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On November 19 2010 07:19 bobcat wrote:Show nested quote +On November 19 2010 06:36 Janook wrote:
Terran front-engagement mechanical units are not competitive without auto-repair. Thors and BCs are good BECAUSE they have such a wide radius, high health, and high armor, allowing them to be repaired by many SCVs and tank plenty of damage.
If you want to nerf auto-repair, you better buff the units.
Excuse me? Exactly what about thors makes them not competetive alone? Is it their 400hp, their 7 range, their ability to crush large ground units while firing aoe splash damage against light fliers, the fact that they can break down forcefields and cannot be lifted by gravity beams, or the fact that they build 10 seconds quicker that colossi and 15 quicker than ultralisks? Auto repair was never intended to be used to cheese out melee units.
Considering that Colossi can be chrono boosted out and that Zergs can make as many Ultralisks at a time as they have money; the build time arguement is moot, they all have their pros and cons. Nerfing auto-repair would render Thors relatively useless v protoss as they are countered by immortals which cost 50 less minerals and 100 less gas and come out earlier than Thors. And the shields v repair argument could go on forever.
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On November 19 2010 06:44 Goliathsorrow wrote:Show nested quote +On November 19 2010 06:38 Jayrod wrote:On November 19 2010 06:09 Goliathsorrow wrote:On November 19 2010 05:46 Jayrod wrote:On November 18 2010 00:55 Goliathsorrow wrote:On November 18 2010 00:36 eu.exodus wrote:
warp prisms that die like flies.
Near marines and thors.
Carrying one of your few robo units.
Are you serious? Marines are behind Thor and Thor doesn't really do much damage against warp prism alone. But go ahead and propose me better options than blind DT rushes and I will read them with pleasure <.< do you even play this game? Honestly... thor gets a MASSIVE damage increase against warp prism, marines will also be in front of or parallel to the thor or be dealing no damage whatsoever (which is why they will be forward), immortals have a range of 5, so in order to pick them up you have to move into 5 range. Warp prism is an awful idea against a race with a 50 mineral unit that shoots up. The reason Warp prism combat micro is used at all in some NEW PvZ ideas is because of Z's lack of accessible anti-air. Above all else, I dont understand why it should be okay for the terran to turn on auto repair, while the protoss is sitting there doing ineffective warp prism (cutting combat units to do so against a TIMED push) tricks, and thoughtfully laying down forcefields every time they engage any terran army... yes even vs thors, who can stomp them out, but are often too clumsy if you put forcefields in a way that the rines block them. Wow, so aggressive, calm down boy. What MASSIVE damage increase are u talking about ? Warp Prisms are armored and will not get shot in 2 hits like a Mutalisk. No, Marines will not be in front of the Thor, that would kill one of the points of having a Thor with ur rush/push, and every dps used on the prism is dps that is not hitting ur gateway units/immortal. The thor is NOT in front and cannot be in front and still damage the protoss units, other than a couple of zealots, which die too fast to dent the marines. If you put all your rines behind the thor, this push fails. If you have your marines in a position to DPS, you are fine. The zeals are a non-factor at this stage of the game because of one thing that not many terran players are forced to utilize, micro. I think if you've actually seen this build in action or used it yourself you might see what I mean, but honestly the zealots die so quickly or cut so much into more appropriate units that they quickly become a liability... Also since the build gets +1 armor by the time of the attack, zealot DPS is cut down even further due to their double attack. It seems that alot of people on this thread have faced thor timing pushes, but this push is very very specific. If you've ever fought a 1 thor with marine/scv push.. its NOT this build. If you've ever fought a 2 thor without strike cannons and armor with marines its NOT this build. This is a very unique and well thought out timing push. My hat goes off to the creator of it and its going to be giving protoss a headache for quite a while. I hope they dont nerf the thor because some people i play with (im lookin at you martin!) always cry imbalance whenever theres a unit they cant use or deal with. Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 23:53 Janook wrote:Someone said you put the marines up front to tank. No. You put the thors up front, with repair, to tank, and keep your marines behind the thor to kill of the zealots. So u know it better than this guy ?
PUAHHAHA, did you just mention +1 vehicle armor? OOOH, scary....
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What about vs the KCDC 1gate FE build.
The FE transitions into either 3 gate robo or 4 gate - delayed robo. Assuming protoss scouts that SOMETHING is up. (I didnt get any scent of this, since it was with a practice buddy and he has never used thors before in our match ups)
Chrono gateways + one immortal and a few probes its defendable. Although i failed to defend it. I see what i did wrong.
Just had this done to me and it was even a Proxy fac. Had i macro'ed a little harder/ maybe throw in a immortal - instead of probing so hard it would have been very stoppable.
He hit me with 6+ marines and 2 thors with scvs. I had 3 stalkers and 8 zealots or so. Had i macroed harder I could have had at least 4-7 more units making the stop possible
(lol also i didnt know how to zoom / tilt camera so at 1 point it was 1 thor + 4-6 scvs vs 6-7 zealots and i couldnt Kill the DAMN SCVS!!!!!! closest ive come to raging in SC2 lol. )
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I like this build. I like it a lot. I never used shrike cannon until now, but watching it turn immortals and colossi into non-factors today was nice. I think I like this better than ghosts; however, the 5 matches I had today against Protoss ended before storm was out.
Even if autorepair gets a nerf of some kind, just setting SCV's in another control group and manually repairing would not be significantly more difficult, even for me.
I don't know who this Janook guy is, but I like him.
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I have held this off 2 times with 2 gate robo and then 3rd gateway after i scouted it. I have to even cancel my expansion sometimes. Once u scouted it, just keep building zealot and stalkers with watever minerals and gas you have. I will advise not getting immortal. Once the force comes in, let them walk it. DO NOT ENGAGE AT CHOKE, cause the fat ass thor will shield the marines.
Kill all the marines. DO NOT try to kill the thor first, just kill all the marines and remove the bulk of the dps. And then u have to shift click all the scv, too bad the AI is bloody stupid, cause the zealot will start walking in circle around the thor worshipping it.
Once you held off the first push, quickly build a stargate and get VR, start building immortal from ROBO and expand. Sometimes it might be even possible to defend with an expansion up, You have to test and trial how many units is needed. Just remember u are economically ahead. Quickly attack when you think ur force is superior, do not let terran switch tech.
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I have tried this at diamond 1500, several times, occasionally it works and occasionally it doesnt. But ive noticed that if you lose the push youve lost the game, and if it hits any later than 9mins its worthless.
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6 SCV's repairing will cause your zealots to bug out. Until blizzard decides to fix this, people will continue to exploit this build.
their too busy finding more ways to nerf Toss
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SCV's repairs should have the same attack priority as the unit/building its repairing. Or if thats a bit much, if a melee unit cannot get to the thor it should auto attack scv's.
Either fix AI, or change the thor animation so you can focus scvs.
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On November 19 2010 11:45 gdub wrote:Show nested quote +6 SCV's repairing will cause your zealots to bug out. Until blizzard decides to fix this, people will continue to exploit this build. their too busy finding more ways to nerf Toss
Its not like Scv AI is particularily good, half the time they will just repair each other instead of the thor, even when you click on the thor. But balancing will negate cheesy all ins like this.
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As someone who was the victim of this twice in the practice group, i'm the 3 colossus 2gate robo and 4 gate guy, It's a really tough build, we do discuss various ways to deal with it, and perhaps 2 colossus and colossus range is the better answer, if possible, but i'd have to crunch the numbers again
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fuckin garbage build, lost with it twice in a row....
2400 diamond terran level
and i did not do anythin differnet than the replays.
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I tried this out on ladder a couple times. It seemed to completely catch my opponents off guard. I won every game where I followed the build somewhat well (had two thors around 8 marines and strike cannon+armor at around 9 minutes).
As stated in the OP, you will have enough money to expand behind the push. I did have one game where I lost my thors after killing the protoss army, but because I had my expo I could throw down some more barracks and was able to win from there.
One thing I really liked was holding off one base timing attacks and then still having enough army to walk across the map and roflstomp. I believe I stopped a 3gate/robo and a 4 gate (with proxy pylons and what not).
The build does seem 'unfair' in the sense that it is much easier to perform than to defend. I'm trying to only use it on blistering sands and steppes so I don't get too attached >.<
edit:
On November 19 2010 14:35 NaYeBo wrote:
fuckin garbage build, lost with it twice in a row....
2400 diamond terran level
and i did not do anythin differnet than the replays.
replays plz? I wanna see what these tosses did.
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On November 19 2010 14:39 aidnai wrote:I tried this out on ladder a couple times. It seemed to completely catch my opponents off guard. I won every game where I followed the build somewhat well (had two thors around 8 marines and strike cannon+armor at around 9 minutes). As stated in the OP, you will have enough money to expand behind the push. I did have one game where I lost my thors after killing the protoss army, but because I had my expo I could throw down some more barracks and was able to win from there. One thing I really liked was holding off one base timing attacks and then still having enough army to walk across the map and roflstomp. I believe I stopped a 3gate/robo and a 4 gate (with proxy pylons and what not). The build does seem 'unfair' in the sense that it is much easier to perform than to defend. I'm trying to only use it on blistering sands and steppes so I don't get too attached >.< edit: Show nested quote +On November 19 2010 14:35 NaYeBo wrote:
fuckin garbage build, lost with it twice in a row....
2400 diamond terran level
and i did not do anythin differnet than the replays. replays plz? I wanna see what these tosses did.
one guy went 2 gate , robo, stargate, and hada void ray out with 2 immortal and zlot
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[/QUOTE]
So u know it better than this guy ?
[/QUOTE]
Actually, yes. Did you watch his replays? First, this isnt even his build... its a refinement on an existing build. Second, In literally every replay his APM dropped to exactly zero for several seconds during the fights without macroing. The simple fact that a guy comes on the forums saying his friend is 2200 and has an unbeatable built doesn't make someone good. Honestly, theres a very specific way to counter this build thats actually more viable than you would think but requires a bit of micro.
Admittedly i was mistaken about the warp prism and admittedly I dont use that unit much so i had the shields backwards from the hp. When can i rest my robo bay for a warp prism anyways =P.
anyways on to the viable opener
You open gate/stargate/gate for the fast phoenix scout, you can delay warpgate tech to make sure youre constantly producing off the first gateway when it finishes. Your first phoenix should be chrono'd of course and it needs to go straight for their base. Phoenix is the fastest way to know exactly what theyre doing. If you see an armory you need to drop a robo immediately and chrono 2 immortals. constantly produce from the gateways, cut workers if you cant constantly produce from the gateways and you can cut a stargate unit if you can't get immortals out back to back as well. The push doesnt arrive before 9 minutes. In fact, in the replay pack included, he never engaged the opponent at their base before the 9:25-9:30ish mark. By this time if you've macro'd properly you will have a very nice chunk of mixed gateway, 2 or 3 immortals (usually the third is about to come out, but honestly it depends on when you actually figure out whats going on/scout the armory)
Additionally, if you open blind 1 gate/stargate/robo you will be able to scout with a fast phoenix and get 3 immortals well before the push comes as well as a void ray... youll also be able to decide if you need to throw down gates. I dont think 1 gate/stargate/robo build is as bad as it sounds on paper as a standard opener but to be sure i havent used it blind much. Normally I like to scout with the phoenix and see if i even need a robo... that answer is usually yes, but if i scout bio i will wait on the robo, go for a more gateway oriented build and defend the bio ball with good lifting and my gateway ball..
Now back to the build at hand... i know you're thinking well how does phoenix/gateway/couple immortals actually deal with this build... i mean... they cant lift thors right?
Right, however, if thor channels cannon on an immortal, you can gravitron beam the immortal to stop the spell, then hit escape and drop your immortal back into combat. Your first couple phoenix's will also have over 100 energy since you went stargate first, allowing you to either save a beam for the thor thats coming if it concerns you, or lift other ground units to help your gateway out. If you are quick about picking up your immortals the fight will go on as though the 250mm doesnt exist... the time lost is a wash because the thor has to channel anyways.
Whats more is that the thor will automatically attack your lifted immortal with his shitty anti-air attack against your armored target. The thor will have to be manually micro'd to hit ground if you hold the immortal in the air (though you probably wouldnt want to)
Long story short, if you open 1 gate stargate you have ample time to respond to any timing push due to the phoenix information. gravitron beam counters 250 mm strike cannons, but the push will still feel difficult to stop because thor is such a bullshit unit for lack of a better way of putting it... repaired thor i should say. Terran users will try to cling to it and justify repairing one unit with 8 SCVs (the OP replays use 10 in the more refined version) at a sickening rate. Even with this tricky work around, you will have to activate guardian shield make sure your zeals are in position, control your units to pick off scvs if possible, pick up targeted immortals and cancel the beam, pick up units with spare energy to help what you have left on the ground. Its possible, but very difficult. to apply the right dps in the right locations to win.
One other trick against thor to at least force the terran to micro. Is to send exactly one stalker forward and lift it with a phoenix. Since the thor has an anti-air range of 9 it will target fire your armored stalker until the user changes his target or casts 250 mm cannon. If he casts the cannon and you lift the target, he will again have to manually switch back to ground. I know that doesnt make up for the 15 things the protoss has to do while the terran can basically a move and hit C+click twice... but its something.
And guys please stop citing the 1 thor timing pushes, thats a different push. The closest 1 thor timing push was the kiwikaki game vs tarson that was posted earlier and only because it featured the 250 mm cannon. In that game kiwikaki opened gate/robo/gate/star but he dropped the star once he saw the armory and I think thats a key take home point from that replay. If you've been playing protoss you should know by now that unless you're some chain 4 gater with no ambition to improve your game, there is NO easy win... or even easy way to enter midgame on equal footing. This build is no exception. Sorry for my rude tone before, but ive seen alot of this build and its crazy powerful and its irritating that terran gets an A move build that I have to counter with 150+ apm.... hell even when VRs were broken they took good micro to win with. Between the polt timing attack, marine all in, SCVs+thor, and at stimmed bio at lower levels, the terran has an array of timing attacks that take very little skill to execute. The protoss have exactly 1 build like that and its not exactly microless since our only damage dealers are slow melee.
Edit: One last thing, sorry for adding to the wall of text. Since many the units take longer to build than standard gateway units, you will have extra minerals, at the cost of adding 1 zealot in place of a stalker you can add void rays, time permitted. You really only need 2 phoenix to micro against the cannons and getting too many will become a liability. Play around with it, but if you know a thors coming it might behoove you to stop at 2 phoenix and try to get voidrays out. The marine DPS is too important to the push for them to try to kill a high HP target like the vr with no stim pack. Its too committed and they will lose most of their push with you still able to create VRs even if you both lose your army you'll be fine.
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On November 19 2010 11:06 s4m222 wrote:
What about vs the KCDC 1gate FE build.
The FE transitions into either 3 gate robo or 4 gate - delayed robo. Assuming protoss scouts that SOMETHING is up. (I didnt get any scent of this, since it was with a practice buddy and he has never used thors before in our match ups)
Chrono gateways + one immortal and a few probes its defendable. Although i failed to defend it. I see what i did wrong.
Just had this done to me and it was even a Proxy fac. Had i macro'ed a little harder/ maybe throw in a immortal - instead of probing so hard it would have been very stoppable.
He hit me with 6+ marines and 2 thors with scvs. I had 3 stalkers and 8 zealots or so. Had i macroed harder I could have had at least 4-7 more units making the stop possible
(lol also i didnt know how to zoom / tilt camera so at 1 point it was 1 thor + 4-6 scvs vs 6-7 zealots and i couldnt Kill the DAMN SCVS!!!!!! closest ive come to raging in SC2 lol. )
The problem is that if you open with 4 sentries, which is fairly common to nullify bio pressure, you pretty much autolose. The next thing to consider is your robo progression - making one obs to scout then an immortal gets the immo out in time, but you're fucked against proxy banshees. Making two obs to scout defends proxy banshees but leaves you with no immortals. Double immortal would handle 1 thor but is no help against banshees. And Thor/Banshee builds look identical in terms of getting early marines and teching.
1 Immortal might as well be none due to strike cannons, so defending this relies on not having invested heavily in sentries, and having 2 immortals out - or just a lot of units and sacrificing some probes.
Alternatively, you could be funky and get 4 sentries + hallu, creating more immortals than Terran knows what to do with (and still having guardianshield).
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This build rules. Before I lost 75% of my games against Protoss but now I seem to be able to win about half of them. Against DT builds it seems week though. No amount of scans works if he just send in one DT at a time.
Repair cost both resources and lost income so it is perfectly balanced - if you bring 8 SCVs that is 320 minerals/min lost income + the the repair cost+the cost to replace the SCV.
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Ok first of all the build as posted by the OP is pretty bad, the thor push is much scarier when it comes faster with 1 thor. Also it is mostly a counter to a protoss expansion (which protoss will have almost all the time though) and doesn't do that well against 1 base tech builds (voidray of fast colo easily stomp it).
The best build for this is simply 1 rax (no reactor) 1 fact and push asap when the thor is out:
12 rax
13 gas
15 orbital
17 depot
18 fac
20 2nd gas
make armory when factory is done and make 1 hellion before tech lab.
When armory done thor + 250 mm cannon (you should have exactly the amount of resources needed, if you make a reactor you'll have to wait for 50 gas which makes that worse, the hellion means you'll have enough units to push along your thor).
A good trick is to make the factory at the edge of your base and then float the factory down after the hellion and make a techlab there, this can speed up the thor rush by quite a bit especially on maps like lost temple, an other option is to proxy but this of course is more risky. Note that up till the armory the build is exactly the same as any other tech build like 1-1-1, this means it's extremely hard for protoss to know what you are doing AND you can change to banshee play or whatever till you put down the armory (or you can cancel the armory and go starport if you want as well). For example if you are sure the protoss does a 1 base build you generally DON'T want to do a thor push as 1 base toss can beat it pretty easily.
Also the ideal number of scv's to bring along seems to be about 7. This won't cripple your economy at all(in fact you will have nearly 16 on minerals and 6 on gas while pushing) yet you will have enough scv's to surround your thor. I also suggest to make just 1 or 2 thor with this push, either the thor push is succesfull in which case extra thor's do nothing or you're thor push is stopped and you should be transitioning into MMM play afterwards.
Now suppose protoss DID expand then a 1 thor push is practically GARANTEED to take out the expansion. There is no way they will have voids or enough immortals out by the time you reach their expo (given the map isn't too big). The best thing protoss can do generally is to abandon the expansion and fight in their main, as this buys them quite some time (a nexus takes quite a bit of time to take down by thor/marine).
Now for protoss there are 2 practical good things you can do:
a) just make ONLY zealot/stalker in a roughly 1:1 mix and counter it with that. You need good micro for this to work though as zealots generally bug out, the best thing to do usually is to send the zealots after the marines and pick off scv's with the stalkers, then after most scv's and marines died you can focus the thor. If he is only left with the thor you can generally back off a bit to buy more time as the thor is really slow and actually doesn't kill buildings fast at all.
This option is severely harder then it should be because of SCV's attack priority bugging out. This deserves a patch imo as it is just incredibly stupid how SCV's that repair never get targeted by melee units.
b) chrono out immortals like a mad man and have MORE immortals then he has thors, 2 immortals vs 1 thor will work, if he has 2 thors you need at least 3 probably 4 immortals OR engage him on the ramp (this will cause his thors to block eachother so he can only use 1 strike cannon and his marines won't do much, only engage with stalker/immortal when you do this by the way). A good move to get out enough immortals for his thors is to always make 1 immortal straight away after your first observer, the moment you scout the thor push then you can immediately start chronoing your robo non stop and buy time by sacrificing your expansion. Losing the expansion isn't that bad as he is effectively losing economy as well by bringing scv's with his push.
A stargate takes too long to work as by the time your observer scouts their base it takes nearly 2 minutes to get out a voidray and phoenix are absolute crap agianst thors. Blind stargates are a nono against protoss because of banshee cloak and especially MMM pushes against which a stargate is almost completely useless.
Here is a replay of me stopping a 1 thor push with immortal play after a kcdc 1 gate FE. Waiting till you have 2 immortals vs his 1 thor is incredibly important:
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-166925.jpg)
The terran made a slight mistake in my opinion of actually pushing up the ramp and continuing with thors. If terran just pulls back and expo's while transitioning to MMM (possibly with siege tanks) they are in a quite comfortable position.
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So this this thread explains why all 3 terrans tried this on me today. 1 gate fe raped it via having a way bigger army.
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@Markwerf your post is funny.
"The OP's build is horrible. Here's a much better one and a replay with TLDR guide on how it can easily be countered".
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Here are more recent replays of the more refined build against ladder opponents and a friend who was specifically trying to figure out how to stop it.
These protoss opponents are all 2.2k+ players.
Additionally, two of the games, the opponent was able to hold the push, and I show how to transition out of this into a late game composition of Thor/Banshee/Marine. (Still working on smoothing that out.)
http://www.2shared.com/file/w6iS2RA9/Janook_2_Thor_TvP.html
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EPT
