observer.
Unfortunately there is no magical build response because there are so many variations of the push.. he can go pure marine/uncloaked banshee and come very early. He can get cloak and marauders and come later. He can come even later with a few vikings to snipe observers and help kill collossus.
Once you know this is coming you want to rely on mainly zealot/sentry. You still want some stalkers but only enough to deal with the banshees. If you can you want to micro your sentries to attack the PDD. They do such low damage that in my experience trying to kill the banshees with them is a waste of time but they can kill the low health PDD allowing your stalkers to attack.
You cry extensively and possibly gg. Assuming you went FE into 3gate robo, upon scouting the techlab starport:
Throw down a stargate and forge immediately. You want to be powering a fair amount of stalker/sentry/phoenix, and lay out some cannons in the front - the longer T sits on 1 base before attacking, the more cannons you can add, because they're pretty much you best DPS against marines. Zealots I find are fairly pointless because they can't actually get onto the marineball before melting, and you can't safely keep them under a guardian shield.
You want to try to force a PDD before reaching your natural, but a good T wont waste it. Have your sentries in a separate control group and use them to focusfire it - but chances are that it'll instantly expend its energy blocking a billion shots anyway. Use your phoenixes to kill the banshees, then lift marines, try to forcefield as many marines back (you want the fight to go longer as PDD is only in play at the start, and stim has a duration).
Guardian shield is absolutely massive, and +1 armor from the forge is something I like as well.
Alternatively you could try to rush out a colossus along with phoenixes, but without the range upgrade it would be tricky (1gate FE). If you've opened 2gate robo FE I would suggest getting some colossi as well as phoenixes, since you'll have the time to get 2 colossi out.
I tend to get roflstomped by this so take that into account when reading this post (2K+ P).
On November 11 2010 06:15 link0 wrote: I recommend not fast expanding when you see this sort of 1 base timing attack.
You can easily do this Raven-Banshee opening and squeeze an expansion in there (as shown in the Jinro match on Metalopolis), or just expand after the push. Hiding on one base while Terran can freely expand just because of the threat of this timing attack seems like just delaying the inevitable.
If you said the solution was to not tech to Colossi and just try to hold with Zealot/Stalker/Sentry/Immortal and FF after scouting the Raven/Banshees, I might buy that. But not expanding in a matchup where Toss is just desperately trying to survive until mid-late-game seems like a terrible idea. =/
On November 11 2010 06:31 Dfgj wrote: Assuming you went FE into 3gate robo, upon scouting the techlab starport:
Throw down a stargate and forge immediately.
This sounds like an overreaction to me. There are plenty of MMM builds that just... get a banshee before they swap to get medivacs for some harassment.
But to answer your question, when you have already done that build, I guess it might be too late. Also however if you do go robo you can just get immortals + chargelots, you don't need colossi against mmm, and then build a Stargate / observer. SG/Robo is much better than Robo/RoboBay because it gives more flexibility, twice the unit production (building a observer won't hold up your colossi/immortals!) This is just theoretical though, since I don't know the timings and I guess it depends what time you find out his build and such. Another advantage for Immortals is, although small, their shields will block each Banshee hit, reducing 4 total damage xD (10x2 instead of 12x2).
Only problem for Immortals is if they go ghosts. But for this build they won't have any. And if they delay and transition into ghosts then you can transition into HT ( you would probably have Twilight Council sometime around here right? )
On November 11 2010 06:15 link0 wrote: I recommend not fast expanding when you see this sort of 1 base timing attack.
You can easily do this Raven-Banshee opening and squeeze an expansion in there (as shown in the Jinro match on Metalopolis), or just expand after the push. Hiding on one base while Terran can freely expand just because of the threat of this timing attack seems like just delaying the inevitable.
If you said the solution was to not tech to Colossi and just try to hold with Zealot/Stalker/Sentry/Immortal and FF after scouting the Raven/Banshees, I might buy that. But not expanding in a matchup where Toss is just desperately trying to survive until mid-late-game seems like a terrible idea. =/
On November 11 2010 06:31 Dfgj wrote: Assuming you went FE into 3gate robo, upon scouting the techlab starport:
Throw down a stargate and forge immediately.
This sounds like an overreaction to me. There are plenty of MMM builds that just... get a banshee before they swap to get medivacs for some harassment.
I don't completely agree. A forge is something that maintains viability - you want upgrades anyways. You're not going to put down cannons unless you've scouted the push forming, but more importantly, this tends to be visible - high marine count, a raven out early, etc.
Phoenixes are also useful units if he's getting ravens and banshees - but remain useful if he transitions back to standard play as they support colossi against vikings. Sure, you've invested extra early, but if he's getting a raven and banshees while sitting on one-base, that's delaying standard play too.
well 2100 p here, for now 2 days i constantly try with various trainingspartner to come up with something. btw. you think this is bad? my bitch of a teammate actually just makes fun off me with a variation of this build. it comes a good minute earlier and without marauders, therefore some rines more, one banshee more and 4 siegetanks with, guess what, siegemode. yes with stimpack. this really is bad, he almost pulls his whole economy and just laughes at me. well, in theory, the counter is pretty easy. if you go for +1 attack chargelots with sentry and phoenix, youre totally fine, but srsly, who does this in a normal game? because +1 lots only need 2 hits for a stimmed rine without shields, which is huuuge. they basically become zerglings.
you cant go for collossi, never, they actually dont do shit. and by the time i mentioned above, you get one out....one! and one collossus is none collossus, srsly. marines just eat up anything. vs polt, propably stalker sentry only is your best option, because there is no awesome range units, you can split off some units and kill them one by one. but what do you do vs 13 range tanks?!?!?!
i mean, terrans complain about collossi.... so what is cheaper has more range cannot be hit by air and most of the time even does more damge? yeah, they cant move....
dont get me wrong, i really want to help you instead of whining, but these are my thoughts for the last 2 days.
I feel you ensis, I've got some clanmates that add in tanks to the build, and the sheer dps (even without siege) is even more obnoxious to deal with.
I'd really love to see this more in games like the GSL so we can see options to handle it (besides 4gating into 1/1/1s on sight). SanZenith showed some defense against Hyperdub, but that's only one game.
I struggle with Terran air all the time. Protoss just has horrifice anti-air, and it gets even worse when a PDD is dropped. Banshee's have higher DPS and are cheaper than VoidRays, and yet voids get nerfed. Smeh :/
You can stop this if you 1 Gate FE, but it's close. The moment you drop down your Nexus, you need cut probes and throw down another gate and a robo. Make an observer to scout, but actually I'm trying to switch over and make a stargate instead. Make a phoenix to scout, if you see a tech lab on a starport, then throw down a robo just to be safe. The reason why I want to switch this is because usually that observer is out before he get cloak, possibly too early. And they're really expensive, seeing how immortals won't help you here. Keep pumping units, be ready to defend with your probes at your nat.
Here's the trick - make a Void Ray. You should have a good chunk of zealots by then, make sure you do so they can deal with the rines. If they can't, pull probes, you will still be ahead if you lose very single one of them. A Void Ray will keep you alive because it's not affected by the PDD, can only be killed by the rines, and can attack everything he is throwing at you. If he adds a viking, target fire with phoenix and Void immediately, but then his banshee count will be less so youre ground army will survive longer to deal with those rines. THE VOID RAY WILL KEEP YOU ALIVE.
But still, countering this comes down to micro and ability. It's a pretty cheap build from Terrans, and I don't mean money wise. The skill to defend it is wayyyyy higher than the skill to execute it, it's just incredibly effective since banshees have such a high DPS and ravens have the ability to negate your stalkers and phoenixes, your main anti-air units. Hope this helps!
I haven't actually seen this build on ladder yet, what do you have to see to say "Oh @#$%, that isn't just banshee harass"? Obviously, as soon as his raven pops out, you can't keep an observer in his base, and by that point, isn't your robo facility already building/done? Do you let the robo finish and just delay the range upgrade and make immortals, or do you forgo robo units altogther, get your stargate up, and CB phoenix ASAP?
In my experience, your best bet is to immediately lay down a stargate and chrono out 2-3 phoenix while completely dropping robotech production. Once the phoenix are out, you MUST go on the offensive with them, and start harassing the hell out of their raven and banshees. Phoenix are fast, do 20 a volley to those units, and can shoot while moving, so you can really cause problems dancing around the marines and hurting those units. If you see any opening at all, its important to just rightclick that raven and suck up any damage or phoenix losses that result - a dead raven means no PDD, which means he needs to spend the gas building a new one and then waiting for it to charge up the energy. If he drops a PDD to save his ravens, just run the phoenix away.
Without PDD, the push is much less scary, as all your stalkers can actually, you know, help. Cannons aren't a bad idea if your natural is defensible with them, but on maps like delta quadrant, I wouldn't bother. Having a high zeal count is important to deal with his marines, as the banshee will get cleaned up pretty quick by the phoenix + stalkers, but those marines, if not dealt with, will still cause a lot of damage.
I have not played any polt-esque push with tanks, that would be truly terrifying. Maybe immortal dropping the tanks or lifting them would be the answer, it would probably depend if he is cutting banshees for the tank production, or just pushing later so you could have colossus up.
I faced that build around 30 times on ladder (2000 d protoss) I 1 gate FE and sometime i can hold it just fine, sometime not.
Mass marine + 2 banshee without cloak + raven = a joke... just delay the fight and waste their stim, the banshee wont do enough alone. Mass stalker with good force field to keep marine out of range.
Mass marine + 2 banshee with cloak + raven = Worst possible scenario, they will just scan, and kill your observer and your done, banshee will kill all sentry.
Mass marine + 1-2 tanks + 1-2 banshee + raven = This push come too late IMO. Your economy can kick in and you can have either phoenix, collosus, and mass stalker all at your disposal.
MM + 2 banshee cloak + 1 raven = The more marauder the happier you are. Mass marine inflict way more damage. WIth marauder you want your zealot shield with sentry to hold and a good pack of stalker.
Takes all this with a grain of salt, i've beaten this strat a lot of time. But when executed perfectly... i just cant see to find the right composition on time.
I haven't actually seen this build on ladder yet, what do you have to see to say "Oh @#$%, that isn't just banshee harass"? Obviously, as soon as his raven pops out, you can't keep an observer in his base, and by that point, isn't your robo facility already building/done? Do you let the robo finish and just delay the range upgrade and make immortals, or do you forgo robo units altogther, get your stargate up, and CB phoenix ASAP?
Well, let's assume you get the robo after your first or second gateway and your observer sees the Raven. At that point, you can't assume he's going for the timing attack. It could just be a fast Raven build.
I think in order to determine that your opponent is probably doing this you have to see both the Raven and a Banshee, as well as a delayed expansion.
After the first Banshee pops Terran has to build another one, then swap the Starport to a reactor and build a set of vikings, then travel to your base. A banshee takes 60 seconds to build, the swap takes 5-10 seconds, the vikings take 42 seconds, and the travel time varies... let's say 20 seconds. You have about 2 to 2.5 in-game minutes to change your plan if you see the first Banshee immediately after it pops.
That's enough time to get a forge and cannons or throw down a Stargate and get maybe 2 phoenixes. The forge option sounds stronger, imo. However... what if he doesn't harass with the Banshees? I don't know how you could know it's coming at that point. =(
I always play Stargate against Terran and this attack has never been a problem. The reason is because the 1 PDD dies quite fast to 1-3 void rays and the marine's only protection is gone. Yeah, you have to micro your voids on the pdd, you have to engage VRs first to soak marine fire, but the attack is paper-thin once the pdd is down.
You can analyze why stargate play is stronger than this, and much stronger than many standard openings in the TvP matchup, and not overcommitting to stargate allows for expansion and other tech paths.
On November 11 2010 07:59 tehemperorer wrote: I always play Stargate against Terran and this attack has never been a problem. The reason is because the 1 PDD dies quite fast to 1-3 void rays and the marine's only protection is gone. Yeah, you have to micro your voids on the pdd, you have to engage VRs first to soak marine fire, but the attack is paper-thin once the pdd is down.
You can analyze why stargate play is stronger than this, and much stronger than many standard openings in the TvP matchup, and not overcommitting to stargate allows for expansion and other tech paths.
i´ll just comment on the replays.
your first rep is completely pointless and just off topic as whole. the second... ok, at like 9:30 my mate has 15 scvs 1 raven 4 tanks 3 banshees and 21 marines with stim at your freaking door. you have 3 sentries 4 zealots 4 stalkers and 3 phoenixes.... you get my point?
and playing voidrays vs a mass marine strategy is like playing mass ling vs hellion
i think i should just submit a replay here. but too tired right now.
I've had success against this build by going 2 robo 1 gate, pumping stalkers + 1 sentry out of the gate, and immortals. The idea is to keep your stalkers behind the immortals, their only purpose is to shoot at the banshee. You will not really try and do any damage with the stalker during the fight with the marine marauder, since there will be a PDD out anyway. Just keep them back, and keep them shooting (to wear down the PDD)
I always play Stargate against Terran and this attack has never been a problem. The reason is because the 1 PDD dies quite fast to 1-3 void rays and the marine's only protection is gone. Yeah, you have to micro your voids on the pdd, you have to engage VRs first to soak marine fire, but the attack is paper-thin once the pdd is down.
You can analyze why stargate play is stronger than this, and much stronger than many standard openings in the TvP matchup, and not overcommitting to stargate allows for expansion and other tech paths.
Please watch your replays and then watch the Jinro vs TTOne replays in the OP. There is a massive difference in the Terran gameplay.
On November 11 2010 08:27 GoldenH wrote: I've had success against this build by going 2 robo 1 gate, pumping stalkers + 1 sentry out of the gate, and immortals. The idea is to keep your stalkers behind the immortals, their only purpose is to shoot at the banshee. You will not really try and do any damage with the stalker during the fight with the marine marauder, since there will be a PDD out anyway. Just keep them back, and keep them shooting (to wear down the PDD)
You can actually FE with this strat.
I don't buy this, especially not after an FE. With only stalker/sentry/immortal the immortals are going to get focused down by the marines extremely quickly while the stalkers are occupied with PDD. If you can prove it by posting a replay, then by all means...
Depending on the map, void rays will work. People don't realize the patch made them much better at hit and run harass but not as effective in rushes. The pros are using void rays way more in tournaments like GSL for this very reason - fly over a cliff hit and run, even mass stimmed marines won't kill them and their shields will heal. The proper counter to microed void rays is actually vikings despite their armor. Marines only work if the protoss player doesn't know how to micro and escape over cliffs.
Void rays work much more like mutalisks post patch. You hit and run and force your opponent to hard counter, and if they can't get critical mass you camp at their barracks and command and snipe anything that comes out. There was one GSL game where 2 void rays microed the marines to death (ignoring tanks and marauders) and then camped over 4 barracks and it was gg.
The other counter is simply to have low econ 1 base aggression against terran to break his tech build, or steal his gas. If you "let" Terran get 2 banshees out without ever making a single attack, that's your call.
The proper way to counter this imo is to make the LEAST amount of stalkers. Stalkers are very bad against the PDD and don't kill banshee's fast while being chewed on by the marines and marauders.
THe best way to counter it imo is to make a stargate STRAIGHT away whenever you see a tech lab starport. Then go with phoenix, immortals, LOTS of zealots and a few sentry. Let the lots with immortal and sentry attack with guardian shield up and place a few forcefields. Then attack the banshee's with your phoenix (you should have 1 and 1 more coming up during the fight). The trick is to kill the marines with zealots and just have 1 phoenix surviving that will mop up the banshee's. Stalkers are crap against this combination as their damage just gets soaked by PDD while the banshee's focus them, phoenix deplete PDD MUCH faster and then kill the banshee's insanely quick while it's relatively easy to stay out of range of most marines (which don't have shield so aren't too hard to kill). Immortal's aren't too great but they last fairly well and don't activate PDD getting at least some damage in and tremendously help if he mixes in some marauders or tanks (difficult to know what exact variation is coming). So usually I open 1 gate FE into 2 gate robo (unless i'm quite certain a MM(g) push is coming in which case i get 3 gate first) and then scout with a observer asap. If i see the starport techlab i pull back the observer immediately and put it in between my bases (in case of banshee cloak harass) and make the minimal amount of stalkers to stop harass (2 or 3 is fine vs 1 starport) while getting a starport. Make non-stop immortal + zealot in the meantime, cutting probe's if neccesary. Then from the stargate make chronoboosted phoenix ASAP, if you scouted the starport in time you should always be able to get 1 out in time. Then when he comes (use your phoenix to scout not your observer) engage him in the most open area possible with your probes + army. Getting a good concave so the zealots dont clog up is very important. On maps with a small entrance point to your natural (such as steppes, LT etc.) buy some extra time by forcefielding the entrance to your base so you can get more phoenix out. General important things: - make sure to use your probe's, he is also using his afterall. - keep making units during the battle it's very common for this attack to break almost exactly even, especially getting a phoenix during the fight is critical. - don't overly focus on the banshees! Yes they deal high DPS but the marines actually deal more! If you deal with the rines and have 1 phoenix (nearly) complete you can easily mop up the banshee's. - killing the PDD with sentries is sweet, the lower number of stalkers you have the easier this actually is to do while the PDD is actually still doing something. Killing a PDD with sentries after it ate 2 volleys of your 8 stalkers doesn't do shit. Don't make too many sentries just for this purpose though, besides guardian shield and a few forcefields their use is quite limited for such a fight as they die really quick to the banshee's. I'd suggest just 2 or 3. - ZEALOTS! You need as many as possible from these to stop this. It seems counterintuitive but the way to win is to win the ground fight first. A phoenix can mop up any air of him really quickly (raven and banshee both light) as long as you kill or force the marines to retreat. Remember that they can't kite well with this push as they lack a medivacs and need to stay near their banshee's and PDD. If they bring a substantial amount of scv's it's critical to not let the zealots bug out vs those (somehow scv's on autorepair are screwed with attack priority). - If you FE'd you need to ignore colossi as a answer to this push. The robotics support costs too much and it takes quite long for that first colossi to finish. More importantly a good T will simply focus it with the banshee's before it does any significant damage (there is no way it will have range upgraded).
The proper way to counter this imo is to make the LEAST amount of stalkers. Stalkers are very bad against the PDD and don't kill banshee's fast while being chewed on by the marines and marauders.
THe best way to counter it imo is to make a stargate STRAIGHT away whenever you see a tech lab starport. Then go with phoenix, immortals, LOTS of zealots and a few sentry. Let the lots with immortal and sentry attack with guardian shield up and place a few forcefields. Then attack the banshee's with your phoenix (you should have 1 and 1 more coming up during the fight). The trick is to kill the marines with zealots and just have 1 phoenix surviving that will mop up the banshee's. Stalkers are crap against this combination as their damage just gets soaked by PDD while the banshee's focus them, phoenix deplete PDD MUCH faster and then kill the banshee's insanely quick while it's relatively easy to stay out of range of most marines (which don't have shield so aren't too hard to kill). Immortal's aren't too great but they last fairly well and don't activate PDD getting at least some damage in and tremendously help if he mixes in some marauders or tanks (difficult to know what exact variation is coming). So usually I open 1 gate FE into 2 gate robo (unless i'm quite certain a MM(g) push is coming in which case i get 3 gate first) and then scout with a observer asap. If i see the starport techlab i pull back the observer immediately and put it in between my bases (in case of banshee cloak harass) and make the minimal amount of stalkers to stop harass (2 or 3 is fine vs 1 starport) while getting a starport. Make non-stop immortal + zealot in the meantime, cutting probe's if neccesary. Then from the stargate make chronoboosted phoenix ASAP, if you scouted the starport in time you should always be able to get 1 out in time. Then when he comes (use your phoenix to scout not your observer) engage him in the most open area possible with your probes + army. Getting a good concave so the zealots dont clog up is very important. On maps with a small entrance point to your natural (such as steppes, LT etc.) buy some extra time by forcefielding the entrance to your base so you can get more phoenix out. General important things: - make sure to use your probe's, he is also using his afterall. - keep making units during the battle it's very common for this attack to break almost exactly even, especially getting a phoenix during the fight is critical. - don't overly focus on the banshees! Yes they deal high DPS but the marines actually deal more! If you deal with the rines and have 1 phoenix (nearly) complete you can easily mop up the banshee's. - killing the PDD with sentries is sweet, the lower number of stalkers you have the easier this actually is to do while the PDD is actually still doing something. Killing a PDD with sentries after it ate 2 volleys of your 8 stalkers doesn't do shit. Don't make too many sentries just for this purpose though, besides guardian shield and a few forcefields their use is quite limited for such a fight as they die really quick to the banshee's. I'd suggest just 2 or 3. - ZEALOTS! You need as many as possible from these to stop this. It seems counterintuitive but the way to win is to win the ground fight first. A phoenix can mop up any air of him really quickly (raven and banshee both light) as long as you kill or force the marines to retreat. Remember that they can't kite well with this push as they lack a medivacs and need to stay near their banshee's and PDD. If they bring a substantial amount of scv's it's critical to not let the zealots bug out vs those (somehow scv's on autorepair are screwed with attack priority). - If you FE'd you need to ignore colossi as a answer to this push. The robotics support costs too much and it takes quite long for that first colossi to finish. More importantly a good T will simply focus it with the banshee's before it does any significant damage (there is no way it will have range upgraded).
Thanks. This actually sounds like a reasonable response... however, don't you think that throwing down a Stargate after you scout only a Starport with a tech lab (no Raven, no Banshees yet) is a bit of an overreaction? Would you be in for some serious hurt if he didn't end up getting more than 1 Banshee/1 Raven and was just aggressive with straight-up MMM?
On November 11 2010 08:54 Markwerf wrote: The proper way to counter this imo is to make the LEAST amount of stalkers. Stalkers are very bad against the PDD and don't kill banshee's fast while being chewed on by the marines and marauders.
THe best way to counter it imo is to make a stargate STRAIGHT away whenever you see a tech lab starport. Then go with phoenix, immortals, LOTS of zealots and a few sentry. Let the lots with immortal and sentry attack with guardian shield up and place a few forcefields. Then attack the banshee's with your phoenix (you should have 1 and 1 more coming up during the fight). The trick is to kill the marines with zealots and just have 1 phoenix surviving that will mop up the banshee's. Stalkers are crap against this combination as their damage just gets soaked by PDD while the banshee's focus them, phoenix deplete PDD MUCH faster and then kill the banshee's insanely quick while it's relatively easy to stay out of range of most marines (which don't have shield so aren't too hard to kill). Immortal's aren't too great but they last fairly well and don't activate PDD getting at least some damage in and tremendously help if he mixes in some marauders or tanks (difficult to know what exact variation is coming). So usually I open 1 gate FE into 2 gate robo (unless i'm quite certain a MM(g) push is coming in which case i get 3 gate first) and then scout with a observer asap. If i see the starport techlab i pull back the observer immediately and put it in between my bases (in case of banshee cloak harass) and make the minimal amount of stalkers to stop harass (2 or 3 is fine vs 1 starport) while getting a starport. Make non-stop immortal + zealot in the meantime, cutting probe's if neccesary. Then from the stargate make chronoboosted phoenix ASAP, if you scouted the starport in time you should always be able to get 1 out in time. Then when he comes (use your phoenix to scout not your observer) engage him in the most open area possible with your probes + army. Getting a good concave so the zealots dont clog up is very important. On maps with a small entrance point to your natural (such as steppes, LT etc.) buy some extra time by forcefielding the entrance to your base so you can get more phoenix out. General important things: - make sure to use your probe's, he is also using his afterall. - keep making units during the battle it's very common for this attack to break almost exactly even, especially getting a phoenix during the fight is critical. - don't overly focus on the banshees! Yes they deal high DPS but the marines actually deal more! If you deal with the rines and have 1 phoenix (nearly) complete you can easily mop up the banshee's. - killing the PDD with sentries is sweet, the lower number of stalkers you have the easier this actually is to do while the PDD is actually still doing something. Killing a PDD with sentries after it ate 2 volleys of your 8 stalkers doesn't do shit. Don't make too many sentries just for this purpose though, besides guardian shield and a few forcefields their use is quite limited for such a fight as they die really quick to the banshee's. I'd suggest just 2 or 3. - ZEALOTS! You need as many as possible from these to stop this. It seems counterintuitive but the way to win is to win the ground fight first. A phoenix can mop up any air of him really quickly (raven and banshee both light) as long as you kill or force the marines to retreat. Remember that they can't kite well with this push as they lack a medivacs and need to stay near their banshee's and PDD. If they bring a substantial amount of scv's it's critical to not let the zealots bug out vs those (somehow scv's on autorepair are screwed with attack priority). - If you FE'd you need to ignore colossi as a answer to this push. The robotics support costs too much and it takes quite long for that first colossi to finish. More importantly a good T will simply focus it with the banshee's before it does any significant damage (there is no way it will have range upgraded).
Yes, this is the textbook counter to marine/banshee. It's really not that tough.
With terran saying omg late game autoloss, and toss going like omg early to hard. The mind set is in favor of the terran there. Anyway thanks to the mules he has a little mineral advantage, so the toss has to really whatch were he invests his ressources in. The terran is able to force a fight with concussivs, so thanks to the pdds he will have some free kills. I can think of a few things that might work. But i am bad playing against people as bad as me so, i couldn't tell you if it would work.
for me pvt always worked by going phenix immortal. Sniping marines and marauders whenever i had the option to do so with my phenix, harassing worker line to force some turrets, making him spend enough stuff so i could expand or if he overcomitted on turrets, just pushing him. Phenix allow the toss to force a fight, so they are pretty nice. guardian shield on -> a click -> lift stuff, your stalkers+sentrys will stay behind pretty save and snipe the lifted stuff -> let immortals focus the marauders on ground -> more lifiting. Its mostly a trade of zealots vs marauders. But once those are traded, its marines vs immortals and stalkers protected by an guardian shield. If he tryes to retreat the phenix will get alot of free marines. And the immortal shields will regenerate as well. I only faced banshee harass or ravens though, can't remember if i had both at the same time before, but its hard to protect something in the air from phenix runbys.
So just try out what works for you. Maybe a templar would work without getting storm just for feedback. its kind of the same cost as the raven and if you can get the raven you can also damage a banshee a little bit.
Imo toss players are way to bound to their warp gates, but well they can be really evil some times. But they alwas try to figure out warpgate heavy tactics.
The proper way to counter this imo is to make the LEAST amount of stalkers. Stalkers are very bad against the PDD and don't kill banshee's fast while being chewed on by the marines and marauders.
THe best way to counter it imo is to make a stargate STRAIGHT away whenever you see a tech lab starport. Then go with phoenix, immortals, LOTS of zealots and a few sentry. Let the lots with immortal and sentry attack with guardian shield up and place a few forcefields. Then attack the banshee's with your phoenix (you should have 1 and 1 more coming up during the fight). The trick is to kill the marines with zealots and just have 1 phoenix surviving that will mop up the banshee's. Stalkers are crap against this combination as their damage just gets soaked by PDD while the banshee's focus them, phoenix deplete PDD MUCH faster and then kill the banshee's insanely quick while it's relatively easy to stay out of range of most marines (which don't have shield so aren't too hard to kill). Immortal's aren't too great but they last fairly well and don't activate PDD getting at least some damage in and tremendously help if he mixes in some marauders or tanks (difficult to know what exact variation is coming). So usually I open 1 gate FE into 2 gate robo (unless i'm quite certain a MM(g) push is coming in which case i get 3 gate first) and then scout with a observer asap. If i see the starport techlab i pull back the observer immediately and put it in between my bases (in case of banshee cloak harass) and make the minimal amount of stalkers to stop harass (2 or 3 is fine vs 1 starport) while getting a starport. Make non-stop immortal + zealot in the meantime, cutting probe's if neccesary. Then from the stargate make chronoboosted phoenix ASAP, if you scouted the starport in time you should always be able to get 1 out in time. Then when he comes (use your phoenix to scout not your observer) engage him in the most open area possible with your probes + army. Getting a good concave so the zealots dont clog up is very important. On maps with a small entrance point to your natural (such as steppes, LT etc.) buy some extra time by forcefielding the entrance to your base so you can get more phoenix out. General important things: - make sure to use your probe's, he is also using his afterall. - keep making units during the battle it's very common for this attack to break almost exactly even, especially getting a phoenix during the fight is critical. - don't overly focus on the banshees! Yes they deal high DPS but the marines actually deal more! If you deal with the rines and have 1 phoenix (nearly) complete you can easily mop up the banshee's. - killing the PDD with sentries is sweet, the lower number of stalkers you have the easier this actually is to do while the PDD is actually still doing something. Killing a PDD with sentries after it ate 2 volleys of your 8 stalkers doesn't do shit. Don't make too many sentries just for this purpose though, besides guardian shield and a few forcefields their use is quite limited for such a fight as they die really quick to the banshee's. I'd suggest just 2 or 3. - ZEALOTS! You need as many as possible from these to stop this. It seems counterintuitive but the way to win is to win the ground fight first. A phoenix can mop up any air of him really quickly (raven and banshee both light) as long as you kill or force the marines to retreat. Remember that they can't kite well with this push as they lack a medivacs and need to stay near their banshee's and PDD. If they bring a substantial amount of scv's it's critical to not let the zealots bug out vs those (somehow scv's on autorepair are screwed with attack priority). - If you FE'd you need to ignore colossi as a answer to this push. The robotics support costs too much and it takes quite long for that first colossi to finish. More importantly a good T will simply focus it with the banshee's before it does any significant damage (there is no way it will have range upgraded).
Thanks. This actually sounds like a reasonable response... however, don't you think that throwing down a Stargate after you scout only a Starport with a tech lab (no Raven, no Banshees yet) is a bit of an overreaction? Would you be in for some serious hurt if he didn't end up getting more than 1 Banshee/1 Raven and was just aggressive with straight-up MMM?
Uhm no a stargate imo always pays itself off if the terran even makes only 1! banshee or raven. That phoenix can function as a scout while your original observer stays at home (wary of cloaked banshee's) and is infinitely more handy to stop harass then stalkers are. Stopping banshee harass with only stalkers is very difficult against a good T as they will just get probe/pylon kills all over the place (especially as i'm i think scouting pylons are a near must as P to be able to respond to drops in time). Remember that a phoenix can always serve to kill medivacs / vikings as well or even lift tanks. It is impossible for a T to screw you into making phoenix and then abuse that in some other way, phoenix are usefull vs every starport combination. Sure they aren't great against pure MMM but if T is making that with a tech lab starport he is doing something less efficient as well. Remember that these pushes generally come when T is a bit behind so all you have to do to gain an advantage is simply NOT die, if they switch to something else you should be way ahead in economy. Also on a sidenote i would NOT advise using cannons against this push. Cannons suck vs PDD (cancel 20 dmg a shot) and the first cannon is very expensive as you don't use a forge against this type of play really. Also cannons make it much easier for them to lay a perfect PDD as they know where you want to fight then. I know cannons have been used in GSL to stop this play once but that player also used phoenix, 3 zealots will help more then 1 forge and 1 cannon really.
Just snipe the PDD! Why do people not realize you can kill PDDs! Not killing the PDD or running away from it is like staying at the spot where a nuke is going down. Just get stalker sentry and add immortals and zealots if he adds marauders. Use the ffs to separate his ground army from his air army. Most importantly, kill PDDs or at least run away. Get phoenixes as his banshee count increases.
the only thing that work are feedback void ray or sentry
i mean it blocks 20 shots how you want to kill it and besides even if you make less stalker and more anti air units ect ect intead of 1 pdd you throw 3-4 auto turrets maybe not effective like pdd it still helps
about the timing attack i agree with the other toss that stargate is nessesary
because what nobody mention he scout with factory and he still keeps it to scout more then the toss to with the observer
and i think seriously void rays mass zealots and guardian shield sentry rape this built the other thing is the rush has only succed when the toss is expanding like the other guy said its a built to punish the p for being greedy
On November 11 2010 09:06 Shlowpoke wrote:Thanks. This actually sounds like a reasonable response... however, don't you think that throwing down a Stargate after you scout only a Starport with a tech lab (no Raven, no Banshees yet) is a bit of an overreaction? Would you be in for some serious hurt if he didn't end up getting more than 1 Banshee/1 Raven and was just aggressive with straight-up MMM?
It depends on the timing of the starport. An early starport means he went 111, and you only go 111 if you're going banshee or medivac drop. 2gas is almost always banshee, occasionally thor. Basically if you build a 111 timing starport you're screwed if you do anything short of banshee or surprise drop. You'll have way too few units and will never catch up without doing damage. 1 barracks does not build a lot, and more importantly they must choose between tech and reactor. If they choose reactor they can't start upgrades until super late, if they choose tech lab they either build marauders or even worse one - marine - at - a - time.
This build is still insanely popular on ladder. There are all kinds of variants of marine/banshee/raven bopping around. I have the most success against it opening kiwikaki style with the insanely fast immortals, and then fast expanding. As long as I have 4 gates and one colossus finished, I hold it off without much trouble.
Its a well balanced push, so you need a well balanced composition. 5 or 6 zealots, 3 or 4 sentries, and 4 or 5 stalkers, 2 immortals, and that single colossus works very well.
The reason why its safe to FE against this is that the push comes at around the 10 minute mark at the earliest. Your expo is already up and has paid for itself at that point if you do take your nat in a timely manner.
Another important thing to note is scouting at the front. If your probe peeks at their ramp and sees only marines banshees are probably on their way to your base. Furthermore, its safe to keep units in your mineral line as long as you are scouting the front of the enemy base. When you see them push out, just box your army and drag them all out to the front. Its much easier to scout their front then it is to scout the entire map for drops and banshees.
You can expand with robo. Get blink. Sit outside of his base. make him work his way to your base and/or lay the pdd. with blink you can snipe the raven and or medivacs on their way to your base + you don't have to worry about marauder slowing you down.
On November 11 2010 08:37 oprandom wrote: Depending on the map, void rays will work. People don't realize the patch made them much better at hit and run harass but not as effective in rushes. The pros are using void rays way more in tournaments like GSL for this very reason - fly over a cliff hit and run, even mass stimmed marines won't kill them and their shields will heal. The proper counter to microed void rays is actually vikings despite their armor. Marines only work if the protoss player doesn't know how to micro and escape over cliffs.
Void rays work much more like mutalisks post patch. You hit and run and force your opponent to hard counter, and if they can't get critical mass you camp at their barracks and command and snipe anything that comes out. There was one GSL game where 2 void rays microed the marines to death (ignoring tanks and marauders) and then camped over 4 barracks and it was gg.
The other counter is simply to have low econ 1 base aggression against terran to break his tech build, or steal his gas. If you "let" Terran get 2 banshees out without ever making a single attack, that's your call.
I would hazard to say they only work because most builds incorporate some marauders in them but if its just marines I dont see it happening
some horrible advice here. Colossi don't work well vs this. First of all they are very risky as the push might come when you just have that first colossi at 60% which will immediately get you screwed. Also a good T will simply focus your colossus with his banshee's/vikings before it does any significant damage as there is no way that colossus will have range tech already.
Also blink is a horrible advice as well. Against takes too long to be effective against this. And the whole "forcing them a PDD on the way over" is never gonna work against a proper timing push. Blink hardly helps in battle against banshee / MM. Blink isn't a fantastic tech against terran, it's only good for stopping harass / chasing units a bit vs T imo (which is enough to get it eventually but not fast)
On November 11 2010 12:16 Markwerf wrote: some horrible advice here. Colossi don't work well vs this. First of all they are very risky as the push might come when you just have that first colossi at 60% which will immediately get you screwed. Also a good T will simply focus your colossus with his banshee's/vikings before it does any significant damage as there is no way that colossus will have range tech already.
Also blink is a horrible advice as well. Against takes too long to be effective against this. And the whole "forcing them a PDD on the way over" is never gonna work against a proper timing push. Blink hardly helps in battle against banshee / MM. Blink isn't a fantastic tech against terran, it's only good for stopping harass / chasing units a bit vs T imo (which is enough to get it eventually but not fast)
On November 11 2010 08:27 GoldenH wrote: I've had success against this build by going 2 robo 1 gate, pumping stalkers + 1 sentry out of the gate, and immortals. The idea is to keep your stalkers behind the immortals, their only purpose is to shoot at the banshee. You will not really try and do any damage with the stalker during the fight with the marine marauder, since there will be a PDD out anyway. Just keep them back, and keep them shooting (to wear down the PDD)
You can actually FE with this strat.
I don't buy this, especially not after an FE. With only stalker/sentry/immortal the immortals are going to get focused down by the marines extremely quickly while the stalkers are occupied with PDD. If you can prove it by posting a replay, then by all means...
You might think the immortals will get focused down by marines rather fast but - they have 200 health with +1 armor and guardian shield? oh yeahhhh. I really hope he does focus them down, because if he just has 4 marauders on one hotkey and all his marines on the other and just uses the marines to kill the shields then i am in a bit more trouble.
Because immortals are considerably less bulky than stalkers and you haven't got many zealots its actually possible to keep the sentries back and still protect them rather well.
Around the time the push comes you'll only have 4-6 stalkers, yeah, you can have a few zealots in there too. But the PDD isn't going to affect your dps much because you'll have like 8-10 immortals, oh, thats like 20 stalkers and PDD is worthless. nice.
Unfortunately I only seem to have a rep of myself getting a collosus and dying when the collosus got sniped heh. tell the matchmaker to pair me up with someone who does the polt rush every time next.
If you 1gate FE you can go 1starport/1robo phoenix/colossus and just try to counter this build in spades. You get a bunch of zealots and colossi for the marines and phoenixes for the banshees, and if he stops making banshees you have phoenixes to kill vikings.
EDIT: don't go phoenix/colossus blindly out of fear for banshees, Megarax MMM will crush you. The starport is just a reactively put down when you see the Tech lab starports.
On November 11 2010 12:20 RaNgeD wrote:Watch the rep. thx.
I watched the replay. Your opening looked good until about 6:30 where you decided to expand, get 2 observers, and get a twilight council all at the same time on 1 warp gate while only knowing that your opponent took a second gas and made a marine. =/
this might be counter-intuitive because I'm still experimenting with how it works but if you see an early factory, go for 3 gate blink stalkers. Blink past the block at his ramp and without bunkers (and most likely, without stim), you'll be able to do enough dmg (or kill him) that you can outmacro him easily.
Pick off scv's, add-ons, supply depots, and small portions of his army... you should be good.
It worked for me the one time I tried it (which I did out of frustration because nothing else was working) but it worked amazingly.
I've been able to hold off marine-banshee-raven timing attacks as protoss with 1 gate FE 1t 1800-1900 diamond. I pressure and scout the front of his base alot. If I only see marines in a bunker I immediatly know he's going raven/banshee/marine. In response I get 3 gates + stargate + robo. Robo only makes 1 observer (this is mandatory). Gates pump stalkers, while stargate gets pheonix. You can tip your hand at 2 pheonix and start harassing his banshee's/ravens in his base. Cannons are great here because they provide detection to deter obsrever sniping by stimmed marines in case he gets cloak. He has to attack you or be outeconned. Micro stalkers, use phoenix to kill banshees, just keep microing stalkers to pick off marines. The longer you can delay his attack with your pheonix harassing his banshees/raven in base the less dangerous his push becomes.
I went against this build earlier this week in the later, and damn it is hard to counter, I had 2 collosi out, with immortals, stalkers, chargelots, and my opponent RAN ME OVER. It was a fight at about 80 food on my own ramp, his tanks sieged up and blasted all of my units, and he advanced with his somehwhat large amount of marines will attacking my collosi. I have never seen such pure power from a build in my life.
i know a lot of you make threads because you want answers now, but just take the time to browse the search results and you might end up learning quite a bit.
On November 11 2010 08:25 ensis wrote:your first rep is completely pointless and just off topic as whole. the second... ok, at like 9:30 my mate has 15 scvs 1 raven 4 tanks 3 banshees and 21 marines with stim at your freaking door. you have 3 sentries 4 zealots 4 stalkers and 3 phoenixes.... you get my point?
So based on what u just told me, he spends: 9x50 + 100 + 4x150 + 3x150 + 21x50 = 2650 minerals 200 + 4x125 + 3x100 = 1000 gas you spend: 3x50 + 4x100 + 4x125 + 3x150 = 1500 minerals 3x100 + 4x50 + 3x100 = 800 gas 2650 - 1500 = 1150 which allows you to get 23 probes (29 total), which in turn, boost your mineral mining by more than 2x. The math tells you that you didn't spend any of this extra minerals. Not to mention the 200 gas difference, which allows for the time of a worker to mine a geyser 25 times.
So, what were you actually doing while he massed his army?
I usually go for HT's, even without storm - you can always get storm when your secondbasegas is running... With 2 to 4 HT's you can feedback the ravens rendering them absolutely useless... I agree of throwing down the robo bay, but the stargate tech is not cost effective imho, since the phoenix are fragile against marines, and the tech gives you almost nothing (unless you want to go for carriers!).
In the video shown by Daniel C (video by Horst) the T goes for dual starport with marines... The thing I had most diffculties in beating, was the MM+tank+raven push. With HT's however, you can feedback the raven - hell, you can even feedback the PDD! Later on the Archons are really usefull for beating down marines, the splash will eat them up. He will be forced to build ghosts, but even ghosts can be feedbacked. This I usually counter by seperating the HT's from each other (EMP has a very small aoe!).
This is how I win easiest against 1-1-1 with two racks added before timing push. But against marine,raven,banshee the feedback will eat up everything, and stalkers are still usefull!
Regardless it will involve cutting probes. I know this goes against the very thing you're trying to do while Fast Expanding (Having a better economy) but you NEED lots of zealots for those marines to kill even with banshees shooting you. You'll see after holding this off that when you resume production from both nexus you take a substantial lead.
Youtube video is a good approach, chargelots and phoenix.
I'm a 2100-ish diamond Terran, and I almost exclusively go for a Polt timing push, with the exception of maps with a really super small rush distance. I go two rax, one factory one starport, and I push when I have out a raven and two banshees without cloak. I immediately expand as I start to push.
I win almost 90% of games that way in TvP, so many that when my opponent complains that it's unfair I kind of agree, haha.
Anyway, sometimes people do manage to hold it off. The key to the P player winning is to be able to fight the battle away from the PDD, so I think the simplest way to do this is to make sure the PDD is put in a non-essential location. Basically, if you just sit in your base, you're gonna lose. Because I'll just run into your base, throw down the PDD, and your range attacks will be cancelled. You can't really escape, since I'm on your ramp. You could run away from the PDD to the back of your base, but your army will probably be broken up and at any rate I can probably destroy your production buildings while staying in safe range of the PDD.
But if you engage me elsewhere, you can force me to throw down my PDD in a non-essential location and then get the hell out of there. It takes a while to get enough energy for a second one, so this gives you time to do a potentially damaging attack on me.
One guy won against me because he built all the buildings in his base very far from his ramp. He forced me to throw the PDD at the choke, then backed up, and could engage me away from the PDD, especially with some nice forcefields. It's the same basic thing though, just make me put it in a non-essential location. If you can engage me in an open field, that would be best, and then just run.
I've also had people use some really interesting ways. I had a guy really really annoy me with immortal drops, and he had crazy micro (mostly picking off supply depots, reactors, tech labs, etc.). It distracted me a lot, and he had been building up void rays while keeping me busy with the drops. When it came time for my push, which was already behind, he had three or four void rays and took me out easily.
So, I can't actually play Toss at all, but that's how people have won against me.
On November 11 2010 08:27 GoldenH wrote: I've had success against this build by going 2 robo 1 gate, pumping stalkers + 1 sentry out of the gate, and immortals.
Stop talking, you obviously don't know what the polt attack is. Immortals are almost useless against the marine/raven/shee version of this build, and not substantially better off against the bizarre and slightly later MM iterations of the build.
The only "good" answer to this build (IE assume players of equal skill not making big mistakes) is a stargate + 2-3 phoenix, plus 3gateways of constant production, but first you have to scout it, which necessitates either an obs or hallu, or you just go blind and pray he isn't actually rushing thors, or only 1-porting a couple banshees. Of course, failing to get obs is also autolose if they get cloak... I honestly think the real answer is a balance patch allowing obs to be built from either starport or robo, but absent that I think you have to open phoenix when you see only marines and a bunk at his front, and pray you aren't wrong.
EPT
