|
I used this strategy on the ladder. It worked against most mid to high diamond players, but had about a 50% success rate against master level players.
Aside from general composition and timing counters (without stim it struggles against void rays, zealots, any sort of early void ray 3gate attack, even against dt or ht tech, which if you are attacking this late is not out of the question), a heavy gate composition is still problematic, especially if charge or blink and any attack/damage upgrades enter the equation.
The hallucination idea was brilliant, but even without it, the shield does very well against marines. The fight against gateway heavy becomes kind of technical - if you lead with marines the toss pokes with stalkers, and if you lead with thors the zealots are brought in to kill your scvs and marines. The mistake that the high to mid diamond players were making was to try and focus down the thors while the repairs were happening - the stalkers got eaten alive by the thors, and by the time the toss retreated too much damage had been done.
The fight against gateway with immortals can still be lost through technicality. A clever protoss waits until you have engaged your strike cannons to then drop force fields, separating some repairers/marines from your thors, isolating them to take them down.
The colossus player can lose if he exposes his colossus, but this isn't necessary. He can simply kite or poke at your infantry and repairers, then retreat back up a cliff where you don't have vision, buying time for more zealots and the range upgrade.
For ladder purposes this is a strong strategy when it is not expected or scouted. Some ladder players do not have the patience or experience to back away from unfavorable confrontations and go up the tech tree, or stall and then drop, etc.
|
United States297 Posts
On February 18 2011 00:49 Alejandrisha wrote:
people still do this since the patch? seems pretty auto-loss if the protoss observer scouts you before 7 minutes O_O
After getting crushed trying to do TvP macro games, I just said "f*** it, I'm Thor rushing every game unless I scout Zealot/Cannon rush". I'm well above 60% win rate since, with most of the losses due to build order mistakes causing delays.
The SCV threat priority change means the SCVs will be attacked if they're in front of the thor, not behind it. With the VR buff a stargate build works better against it, but you can solve that problem by bringing more SCVs  .
|
If you go Stargate against this build, should your Void Ray be targeting SCVs or the Thors? I played a 2-Thor-rusher yesterday and my Void died before the Thor could be killed, and within a few seconds it was back up to full health :/
|
This build still fares quite well. I expand behind the 2 thor push and usually end the game with a 5-6 thor push a bit later. Producing out of 2 factories and 2 rax (one reactored other techlabbed).
|
this start still works very well,,,, against toss, just make sure u keep your armory hidden.
and keep an eye out for what other people have said,, observers,,, those are key to winning, once u see the protoss expand, u know its GG, he just wasted 400 mins,,, so as soon as i see that, im like nice, easy win for me.
this works very well for zerg, chances are uw ill run into either a roach rush,,, which is easy to defend,, ,or lings and bangs, again,,, once u see the bangs,,, try to move your scvs and rines out of the way so the thors absorb the hit,,, the faster u move out,, the lessbangs there will be i find. I find this strat easier to handle with zerg than protoss.... I use it for both, once in awhile, im kind of getting bored of it, ebcause it is a very boreing cheesy build. It did get me from bronze to gold in a about a week. when i used nothing but that, before 1.2 came out, and from time to time, ill throw it in there to switch things up. Right now, im havng a hard time with zerg, so im starting to slowly bring it back again for my zerg match ups until i can kick my losing habits with them.
|
How does protoss deal with this?
|
On March 01 2011 08:16 The.Doctor wrote:
How does protoss deal with this?
3gate void ray is strong against it. not only do vrs deal nice dam against thors, the main reason why they are good is that they make the thors autotarget them, so that they use their pitiful missiles instead of thors hammer. another advantage of vrs against thors is that thors are very immobile and vrs make a great backstabbing unit.
and ofc the quick thorpush usually is an autoloss against any decently performed dt rush. but dt rushs ofc are a very gimmicky strat. the most important thing is to scout the thor push in time, ie scouting when he puts down the armory.
|
how i regularly stop this build...
1 gate FE send my first zealot and stalker when the 2nd stalker is almost half done, the other stalker will catch up and you can have a nice little early push which can do a lot of damage to a non bunker non marauder opening. then you can follow it up by going into 4gate robo macroing like mad. take another base around 8-9 minutes and go up to 7 WARPGATES!!! i just have way to many basic units for this type of build to handle. generally i do have to sacrifice around 5-10 workers to survive but then im on 3 base!!! so i win.
|
On March 03 2011 20:27 DespisedIcon wrote:
how i regularly stop this build...
1 gate FE send my first zealot and stalker when the 2nd stalker is almost half done, the other stalker will catch up and you can have a nice little early push which can do a lot of damage to a non bunker non marauder opening. then you can follow it up by going into 4gate robo macroing like mad. take another base around 8-9 minutes and go up to 7 WARPGATES!!! i just have way to many basic units for this type of build to handle. generally i do have to sacrifice around 5-10 workers to survive but then im on 3 base!!! so i win.
take another base around 8-9, while the thorpush usually hits around 8-9 minutes into the game? sry for questioning your competence, but what league are you in?
from my experience, any FE build loses to this thorpush.
|
I tried tis a couple time and lose all my games. to 3 gate robo + immos and 4 gate. basically my micro sux so bad tat i forgot tat my scv can repair my thor. any tips? i set auto repair and they repair each other
|
Build is crazy strong and when they bring workers to repair, it really proves how strong repair is right now. I saw this build the other day on latter and did my normal 2 gate expand build in which i hit the terran around 6:15 with 6 stalkers and 1 zealot. He had like 5 marines which i killed pretty easily without losing a unit and then his thor pop out and he took 8 scvs and basically crushed my 6 stalkers + 2 warped in stalkers. Even thou I had 2 bases up, he still beat me because thors with scv repair way to cost effective against gateway units and not to mention they have an ability to one shot the only hard counter toss has to them.
The best response that I have found is going straight for Dts when you scout this. It works pretty damn well.
|
I hardly ever lose with 3 gate robo against it....I usually build two immortals and tech straight to colossi. I position my stuff on top of my ramp so that it creates a nice arch, mainly zealots with some stalkers and 1-2 sentries for guardian shield. One immortal gets the cannon but the second one together with the zealots usually takes out the first thor when it's making its way up my ramp. If he doesn't come up my ramp then I get colossi with thermal lance and...well...pretty much always win.
For the record, I always go 3 gate robo when I suspect tech-play. I expand after my observer sees whether or not it's safe to expand.
|
I have used this build in my last 10 or so TvP's against many high diamond-ish Protoss. I have not had as much success with the initial push as it seems many do, but I have a VERY high win rate by transitioning in to a 2 base 3 rax + Thor push afterwards. If anyone wants replays I would be glad to find some of my decent ones to upload.
A question, however, is how do you guys react to a gas steal? I have tried a few different things including delaying +1 armor to get the Thor's out in time, waiting for 3 thors, or even just skipping the factory and going 3 rax + stim, but I'm not sure which to go with.
|
Like it said in the OP, DTs are a good counter to this (since he doesn't really have the gas to get a starport and a raven if he is making thors). If he starts pushing up your ramp, you can just retreat your army back into your base, and send one DT at a time after him, forcing scans that don't kill every DT. Also since DTs 1-shot SCVs and Marines, they shouldn't have trouble cleaning up that too.
Only thing is going blind DTs is risky, and will end up losing you some games (eg. Cloak banshee rush is gg, early conc marauder pushes are very possibly to be gg)
|
If you've went a regular 2/3 gate robo you should have an observer+immortal out in time to scout this.
|
On March 01 2011 08:16 The.Doctor wrote:
How does protoss deal with this?
Depending on when I scout it I usually go for fast immortals and a single voidray (+phoenix if possible). Sounds a bit strange to go for both but you can get both with a single sentry and a fair few zealots before the rush hits and the fight will not be close.
I suppose you could skip the immortals and just get more gateway units but I always get the robo early anyway and the immortals are great for countering straight after you kill his army.
|
Is this build viable anymore with Patch 1.3.3?
Patch 1.3.3:
+ Show Spoiler ++ Thor now has 200 max energy, and starts with 50 energy.
+ 250mm Strike Cannons now cost 150 energy to use (cooldown removed)
|
interesting to see what janook would say about this build now. he's top 8 in my master division i believe and i think ive matched him a few times, but it's been a while.
|
On July 04 2011 02:08 PaleRider09 wrote:Is this build viable anymore with Patch 1.3.3? Patch 1.3.3: + Show Spoiler ++ Thor now has 200 max energy, and starts with 50 energy.
+ 250mm Strike Cannons now cost 150 energy to use (cooldown removed)
No. Why bump such an old and irrelevant post when the answer is obvious? /facepalm.
|
On July 04 2011 04:58 goFLiP wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2011 02:08 PaleRider09 wrote:Is this build viable anymore with Patch 1.3.3? Patch 1.3.3: + Show Spoiler ++ Thor now has 200 max energy, and starts with 50 energy.
+ 250mm Strike Cannons now cost 150 energy to use (cooldown removed) No. Why bump such an old and irrelevant post when the answer is obvious? /facepalm.
Why? Because it was not obvious to me. Thank you tho. /facepalm.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
